The Seventh Floor, page 10
She peered into the water. “Only gator in there right now is one of the juvies who already ate today and isn’t much interested in these chickens—or us, apparently. The real fun starts when we open the other gate.” She pointed her cigarette out into the lagoon, where the outlines of the gators had clumped around the submerged gate. Thirty minutes until the next Jumparoo: bloodlust was in the air. “Keep going,” she said.
“More chickens?”
“Yeah, ‘bout ten more. And also with the story.”
“Well,” Theo said, squatting down for another bird, “we come up with an idea to solve the problem. A White House flunkie drove out to Langley for a conclave and said, right to our faces, figure it out. I want options, nothing off the table.” He strung up the bird, regarding it with pride.
“Who’s there for the meeting?” Procter had asked. For no reason, then, other than context.
“Me, Mac, Gus, Debs. The brain trust,” Theo said, with a filthy and anatomically questionable gesture of his fists. The chicken rattled across the water on a squeaky pulley.
“And we’re shooting the shit in this meeting,” Theo said. “It all has a very informal feel, and Mac throws out an idea: We kidnap one of theirs. Not rocket science, of course, we’ve thought about it before. But it’s pretty damn aggressive. Mac says we need to kick ’em in the nuts so they’ll stop pinching ours. Helluva meeting. One of the best ever.”
“Snatching a Russian,” Procter said. “Kind of a big deal, right? What was—Oh shit! Theo!”
He’d slipped off the dock, and was now shouting and splashing around down there like crazy. Procter saw the juvenile headed toward the racket, and with that she had plunged in to drag him over to the ladder, kicking back a few times at the gator, whose interest, she would later reassure him, sprouted more from curiosity than hunger.
Once they’d clambered back up to the boardwalk, the dreary quotidian things that so often derail important discussions forcefully took command: Procter and Theo had to change clothes. Cummings, who had seen the tail end of the splashdown, had to be assured that, no, she was not pawning work off to her degenerate friend. No, Theo was not feeling litigious. Yes, she would get her ass sparkling clean to run the Jumparoo. By the time the show was done, Theo was thoroughly drunk, and she was not far behind. “I’m not much of a swimmer, Artemis,” he had slurred that night, raising his glass to her. “Not so aquatic.” And this, given his love for fish, was simply incredible. The next morning, he’d been up early to catch a flight. He’d stolen one of her work hats, she discovered later, the bastard.
Proctor was surprised to find that Mac—a far more reliable narrator than Theo—told the same story. It picked up speed exactly where Theo left off, which was that the White House had indicated they were open to the CIA proposing a Russian intelligence officer as the target. If Langley could wrap its arms around it, the White House would iron out the legal side, ensure the ongoing covert action work with respect to Russia was molded for such an op. They required a country in which there were Russians of value to Moscow, and preferably where the local service was some combination of friendly, ambivalent, and incompetent. “Any guesses?” Mac said.
“Has to be Vienna.”
“Spy City,” he said. “And REMORA,” Mac went on, with a long pull of scotch, “was the critical node here.”
Procter remembered REMORA, of course, though she hadn’t developed, recruited, or handled him. He was one of the CIA’s top Russian assets. A high-flying colonel, Deputy Chief of the SVR’s Fifth Department (Europe), REMORA had been recruited by Mac and Theo two years earlier in Morocco. He was handled internally by Gus in Moscow. Gosford and Debs, Procter recalled, had developed a particular interest in REMORA upon taking the reins, though here her memories were fuzz; she could not recall precisely why they’d been so hot on the case.
“Theo and I snagged the first breakthrough from REMORA. Which is”—thinking for a moment, another peck of scotch, a little light pouring through his eyes—“mid-July. Second week or so. REMORA’s privy to a discussion at SVR about what the Russians are doing with Sam. He’s heard that Sam was smuggled from Singapore to an unofficial prison outside Moscow. Not sure precisely how, but a shipping container was involved. We of course wanted to know why in the hell they’d taken him. And REMORA said he’d asked and been treated to hell-if-I-know shrugs from everyone. SVR goons had been the heavies in Singapore. Running theory in his circles was that they’d gotten a little excited about dishing it out to an American, and went overboard.”
