‘Art retired maybe eight, nine years ago.’
‘Can you tell me how to get in touch with him?’
‘No,’ refused the voice, at once. ‘You give me your name, a number to reach you on, and I’ll try to get a message to him.’
It had been a stupid, unprofessional attempt, Slater accepted. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Maybe it does. If you don’t want to give me your name why don’t we set up a meeting? It might be that I could help with whatever you wanted to talk to Burt or Art about.’
It was extremely unlikely but perhaps Jack Mason still had friends, acquaintances, within the Agency. The debriefing agents – the CIA department to which he knew he was connected – had never known his Frederick relocation. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ repeated Slater, replacing the phone before the man at the other end could argue any further.
* * *
Mason’s summons to the warden’s office came two days after the parole board debacle. The only person he recognized, apart from Hubert Harrison, was Glynis Needham, whose trouser suit today was a muted brown check. There was no introduction to the other three men. A woman technician sat beside tape-recording apparatus on a separate table, a back-up notebook already open before her. Mason had expected Frank Howitt to be present, but he wasn’t. The chief prison guard hadn’t been on the landing in the last two days. Gerry Garson had, but studiously ignored Mason.
Harrison said, ‘We’d like you to help us with what happened when you went to the Washington parole board meeting.’
‘Is this an official enquiry?’
‘Not yet,’ said the governor. ‘We’re just trying to get things straight in our heads.’
‘Shouldn’t I be allowed legal representation?’
There was a stir among the unnamed men. One of them, a fat, white-haired man, said, ‘Why should you need a lawyer?’
‘I believe myself to have been the victim of a conspiracy,’ declared Mason. ‘I believe an attempt was made by Prison Officer Frank Howitt to have my remission revoked by staging an apparent attempt by me to escape from custody.’
There was a fresh stir throughout the room. The records clerk looked up from her scribbled notepad to check her machine.
‘That’s a serious accusation,’ said the gruff-voiced parole officer.
‘To have lost five years remission would have been very serious to me indeed,’ said Mason.
‘Why don’t you tell us what happened?’ suggested another of the unnamed men.
‘I have already given an account to the parole board, which Ms Needham has heard,’ said Mason. ‘The parole board also heard from police officers at Reagan airport to whom I immediately surrendered, after Prison Officer Howitt vanished. I don’t think it advisable for me to give any further details until I’ve had the opportunity to discuss everything in full with my attorney and received legal advice upon filing a civil claim upon my release.’
‘A conspiracy needs the involvement of more than one person,’ said the third stranger, who had so far not spoken.
‘I know,’ said Mason.
‘Are you alleging more than one person was involved in a conspiracy against you?’
‘I could be.’
‘Who are they?’
‘They will be named in any claim, if I am advised to make one,’ said Mason.
‘This threat might need to be brought before the parole board, for their consideration,’ warned Glynis Needham.
‘As would that threat need to be brought before a civil court, most definitely if it in any way influenced my already agreed remission,’ said Mason.
The woman flushed. The white-haired man said, ‘I don’t think Ms Needham’s remark was a threat.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ said Mason.
‘There’s no cause for this meeting to degenerate into acrimony,’ said the warden.
‘That’s reassuring, too, sir,’ said Mason. ‘I’d like to use this opportunity formally to request a meeting with the lawyer who represented me at my trial and who settled the estate after my mother’s death.’ Already knowing from his close study of his own file that it was, he added, ‘I would expect the name of my attorney to be on my records. I can, of course, supply it if it’s not listed.’
‘That is your right,’ agreed Harrison. ‘There doesn’t appear to be any further progress we can make here today.’
‘I would like everyone here to accept and understand that this is the very last thing that I want – or wanted – to happen,’ said Mason.
‘An asshole!’ declared John Peebles. ‘Prancing about like someone out of a James Bond movie.’
‘They’re not worth watching,’ judged Bourne, the film buff.
‘He didn’t put me down, though,’ insisted Peebles. ‘I told him not to be so fucking stupid and to scurry back into his little hidey-hole. And not to bother us again with stupid questions.’
‘Well done,’ said Bourne. Liar, he thought.
Five
It was gone nine by the time Slater had checked David’s homework and they’d eaten supper together and settled the boy before Slater and Ann were alone. Even then Slater hesitated, briefly tempted to break the vow and not after all tell Ann of the letter, uncertain of her reaction. But he didn’t, even more fearful – and professionally aware of the erosion that deception brought – of her somehow discovering that he had abandoned their solemn, mutual promise at the first moment of pressure.
Slater said, ‘There’s something you should see.’
Ann looked up, smiling, from her book. ‘What?’
Without any preliminary explanation Slater offered her the letter, watching as the colour as well as the smile drained from Ann’s face. She looked up at him and whispered, as if sharing a secret, ‘Oh my God!’
‘It’s all right,’ insisted Slater.
‘How can it be all right! How can anything be all right!’
‘Listen. Please listen.’ Quietly, over-stressing the control, Slater recounted the Washington visit and his encounter with Peebles, at her interrupting insistence relaying word for word everything about their exchanges, as well as his assessments of them.
‘You think he made up the amendment legislation!’ she challenged at once.
