The Seventh Floor, page 12
“I hear he has cats,” Rem said.
“Three of them. Quite large. Like raccoons. The Tarrman woman, Molly, was apparently quite fond of them. Gave us a hell of a time. Got in our way, so we couldn’t deal with them cleanly.” He rolled up his sleeve to expose a clawed right forearm.
“Is that from the cats?”
Bortnikov grimaced. “I’m afraid I don’t know.”
Foreign Intelligence Service Review Board: Director’s Case 24-6 (DOCTOR B), Annual Evaluation, Module E (Outlook: Objectives and Collection Requirements)
Special Investigator: Check, check. Yes? All good? Okay. This is the final module of the annual case review for 24-6. Let’s—
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: Enough. It has been . . . [checks watch] eighty-three minutes. I gave you ninety. My back is tired.
Special Investigator: The Director has been very clear, Rem, he—
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: I know that. I wouldn’t be here unless he’d twisted my arm with painful clarity. Finish your questions so we can both get back to work.
Special Investigator: The last module of the review is the most contentious, as you know.
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: It always is.
Special Investigator: And it obviously concerns the . . . how should I put this . . . restrained approach you’ve taken to managing this case. There are those in the security apparatus who believe Dr. B is not being pushed in the right direction, who say that opportunities are being missed. We’ve received the name of only two Russian assets of the CIA, for example, the rezident in Athens, the one known by CIA as BUCCANEER, whom we recalled from Greece and who killed himself in that horribly managed arrest. And the FSB colonel known as CLAW. And there is a certain . . . uh . . . eh. . . . how would I put it . . .
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: Good god. I understand there’s no real value in shooting the messenger, but even so, it can be fun. So be clear and do not tempt me. Ask your goddamn question. And just read it from the paper. If any nameless figures among the cousins—perhaps ones with names such as Bortnikov—wish to challenge my perspective, they know precisely where to find me. Or they can lobby the Director, who has so far seen fit to trust my judgment on this case.
Special Investigator: [rustling of paper, clink of glass on table] Fine, Rem. Fine. You’re not making this easy on me, you know, I’m only doing my—
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: Just read the question for the module.
Special Investigator: [coughs, inaudible mumbling] Please describe your objectives for the case in the coming year.
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: A wonderful question, thank you for asking. Dr. B is the most valuable penetration we have ever run inside any Western special service. Ames and Hanssen don’t hold a candle. We’re talking about an asset who might function similarly to Philby, if he’d hung on. So the order of the day is source protection. Keeping Dr. B in harness and in the game. There you have it, the objective: survival. The architecture of the case—the commo plan, the collection requirements, the unique mechanism through which we engage the good Doctor—well, it has all been designed for longevity, hasn’t it? If we’d run this case through the normal processes and departments, Dr. B would already be in prison. It would be 1985 all over again, the damn Year of the Spy, with a dozen or more arrests and disappearances. Every two weeks Bortnikov would have a new captive and a few more chances to punch CIA officers in the head during interrogations. The CIA’s Dermatologists would know something was rotten. Dr. B would eventually be cooked.
Special Investigator: What, then, is the longer-term objective, Rem? If the priorities in the coming year are not collection so much as preservation?
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: The success of Russian culture and civilization depends on American weakness and division. And the Americans are destroying themselves, are they not? American politics are dysfunctional and polarized. Their economic life is fundamentally twisted and unjust. The culture is sick. There is no unity, no shared sense of purpose. Americans are increasingly soulless and decadent and self-referential. This rot is happening both bottom-up and top-down. And it’s happening independent of us, but we can help speed things along, can’t we? Hasten the decline. Our information operations, for example, help feed the rot from the bottom up. The top-down approach is where Dr. B comes in. It has become fashionable to predict the death of human intelligence, but it has its value, does it not, in a world where we still have humans? We can wreak all manner of digital havoc, but we cannot turn an enemy institution inside out unless we’ve got hold of some of its humans, preferably those damn near the top. Dr. B is our Trojan horse to wreck CIA. There are destructive mechanisms that will be available to the Doctor in the not-so-distant future: budgets can be slashed or frivolously redirected; competent officers may be fired en masse; any number of intelligence-sharing agreements with allies might be shredded; lunatics, sadists, and incompetents might be placed in key posts; selective leaks of CIA misdeeds and rumors and crimes might undermine its credibility and weaken its political footing; reforms kneecapping Langley might be proposed sub rosa; and yes, of course, dozens and dozens of assets might be compromised. None of it will be possible if Dr. B is pushed too hard, or in the wrong directions, or too quickly. The good Doctor is the rare case in this damnable business where future value exceeds that at present. Now, do you have what you need?
