The Company: A Novel of the CIA (111 page)

Vanessa said, "We tested the serial number on all the lottery numbers broadcast by Radio Moscow when an Alice or a Looking Glass quote turned up in the quiz. Every time we subtracted the eight-digit serial number from the winning lottery number, it led to a Washington-area phone number in an apartment rented by the same woman. In every case the woman relocated within a week or so of the Moscow Radio broadcast."

"So the cutout's a woman!" Moody exclaimed.

"A Polish woman by the name of—" Tessa retrieved an index card from the pocket of her jacket "—Aida Tannenbaum. We got our hands on her naturalization papers. She is an Auschwitz survivor, a Jewish refugee from Poland who emigrated to America after World War II and became an American citizen in 1951. She was born in 1914, which makes her sixty-nine years old. She never seems to have held a job and it's not clear where she gets money to pay the rent."

Vanessa said, "She's changed apartments twenty-six times in the past thirty-two years. Her most recent address—which we traced when we broke out the most recent lottery signal from Moscow Radio—is on 16th Street near Antioch College. If she sticks to the pattern she'll move out in the next two or three days."

Mr. Moody was beginning to put it all together. "She moves out a week or so after she's contacted by the Soviet agent in America," he said.

"Right," Tessa said.

Vanessa said, "When she moves, all we have to do is get the phone company to tell us when someone named Aida Tannenbaum applies for a new phone number—"

Tessa finished the thought for her: "Or wait for the Moscow quiz program to come up with an Alice or a Looking Glass quotation, then subtract the serial number from the lottery number—"

Moody was shaking his head from side to side in wonderment. "And we'll have her new phone number—the one that the Soviet agent will call."

" Right. That's it."

"It looks to me," Moody said, "as if you girls have made a fantastic breakthrough. I must formally instruct both of you not to share this information with anybody. By anybody I mean any-body, without exception."

As soon as the twins were gone, Moody—who, like his old mentor Angleton, was reputed to have a photographic memory—opened a four-drawer steel file cabinet and rummaged through the folders until he came to an extremely thick one marked "Kukushkin." Moody had been a member of the crack four-man team that Angleton had assigned to work through the Kukushkin serials. Now, skimming the pages of the dossier, he searched anxiously for the passage he remembered. After a time he began to wonder whether he had imagined it. And then, suddenly, his eye fell on the paragraph he'd been looking for. At one point Kukushkin—who turned out to be a dispatched agent but who had delivered a certain amount of true information in order to establish his bona fides—had reported that the cutout who serviced SASHA was away from Washington on home leave; the summons back to Russia had been passed on to the cutout by a woman who freelanced for the Washington rezidentura.

A woman who freelanced for the rezidentura!

In other words, SASHA was so important that one cutout wasn't sufficient; the KGB had built in a circuit breaker between the rezidentura and the cutout who serviced SASHA. Could it be this circuit breaker that the Kritzky twins had stumbled across? He would get the FBI to tap Aida Tannenbaum's phone on 16th Street on the off-chance the cutout who serviced SASHA called again before she moved on to another apartment, at which point they would tap the new number.

Barely able to conceal his excitement, Moody picked up an intra-office telephone and dialed a number on the seventh floor. "This is Moody in counterintelligence," he said. "Can you put me through to Mr. Ebbitt ... Mr. Ebbitt, this is Moody in counterintelligence. I know it's somewhat unusual, but I'm calling you directly because I have a something that requires your immediate attention..."

