Moving targets, p.2
Moving Targets, page 2
“It’s done.”
“Good,” the driver said. “There are new orders for you. Another assignment. This time in the West. America.”
The surest way of ruining a trip home was to conduct a joint intelligence service briefing, Richard Sweeney thought, approaching the lectern. It was nearly dinnertime and his stomach rumbled. Kay was waiting for him at the hotel, and he wanted nothing more than to get back to her and fix himself a decent drink … an American drink.
The auditorium was small by Pentagon standards, with less than fifty seats, most of them taken this evening. Besides the military intelligence establishment contingent, the civilian complement included the CIA’s deputy directors of intelligence, Chris Roberts, and operations (Sweeney’s boss), Richard Adkins. Allen Young had come over from the FBI’s Special Investigations Division, as had the second assistant directors of the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Sweeney began. “It’s good to be home, even if it’s only for a few weeks.”
There were a few polite chuckles from the audience. Sweeney worked for the CIA as assistant chief of station at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He’d been recalled to Washington for update briefings on the current political thinking of this administration. It was common for returning CIA officers to help conduct such briefings as these in turn. The theme of this evening’s meeting, at which Chuck Markham from NSA and Dennis Warner from the State Department had already spoken, was “Intelligence Gathering for the ’90s.”
“Chuck and Dennis have both promised you no surprises,” Sweeney said. “It’s business as usual for them. Or very nearly so. But I’m afraid I can’t be quite so sanguine.”
A few men in the audience shifted in their seats, and Sweeney grinned and held up his hand. He was a large man. Strongly built, with a thick waist, a bull neck, and massive shoulders. He loved to fish and hunt, and in high school and college he’d been a hell of a lineman. His wife of twenty years called him “Ernie” in private. Short for Ernie Hemingway. “A man’s man,” as she put it.
“This is not the usual field officer paranoia talking here, although I suppose I’ve developed my share of that occupational hazard.”
There were a few more good-natured chuckles.
“What I’m talking about tonight are the changes that have and are taking place in Moscow. And we all know what some of those are. I’m not telling tales out of school in this room when I remind you that the CIA’s budget has been slashed by nearly sixteen percent over the past year and a half. No new hiring at Langley. Nearly every research project our Technical Services Division had going has been put on hold … some permanently. And there’ve already been drastic cutbacks at all but a few of our key stations.
“Germany, for instance, is in near shambles. The only real work of any consequence we’re doing there is being done out of our Bonn Station.
“Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, all the former hot spots have been shut down for all practical purposes. At the Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory and the National Security Agency, and our own Satellite Surveillance Division, it is business as usual. I agree. But from where I sit, I see a different picture. A painfully different picture, gentlemen.”
Sweeney glanced at Dick Adkins, who gave him a slight nod. It had been decided that he was to be the bearer of this particular message. Coming from a field position in Moscow, just now, his words would carry some weight.
He agreed, though he didn’t like it. He was a field officer, not a politician.
“Part of the job, Richard,” his boss had told him. At Langley he was Richard, and Adkins was Dick. It saved some confusion.
“ELINT—electronic intelligence—gathering will continue to play a vital role, of course. But these days it behooves us to know the Russian government’s intent. Which means we must return to the basics. People spying on people. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.”
“The Russians will be doing the same damned thing,” someone muttered loudly enough for Sweeney to hear.
“Exactly,” Sweeney said. “The comment has been made that the Russians will be doing the same thing. Well, gentlemen, they’ve already begun. Not that they ever really stopped. And now it is up to us to do what we can, and to stop them. They’ve still got the weapons and the delivery systems. It’s up to us to make certain we always know what their real intentions are. Stimson was wrong. Gentlemen must open other gentlemen’s mail, if we are to survive. And now with everything over there changing so rapidly, intelligence gathering has become even more important than before.”
The night was brilliant. A star-flung sky competed with the brilliant carpet of lights that swept up from the Black Sea and the lights of an occasional ship in the inky darkness toward the horizon. The city of Odessa was thirty kilometers to the southwest. From the balcony of the villa perched on the seaside cliff it was only a glow in the distance.
Moscow, fourteen hundred kilometers to the north, was nothing here except for the brief telephone warning the man had received.
He was not large, but he was compactly built, his skin dark from exposure to the sun, or a sunlamp. He stood on the balcony looking out to sea. A glass of white wine sat on the low rail. He smoked a cigarette in the American fashion, holding it not between his thumb and forefinger, but between his forefinger and middle finger. He wore nothing more than a white towel around his slim waist, not cold at all in the gentle sea breeze.
“Where are you?” the woman called from inside the house.
He didn’t answer for a long time, preferring his own solitude for just a few moments longer. The struggle was coming much sooner than he’d hoped for. They were not ready. But there was no help for it. They would have to move now, or the opportunity … the golden opportunity of a lifetime … would be lost, and with it the KGB. Vanished into thin air. Dissipated like smoke on the wind.
“Here,” he said at length.
