Henry McGee Is Not Dead

by Bill Granger

  Mrs. Neumann waited. The room was very quiet even though official Washington snarled its way through another perpetual morning traffic jam outside the windows of their solid old building. The city was full of quiet rooms where people even more powerful than the head of R Section sat in judgment. In Washington, all the places without power were full of noise; the reality of power required intense quietness.

  “Henry McGee. A planted story about a planted spy fifteen years ago. Somehow bona fided by an East German agent we thought we turned seven years ago. Years passed and the stories that we questioned at the beginning take on the mustiness of being true. They must be true, they’ve been around so long.”

  “Like the search for the mole in CIA,” she said, her voice taking on a sad timbre.

  “Two defectors say that a Soviet mole exists inside CIA and CIA begins to tear itself apart in the 1970s to find him.”

  “Because the head of counterintelligence, Angleton, is convinced the mole exists—”

  “And is accused in his turn of being the mole—”

  “And the Church committee destroys the Langley firm’s ability to perform counterintelligence—”

  Hanley finished it: “Because the directors of CIA finally agree to slash counterintelligence and make public the most secret secrets, the ones the Langley people called ‘the family jewels.’ ”

  They did not continue the story. They knew it. Everyone in counterintelligence knew it. The questions lingered long after the fact, long after Angleton was forcibly retired, long after the mole theory was discounted.

  Had there been a mole in CIA after all?

  How high had the mole risen?

  Was the mole behind the destruction of CIA counterintelligence for nearly a decade?

  The retired spies who lived on Florida’s west coast and in southern California below Los Angeles still argued the question because it was an endless question and each conclusive answer to it led to another question.

  “Is that the nightmare we face now?” Mrs. Neumann said.

  “We are this close,” Hanley said, holding up his thumb and forefinger. “Involve FBI and you involve Justice finally and then Congress. It all seems rather small, but if our confidence is cracked—if we give away our own family jewels—then R Section will turn itself inside out looking for its own moles and we will cease to function anymore as a counterintelligence operation.”

  “Counterintelligence was not originally part of our charter.”

  “ ‘Who will spy upon the spies?’ ” Hanley quoted. It was the rhetorical question of John Kennedy, who had pushed for R Section in the first place, when he felt betrayed twice by Langley’s secretive incompetence.

  Mrs. Neumann sighed then and dropped her hand heavily on the padded arm of her chair. The computer screen on her desk was blank, save for a single blinking cursor waiting for her instructions. She looked at Hanley. “It is all in the stories,” she said. “There were too many stories.”

  “Too many,” Hanley said. “He kept them all straight, and years later, this agent or that would blunder into our arms and another gem of bona fides would be handed to us. We would have Henry McGee’s story buried in files and this new story that proved Henry was telling the truth. Or Henry proved the new man was telling the truth. And sometimes it was the truth and just as often not. We are wounded, Mrs. Neumann, I should have seen it more clearly when I sent November after him. We are wounded and we don’t even feel the pain of it yet. November is part of the trap being set for us, a trap without edges to it yet. I don’t even know if it has snapped on us.”

  “It was all the stories,” she repeated.

  “Too many damned stories,” Hanley said.

  31

  THE PRICE OF SILENCE

  The trap snapped three hours later.

  The senator from Alaska was on the phone all night after the Friday edition of the Washington Post hit the street Thursday late afternoon. Patricia Heath called in her press secretary to field the calls and issue a prepared statement.

  Patricia Heath was glowing with that peculiar sheen that comes over the face and eyes of a politician who suddenly is at the center of all attention. It was as good as sex. Even better. The news media was so compliant and never demanded satisfaction in return. It worshiped power. She handled it well. She wore a little, black dress of the kind always called “a little black dress” and enough makeup to make her look good on the television cameras at the press conference held at eleven P.M. outside her Georgetown home.

  The first story did not sandbag Malcolm Crowder. That would come in a day or two. But for the first time, the name of R Section was spoken of in the press.

  What was R Section anyway?

  Few files existed in the newspaper offices of the country and a check of the federal directory revealed only this obscure “crop reporting and international agricultural estimation” service stuck in the dreary bowels of the two old Department of Agriculture buildings on Fourteenth Street Northwest.

  The absence of information about R Section made it all the more fascinating. And yes, there was a connection between a man named Pierce from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, found shot to death outside a disco in Anchorage and the R Section manipulation of information about a series of terrorist attacks on the precious Alaska pipeline. Everything had been kept secret up to now.

  It was the act of secrecy in government that fascinated the press.

  The man from ABC camped on the doorstep until Patricia agreed to talk to him. He said R Section was spying on its own citizens. Patricia did not disagree with him, although that was not part of the story. The story had very careful limits and the dark-faced man had made her go over the story again and again until she understood those limits.

  Patricia Heath said to ABC that secrecy in government, especially in an open society, could not be tolerated.

  The press got the quote exactly right.

  Denisov went to the Polaris Hotel and asked for Mr. Schwenck and they said they had never heard of the man. He walked out of the hotel and went to the corner of Front Street, which paralleled the rocky coastline. Nome was quiet in the midday glaze of clouds.

