The Seventh Floor, page 30
“If,” he interrupted, his tone becoming muscular, “it’s narrowed the field, if we accept the premise that”—insistent tap of a finger against the table—“the REMORA stream is inside out. If we buy Frankie’s claim about REMORA’s history with Zhomov, and assume that they’re still teamed up. That REMORA works with, or for, Zhomov.”
“Fair, fair,” she said. “Fucking fair. If you accept all that, I’ve got suspects and an idea that could lure our mole aboveground.”
“Which is what, precisely?”
“You ever hear of a barium meal, Jaggers?”
“That some lingo from the Cold War glory days?”
“Means we feed something into the system and see where it comes out on the other end. Or who it comes out of.”
Sam made a face. “That implies we need to see it at both ends.”
“Oh, it doesn’t imply that. That’s what it is. We feed the meal into a few mouths and position ourselves for a good look at the butts.” She paused. Then said, “Look, man, it’ll be hard to do it without you. But even I’m not sure. I made up my mind, but I’m not sure.”
“Why’s your mind made up?” he asked.
“I was fifty-fifty, so I flipped a coin at the Farm. Let the intelligence gods decide. Heads, I keep at it. Tails, I disappear. It was heads. So I bounced from the Farm, then I called you.”
42
FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA / CRYSTAL CITY
Paul Portnoy, a psychologist on contract with CIA, was a former case officer of no repute who’d quit the Service three decades prior, deciding he’d attempt to treat mental illness rather than encourage it in the form of coaxing foreigners to commit treason. Portnoy had at first sworn off any entanglements with CIA, but by the mid-aughts his private practice had stagnated and the Agency had generous coin to throw his way. Those days were peak War on Terror, and there were plenty of officers returning from the war zones with problems to work through. At any given time, about half of Portnoy’s patient load came from his contract with CIA, which paid its bills on time and had even set him up with a counseling room and office that were graded as commercial sensitive compartmented information facilities, SCIFs. Under the terms of his master contract with CIA, Portnoy was required to write up cables following each session. Many of the officers were dealing with issues—Post Traumatic Stress, burnout, on and on—and their Langley components wanted to know if they might again be trusted in the field. Portnoy’s sign-off was critical to reestablishing that trust.
And now one of his patients, Sam Joseph, a recently terminated case officer, was sitting on the floor outside his office, waving, as Portnoy rounded the corner from the elevator bank. Joseph’s hair was mussed, and he had a frantic energy rolling off him. Up to this point the patient had functioned pretty well given the circumstances, but as Portnoy approached, he had the distinct impression Sam was strung out on something.
“Doc! Dr. Portnoy!” Sam called out as he stood up. “We gotta talk. Have a chat.”
“Sam, our appointment is not until next week,” Portnoy said.
“Need to do it today.” Sam slurred back. Definitely on drugs, Portnoy thought, steeling himself for what would certainly be an unpleasant start to his morning.
Sam offered Portnoy his hand, and when he took it Portnoy caught the stench of whiskey wafting toward him. He looked the patient up and down for a beat. “You on drugs, Sam?”
“No, Doctor.”
“No?”
“Nothing illegal. Just a little tipsy.”
Portnoy did not need this. He had an hour and a half until his first appointment at ten, but that was reserved for charting and bookkeeping. Then he had a full roster of appointments.
“Are you having suicidal thoughts?” Portnoy said, scowling. “If you’re considering self-harm, I will escort you to the ER.”
“Gotta be in your SCIF room,” Sam said, talking past him. “Gotta be right now. I’m working through something.”
Portnoy sighed. What this smelled like, other than booze, was a lost morning. A wasted hour babysitting a lunatic. A session that, though he could bill CIA, would not be worth the squeeze, given the quantity of frustrating cables he would be forced to draft in its wake. He could call the police, but that would definitely ruin the entire morning.
“How drunk are you?” Portnoy was scowling.
“Not enough. Look.”
Standing, Sam walked heel to toe in a passably straight line. Then he said, “Z, Y, X, W . . .”
“Enough!” Portnoy shouted. “Let’s make this quick.”