Procter cut in: “What did REMORA say had happened to Golikov?”
Mac made a face. “Butchered him in his hotel room like Khashoggi. Russian gorillas had intercepted him, but he tried to run, there was a fight, and he died. They cut him up, allegedly, and smuggled the body out in the morning. Apparently the parts were stuffed into a bunch of suitcases.”
“And how . . .” Procter asked, selecting her words with care, “how did REMORA explain the interest in Golikov to begin with? How did they know he was meeting with Sam?”
Mac’s eyes narrowed in the direction of one of the boxed paintings, then shifted fixedly toward Procter. “I’ve had some doubts,” he said, “about the chain of custody on this intel, I must say. I don’t think REMORA was lying, I merely wonder if the telephone game had become so muddled he was shoveling us gibberish picked up in the halls. But, in any case, REMORA said that a fellow member of the trade delegation had reported Golikov to one of the security minders during the Asia trip. Said Golikov had apparently been spotted filching classified documents from the embassy during the leg in Bangkok. Golikov’s a well-known gambler and, according to REMORA, rumor had it he was in serious debt. Anyhow, the gorillas see him talking to Sam in the casino. They go upstairs to ask him questions and search his room, and then, boom, sideways. REMORA also claimed the gorillas snagged Golikov with documents on a few thumb drives upstairs, a tangle of Security Council minutes, various budgets, internal Presidential Administration memos, and a bag of content lifted from Bangkok. Golikov was there to do a deal, gorillas snipped it midstream.”
“So it was a mistake to grab Sam?” Procter asked.
“According to REMORA.”
“So why not just hand him back in Singapore? Turn him loose?”
“Well, and I’m speculating here, Artemis, I’d imagine that by the time they had him, that team felt they had to bring him to Moscow, and by the time they’d drugged him and smuggled him out of Singapore, beaten him, and doubtless had a very rough conversation about whether Golikov had passed him anything, by then there’d have been a debate inside the Kremlin over whether a price might be extracted for his return. Once he was in Russia, what could the Russians do, really? Admit to their mistake? That’d be off brand. Look at Ukraine. Look at the Cold War. Look at five hundred years of Russian history. Not going to happen.”
“So that’s the Russian motivation to send me the tapes, advertise that they had Sam?” Procter said. “Marketing? Shake the bars so we sit up and take note?”
“I think so,” Mac said. “Kindling a four-alarm intelligence fiasco in Washington, well, that’s all gravy for them. Sure, they look brutal for kidnapping our guy, but, hey, Ukraine and all, the barbarism is old news, and it skyrockets Sam’s value as a negotiation chit because now they know that we know, and so on.”
“But we have nothing to trade,” Procter said. “Viktor Bout’s gone. Hanssen’s dead. Ames is off the table. No Illegals in the pen.”
Mac’s scotch was still going—Procter’s was not—so Mac downed his and stood to refill their glasses. Finger to his nose, Mac eased back in his chair and searched the room, scanning across the boxes of paintings as if taking some unspoken inventory. “Precisely,” he said. “We’ve got nothing to trade for him. We had to change that. And we had an opening from the White House to be aggressive. Europe is REMORA’s stomping grounds, so we asked him for the roster in Vienna and his assessment of the political stature of each officer there. Found an adviser to the rezident, a general with family connections in the Kremlin. REMORA said he’d been in Vienna for a few months. Some boondoggle, he imagined, passing a pleasant summer in Austria. REMORA knew where they’d put the guy up because it had been so damn expensive. From there, it wasn’t so tricky. Gus was out there with me.”
“We just bagged him up?”
“Guy walked from the rented mansion to the embassy every morning. Roughly the same time. Special Activities Center led a snatch-and-grab out of a van; we took him into the mountains outside Salzburg, nice little private house, very comfortable. Kept him there until we could make the trade.”