  Behind the storefronts on Front Street, the Bering Sea stretched out before him to the Soviet Union. A milepost sign on the street said it was less than one hundred ninety miles to Siberia.

  Like all Muscovites, Denisov had always thought of the vast waste of Siberia in terms of east and north and now he was standing at the western edge of the world and the thought of Siberia “over there” made him almost dizzy. He was this close to home; he was too close to home. He thought of the quiet face of the man he had killed in Anchorage and of Alexa’s calm acceptance afterward of the fact of murder. None of it seemed quite real anymore, not this place, not the closeness of Siberia, not Devereaux telling him to play it out. He felt disoriented. He had been frightened in Santa Barbara, frightened by the crude blackmail implied in the photographs of Alexa in that hotel room. Yes, he could justify the murder of the agent in Anchorage; he could explain it in reason to himself and to others. But what about the price of R Section’s eventual revenge on him?

  His face was as dark as the clouds. He walked past the memorial to the Iditarod race and did not see it, saw nothing at all because he was looking for some way out.

  And then Karpov was standing in front of him, his hand on the single parking meter in the entire bush country of Alaska. Karpov was the meet. Karpov had identified him in Santa Barbara; Karpov had known the code between Devereaux and Denisov; Karpov was the next step in the plot. It was true, then, Denisov thought in a rush of black feelings: Everything was arranged and there was no reason to struggle against it anymore. He almost felt release.

  At the moment Denisov met Karpov, the red phone in Hanley’s office rang. It was four P.M. in Washington, five hours later than Alaska.

  “I thought you might be terminated as well,” Hanley said.

  “What happened?” Devereaux asked.

  “Denisov is in
Alaska. He finished one of ours in Anchorage last night. Where are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Devereaux said. “I’m getting closer to Henry McGee.”

  “Henry McGee is not important anymore,” Hanley said. “A very bad thing has happened, it’s much more important.” He told him about the breaking story of sabotage on the Alaska pipeline and the way R Section’s name was now being connected with the cover-up.

  “I’m not interested in politics or public relations,” Devereaux said.

  “Damnit, you’re an agent,” Hanley hissed. “I want you to drop McGee now and find out where Denisov is and—”

  “He’s in Nome, I’ll be seeing him in a little while,” Devereaux said.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “With what you’ve just told me, I begin to see what Henry McGee intends to do,” Devereaux said. His voice was calm and it made Hanley nervous. “Henry McGee was behind that sabotage, Henry McGee gives this Alaska senator the story, Henry mentions R Section.…” It was as though he was talking to himself. “I want you to put a guard on Rita Macklin and Philippe. And on my Aunt Melvina in Chicago.”

  “Why? Why on earth should I do that?”

  “Because Henry threatened them—”

  “You saw Henry McGee?”

  “I don’t have any time, Hanley,” Devereaux said.

  “You saw Henry McGee?” Hanley repeated, his voice echoing back inside his receiver so that the question seemed idiotic to him as soon as he asked it.

  “Will you do it?”

  “Yes. But what about Denisov and this—”

  “Denisov is working on the next step of Henry’s plot,” Devereaux said.

  “Denisov is a killer,” Hanley said.

  “And an arms dealer. But I need him at the moment.”

  “You can’t trust him.”

  “I never did,” Devereaux said. “The trouble with going after Henry McGee the way we did is that we arranged to always be behind him. That’s the way he wanted it. It’s time to stop following him. I have to run ahead and wait for him.”

  “When will you get him?”

  Devereaux paused and smiled into the telephone. Nels Nelsen was outside the airport building, waiting in the truck, the rifle still across his lap. He had driven Denisov into town from the cabin and now he would drive Devereaux back to the cabin. “Hopefully, before he gets us.”

  “Us? Did you say us?”

  “Us,” Devereaux said. “As in Section.” And Devereaux began to tell him a fantastic story about a storyteller and about spies and about all the things that must be done to make the ending change.

  32

  ENEMIES

  Denisov sat in the car next to Karpov as they moved up the road toward Teller. The endless sunlight depressed Denisov; Karpov depressed him. The Jeep they had rented in the town was made for winter, with heavy tires and a growling engine and the slight whine of four-wheel drive.

  “The matter is arranged for you to conduct November into Big Diomede,” Karpov said for the sixth time. He said it over and over, like a child. He had insisted on dinner in Nome at the Nugget Inn, he had insisted on bragging a little to Denisov. He had never mentioned Alexa and it became clear after a while that he was a very small cog in the larger machine. He did not know about Alexa and he was quite certain that the Section agent named November would be waiting for them.

  “And do we fly over?”

  “Arranged,” Karpov smiled, watching the road. “Do you like to travel by submarine?”

  “Of course. It is convenient, picturesque, and very comfortable,” Denisov said.

  “We meet the others after we pick up our friend, November.”

  “I do not understand why he is important in this.”

  “He is important because we say so,” Karpov said. “Just as you are important.”

