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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Assassin
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T
he National Press Club's main ballroom was all aglitter for the annual Person of the Year banquet, although the several hundred journalists and diplomats paid scant attention to the fine linen, silver and porcelain, they'd seen it before, often.
Word was out that President Lindsay would be given the honor this year (eighteen months late) for his international policies including the handling of the Japanese trade issues. For the first time since World War II the U.S. balance of trade with Japan was heading in the right direction. No one expected parity in the near future but Lindsay was taking the country in that direction.
It was a little before nine in the evening, and although the President and Mrs. Lindsay weren't scheduled to arrive until 9:45 P.M., dinner was winding down and dancing had begun.
Howard Ryan and his stunningly dressed wife, Evangeline, had just finished a dance and were heading back to the table they shared with Senate Majority Leader Chilton Wood and his wife, J3 Admiral Stewart Phipps and his wife and Bob Castle, political columnist for the
New York Times
, when Ryan's assistant DDO, Tom Moore, and his dowdy wife Doris intercepted them.
“You two cut a fine figure out there,” Moore said.
“We're defined by our social graces,” Ryan said pompously. He kissed Doris on the cheek. “If your dance card isn't filled, put my name on it.”
“Thanks for asking, Howard, but I have a feeling that Evangeline and I are going to be deserted tonight,” Doris said. She seemed resigned.
Ryan shot Moore a questioning look. His assistant was worried.
“Why don't you and Doris go back to our table and have another glass of wine,” Ryan told his wife. “Tom and I will join you ladies in a couple of minutes.”
“Don't strand us here, Howard,” Evangeline warned, and she and Doris headed back to the table. She did not share her husband's love for intrigue.
“This better be good,” Ryan told his assistant.
“It's much worse than that, Howard. Believe me,” Moore said. “My car is in front. I suggest we go for a ride.”
Ryan was annoyed. He wanted to see the President again, but Moore's obvious agitation was worrisome. They walked outside, got into the assistant DDO's car, and pulled away, merging with traffic on 14th Street.
“I just came from Langley,” Moore said. “Farley Smith caught me as Doris and I were leaving the house. He must have missed you by only a couple of minutes.”
Smith was chief of the CIA's archives section where the agency's most highly classified records and historical documents were stored. He was working on deep background for Ryan's follow-up report to the President on sending an envoy to Tarankov.
“What has he come up with?” Ryan asked.
“We've got trouble, Howard,” Moore replied. “Not just the DO, but the entire agency. If this breaks, the remainder of our careers will be spent on the Hill answering some tough questions that'll make the Iran-Contra fiasco look like a tempest in a teacup.”
He stopped for a red light and looked over at Ryan. “What's the worst thing you can think of that could happen to us in this operation? The absolute worst piece of information.”
“Don't play games, Tom. Lay it out for me.”
“Tarankov is ours. Or was.”
Ryan was stunned. “What are you talking about?”
“In the seventies his code name was CKHAMMER,” Moore said. The CK digraph was an old CIA indicator that the code named person was a particularly sensitive Soviet or Eastern bloc intelligence source.
“He spied for us?” Ryan asked, thunderstruck.
“While he was in the missile service. His parents ran into trouble with the KGB, and were sentenced to ten years in a Siberian gulag. They were friends of the Sakharovs. Our Moscow COS at the time, Bob Burns, assigned a case officer to see if Major Tarankov could be turned. He was, and until he was transferred out of the service he apparently provided us with some pretty good information.”
“Then we have the bastard,” Ryan said triumphantly. “We'll get a message to him to back off, or we expose what he was to the Russian people. It'll ruin him.” Ryan had another thought. “Do we have proof? Photographs? Documents? Signatures?”
“Presumably, but it's all worthless, because there's more.”
“What more can there be?” Ryan demanded. “The son of a bitch was a spy. His people can't trust him. Hell, we'll even offer him political asylum. We can dump him in Haiti, or maybe Panama where he'd be out of everyone's hair.”
“Money. A lot of it. Moscow station had an open checkbook for a few years back then, because of the SDI thing. Word was that the Russians were way ahead of us on research. Farley is still digging, but he thinks that rumor may have gotten started on the basis of false information Tarankov sent us.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Over a nine year period we gave Tarankov, and a supposed network of spies under his direction, more than seventy million dollars. All of it black, none of it authorized by, or even known about on the Hill or the White House.”
“He used the money to buy that goddamned train.”
“It would appear so.”
“Nothing has changed—”
“We can't send an envoy to Tarankov. He'd just laugh in our faces. Imperialist bastards who tried to buy Russia for seventy million. It would backfire on us. It would set our foreign policy back a hundred years.”
They came around the corner on K Street a block from the National Press Club.