‘I thought he guessed at it,’ qualified Slater. ‘And I was right. When I couldn’t reach the guys I originally dealt with at Langley I checked at the Library of Congress. It was a House bill in 1992 that included the release warning: it was primarily intended for organized crime witnesses within the programme.’
‘Why didn’t …?’ Ann waved her arms, seeking the identity.
‘Peebles,’ supplied Slater.’
‘Why didn’t Peebles know the right statute?’
Slater shrugged. ‘He’s a form-filling clerk, not accustomed to being questioned or needing to show any initiative.’
‘How do you know that?’ demanded Ann.
‘It was practically written on his forehead.’
She didn’t smile. ‘That’s not good enough. You know that’s not good enough.’
‘Darling, it’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK,’ she refused. ‘I said it would never go away and it never will.’
‘Jack’s been a model prisoner. That’s why he’s got his remission.’
‘You don’t know him. No one knows him like I do. He won’t have forgotten. Or forgiven. He’ll want to expose us, maybe even to the Russian embassy. Hurt us as much as he can. What would it do to David? Oh my God!’
‘How can he find us?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the woman, emptily. ‘But I know that he’ll try.’
‘And fail. There’s no way he can find us.’
‘We can’t be sure,’ said Ann, even emptier. ‘Pennsylvania’s the next goddamn state!’
‘That’s not going to make it any easier for him. Or dangerous, for us.’ Spacing the words in the hope of reassuring her, Slater said, ‘Jack Mason doesn’t know where we relocated. Ann Mason and Dimitri Sobell ha
ve vanished: ceased to exist.’
‘I knew it was all going to come back, one day,’ she insisted, her mind blocked.
Slater hadn’t expected the collapse to be as bad as this; hadn’t expected a collapse at all. Until this moment he’d believed that over the years they’d laid all the threatening, haunting ghosts: talked everything out to exhaustion and satisfied each other – and themselves – that they could never be discovered for who they had once been and who they were now. He was certainly convinced that he had moved on and was disappointed to find that Ann hadn’t, that in effect Ann had been deceiving him with her assurances and insistences. What else wasn’t she sure about? Them maybe? If she wasn’t then the deception was practically unimaginable. So why was he imagining it; raising his own, taunting ghosts? She had to love him as totally as he loved her. He supposed on balance he had made the greater sacrifice, although he’d never considered it as such, in abandoning his very existence and his country for his love of her. But after the first few days of understandable disbelief at truly learning who he was and what his function had been, running her husband as a traitor, Ann had just as willingly stepped out into the unknown; been prepared even for the retribution from Moscow he’d honestly warned could engulf them if they were ever found, as well as enduring the humiliation and exposure of their affair at Mason’s trial, although fortunately she’d been spared an actual court appearance. Never once had she questioned or complained about the surreal initial months, months that stretched into more than a year, totally stripping herself of one, albeit miserable life to adopt another. And she wasn’t questioning it now. Ann was behaving like this, seeming almost immediately to crumble, because she’d adapted so completely and loved him so absolutely and she was terrified of losing everything they had.
He said now, ‘Nothing’s come back. Nothing is going to come back. All right, maybe I was knocked off balance when I got the letter. Which obviously I had to check out. Now that I have I’m satisfied there’s nothing sinister; nothing for us to worry or panic about. We just go on as we have been doing for most of the past fifteen years, living our lives, enjoying our lives. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. I won’t let anything bad happen to us.’
‘You said Peebles told you Jack will be out in four or five weeks?’
Slater saw that his wife was wet-eyed, although not actually crying. ‘Something like that.’
‘You definitely said four or five weeks!’
‘I know what I said, Ann. There’s no reason for us to argue.’ He couldn’t remember the last time they had even squabbled.
‘I’m not arguing. I just want to get things straight.’
‘He said four or five weeks.’
‘Where will he go?’
‘Peebles said he didn’t know. That he wouldn’t have told me, even if he had known.’
‘There has to be a reason for their warning us.’
Slater couldn’t criticize Ann for echoing his own first thought. ‘That’s not so! It’s a statutory obligation, a legal requirement, nothing more than that.’
‘That’s just what Peebles said,’ insisted the woman, disbelievingly.
‘It’s what I checked out and confirmed at the Library of Congress.’
‘Is Peebles going to keep in touch?’
‘Ann, stop it! There’s no reason for him or anyone else to keep in touch. Forget it.’
‘How the hell can I forget it?’
‘You have done, for the past fifteen years!’ They were definitely arguing now.
‘No I haven’t,’ she denied. ‘I’ve waited for the past fifteen years. I think I need a drink.’
‘It didn’t drown anything out before.’ She’d been very good at disguising it, Slater remembered. He hadn’t even guessed when they’d started their affair, although they’d both had too much to drink the first time, and afterwards agreed it had been a bad mistake; Ann remorseful for cheating on a husband despite his so consistently and blatantly cheating on her, actually financing his womanizing with Moscow’s money, and Slater – or Sobell as he was then – personally horrified at breaking every KGB rule as the control of a major American spy source. Neither had been drunk the second time. Or the third.