Portnoy opened the vault and sat down at his desk. He flicked on the microphones and collected a notebook and pen. The harsh overhead lights buzzed; above them a wall clock ticked away. Sam flopped into one of the tired green easy chairs.
“What is going on? What could not wait?” Portnoy asked flatly.
“I’ve been thinking more about the time before they got me. The few minutes when I was talking with him.”
“They? Who is they? And who is him?” Portnoy said, exasperated.
“They is the Russians,” Sam said. “And him is Golikov. When I got home I spent a few weeks at Langley running through what I told the Russians in Moscow, and what I heard from Golikov before he disappeared. And, here’s the thing, Doctor, I’ve been foggy and the memories roll back unevenly, in waves, and I was talking to Natalie”—Natalie Karam, Portnoy would write in the cable, REF C/O’s significant other—“this morning and I said that I’d been playing more poker, maybe too much, kind of a problem because impulse control’s a challenge after the unpleasantness”—here Portnoy snatched a glance at Sam’s face, remembering what had been done to him in Russia, and how the guy had looked when he’d finally told the story—“and I mentioned how a few weeks back I went out to Vegas for a little gambling and I was at a table chatting up a dealer and I was suddenly, like, I don’t know, transported to Singapore, and I was remembering the few words Golikov shared with me before he went upstairs, and if I’m remembering them correctly it’s pretty damn important.”
In the throes of a PTSD collapse, Portnoy scribbled illegibly into his notebook. As Sam prattled on, his voice rose and fell at random, his feet bounced so wildly he was probably shaking loose the ceiling spackling downstairs, sending it down like rain on the good folks at Labcorp. “What was so important?” Portnoy asked.
“In Singapore,” Sam replied, “Golikov said SVR had someone inside CIA.”
At this, Portnoy swiveled his head to face Sam’s directly, his naturally sweaty skin suddenly cold and dry. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, now. Easy, Sam. What?”
“Golikov said SVR had someone inside CIA. Run by the Special Section. Some other clues I can’t remember. But I will, or I think I will.”
“Look,” Portnoy said again, “you’re drunk. Let’s just be honest about that. Maybe we call it here, I don’t write this up, and you come back tomorrow and we see where we are?”
“Dr. Portnoy,” Sam said, staring through him with no small amount of menace, “I remember it clear as day now. This is important.”
“Fine. Is that exactly what this Golikov said?” Portnoy asked, beginning to write. “Give me the chain of the information, if you remember it?”
“Golikov said he’d gotten it from someone on . . . the Russian Security Council. Don’t remember the name, but he said it, I’ll remember it. He said, and I quote, ‘SVR has someone inside CIA, an asset run by the Special Section.’ That’s what he was in Singapore to trade. From there it’s fog. Smoke in the brain. Write that down, Doctor, I’ve gotta set the record straight, we’ve gotta fix this.”
After he had left Portnoy’s office, Sam made the call from the Crystal City safe house with a new burner, purchased in cash, and loaded with an Ultra Mobile international SIM card he picked up at an electronics shop run by Serbians. As expected, Rami Kassab did not answer. And why would he? He did not recognize the number. But Sam left a short voice mail, saying he would be in Paris for a few days and was keen to see the brothers. He rang off by suggesting he’d love to go out for some barazek, a Syrian sweet biscuit covered with sesame seeds and crushed pistachios. And while Sam did love barazek, he had no illusions that there would be any waiting for him in Paris. It was a brevity word, from their Damascus days; the brothers had mentioned barazek in time-sensitive communications to signal freedom from hostile control. He called Natalie and said he’d be traveling for a few days. Back soon, habibti, he made himself say, and when he’d hung up Procter smacked him on the back of the head, said she wasn’t angry with him, just disappointed. “Chief,” Sam replied, “give it a rest. Why do both of our homes need to explode at the same time?”
Procter and Sam purchased their tickets in true name—a risk, but what could be done? There was so little time. They rolled through a mad-dash shopping spree for any equipment they could acquire stateside and pile into their carry-ons. Commercially available surveillance cameras were now so small, flexible, and cheap that it was straightforward to quickly acquire an adequate supply.