“I heard you were rough on him,” Procter said. “That it wasn’t so comfortable for the Russian.”
Mac’s smile was all proud schoolboy. “You heard that, did you? From whom?”
“People talk.”
He smiled again—this time with far less mirth. He wiggled his knuckles. “There were aspects of that trip that I enjoyed more than I should have.”
“I’m sure the bastard deserved whatever he got.” She paused, taking a sip of her drink. “And you—you deserve the Intelligence Commendation. I should have already said it. But congrats.”
“You want applause?” Mac said, smiling.
“Join the State Department,” she finished. “And you want a medal? Join the Army.”
He clinked his glass to hers. “We think the same way about these goddamn things. I’m not in this business for accolades.”
“Well, it’s gold for job security. Makes it harder for Debs or Gosford to push you out. Gus, too.”
“That it does. For good, and for ill.”
There was a silence, then Mac said: “Sam, by the way, seems to be doing fine, given the circumstances.”
“That’s good to hear,” she said. “If I have time I’ll see if I can drop in and say hello.”
“He’d like that, I’m sure.”
They settled into another friendly silence. She remembered now that the op that had distracted Mac and Theo that week had been preparation for a meeting with REMORA. Vaguely disturbing warnings, she recalled. “REMORA,” she said. “Did he also tell us something in the run-up to Singapore? Or am I nuts?”
“No, that’s right,” Mac said. “Theo and I were getting ready for a face-to-face with REMORA, in France. Even Debs made the trip to Lacoste to join the meeting.”
“Debs?” Procter said, sitting up. “That’s bizarre.”
“Tell me about it,” he grumbled. “She insisted. Said she wanted to get into the field, roll up her sleeves.”
“And what, exactly, did dear old Debs contribute to the discussion?”
“Very little. I met Theo there for the fireside chat with REMORA, who made the two of us wait a bit, naturally. Theo thankfully had the place all set by the time I showed. REMORA can be picky about the hospitality. Debs joined at the end. Wanted to shake REMORA’s hand, I suppose, get a few stories she could bring to the Oval with Gosford.”
“When was the meeting?” Procter asked, imagining the chronology she’d scrawled the night before, on her legal pads.
“It was within a few days of Singapore. Maybe two days before? Three? I don’t remember the exact dates. REMORA had a rumor he wanted to sell us. Vagaries about Russians targeting Americans in Asia.”
“That,” Procter said, “gives me hives. Could we have done something with that?”
“Not a chance,” Mac said. “It was all too vague, even Debs agreed. I recall she said as much during that rough meeting on the Seventh Floor the morning after Singapore. I was in the Adirondacks with Lou when I heard that REMORA had signaled for a meeting. I scurried back to Washington, prepped with Theo, then flew to France. In the end I wound up cutting short my vacation for a useless tidbit.”
As if summoned by mention of her name, the motion-sensing light outside clacked on, and downstairs the door creaked open. “Mon amour,” purred Loulou, “t’es là?”
“Oui, ma chérie,” Mac said, “nous avons finis. Prenons un verre? Artemis va rester ici ce soir, avec nous.”
“Goddammit,” Procter snapped, “please, in English. It’s been twenty years since my tour in France, and my frog talk was never so sparkly to begin with.”
15
McLEAN
Next evening, through the windows of the restaurant, Procter watched Gus’s sparkling minivan pull into the parking lot. Washed it weekly, she was sure, probably on the way home from church. Two things that mattered most to Gus Konstantinos Raptis: Greek Orthodoxy and the Central Intelligence Agency. If there was any room left, he had a wife, Connie—a former Agency hand, she had done something with the analysts before the kids were born. Old man Raptis—like old man Mason—had been an Agency man, earning his spurs running the muj in the eighties.
Gus had been the top man in their Farm class. He was steely and athletic; played lacrosse at Cornell, and Procter heard he’d been something of a top man there, too. Gus had it, the right stuff, the father’s stuff. This was not the loser son who piddles away the family glory, this was the heir, the successor to the legendary runner of muj and killer of Reds.
