Back Channel: A novel Page 5

  The man called Viktor was uneasy. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. He didn’t much care for this rich country and its soft, pampered people. Certainly he didn’t like the man seated beside him. But the struggle to protect the Motherland often required compromise. Even Comrade Stalin had made temporary strategic alliances, first with the German fascists, then with the American capitalists.

  “What do you know about the operation?” Viktor asked.

  “Not much. Not yet. I understand that Langley is calling it QKPARCHMENT.”

  “QK?”

  “That’s the digraph for Bulgaria. I’m sure you know this stuff by heart. If it’s AE, it’s against the Soviets. You. If it’s JM, it’s Cuba.”

  Viktor did indeed know the Agency’s digraphs by heart. Most Soviet intelligence officers did. Viktor had not been aware that the Americans officially conceded this. But, then, the man with whom he was negotiating was anything but official. His name, if anything at all, was Ziegler, and he represented that uniquely American species, the consultant, a man with connections everywhere and responsibilities nowhere.

  “You do understand,” the Russian said, “that we will do all that we can to stop this operation.”

  Ziegler’s laugh was humorless. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  A strange man, Viktor reflected. Betraying his country with such enthusiasm, when the only reward would be an intensification of the crisis. Presumably he had his reasons for cooperation, just as Viktor did.

  “Tell me about the agent,” he said.

  “I don’t have his identity yet, but I’m working on it.”

  “And once the agent is identified?”

  Again that strangely cruel laugh. “Bulgaria is on your side of the Curtain, Viktor. Your territory, your rules.”

  II

  The American left the meeting ground first. This was in accordance with their practice. Viktor returned to his borrowed vehicle and headed back toward the city, relying on his pickets to ensure that he was not being followed. He assumed that Ziegler had his own methods of detecting and avoiding surveillance, and he had no interest in them. They shared a temporary goal, to be sure, but they were enemies.

  Viktor did not know precisely how contact had been established between his people in Moscow and the faction represented by the strange American. There were moments when he suspected that the approach must be a provocation, intended to create a diplomatic incident. But his superiors had ruled the task worth the risk. If matters went according to plan, the Motherland would enjoy a great success, and the cause of worldwide socialism would be immeasurably advanced. A defeat would mean a catastrophe—not only for the Motherland but for Viktor personally, and perhaps for his family as well. He understood full well how his employers dealt with failure.

  His full name was Viktor Borisovich Vaganian, and he was a captain in the counterintelligence unit of the First Chief Directorate of the Committee for State Security, commonly known in the West as the KGB. The Americans had a poor understanding of the workings of the Soviet intelligence service. The formal rank of captain meant nothing, reflecting only years of service. What mattered was the particular appointment one held in the hierarchy. Thus it was not unusual, for example, to be part of an operation in which a junior case officer who was a full colonel would take orders from a senior case officer who was a major. Vitkor was still a captain because he had been with the KGB only three years. But in those years he had developed both a particular specialty and a particular reputation. And as a member of Counterintelligence, he could, in the proper circumstances, give orders even to a general.

  This authority mattered just now, and explained his presence in Washington. The Motherland was in the midst of the most important intelligence operation it had undertaken since the end of the Great Patriotic War, an operation that, if successful, would end once and for all the American strategic superiority—and there was a leak.

  More than a leak.

  Someone on the Soviet side intended to tell the Americans what the Soviets were doing in Cuba, and, presumably, to help them stop it. This was intolerable, and had to be prevented. Viktor and his team had been sent to Washington to trace the source, because efforts to find out the answer in Moscow were being frustrated. Whoever was betraying the country had powerful friends.

  But their influence would not extend past Soviet borders. In America, Viktor could take whatever measures he deemed necessary to discover the source.

  As for the agent heading to Bulgaria, well, that problem was for Viktor’s colleagues to deal with. It was just as Ziegler had said: Our territory, our rules.