4

WASHINGTON, DC, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1983

TWO MEN IN WHITE JUMP SUITS WITH "CON EDISON" PRINTED ON THE backs showed laminated ID cards to the superintendent of the apartment building on 16th Street off Columbia, within walking distance of Antioch College. Quite a few Antioch undergraduates lived in the building, three or four to an apartment. The old woman with the heavy Eastern European accent in 3B had given notice, so the super said. She was obliged to move in with a sister who was bedridden and needed assistance; the old woman, whose name was Mrs. Tannenbaum, didn't seem overly concerned when she discovered that she would lose the two-months' security she had deposited with the real estate company. No, the super added, she didn't live alone; she shared the furnished apartment with someone named Silvester. Using penlights, the two technicians found where the telephone cable came into the basement and followed it along the wall to the central panel near a wire mesh storage space filled with baby carriages and bicycles. The shorter of the two men opened a metal tool kit and took out the induction tap and cable. The other man unscrewed the cover on the central panel. Inside, the connections were clearly labeled by apartment number. He touched 3B and, following the wire up with a fingertip, separated it from the others. Then he attached the induction clamp to the line; the device tapped into a phone without touching the wire, which made it difficult to detect. The two men wedged a small battery-powered transmitter between a metal beam and the ceiling, then ran the black cable from the induction tap up behind a pipe and plugged the end into the transmitter. They connected one end of an antenna wire to the terminal and, unreeling it, taped it to the side of the beam, then activated the transmitter and hit the "Test" button.

Inside the white panel truck with "Slater & Slater Radio-TV" printed on the side, a needle on a signal reception meter registered "Strong." The two FBI agents manning the truck, which was parked in front of a fire hydrant further down l6th Street, gave each other the thumb's up sign. From this point on, all incoming and outgoing calls to 3B would be picked off the phone line by the induction clamp and broadcast to the white panel truck, where they would be recorded on tape and then rushed over to a joint command post staffed by FBI agents and Moody's people from counterintelligence.

The President was extremely proud of his long-term memory. "I recall, uh, this grizzly old sergeant looking out at the new recruits, me among them," he was saying, "and he growled at us, you know, the way sergeants growl at new recruits: 'I'm going to tell you men this just once but trust me—it'll stay with you for the rest of your lives. When you come out of a brothel the first thing you want to do is wash your, uh, private parts with Dial soap. The way you remember which soap to use is that Dial spelled backwards is laid."' Reagan, who liked to think of himself as a stand-up comic manque, grinned as he waited for the reactions. They weren't long in coming. "Dial spelled backward is laid!" one of the White House staffers repeated, and he and the others in the room howled with laughter. Reagan was chuckling along with them when his chief of staff, James Baker, stuck his head in the door of the second-floor office in the Presidential hideaway, the four-story brick townhouse on Jackson Place that Reagan had worked out of during the transition and still used when he wanted to get away from the darned goldfish bowl (as he called the Oval Office). "Their car's arriving," Baker snapped. He looked pointedly at the aides. "You have five minutes before I bring them up." With that, he disappeared.

"Remind me who's, uh, coming over," Reagan said amiably. A young aide produced an index card and hurriedly started to brief the President. "Bill Casey is coming to see you with two of his top people. The first person he's bringing along is his deputy director, Elliott Ebbitt II, Ebby for short. You've met him several times before."

"Did I, uh, call him Elliott or Ebby?"

"Ebby, Mr. President. The second person is the Deputy Director for Operations, Jack McAuliffe. You've never met him but you'll pick him out immediately—he's a six-footer with reddish hair and a flamboyant mustache. McAuliffe is something of a legendary figure inside the CIA—he's the one who went ashore with the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs."

"Ashore with the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs," Reagan repeated.

"McAuliffe's boy, Anthony, is the CIA officer who is being held hostage in Afghanistan, along with the Shaath woman."

Reagan nodded in concern. "The father must be pretty, uh, distressed."

"You were briefed about the boy's toe being amputated and delivered to the CIA station in Kabul."

"I remember the business with the toe," Reagan said cheerily. "They were able to identify it because of a birthmark."

"They're coming to see you," another aide added, "because they've discovered where this Commander Ibrahim is holding the hostages. They want a Presidential finding to mount a commando-style raid to free them."

Bill Clark, the Presidents National Security Advisor, came over to Reagan, who seemed lost in an enormous leather chair behind the large mahogany desk. Photographs of Nancy and himself, along with several of his favorite horses, were spread across the desk. "There are pros and cons to a commando raid," Clark said. "The one your predecessor, President Carter, mounted to free the hostages in Iran went wrong. US servicemen were killed. And of course the raiders never got anywhere near the hostages. Carter looked inept—the press was very critical. On the other hand, the Israelis mounted a commando raid to free the Jewish hostages being held by airline hijackers in Entebbe and pulled it off. They got a terrific press. The whole world applauded their audacity."