Special Investigator: I need the one-line answer, Rem. For the summary. How do you want it to read?
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: Repeat the question.
Special Investigator: [flapping of paper] Please describe your long-term objective for the case.
Gen. Rem Mikhailovich Zhomov: To destroy the CIA. Now, time’s up.
17
CLARENDON, VIRGINIA / LANGLEY
Sam awoke a few hours before dawn, gripped by fear that the nameless woman was snuggled beside him in bed. Her distinctly sweet smell flooded him before he could even open his eyes. The taste of her lipstick was muscular, overpowering the sour dryness left by sleep, and he thought his tongue could feel a few chalky flakes deposited along his bottom teeth. Light-headed, with the sheets around him churned and dampened by sweat, he sat up and looked around for the little red stars, but it was too dark to see the walls. He listened to her breathing and, as always, pawed frantically across his skin for evidence of her nocturnal blandishments: sores and scratches and exposed flesh and sticky stripes where her tongue had been. He did not feel pain. His underwear was on. His skin was dry and smooth. Sam’s heart began the slow climb down from his throat.
He could only be certain he was not in the box when his eyes came to rest upon the dim glow of his bedroom windows: there hadn’t been a single window in Russia, but here, here in his home in Clarendon was a window. This could not be Russia. This could not be his box. There had been a time when he’d had blackout shades—no longer, and never again, as long as he lived. Natalie was sleeping peacefully next to him. For the most part he did not like sharing a bed with her, but he was grateful for it on mornings when the woman haunted him. Unlike most ghosts, she was at her most terrifying around first light.
He swung his legs out of bed and sat there for a few moments with his head in his hands. Natalie rolled over. “How did you sleep habibti?” she murmured.
“Fantastic,” he said, leaning over to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Really great.”
In the shower Sam moved through the memory palace of his childhood bedroom, but this time the Lego bins held numbers that he had reviewed with Procter on Roblox the night before. He did not like to think about what would happen if he forgot them, or put them in the wrong order. And if he got them right? Well, he did not like to think about that, either.
He and Natalie ate breakfast at the dining room table. He had met her at a grocery store a few blocks down the road, in Clarendon, a year before Singapore. Two or so sideways glances between them, she had smiled, and Sam—who as a matter of principle took his shots when they concerned the attentions of well-made Levantine women—walked right up to her in the bakery and asked if they might have dinner.
“I have a boyfriend,” Natalie had said, with a tone of regret.
“That’s too bad,” he replied. “But what do you think about dinner?”
Now they sometimes shared a bed and she was scooping out a cup of yogurt at his table. “What do you have going on today at work?”
“Not much,” he lied. “Normal day. You?”
“Nothing. The usual chaos.”
“Those kids are lucky to have you.”
“Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” he lied, a night alone smashed on the rocks of her love. “I can pick up salmon.”
She made a face. “Maybe a rain check on your salmon? I’ll swing by Kazan’s on the way home. The usual?”
“Perfect,” he said. “Sounds like a plan. I should be home by six.” He took his cup and bowl into the kitchen. Natalie followed.
“You really slept well last night?” she asked. “No . . . uh . . .”
“None,” he lied, opening the dishwasher.
“I’m so glad, Sam,” she said. “That feels like . . . like progress.”
“Totally,” he said, loading their dishes.
“What did Dr. Portnoy tell you? A month without nightmares and you’re on your way.”