  Denisov tried to think of the Soviet Union just beyond that bank of clouds over the water. When he was at the big red-stone train station in Helsinki, he was already home in Moscow because the buildings and the people reminded him of Russia just across the border less than a hundred miles away. Russia revealed its presence by degrees in Europe as you moved east to meet the country; you were involved in Russia long before you reached the Soviet border. But this was so different. This was abrupt. Here was Alaska, a strange, half-savage country with glittering cities and deep and endless isolation, so close to another strange, half-savage country of pine forests and immense rivers and Asiatic people who were only Soviet citizens, not Russians at all. Denisov felt very lost at that moment, abandoned between two worlds.

  Karpov glanced at him once and frowned. “What are you thinking, Ivan Ilyich?”

  Denisov gazed at the gentle tundra turning green and the white mountains in the distance and the expanse of shifting sea.

  “I am thinking of Gilbert and Sullivan,” Denisov said at last. He turned to Karpov. “Comrade, what does this mean? Why must this American agent and I be taken back to the Soviet Union? Will we ever know?”

  “That is not for me to say.”

  The car turned at the rough track and climbed up to the summit where the windowless cabin stood framed against the gray sky.

  Denisov got out beside Karpov and they walked up to the cabin.

  The heater was on and the room was a little too warm against the day. There was dried blood on one wall. They saw the figure of the man on the sleeping shelf. Karpov had the pistol out now and was crossing the room ahead of Denisov. He pointed the pistol at the figure on the shelf.

  Devereaux stared at Karpov. He was bound by ropes to the shelf. Nels Nelsen had retied him and thought the American agent was completely mad, as mad as the Russian he had taken to Nome, as mad as the world had been since the day his partner got himself shot. Nels Nelsen thought how good it would be to lose himself again in the sanity of solitude in the bush.

  Karpov spoke Russian now. He ordered Denisov to cut the rope and then retie Devereaux’s hands behind his back.

  Denisov took out the small penknife and worked at the ropes and cut them. He stared into Devereaux’s face while he worked. Devereaux stared at him with gray eyes, exactly like the eyes of the wolf. Neither man revealed anything.

  Devereaux stood up, staggered, nearly fell.

  “You are comfortable?” Karpov said to the American agent.

  Devereaux stared at him.

  Karpov could barely contain his glee. “This is the end of November,” he said. “Not the end of November but perhaps a new beginning for you and for your agency. You have betrayed your country, November, you have betrayed its security and its security programs. You have been a terrorist in your own country and you and Denisov have amassed a fortune together by working against your own country.”

  Denisov stared at Karpov as he once had examined stamps. He had been a collector as a child and turned the stamps over and looked at the colors and fitted them in a book. When he became a man, he stopped collecting stamps and examining them. It was the only pleasure of being an agent: Examining people.

  Karpov could not keep still. He danced around the room as he talked. And then he shoved the pistol in Devereaux’s belly and said it was time to go.

  “Where do we go?” Devereaux said. He took a step and staggered again. The concussion brought no pain now, only this sense of walking very carefully on a rope thirty feet above the ground.

  “There is a place where we will be picked up,” Karpov said.

  The road was not heavily traveled, although a truck boomed along behind them from time to time and pulled ahead, spraying gravel. The day would last forever. The clouds parted over the sea and let sunlight fall on the gray water and turn it to blue.

  The wind never ceased. It was not uncomfortable but it never ceased.

  Denisov sat in the front with Karpov; Devereaux on the backseat. Karpov had thrown a blanket over him.

  The car swung along the lonely, uninhabited countryside. They saw a bear once and they saw dogs or wolves and they
saw a beautiful herd of caribou grazing.

  Karpov began to hum the lush romantic bars of “Moscow Nights.” Denisov had been forced to join in, not in voice but in thought, because it did remind him of Moscow, of the Kremlin and Red Square and the houses on the hill and the children skating in Gorky Park and so many other things. In that moment, he suddenly was removed from Alaska and Siberia and the great emptiness of the Arctic, even the emptiness of his quiet existence in Santa Barbara. He was home again in that moment because he could feel the sense of Moscow in him.

  The Jeep was off the road again, this time whining over the unmarked tundra toward the coastline. The clouds still obscured the sun.

  They reached the edge of the continent and got out of the car. The little silver raft was coming toward the shore.

  Devereaux said to Denisov, “What do you intend to do?”

  “We go to Soviet Union,” Denisov said in flat English. “This is the only way.”

  There were two men on the raft with automatic weapons. They helped Devereaux aboard but did not untie him. The raft was large, made for the open sea, and the men pushed off with short paddles. The car sat on the shore, headlamps staring at Siberia beyond the horizon line.

  The submarine surfaced suddenly in the shallow water of a secluded rock harbor off the rugged coast. It broke the waterline with a shock and the water fell away from the conning tower and then it was there, not massive and not too small, already alive with sailors coming out of the hatch.

  Devereaux said, “They’ll kill me. They’ll probably kill you.”

  Karpov said, “Shut up,” in English.

  Denisov only watched the submarine settle in the shallow waters and wait for them.

  And Devereaux watched him.

  33

  THE PERIL

  Bob Wagner met the man who liked peanuts and beer in the Fairmont Hotel bar again. Pell said they had good peanuts. Pell said he was picking up the check anyway, even if Wagner called the meeting.