Checkpoint Charlie

After my interminable session with insulting civil servants and the infuriating immigration apparatus I was dour and irritable and, overriding everything else, hungry.

As we drove in I had a look at the Embassy and saw the smudges above the top-story windows where the fire had licked out and charred the stonework. I made a face.

I introduced myself at the desk and there was a flurrying of phoning and bootlicking. I was directed to the third floor and managed to persuade one of the secretaries to send down for a portable lunch. Predictably I was kept waiting in De

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know you all resent my coming. But making me sore won’t help any of us. Punch up the intercom and tell him I’m coming in.” I strode past her desk to the door.

“Sir, you can’t —”

“Don’t worry, I know the way.”

*   *   *

SNEDEN WAS on the phone. He looked up at me, no visible break of expression on his pale features, and said into the mouthpiece, “Hang on a minute.” He covered it with his palm. “Sit down, Charlie, I’ll only be a minute.”

The blonde was behind me, possible trying to decide how to eject me by force. It would have been a neat feat in view of the fact that I outweighed her by two-and-a-half to one. After Sneden had addressed me with civility she changed her mind, made an apologetic gesture of exasperation to Sneden and withdrew.

He said into the phone, “Nothing we can do until we know more about it. Listen, Charlie Dark’s here, he just walked into the office. I’ll have to call you back — we should have an update later…. Right. Catch you.” He cradled it and tried to smile at me.

The chair was narrow; I had to perch. Through the high window I had a distant glimpse of the Kremlin’s crenelated onion towers.

Sneden looked pasty, his flat puffy face resembling the crust of a pie; I attributed the sickly look to chagrin over what had happened and fear for his job. I said, “I’m not necessarily here to embarrass you.”

“No?”

“The Security Executive — Myerson — wants a firsthand report. And I’m to lend a hand if it seems desirable.”

“Desirable to whom?”

“Me.”

“That’s what I thought.” He lit a cigarette. His fingers didn’t tremble visibly. “It was a freak.”

“Was it set? Arson?”

“We don’t know yet. It’s being investigated.”

“But there were Russian firemen inside the building.”

“Moscoe fire department. We had to. But not on the top floor. We handled that ourselves with portable extinguishers — it never got too bad up there, we caught it before it spread that far.”

“You know for a fact there’s no possibility any of them got up to the top floor, no matter how briefly?”

“No possibility. None. Our people were at the head of the stairs to cordon it.”

“I’ll accept that, then.”

“Thank you,” De

“The safe on the third floor.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was all in my report through the bag.”

“Go over it again for me.”

He said, “Charlie, what’s the point? I doubt anybody got into the safe. There’s no sign any thing’s been disturbed. But there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance that it happened and we have to be guided by that — we have to assume the safe was compromised.”

“Hell of an expensive assumption, De

“I know. I can’t help it.”

“Files covering several current covert operations.”

“Ongoing operations, right.”

“Including the identities of at least eleven of our agents.”

“Yes. But everything’s in code.”

“Never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed, never was a horse that couldn’t be rode. De

“I know. But each operational file is kept in a different code. The Control on each operation has access only to his own codes.”

“Who assigns the codes?”

“I do. Part of my job.”

“Then nobody else can decipher more than one case-officer’s files without access to your code books?”

“Well, they’re not code books any more, they’re computer programs, but in essence you’re correct. Nobody can decode more than a few of those files at a time.”

“Unless they manage to break all the codes simultaneously,” I said. “If they breached those files with a camera we have to write off six current operations and eleven crucially valuable agents.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Charlie, but only two of them are crucially valuable. The other nine are just nice to have but in the cruel impersonal terms of modern espionage they’re expendable.” He was fiddling with his windproof cigarette lighter, flicking the lid open and shut. “We’ve already taken preliminary steps to shut down the capers and cover our tracks.”

“Good.”

“The safe was unlocked — before, during and after the fire. In the excitement it didn’t occur to anybody to lock it. I guess that’s my fault; it’s my job to maintain security.”

“Your loyalty to your subordinates is commendable, De

De

“There’s no way to find out. Not for a while until we start getting feedback from them.”

“That could be too late. I’ll need to have a look at those files.”

*   *   *

I SPENT most of the night with the files and a brown bag full of cooling hamburgers from the cafeteria downstairs. By the end of it I realized why Myerson had picked me for this one. Whenever a job comes along that requires both ingenuity and mortal risk he likes to throw it at me because, whatever the outcome, he can’t lose. If I come a cropper then my embarrassment, injury, incarceration or demise will provide him with perverse satisfaction; if I succeed in bringing off the impossible then the success will reflect on Myerson and he will climb higher in the favor of the Langley executives.

The files offered me half a dozen covert capers-in-progress to select from. All of them were espionage operations involving hired Russians who’d been subverted by the American station operatives, usually for money, less often by means of blackmail or other shady coercions. None of them was selling his country out for ideological reasons; spies seldom do except in movies.

The eleven agents listed in the coded files from the Embassy’s safe were unimportant people for the most part — two of them were charwomen with access to certain wastebaskets; others were clerks, countermen, typists, a telephone repairman, a minor commissar’s chauffeur, a computer technician, a laboratory assistant.

I found possibilities in two of the six operations although the risks in both cases would be high: one misstep and I could find myself in the Lubianka dungeons with electrodes affixed to my tender parts. There were several KGB types who would delight in getting me into such a plight.

*   *   *

DENNIS WAS still nervous. “I could be in bad trouble.”

“Take it easy. The worst you’ll suffer may be early retirement. You’ve only got ten months left anyway.”

“Just the same —”

“Don’t ask me to cover up anything, De

“I wouldn’t do that. What do you take me for? We’ve known each other too long for you to say that to me, Charlie.” But he said it too fast and I focused my gaze on the summary sheets so that I wouldn’t compound his guilt by witnessing it.