‘I want a drink,’ Ann demanded.
It had once been a bottle a day, Slater recalled, pouring the measure he knew Ann had liked then, adding ice, lime and tonic to the gin. He didn’t make one for himself.
‘Not joining me?’
‘I don’t need it.’
Ann remained staring at the full glass on the table between them, like a fairground fortune-teller trying to predict the future from a crystal ball, making no attempt to pick it up. Slater remained silent.
At last Ann said, ‘I don’t need it either. Throw it away.’
‘Well done,’ praised Slater, who’d only just stopped short of trying to persuade Ann to enrol in Alcoholics Anonymous all those years ago.
‘There’s something I do want, though.’
‘What?’
‘Better alarms and security.’
Slater opened his mouth to say it wasn’t necessary but decided against it.
Tension remained between them. Each was aware of the other working hard to keep any indication of it from David, although Slater was discomfited driving the boy back from basketball practice when David said, ‘I thought you were a bit hard on the guys tonight, Dad?’
‘They weren’t all trying their best,’ said Slater, defensively. ‘A team only works as a unit. One or two lay back and everything gets put out of synch.’
‘You actually yelled at Steve and Paul.’ ‘Let’s hope they pull their full weight next week.’ When he tried the door that night, Slater discovered Ann had put the security deadlock on – a matching deadlock she’d insisted he have installed the day after the letter arrived, on the art gallery she ran on Main Street, as well as CCTV cameras on both – and when she answered the door, after assuring herself who it was, Ann said, ‘I thought you’d come in through the garage. You think it’s a good idea to leave the car out?’
Saying nothing Slater went back to the car, triggered the garage door lift and put the vehicle away, entering the house through the inner connecting door. Finally inside the house he saw she’d slipped the bolts, as well as resetting the deadlock. The following morning, the episode in his mind, Slater found himself instinctively checking for surveillance as he drove into Frederick. There was a quick flare of irritation, just as quickly dispelled. What was wrong with that? he asked himself.
According to Peebles’ schedule Mason would still be in the penitentiary and he genuinely believed what he’d told Ann, that there was no conceivable possibility of Mason ever locating them, even if her former husband attempted to do so, which Slater doubted just as strongly. But he’d had the specialized training and attained the expertise, an expertise he still utilized to a limited extent in the business he now ran. He’d even taken that expertise – or caution – into his business. To avoid the need for a large, potentially curious work staff Slater designed the security, but subcontracted the actual fitting and installation to others.
Why not maintain – or rather recover – all his other expertise, Slater now asked himself? There was no excuse for letting that craft wither out of shape, as he’d acknowledged from the most recent camping weekend that he’d neglected the physical fitness he’d once so strenuously kept up. Hadn’t one of his personal, professional mantras been that an all important edge should be constantly honed, to remain sharp, not allowed to become blunted? It shouldn’t be difficult, to bring it all back. Everything was still there, except for the back-up of the omnipotent KGB. His skills were just dormant, like a learned language was initially difficult to recall to fluency if it wasn’t regularly spoken.
It wasn’t a decision he’d tell Ann: wasn’t sure, even, if he’d keep to it himself. Despite their solemn mutual undertaking always to be honest with each other, Ann had kept things – far more relevant things – from him: I’ve waited for
the past 15 years! echoed in Slater’s mind, not just the words but the virulence with which she’d said them. He wouldn’t be withholding as she had withheld from him, for so many years. To tell her, to hint even, what he was only vaguely considering would cause her much greater worry than the letter had.
Hadn’t he been waiting for the past fifteen years for Mason’s release, complacent until now that he still had another five years to go until he needed to confront the possible repercussions? No! Slater determined at once. Mason wasn’t a physically violent man. He’d looked capable of it but it had been a pretence, like so much else about Jack Mason was pretence; the way he’d convinced any woman under the age of sixty with a faint pulse that he was the stud upon whom James Bond had been modelled. At the man’s trial it had emerged that almost invariably Mason intentionally let slip to any woman he was trying to seduce that he was a CIA agent who’d risked his life in Moscow and Vienna and Prague, although not that it was in the Russian capital that he’d been photographically entrapped, literally with his trousers around his ankles, by a planted KGB seductress. Nor that while he had been stationed in all three cities, he’d never been exposed to or experienced any danger. Mason’s greatest intelligence coup was manoeuvring a recall from Moscow to the CIA’s Russian Desk at Langley, and that was for his KGB masters.
He still might amuse himself recovering all the old, perhaps even outdated and superseded tradecraft, thought Slater. It could conceivably be a selective re-learning process from which he’d isolate things to teach David.
Jack Mason wouldn’t have recognized the attorney who’d represented him at his treason trial: their association over his mother’s estate had been entirely by letter. Since 1986 Patrick Bell had lost virtually all his hair, put on at least 281bs and needed thick-lensed spectacles. His breathing was strained, too.
‘Sorry I couldn’t make it until now,’ apologized Bell. ‘I’m pretty busy.’
‘Not a problem,’ assured Mason, who’d actually wanted the meeting pushed back as close as possible to his release date. He looked around the interview room assigned to them and said, ‘You sure this place isn’t wired?’
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