  SIX

  Anadyr

  I

  “Have you ever heard of Vasily Smyslov?” asked the woman wearing the agate brooch on her jacket. She was prim and withdrawn and fifty, and dropped just enough “r”s to let you know how lucky Radcliffe was to have had her. She wore a schoolmarm bob and her father’s gold watch, and Margo had the sense that she kept the family heirlooms at home in the safe, but wore the cheap pin to work at the State Department because only new money showed off. Her name, she had announced as if in surprise, was Harrington, and her role, she said, was prep. Actually, Harrington was the fifth or sixth functionary Margo had met on her two-day trek through official Washington. Borkland had conducted her from one interview to the next, sneaking in the side entrance of some massive but anonymous government edifice, taking the freight elevator in a fancy Georgetown apartment building, and, once, crossing the back yard of a stately home just north of Washington’s unfinished cathedral. “We have to get you ready,” Borkland said. “On the other hand, you can’t actually meet the people you’re meeting.” And he smiled the warmly apologetic smile that, as Margo had learned ruefully, represented less an offer of compromise than a polite acceptance of your surrender. And so she answered questions and filled out forms and received travel documents and posed for mug shots and now, somewhere in the bowels of the Department of State, was to be briefed at last on what Harrington insisted on calling her “mission parameters.” Margo sat across from the older woman at a conference table that would have done duty for twenty, although the two of them were alone. Unlike her other meetings, this one was conducted with a uniformed Marine outside the door, a change in routine that Margo found anything but reassuring.

  “Smyslov,” Harrington repeated. “Vasily Vasiliyevich, born Moscow, R.S.F.S.R., 1921. Is that a name to you at all, my dear?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Margo.

  “I read somewhere that your delightful young man is teaching you chess.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Your Tom was quite a chess player himself a couple of years ago. Went to the World Youth Championships when he was in high school. Did he mention that? Poor lamb, he finished eighteenth out of thirty. But it’s an honor to be invited, don’t you think?” Her trilling laugh was beginning to grate. Perhaps that was its purpose. “Yet your Tom has never mentioned any of the top Soviet players to you? Botvinnik? Tal? Petrosian?”

  Margo hesitated. “I think Botvinnik is the world champion.”

  “Why, so he is, my dear. So he is. Very well done.” She even applauded, to Margo’s secret fury. “So you have heard of one or two, it seems. But Smyslov you don’t know. Oh dear. Well, let’s get your information topped up, shall we?”

  “Please.”

  “Vasily Smyslov is also a Soviet chess grandmaster, my dear. One of the strongest players in the world. Won the world championship four or five years back, although he lost the rematch.” Harrington recited this history with a delighted smile, to make sure you knew she had only recently studied it up. “He’s going to be at Varna, so we’re told. On their team for the Chess Olympiad.”

  “Is he the reason I’m going?”

  But women of Harrington’s class did not allow themselves to be rushed. “This past summer, there was a grand tournament down on Curaçao. Such a lovely island. Eight of the strongest chess players in the world battled for a
month, twenty-eight games apiece, the winner to play a match with the world champion, you see. Smyslov wasn’t invited this time, poor lamb, but he dropped in for a few days to watch the others. Four Soviets out of the eight players in the tournament, so I imagine he would have been cheering them on and so forth. On a free day, they all took the boat from Curaçao and went to the beach. Now, the thing you have to understand, my dear, is that the Soviet chess grandmasters are followed everywhere they go by special security agents, known as the gorillas. When the Soviet masters travel abroad, the only foreigners with whom they are allowed to socialize are their fellow chess players. There was one American in the Curaçao tournament, my dear, and that day at the beach, the American and Smyslov stayed in the boat while the others waded or swam or whatever one does. Even the security gorillas were enjoying the sun, so Smyslov and our source had a bit of time together. Smyslov evidently had flown to Curaçao by way of Havana, where he had been on a goodwill tour, playing an exhibition. He had talked to some friends there, people who we believe, from his description, must be part of the apparatus. Not that our Cuban assets are good enough for us to seek confirmation. No matter. The point is, Smyslov told our American source that when the Soviets finished their secret project in Cuba, the United States would be as surprised as Levitzky against Marshall. Alas, before he could explain further, one of those beastly gorillas appeared, and Smyslov clapped the American on the back and said he would see him in Varna and tell him the rest of the story. The next day, Smyslov flew home.”