“We have to move very carefully, Howard,” Moore said. “Tarankov must be arrested and put on trial as soon as possible. Before the June elections.”
“Our involvement will come out in any trial.”
“It won't matter,” Moore interjected. “As long as we're not involved with him now we can deny everything. Tarankov will come out sounding like a desperate man clutching at straws.”
“The President wants to send me as the envoy.”
“You'll have to convince him differently. We cannot be seen interfering in Russian internal affairs. It would do us a great deal of damage.”
Ryan had another thought. “Who else knows about this?”
“Nobody. And Farley had the good grace not to mention sending this upstairs to the director's office.”
“Murphy has to be told.”
“That's your job, Howard.”
Damned right, Ryan thought. “And your job is to keep a lid on this thing. I want you to convince Farley that I mean business. If so much as a hint of this comes out of his office I'll nail his ass to the barn door.”
“Of course.”
“Where's the file at this moment?”
“In my safe.”
“I want it on my desk at eight sharp. I'll see the general at nine. He's due back from New York sometime tonight.”
It was a few minutes before nine when the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Lawrence Danielle called Ryan's office. “We're here, are you ready?”
“I'm on my way,” Ryan said. “Has Technical Services scanned his office?”
“They just left.”
He checked his pocket watch, buttoned up his coat and took the Tarankov file recovered in a D.D.O. EYES ONLY gray folder with a blue border on each page up to the seventh floor. He'd had a sleepless night worrying about what he would to have to face this morning. And reading the material Moore had brought over, he decided that his assistant had not exaggerated.
Ryan's specialty, among others, was turning negatives into pluses. This time, however, he was out of ideas except one, and that was when the play got too hot you always handed the ball over to someone else. It was one of his axioms for survival.
Roland Murphy was having coffee at his desk while he watched the 9:00 A.M. news reports from CNN and the three major news networks on a multiscreen TV monitor, as he did every morning. He was a large man with prizefighter's arms and dark eyebrows over deep-set eyes. He was one of the toughest men ever to sit behind that desk, and no one who'd ever come up against him thought any differently.
With him were the aging, but still effective, Danielle who'd been in the business for more than thirty years; the dapper dresser Tommy Doyle, who was Deputy Director of Intelligence; and Carleton Patterson, the patrician New York lawyer whom Ryan had recommended to take over as general counsel.
Murphy's eyes strayed to the file folder. “Has something happened overnight, Howard?”
“In a manner of speaking, General,” Ryan said, closing the door. “I suggest that you ask not to be disturbed, and that you shut off the tape recorder.”
Murphy's eyebrows rose, but he called his secretary and told her to hold everything until further notice, then opened a desk drawer and flipped a switch. “We're clean and isolated,” he said. “You have our attention.”
Ryan sat down in the empty chair and laid the file folder on the edge of Murphy's desk. Nobody made a move to reach for it. “The President must be convinced not to send an envoy as I originally suggested to speak with Yevgenni Tarankov.”
Murphy studied Ryan's eyes. “If you feel that strongly about it, we'll send someone else. I don't think that will be a major stumbling block.”
“No, Mr. Director, we can't send anybody to see him, unless or until he becomes President of Russia by whatever means. To do so would irreparably harm the United States, and this agency specifically. Something has come up.”
“Who knows about this?” Patterson asked softly.
“Tom Moore and Farley Smith.”
“Archives?”
Ryan nodded.
“No one else on your staff, or Smith's staff knows anything?” Patterson asked.
“That's correct.”
“What is it, Howard? What dark secret have you stumbled upon?” Danielle asked.
“I've come up with incontrovertible proof that in the seventies and early eighties Tarankov spied on his own government for the United States. Specifically for a case officer working out of Moscow Station under Bob Burns.”
“I'll be damned,” Doyle said.
Murphy and Danielle exchanged glances. “It was before my time, Lawrence,” Murphy said. “Did you know anything about it?”
“No. It must have been a soft operation.”
“His code name was CKHAMMER,” Ryan said. “Someone thought he was important.”
“I didn't know anything about it, Howard,” Danielle said mildly, but there was a dangerous edge to his voice. He'd played this game so often that he was a master at it. “What's your point?”
“His operation was called LOOKUP, and over nine years we paid him nearly seventy million dollars for SDI information. All of it black. Money he used to buy the armored train he's terrorizing the countryside with. It makes for some disturbing possibilities.”
“That puts a hell of a spin on the situation over there,” Murphy said. “How do you see it?”
“We certainly can't open a dialogue with him now,” Ryan said. “It could backfire in our faces. He'd accuse us of trying to bring down Kabatov's government.”
“He's one of us,” Doyle said.