The woman came across the bedroom and joined him on the balcony. She was nude, her skin nearly iridescent in the starlight, her long legs ending at a narrow swatch of dark pubic hair, her breasts firm, the nipples already erect. Here was a … child, who had never had children. She was almost thirty, perhaps, but she was a child still, with no real memories of her own. She was like putty, ready and even willing to be formed.
“I got lonely,” she said in Russian.
“In English, please, Marinka,” the man said, using the diminutive of the name they’d given her.
“What are you thinking about out here?” she asked, but he put a finger to her lips to silence her.
“Tomorrow you return to Moscow.”
“Already?” she asked, a look of alarm crossing her face.
The man nodded. He brushed his fingertips across her breasts and she shivered.
“So soon?”
“Yes.”
She leaned into him and took the nipple of his left breast into her mouth, running her tongue lightly in circles. He smiled and flipped his cigarette out into the night, sparks trailing all the way down to the water.
Together they went into the bedroom, where he took off his towel and lay with her on the wide bed, caressing her flanks, taking her long, dark hair between his fingers as he entered her dark, warm body.
“You will be my banner, my love,” he whispered into her ear.
“Forever,” she replied.
1
THE WINTER
THE RUSSIAN EMBASSY WAS FIVE AND A HALF BLOCKS NORTH OF the White House on 16th Street between L and M streets. Like virtually every embassy in the world, business as usual included cocktail receptions. This one celebrated the appointment of a new deputy undersecretary to the ambassador to the United States, Igor Mikhailovich Lubiako, a tremendously charming man whose English was so idiomatically perfect that he could have been mistaken for an American anywhere. In Iowa they would have figured him to be from the East, Boston perhaps. In California he’d be from Minnesota, and in Boston from out West somewhere.
Richard Sweeney and his wife, Katherine, had been invited to attend. In the morning they were returning to Moscow.
“Hell of a way to spend our last night home, Ernie,” she’d complained good-naturedly on the way over. But she was a good sport. She’d always been the perfect wife for an intelligence officer: Smart, cool under pressure, and when it came to politics, especially the world view, she definitely had her head on straight. No bleeding-heart liberalism for her. Of course she’d been raised that way. Her father had graduated in the top ten of his class at West Point. As a child she’d been a tomboy. As a teenager a standout in high school and college swimming and soccer. She’d grown up to be a pleasant-looking if not beautiful woman with a good body, wide pleasant eyes, and thick, sensuous lips.
“We’re showing the flag,” he told her in the cab on the way over from their hotel.
“There’re plenty of eager hands in this town to take care of that job nicely, thank you.”
“Not many of them are special assistant to the ambassador in Moscow.”
She looked closely at her husband. They’d been married long enough for her to understand when he was telling her to back off. They’d never had children, and they both believed that they were closer to each other because of it … not necessarily better off, just closer in many respects.
He caught her looking at him and grinned. “Just keep your ears open.”
“Around whom?”
“Lydia Lubiako,” Sweeney said.
“Ah, the wife. Could be the new deputy undersecretary is a spook?”
“Sister. He might be.”
“Maybe it’s her … she?”
Again Sweeney had to grin. “Just keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said in mock disappointment.
They often played these little games with each other, mostly to relieve the tension. On this trip back to the States, their stay had been too short for them to open their house in the Maryland countryside, located just outside of Lexington Park about sixty miles south of Washington. They owned twenty-five wooded acres of what had once been a part of a horse-breeding ranch. From the house they could see the Chesapeake Bay eight miles away. It was a beautiful spot that they both loved. “Peace in a world of turmoil,” she’d once said.
“Yes, isn’t it?” he’d replied, holding her, knowing what was coming next. The cold war was still going strong.
“But when the bombs fall on Washington it won’t be such a great spot.”
“Won’t happen.”
“No?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.
“Not if I can help it.”
Washington had received a couple of dustings of snow since they’d arrived, but it still seemed like the tropics to them after Moscow. They’d already spent two and a half years in the Russian capital; two long winters, this their third. They’d definitely acclimatized. At least physically.
The cabbie dropped them off in front of the Russian Embassy a few minutes past five-thirty. They were fashionably late, as were a number of other guests, and they had to queue up just inside the vestibule, where their invitations were examined before they were allowed inside. In the old days they would have been subjected to a metal detector search. The Gorbachev regime had put a stop to that, and in that respect, nothing had changed since.
“This new openness will survive,” a well-known Russian journalist had written, although Sweeney had his doubts. The Russian distrust of foreigners and anything foreign went back a long way … even before Stalin, back to the time of the czars. It was in the national spirit, the people’s psyche.
“Be friends with the wolf,” the old peasant proverb said. “But keep your hand on the ax.” After all, America’s loss of life in the Great Patriotic War had been measured in tens of thousands, while the Rodina’s losses had been measured in tens of millions!
The reception was being conducted mostly from the main hall and the state dining room on the ground floor, though the string quartet played on the second-floor balcony overlooking the stair hall. A number of people had gone up to listen, and to talk.
There was a muted hum of dozens of conversations among the more than one hundred guests. At this party the caterer was American and the canapes and other hors d’oeuvres were excellent.