Rami Kassab returned Sam’s call before they left for the airport. He and Sam made plans for breakfast upon arrival in Paris. When Rami asked after the purpose of his trip, Sam said business, and let it sit there for a few silent seconds. He could hear Rami breathing through the speaker, his lips clicking together, thinking. The Kassabs had no clue Sam and Procter were no longer with CIA. We shouldn’t burden those poor boys with more complexity, Procter had urged. Let’s keep it simple for them.
“How are we going to pay them?” Sam asked after he’d hung up.
“We? You’re the card shark, Jaggers, you’ll figure it out.”
43
MOSCOW
According to the CIA profile Dr. B had passed along, the Americans believed Rem to be a chess champion. The document stated that he’d been fond of the game since youth, and assessed that he brought hard-won lessons in strategic thinking, patience, and tactics to the recruitment and running of spies. The faulty analysis amused and flattered Rem. It was not so terrible for the opposition to paint you as a modern-day Karla, cunning and competent, always one step ahead. He rearranged his donut pillow; hemorrhoids had been flaring up as of late, an awful distraction from his arthritic knees and hips.
In truth, Rem did not play much chess, and he’d certainly not excelled at the game as a boy. He found it boring: the low stakes, the snobby ritualism, the pieces as preprogrammed automatons. Rem did not think about his world as a chessboard, he did not use such analogies to order his moves. Now, despite the feverish complexity of the war he was fighting, he thought only of how Dr. B might be preserved to continue reporting. How the threats facing the doctor might be eliminated. And here, even if chess had been his bailiwick, Rem would have vainly struggled for any comparison to a board game in which two opponents sit politely in seats and flick plastic pieces across a board in a make-believe war.
The photos of MICKEY and MINNIE’s disastrous performance, first of all, put paid any notion of a stuffy conflict pitched across a wooden battlefield. He slid the printouts onto the table, cupped his hands around his nose, and looked straight at Gennady. “A bomb?” Gennady looked down. “What did your Spaniard tell them?”
“He did not tell them to build a bomb. And they did not tell him they were building a bomb,” Gennady said.
“They live in a country with more guns than people, and they chose to build a bomb?”
“Apparently not a good one.”
Rem nudged his chin at the pictures; the one on top was a close-up of a charred head. Such things made Rem think of Afghanistan. Even now he did not like to think of Afghanistan. “The body is MICKEY’s?”
“Right.”
“And MINNIE is asking for guidance?” Rem asked.
“Correct. She has sent a message through the usual channel asking for instructions.”
“She will certainly be taken into custody soon, yes? Don’t you think?”
“I would assume so. We should assume so.”
“Put her on ice. No contact. Nothing. Not after this fiasco. She’s cut off. Now, I do not like to do this, but get me Laskin. And do it now.”
Rem liked Laskin even less than he liked thinking about Afghanistan. In fact, when he had to make use of Laskin he typically did so through intermediaries, usually the Director, whom Laskin would heed without question. The questions. With Laskin there were always so many questions, and all were volleyed in a tone so brusque it often drifted into outright hostility.
“And what, exactly, is happening at this French farmhouse?” This was Laskin’s fourth question, and by a wide margin his most hostile. He gestured toward the map on the table. A blue sticker had been placed at the farmhouse’s location.
They were in Rem’s office sitting around the corner table, which was set into the windows facing the forest. When Rem had walked outside that morning he’d found the air crisp, announcing a winter that had mercifully not yet fully arrived. The Moscow sky was bright blue. He’d traded a joke or two with his neighbor and inquired about his son’s swimming exploits. He’d passed a silent and contented breakfast with Ninel and she’d laid out his clothes and he’d gotten dressed without any expectation of arriving at the office to pictures of a muffed assassination attempt and an emergency signal from Dr. B. Strange times to be a Russian bureaucrat.
“Doesn’t matter what’s happening at the house,” Rem growled. “It only matters who is there.”
Laskin turned imploringly to Gennady. Finding no moral support there, he swung to the windows, as if the trees might back him. “And you have permission for this, Rem? This is approved?”
Rem wagged his finger, each jerk of the hand seeming to bring Laskin nearer to punching him. An aide knocked to bring in tea. “Go away,” Rem shouted. They listened to footsteps padding off.