An appreciative smile worked its way onto Reagan's tanned features. "I remember that. Made quite a splash at the time."

There were two quick raps on the door, then Baker came in and stepped aside and three men walked into the room. Reagan sprang to his feet and came around the side of the desk to meet them half way. Grinning, he pumped Casey's hand. "Bill, how are you?" Without waiting for a response, he shook hands with Casey's deputy director, Elliott Ebbitt. "Ebby, glad to see you again," he said. The President turned to the DD/0, Jack McAuliffe and gripped his hand in both of his. "So you're the famous Jack McAuliffe I've, uh, heard so much about—your reputation precedes you. You're the one who went ashore with the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs."

"I'm flattered you remember that, Mr. President—"

"Americans don't forget their heroes. At least this American doesn't." He pulled Jack toward the couch and gestured for everyone to sit down. The aides hovered behind the President.

"Can I offer you boys something to wet your whistles?"

"If you don't mind, Mr. President, we're in a bit of a time bind," Casey said.

Reagan said to Jack, "I was briefed about the toe with the birthmark— you must be pretty distressed."

"Distressed is not the word, Mr. President," Jack said. "This Ibrahim fellow is threatening to cut off more of his toes unless the negotiations—" He couldn't continue.

Reagan's eyes narrowed in sincere commiseration. "Any father in your situation would be worried sick."

"Mr. President," Bill Casey said, "we've come over because there have been new developments in the hostage situation."

Reagan turned his gaze on Casey and stared at him in total concentration. "Our KH-11 has come up with—"

The President leaned back toward an aide, who bent down and whispered in his ear, "Sir, KH-11 is a photo reconnaissance satellite."

"Our KH-11 has come up with some dazzling intelligence," Casey said. "You'll remember, Mr. President, that the Russians and everyone else fell for the disinformation we put out—they think the KH-11 is a signals platform. As they don't suspect there are cameras on board, they don't camouflage military installations or close missile silo doors when the satellite passes overhead. The KH-11 has an advanced radar system to provide an all-weather and day-night look-down capability—using computers, our people are able to enhance the radar signals and create photographs. Thanks to this we've been able to track the Ibrahim kidnappers across Afghanistan. We've traced them to a mountain fortress two hundred and twenty miles inside Afghanistan." Casey pulled an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph from a folder and handed it to Reagan. "We even have a daytime shot of the Shaath woman and Jack's son, Anthony, walking inside the compound."

The President studied the photograph. "I can make out the two figures but how can you, uh, tell who they are."

"We determined that one is a woman by her chest. And as neither is dressed the way the tribesmen dress, we concluded that they are Westerners."

Reagan handed the photograph back. "I see."

Ebby said, "Mr. President, we have independent confirmation that Anthony McAuliffe and Maria Shaath are, in fact, being held in Ibrahim's stronghold. We arranged for our Israeli friends to send in an agent masquerading as a gunrunner. This happened four days ago. The Mossad's report reached us this morning. The gunrunner saw the two prisoners with his own eyes and subsequently picked out the young McAuliffe and Maria Shaath from a group of photographs that we faxed to the Israelis."

"While this was going on, Mr. President," Casey said, "we've been buying time by negotiating with this fellow Ibrahim by fax. As you know, he originally wanted a hundred and fifty Stinger ground-to-air missiles. In the course of the negotiations we've managed to talk him down to fifty—"

Reagan was shaking his head in disagreement. "I don't see why you're being so stingy," he said. "Far as I'm concerned Afghanistan's the right war at the right time. I told Jim Baker here that the, uh, money you boys allocated to the freedom fighters was peanuts." The President repeated the word "peanuts." The others in the room dared not look at each other. Reagan slapped a knee. "By gosh, there were fifty-eight thousand Americans killed in Vietnam. Afghanistan is payback time."

The National Security Advisor coughed into a palm and Reagan looked up at him. "Mr. President, you decided some time ago that giving Stingers to the Islamic fundamentalists could backfire on us, in the sense that after the Russians leave Afghanistan the fundamentalists could turn the Stingers on the West. Perhaps you would like to review this policy—"