The winning seemed to carry over into the home. Raptises were churchy, and monogamous—never a visit to the Penalty Box, in work or in marriage. Until he’d cut short his tour in Moscow, Procter had always gotten the sense that Gus and Connie were deeply in love, having gobs of sex, and generally upbeat about the future. In other words: aliens.
Gus took a seat in the booth across from Procter. Dark hair, neatly combed, crisp suit, and white shirt—always the white shirts—but probably from Jos A. Bank or some other mall provenance. There wasn’t much money; no family reptile fund. Connie didn’t work anymore, and for three years their eldest, Nico, had been bleeding them dry. That Nico had driven a stake through the family was that most tortured brand of Agency knowledge: the secret known by all. There were rumors Gus had dipped into his retirement to fund the latest trip to rehab, at some new place out in California.
Gus looked her over with those stern eyes. A minister’s gaze, Theo would say when they were drinking and the conversation rolled to their friend. “He sees our sins, Artemis.”
“He wouldn’t be friends with us if he could,” she would reply.
Procter ordered a burger and a beer, Gus a sparkling water. The guy managed judgment even in his ordering habits. When the waiter had left, Gus said he had thirty minutes, tops. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” he said. “This is no notice. Where are you interviewing, anyway?”
“DynCoTel,” she said, and gave him the same speech she’d given Mac. She asked after Connie and the kids—he answered with polite evasions—and then she gave up and steamrolled him: “I’ve been thinking more about Singapore,” she said, “and I could really use your help on a few things.”
He said, with a kind smile: “Why in the world would you think about that?”
“Guilty conscience, I guess.”
“That’s a new one for you.”
“You’d be surprised at the dark thoughts that pop into your mind when you’re alone and wasted in a trailer. It’s a challenge to wrestle your demons and gators at the same time. More of an either-or situation, turns out.”
“Good grief, Artemis.” His eyes softened, and he said, his tone sympathetic: “Tell me how I can help.”
“I’m just wondering if I screwed up,” she said. “If I missed something and sent Sam into the pit. It’s been eating me alive.”
The food and drinks arrived. Gus asked for a lime and they sat twiddling silverware until the waiter brought it. A gas fireplace punched on. Gus watched the flames for a moment, sniffing the carbonation sparkling up from his drink. She’d never seen him take a sip of booze, perhaps the only non-Mormon employee of the Central Intelligence Agency about whom she could make the claim. Theo’s sins were on display, front and center, primo shelf space, much as Procter’s. Gus’s sins were the hidden varietal: pride, greed, envy, things that only priests cared about, not the shit that left you with a trail of marriages, in a gutter, or stringing up chickens at Gatorville. Only Mac had managed to tie the knot so elegantly: he’d re-cast his sins as virtues.
Gus was stabbing the ice in his drink. He raised his eyes when he saw the waiter bearing down and rudely waved him off. Gus Raptis, a waiter’s nightmare: unsmiling and cheap. Were those sins? she wondered.
“Well, let’s put that insane notion to rest, Artemis. It’s absurd. Much as I applaud the sudden and long-overdue flickering of any moral compass inside you, I don’t think it’s pointing the right direction here. You’re suggesting Golikov was a dangle? That it was a trap?”
“You don’t think it was?” Procter said, placing the ball on the tee of their conversation.
“Golikov,” Gus said, taking the swing, “was the real deal. The outreach was too elaborate. It was the right mix of paranoid sophistication and civilian inexperience. That letter, his offer, was genuine.”
“You called me that morning,” Procter said. “After the cable came in.”
“Right . . . I was up in New York, briefing Deborah and Gosford. Had to be less than a week after Gosford’s confirmation.”
“You remember briefing the details on Singapore to Debs and Gosford?” she asked. “Did it wind up in their read books up in New York?”
“Now, Artemis, why are you—”
“Please, Gus, just asking. Please.”
He sighed. “There was a briefing, yes. For Deborah. I was there to get her up to speed on our Moscow operations. She was keen for the lay of the land.”