“Not any longer,” Ryan shot back. “But if Kabatov is successful in arresting him and bringing him to trial we'll be out of the woods.”
“He wouldn't use his relationship with us as a defense, that's for damned sure,” Murphy said. “But he could end up asking us for asylum.”
“Which we'd deny him,” Ryan said.
“Doesn't say much for how we treat the people who've worked for us,” Danielle suggested.
“Tarankov is no friend of ours,” Ryan replied sharply. “He never was. In those days we were helping a lot of questionable people. Batista then Castro, Noriega, Marcos. It's a big number, and most of the decisions were poorly thought out. It gave us a bad reputation which we're just beginning to live down. If the truth came out about our involvement with Tarankov it would push back the clock, and no one would come out smelling like a rose.
“I'll have to brief the President—”
“No, sir,” Ryan interrupted. “I think that would unnecessarily complicate matters. Let me work up a new proposal showing why sending an envoy to Tarankov isn't such a good idea after all. He wasn't all that keen on it in the first place.”
“You'll come out with egg on your face for waffling,” Murphy warned.
“Better me than the agency.”
Danielle gave him an amused look of barely concealed contempt. “I'd like to see that proposal before we kick it over to the White House.”
“We'll all take a look,” Murphy said, before Ryan could respond. “The President will have to be convinced that we must support Prime Minister Kabatov's government.”
“At all costs,” Ryan said. “It's our only course.”
“Is any of that file in the computer?” Danielle asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “Smith got this from the warehouse. It's the only copy.”
“How about cross-references?”
“He's pulling them now.”
“When he's dug everything out, we'll put a fifty-year seal on the material,” Danielle said.
“We'll destroy the files,” Ryan said.
Danielle shook his head. “We've done questionable things, Mr. Ryan. But we don't destroy records, because in the end we're accountable to the public.”
“No—” Ryan said.
“I have to overrule you on this one, Howard,” Murphy said. “Lawrence is right. We'll let the historians struggle with it fifty years from now, but we won't alter the record.”
“As you wish, Mr. Director,” Ryan said darkly.
“Then we all have work to do. I suggest we get to it.”
 
Tom Moore came over when Ryan got back to his office. “Did they go for it?” he asked.
“They didn't have any choice,” Ryan replied harshly. “As soon as Smith is finished with his search, I want everything hand-delivered to me.”
“Are we going to destroy it?”
“No. It's going under a fifty-year seal.”
“Just as well,” Moore said.
“In the meantime I'll put something together for Murphy to take over to the White House. I'll need comprehensive reports on Kabatov's government, on Yeltsin's assassination, and a sanitized version of Tarankov's background.”
“Will do.”
“I'll need it yesterday, Tom.”
“I'll get on it right away,” Moore assured him. He turned to go, but stopped at the door. “This business with the French and McGarvey doesn't want to go away. How far do we want to take it?”
Ryan's stomach knotted up, and he absently touched the scar on his chin. “Maybe it was McGarvey who killed Yeltsin. I wouldn't put it past the bastard.”
“The timing is wrong. But the French are worried that the Russians have hired McGarvey to kill someone in France.”
“Arrest him, and put him on a plane back here. We'll pick him up at the airport.”
Moore shook his head. “That's just the problem. They can't find him. Seems as if he's gone to ground.”
Ryan looked up at his assistant deputy director with renewed interest. Hate for McGarvey still burned very hotly in his gut. “Has he broken any French laws?”
“Presumably not. They merely want to talk to him. He was living with a French intelligence officer who was keeping tabs on him, but he kicked her out and disappeared.”
Ryan could sense trouble. It was McGarvey's pattern. When he was given an assignment the first thing he did was drop out of sight. The son of a bitch was back in the field. He still hadn't learned his lesson.
“We need to give them all the help we can. Have Tom Lynch do what he can for them. But it's a safe bet that some Russian has hired him to kill someone. Probably a mafia thing. Or, maybe he's even decided to work for Tarankov, and is stalking Prime Minister Kabatov. With a man like McGarvey anything is possible.”
“I'll call Lynch and talk to him personally,” Moore said.
“Wait,” Ryan said. He'd had another thought. “Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we hire Elizabeth McGarvey as a translator over my objections a few months ago?”
Moore shrugged. “Is she some relation?”
“His daughter,” Ryan said. “Find out if she's on the payroll. Maybe we'll borrow her for this one.” Ryan smiled. “Who better to find a father, than his daughter?”
“Isn't that a little extreme, Howard? She's done nothing to harm the Agency has she?”
“We're not going to harm her,” Ryan replied, holding his anger in check. “I'll simply explain to her that we'd like to speak to her father, but that he's gone to ground. We'd like her help getting a message to him. Nothing more than that, Tom.”

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