Katherine accepted a glass of typically sweet Russian champagne from a passing waiter, while Sweeney took a small cognac. They would drink their first drink, and would accept a second in due course, which they would not touch. An oft-used trick was serving the first drink undoctored, but the second drink, after the guest’s taste buds were numbed, could be safely spiked. No one could taste the chemical.
“Mr. and Mrs. Sweeney, I believe,” a Russian said as they started across the hall into the dining room. Sweeney turned around.
“Yes,” Sweeney said, extending his hand. “Nice party.”
“Thank you, but frankly it’s easier to do here than at home,” the Russian said, shaking hands. “I’m Yuri Truskin, embassy chief of protocol.” He was a short, stocky man with thick black hair.
“Pleased to meet you. Maybe I can help change all of that, you know. Now that your President is opening up the country to foreign investment again.”
“Investments, not loans,” the Russian said.
Sweeney smiled broadly. “Ah, but then, my friend, on the world market there’s hardly a difference.”
“Except that one has to be paid back, the other not.”
“Not always necessary.”
Truskin turned to Katherine. “I see that you’re drinking our champagne. How do you like it?”
“Sweet, but very good,” Katherine said, with a little giggle.
“Some Americans are beginning to acquire a taste for it. A small market has been developed.”
“Don’t forget your vodka,” Sweeney interjected. “The yuppies are all drinking Stoli and grapefruit, or Stoli and a mix of orange and cranberry juices. Sells like gangbusters. Good for your balance of trade.”
Truskin’s smile broadened. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? Good vodka and … cranberry juice?”
Sweeney looked beyond him toward the dining room. “What I’d really like to see in Moscow would be a Ford or GM plant. Could employ a lot of people. Pump a lot of money into the economy.”
“That may be a dream …”
“Actually we’re returning to Moscow in the morning. Who knows, maybe we can work out such a deal, Mr. Truskov,” Sweeney said, deliberately mispronouncing the man’s name.
Truskin smiled pleasantly. “Then I’ll wish you a good trip.”
“Thanks, but we just stopped by to offer our congratulations to your new deputy undersecretary. I understand exactly what he’s up against.”
Again Truskin smiled. “I’m sure you do, Mr. Sweeney.”
Sweeney took his wife’s elbow. “Nice chatting with you,” he said, and he steered his wife toward the dining room.
“Nice fellow,” Katherine said as they crossed the room.
“Yes,” Sweeney said. The embassy was bugged, of course, so they had to watch what they said.
Katherine wore a low-cut white cocktail dress that they’d bought in Paris on the way back to the States, for what she’d thought at the time was a ridiculously high price. Considering the looks she was generating now as they crossed the room, she would have gladly paid double. She and Richard were the same age; at forty-three a girl took her compliments where she got them.
Sweeney steered her toward a knot of people near the head of the large room. The huge dining table had been removed for this occasion, and the gilded walls were lined with the chairs. Waiters bearing trays of cocktails and hors d’oeuvres circulated in and amongst the groups.
He recognized Lubiako from the photographs he’d studied at Langley. At over six feet, the man was very tall for a Russian. His complexion was fair, and his hair dishwater blond. With a tan he could have passed as a southern Californian.
Lubiako was a relative newcomer. A 1974 graduate of Moscow University, he had spent one year at Cambridge, in England, and eighteen months at Harvard. He did not drink, he didn’t smoke, and although he’d never married, so far as the Agency could determine he wasn’t a homosexual (it would have been highly unusual if he had been). He was clean. Adkins called him “Snow White.” And Sweeney wondered if the Russian had his seven dwarfs lurking somewhere nearby; Truskin was one, were there six others?
Two men speaking with Lubiako were Americans. One of them tall and craggy, the other heavier and much older. They turned as Sweeney and Katherine stepped up.
“Richard Sweeney. Just stopped by to offer my congratulations, Mr. Deputy,” Sweeney said to Lubiako. They shook hands.
The Russian grinned, the expression seemingly open and guileless. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I know the name.”
“I’m stationed at our embassy in Moscow as a special assistant to our ambassador.”
“I see. In what capacity, may I ask?” Lubiako asked.
“Developmental loans,” Sweeney said, watching the man’s eyes. “It’s a job.”
“And why are you in Washington?”
“Oh, the usual instructions and conferences and all that at the State Department.”
“We keep them busy,” the tall, craggy American standing next to Lubiako explained to the Russian. “I’m Walter Miller, State Department, Economic Affairs,” he explained to Sweeney. “I recognize your name, but I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“No, sir,” Sweeney said, shaking hands with the American. His legend was good with the State Department.
“May I add my congratulations, Mr. Deputy?” Katherine said sweetly.
“Mrs. Sweeney, I presume?” Lubiako said. “Enchanté, madame.”
“Oh, thanks,” Katherine twittered. When need be she could play the part of a mindless American wife very well. The Russians accepted it.
The other American introduced himself and shook hands with Sweeney. “Omar Ward, State Department. We’ve met.”