  She saw Margo’s blank stare.

  “Dear me. Where shall I begin? A famous chess game, my dear, played in 1912 at Breslau. Levitzky is doing fine, possibly heading for a win, when, out of the blue, Marshall’s queen swoops down onto the most heavily defended square on the board. But it can’t be captured. No matter which piece the queen is captured with, Marshall will checkmate Levitzky. Sudden, unexpected, forceful—some call it the most brilliant move ever played on the chessboard.”

  “I see,” said Margo, utterly mystified.

  “Except you don’t see, do you, Miss Jensen? Let me explain. Smyslov had no reason to let slip anything about Cuba. But we know—and I suspect Smyslov knows we know—that, in addition to his chess, he does occasional odd jobs for the KGB. Pretty much all of them do, or they don’t get to travel abroad. Our American source missed the point, but when he got home to New York, he mentioned the tale to one of his chess friends, who mentioned it to a friend of ours. We realized what our source didn’t—that Smyslov was sending us a message. He very likely came to Curaçao with that very intention. He wanted us to know that the Soviets are planning something brilliant and unexpected in Cuba that will turn the game on its head.” Harrington turned another page. “You wouldn’t know this, of course, but Soviet ships have been offloading huge crates in Cuban ports for weeks now.” That preposterous laugh. “Oh dear. Need I remind you that what I am about to disclose is highly classified? If you should ever share it with anyone, they’ll send you to prison for simply years, my dear. You do understand, don’t you, Miss Jensen?”

  This time Harrington waited, and Margo realized that she had to respond, for the record. “I understand, Mrs. Harrington,” she said, shrinking inside.

  “It’s Miss Harrington, my dear, or Doctor, if you find that more comfortable.” The older woman slid a long printed form and pen across the table. The page carried a warning in large red capitals: YOUR SIGNATURE SUBJECTS YOU TO STATUTORY PENALTIES—DO NOT SIGN WITHOUT READING! But whatever the text might demand, Margo knew that she would sign anyway: having been brought this far inside, she found unbearable the thought of being escorted summarily from the room and sent back to Ithaca. And even as Margo signed—without reading—and added the date, it occurred to her that Harrington, for all her surface pomposity, was rather a wise psychologist, having chosen the perfect moment. For Margo stood at the precipice of the secret world, and longed to jump.

  “Excellent! Oh, you’re doing wonderfully well, my dear. I can see why Dr. Niemeyer admires you so. Well.” Harrington checked the signature, then slipped the paper back into her folder. She was once more turning pages. “The crates being offloaded in Cuba. All we know about them is that the Soviets have code-named the operation Anadyr. That is the name of a river, and a town in one of the Soviet republics. The name was chosen in order to mislead us, Miss Jensen. Alas, our vaunted intelligence agencies have had no success in penetrating Anadyr, and so we have no idea what they are seeking to mislead us about. But the crates keep coming. They could hold tank shells or grain, automobile parts or Spanish-language copies of Das Kapital. Those are the optimistic scenarios, my dear. In light of what Smyslov said, and given the state of our relations with the Communist bloc at the moment, we are forced to assume the worst. There has long been a faction within the Central Committee urging Khrushchev to put nuclear warheads into Cuba. I’m sure Niemeyer has taught you that in the next war, warning time will be everything. With missiles in Cuba, we would have none. Washington and New York might disappear before anyone had the chance to tell the President that the Soviets had pushed the button. Oh.” A motherly lift of eyebrows. “Why the long face, my dear? You needn’t be worried. Most of our people think Khrushchev is too clever to try such a thing, because, if the Reds start a war, we would wipe the floor with them”—from her partisan delight she might have been discussing the Harvard-Yale game—“but one doesn’t protect one’s country by assuming the best of the enemy, does one? Naturally, then, we have to find out precisely what Operation Anadyr is. You see that, don’t you, my dear? Probably there is no reason for concern, but Khrushchev is under enormous pressure, poor lamb. That’s why he built that beastly wall in Berlin. He wants to prove that he’s as tough as his predecessors, you see.”