“Something like that.” He slid shut the dishwasher.
“And how many days does that make without one?”
“Seven,” he said, and this time felt a little sick about the lie.
At his basement desk Sam spent an hour pretending to read the overnight traffic. His calendar, visible to the entirety of Moscow X, was blocked out from one to three p.m. The red box said: “Doctor’s Appointment.” That was a stand-in for appointments with his Office of Medical Services–mandated psychologist. Though the readouts of those sessions, written up by Dr. Portnoy, were submitted to Sam’s personnel records and, he knew, his Russia House superiors and a few up on the Seventh Floor, no one had once asked about these chats, much less pointed out if he left early or returned late.
Russia House has many rooms. One of them is known as the Backroom. The door is green-painted and unmarked. Behind it is a honeycomb of cubicles staffed by the small team of officers managing the Agency’s most sensitive Russia cases, many of which, even today, are documented in hard copy. At nine-thirty he called Lanzasta, one of the Backroom analysts, on the green line phone on his desk. “James,” he said, “how’s it hanging?” But before Lanzasta could misread this salutation as an earnest question and respond, Sam barreled ahead: “Awesome. Look, we’ve got a potential inbound from a Russian financier who’s living in the Gulf. Thought I could put a few questions to you about Moscow? Guy’s a rambler, and some of his stuff on the city doesn’t add up. I’ll pay you back with lunch. Pick your poison.” The offer was dead on arrival, and intentionally so: Lanzasta always brought his own lunch, typically lugged in a cooler large enough to transport a decent batch of organs. And like many analysts, Lanzasta preferred to eat from the relative peace and security of his high-partitioned cubicle.
Lanzasta declined the offer of food, accepted the invite, and Sam said, “I can come up your way. Eleven-thirty too early? I’ve got to make a doctor’s appointment out in Fairfax by one.”
The Backroom crowd usually thinned out over the lunch hour, decamping to read newspapers over silent lunches in the cafeteria, yet another awful feature of this place that made Sam wonder if, by osmosis, he was becoming all he had ever hated.
Sam did not have access to the vault, so he punched the buzzer and waited for the click. Once inside, he cheerfully greeted the few reports officers and then Lanzasta, squatting in the first bullpen of cubicles inside the door. The far back wall of the Backroom held a bank of safes, each for the material produced by a single human asset.
“The number is 132-1,” Procter’s Roblox character had scrawled on its message board, “over on the left.” From his current vantage he couldn’t make out any numbers. He noticed sweat sticking to his pants and shirt. He set the gym bag down in an empty desk in the bullpen next to Lanzasta, who joined him at the circular table in the center. He and Lanzasta had worked on Syria together back in the day, when Procter had been Chief in Damascus, and he had expected that they would fall into a conversation that was completely natural, even casual. But immediately upon sitting down, Sam could tell something was wrong.
“James,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Something happened in Moscow last night,” he whispered. “Asset didn’t show for a meet. You know Tarrman, one of the case officers out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they arrested him. Brought him to Lefortovo. PNGed him and his wife. Killed all his cats.”
Sam made a face. “The Tarrmans are okay, though?”
“Yes, bodily. They’re out of Russia and on their way home.”
“What happened to the asset?” Sam wanted to ask which one, but he would not; he didn’t have access, and Lanzasta was oversharing as it was.
“We don’t know.”
“Well, shit.”
“Anyway,” Lanzasta said, tossing his lunch bag toward a trash can, and missing horribly, “crap day up here. What did you want to talk about?”
Sam, reeling from the news but refocusing on the task at hand, put to the analyst a few questions about the atmospherics in Moscow. A volunteer in Dubai claiming access to a variety of Russian oil tycoons had provided his debriefer with a ream of information on his life and times in Moscow. Sam, at Raptis’s direction, had been tasked with the evaluation. It was a softball, a way to keep him busy, make him feel included. And it was a microcosm of the Langley self-licking ice-cream cone: Sam knew of at least four others across the alphabet soup of Agency components who were evaluating the case.