“Before I ask for permission,” Rem said, “I need to know what resources will be required. And we both know, Colonel Laskin, just how tentative these approvals can be. This is all in the spirit of building the package. We have hours, not days. This is Singapore all over again.”
The mention of Singapore elicited from Laskin a weak grunt, and then a shine in his eyes that made Rem want to throw him into oncoming traffic. “I’m brought in to shovel your shit,” he said. “As usual. I don’t know what exactly you are protecting, Rem, but it’s making me jumpy. Isn’t this shop supposed to be boring? Knife-and-fork business, right? Yakking up Americans at cocktail parties, that kind of thing? Buckets of blood have been spilled as of late. Hardly the calling card of a jet-setting alumnus of the First Chief Directorate. It’s not a good sign, when you hoist old Laskin up from the basement for a chat about source protection. When I get involved, the source isn’t being protected. By definition.”
“Colonel,” Rem said dryly, “sometimes it is best to keep your mouth shut.”
Gennady began unfurling maps across the table.
Laskin had said his piece, the hands up, Fine, fine, retreat was entirely predictable for the man, who now stood for a more expansive view of the detailed maps depicting the Provençal village of Lacoste and its immediate environs. The SVR had produced high-quality maps of the area after Dr. B had been recruited.
Rem tapped his finger on the sticker marking the farmhouse. Gennady shoved a binder of photos at Laskin. “Landscapes and terrain. There’s a thumb drive in there with a handful of videos.”
“Two hours, Laskin,” Rem said. “You have two hours to tell me how many people you need to maintain overwatch on this property and intervene if necessary. And how many you can slip into France on zero notice.”
“That is not enough time,” Laskin said, in a lawyerly voice, still hunched over the map.
“Two hours,” Rem snapped, “is what you’ve fucking got, Colonel.”
This time the SVR director asked Rem to accompany him to meet the President. Rem found himself in a four-car convoy of armored Land Cruisers, blue sirens wailing, flying down the reserved center lane where the roads had them. His knee pain was worsening as the day went on, he was famished from the day’s sprint, and worn down by the drip of arguments with Laskin, which, as had been the case with Singapore, had stretched exhaustingly into the afternoon, the insufferable bastard. Laskin was the type of subordinate that made you fantasize about a return to Stalinism, if only to end the argument by putting a bullet in his neck.
The car swaddled Rem: dim, plush, and warm, womblike excepting the pleasurable smell of smoke and an overmatched citrus that made him think of Rome. The ride was smooth as marble and the gentle hum of the car tugged at his eyelids. The Director was reading a briefing book in silence. He also seemed to loll forward in fits; when the Director shot up straight he would press fingers into the corner of his eyes and blink feverishly for a reboot. Rem, surrendering, clutched his documents and nodded off.
He woke to the driver’s voice: “Director? Comrade Director?” The tone was insistent, layered by the obvious worry that they were both dead. It was very clearly not his first attempt to wake them.
The Director mopped spittle from the corner of his mouth and heaved himself out of the car. “Let’s hope we can make this quick,” the Director said. “I need to eat something so I can take my back pills.”
The office’s anteroom was brown: dark mahogany walls, carved paneled ceiling, clock engraved with the imperial double eagle, brown leather chairs and sofa, bookshelf groaning with brown-jacketed books, a collection of encyclopedias, by the look of it. They’d submitted to the COVID PCR test, completed the medical questionnaires, and, an hour earlier, had been green-lighted for their face-to-face with the President.
Now they waited. There was no food, no tea. Rem was alone and hungry on a brown sea. The chairs were thinly cushioned, razors on his ass. The troubling absence of the President’s security detail made Rem wonder if this meeting would be canceled. Out of precaution for any leaks inside the President’s staff, the topic had been submitted as “Director’s Brief”—there had of course been no mention of Dr. B—and Rem now wondered if that had been a mistake, a signal this meeting could be skipped or perhaps attended by an uncleared aide. The slanted amber light of a November afternoon poured through the window and made his limbs feel numb. To fight sleep Rem rehearsed what he might say to any number of specific questions raised about the France operation, MICKEY and MINNIE, or Dr. B.