  Harrington’s gaze had intensified, and Margo, no longer able to meet its glow, was staring at the blank pad in front of her. The State Department logo was embossed in the blue leather.

  “So, there we are,” said the older woman. “We need information, don’t we? We need to know whether the Soviets are offloading missiles or mosquito nets. At the moment, our only path to that information is to follow up the message from Smyslov. As I believe I mentioned, Vasily Smyslov is scheduled to be at the Olympiad in Varna, playing for the Soviet team. Our American source will be there as well, playing for the American team. We asked our fellow countryman if he would please rekindle the conversation with Smylsov, to find out what on earth he was talking about. He can talk to Smyslov, you see. Nobody else will be able to get past the security gorillas. Only, the little snot refused.” Harrington chuckled in embarrassment at her own vulgarism. “Oh, dear me. He does bring out the worst in people, I’m afraid. Never mind.” She folded her hands.

  “I apologize, Dr. Harrington. I still don’t see why you need me.”

  “My dear, it is evident that you are an innocent. You don’t know men as one day you shall. When we asked our countryman to help us out, he told us no, absolutely not. We appealed to his love of country. He said the Russians would kill him. We said we’d give him a minder. He said talking to Smyslov about some Russian surprise in Cuba would distract him from his chess. We pointed out that the mission would require only one or two conversations over the course of three weeks. We offered him money, but money seems to bore him. We had friends of friends prevail upon him. Finally he said he would do it—he would meet Smyslov—but only if we pay him a great deal of money, and if you go. He appears to believe that you are his good-luck charm.”

  “Oh, no,” said Margo, a terrible suspicion dawning.

  “Oh, yes, Miss Jensen. Our American source seems to have developed quite the crush on you. I would congratulate you were Bobby Fischer anything other than the little monster we both know him to be.”

  II

  If Harrington intended by her clever deployment of the identity of the source to get a rise out of her guest, she succeeded, quite literally, for Margo was on her feet, instinct causing her to back away from t
he table, as if to put physical space between herself and the memories evoked by the name. For a terrible moment, time flipped backward to last spring, and she heard voices raised in fury, shouting about life being wasted, together with layering insults about the intellectual capacity of women, who, as a group, ranked somewhere below the hated Russians in Bobby’s bizarre cosmology. She saw Bobby’s long, narrow face and those dark, pounding eyes as he screamed at her; saw the only man she had ever loved, squaring to slug his best friend in the world.

  Because of her.

  Bobby Fischer and Tom Jellinek were indeed friends, if a man like Bobby could be said to have friends. They had grown up together in Brooklyn, attending Erasmus Hall High School. Both had been chess-mad. Tom had been very, very good at the game; Bobby had been a true genius, who already at age thirteen had defeated one of the strongest players in America in what Chess Review labeled “The Game of the Century.” Bobby dropped out of school to focus entirely on chess, and was now, at age nineteen, one of the best in the world, widely expected to win the championship before too long. Tom won a scholarship to Cornell. Margo got to know Bobby because he came up to Ithaca now and then to spend a few days sleeping on the floor of Tom’s dorm room, to escape the Russian spies peering in his window, or the knife-wielding thugs hiding behind every lamppost, or the people coughing on him in the street, from whom he might catch some dreadful disease. Tom usually indulged his peculiar friend, so Margo did, too. For a while, she even developed a maternal attitude toward him, for Fischer projected the air of a sly child bewildered by the world and in need of protection. But then, the last time he visited—

  “Do sit down, my dear,” said Harrington, with a touch of bemused impatience. She was still turning pages in her folder. “I’m afraid we have not completed discussion of the mission parameters.”