When Lanzasta had finished answering, Sam thanked him and proposed the first essential lie: “I’ve got about a half hour. Gonna log in to one of these machines until I head out.” This was not technically permitted, but practically it happened with sufficient frequency that Lanzasta did not bat an eye. “Cool—good to catch up,” was all he said before returning to his desk on the other side of the high-partitioned cubicle.
Sam logged in, pulled up the cable database, and for about five straight minutes simply stared into the screen. Sweat was pouring through his shirt. Hearing the murmur of Lanzasta and his teammates, Sam typed out a few senseless paragraphs so they might hear the clack of keys. He checked his watch.
Standing, peering over the top of the cubicle’s partition—stretching, for good measure—he wiped his hands once more and made friendly eye contact with Lanzasta. Sam’s ears felt like they’d been put in an oven; this was a regular tic during surveillance detection runs in the field, and in this moment it was reassuring, making him feel dialed in, ready to cross the line, to commit the act.
“Safe 132-1,” Procter had written, “will be three, maybe four to the left from the one at center.”
“How many up or down?” he had asked.
“No clue,” Procter had written.
Ten steps, and Sam was looking up at the wall of safes as if it were a hill he might climb. A ball of saliva crowded his throat, his ears were aflame, but he could rise above it to remind himself he appeared casual, normal. This was simply the rush of stealing. He wasn’t dead to it, thankfully—they didn’t want you dead to it. They worried what you’d do if you got dead to it.
And here, it was here he made his first and only mistake—later, he’d chalk it up to the rust one collects in the Penalty Box. Rather than pounce on the opening granted by the room, at that moment populated by Lanzasta and two disinterested analysts, Sam instead went to a safe to which he had once had formal access: the case file of an executive for Russia’s state-owned arms exporter.
Sam unlocked the safe and took a stack of papers back to his workstation. His vision watery, he stared uselessly at the reports, silently counting to one hundred and eighty, randomly turning pages and doing so quite loudly, almost jerking the staples out, as if Lanzasta simply had to know how feverishly he was working over here, on business that was critical and, clearly, entirely legitimate. He flipped more pages. Felt beads of water tickling his legs, sliding into his socks. His hands were steady, though. And bone-dry.
He mentally ticked through the combination he’d committed to memory, sliding each Lego bin from beneath his bed to memorize the numbers. Maybe he would forget it. But when had he forgotten numbers in his life? He wouldn’t be so lucky. His heart was drumming his ribs.
Sam was up. He left half the stack of papers at the workstation and returned the other half to the safe. He stood there, fingers on the dial, watching the sweat evaporate from the handle. Move.
Three steps to the left, same row, and he saw the safe’s number: 132-1. REMORA’s trove. Sam turned the dial, swishing and clicking, swishing and clicking. Click. The bolt released. First try. The safe swung open. The creaky hinges might well have been a gunshot. Bam. Violation of Agency Regulation 2353-5 (Procedures regarding handling of Sensitive Reporting material in Agency safes); specifically the lines stipulating that if you mishandled said material they would submit your file to the Performance Review Board and/or consider termination or prosecution pending Security investigation. Bam. Bam. Now the vulnerable part. As the Chief had said, the stack was healthy. There was no reason to lift an entire case file out of a Backroom safe in a single haul, but he’d have no guarantee of operational cover in a fucking minute’s time and so he fished it all out and shuttled it to the workstation and began sorting, rifling to be sure he had it all. The structure inside these safes varied wildly by case. And Theo Monk, REMORA’s current handler, was a notorious slob. First folder. Copies of the finished product. Into the gym bag. Next: the personality file, the background material, photos. Into the gym bag. Six folders, labeled chronologically, with the entirety of the ops cables and notes. Gym bag. The GQ/OATH documents: the Finance Smurfs’ accounting. Gym bag. Next up: asset validation and assessments. Drop of sweat from his nose, goddammit. Into the bag. Then: thick reams of the operational traffic. He set the papers down and wiped his face with his sleeve. Next: logistics. Buff-colored folder. Commo might be in there. Had to be, right? What else was there? Move.
