Harry's Rules Read online

  “You should try it sometime with twenty surveillants on your tail in hostile territory, knowing that if you make a mistake someone will die.” It took months to train officers for such “denied area” assignments, and there was a high wash-out rate.

  Morley smiled thinly, unimpressed. “Old hat, Connolly. The Cold War is over, and so are people who think like you.”

  Morley would never have spoken to me this way if he did not already have the backing of the new powers that be, and those people evidently had given him carte blanche to re-organize the Section. Morley likely expected me to resign, was trying to goad me into it, but some perversity of spirit enticed me to stick around, if only to annoy the new management with my continued presence. If they wanted to move me to an insignificant position, I would pretend that I didn’t mind.

  Harry Connolly became an official non-entity.

  *****

  Simultaneously I became a difficult person to be around.

  Kate had grown weary of the peripatetic CIA lifestyle, hopping from country to country, often having to cope with hostile environments that made “normal” life impossible. She had yearned for a more settled existence in the States near family and friends, and she wanted children. I think she must have seen my exile as an opportunity, but then her headaches began. The doctors diagnosed them as migraines.

  Not long after my conversation with Barney Morley, a neighbor discovered Kate unconscious and barely breathing on the kitchen floor of our Annandale, Virginia, home. When I arrived at the hospital a doctor with weary eyes and a kind voice informed me she had suffered a severe cerebral aneurysm.

  She did not survive.

  The doctors assured me that aneurysms are congenital time bombs that are difficult to diagnose, but I wondered if the anger I had brought home from Langley had been the precipitate cause.

  Kate had accepted the personal sacrifices that sharing me with the Agency entailed. Now I thought myself naïve to have expected the Agency to reciprocate the devotion I had shown to it. Like all Washington bureaucracies, Langley was buffeted by the currents and counter-currents that periodically sweep through the Capital. In the wake of a long string of public flagellations, a queasy CIA was nearly always under siege, either from the press or some politician with a need to divert attention from his own corruption. It had lost its former élan and the imaginative thinking that inspired many of its past successes. These days “successes” could become the quarry of a Justice Department lynch mob, and “imaginative” operational proposals were more than likely to be taken apart by wary senior executives looking over their shoulders to make sure the lawyers weren’t getting a feral gleam in their beady little weasel eyes.

  My life was shit.

  CHAPTER 6 – Saturday, February 8

  Saturday offered up a pale dawn that dimly limned the bare trees lining the Virginia mountainside. A light snow had fallen during the night, and the ground was carpeted with a thin layer of white. The view out the cabin window could have been an Ansel Adams photo.

  I coaxed the fire back into crackling life and brewed my first pot of coffee. As I prepared to light a morning cigar the phone rang. It was very early for a phone call, and of late a call from anyone was unusual.

  "Hello?"

  The chink of coins dropping into a pay phone sounded from the other end of the line. "Harry?"

  Only my name, but I instantly recognized the voice.

  "Yeah. Who else? Why are you calling from a pay phone?"

  “I need to see you."

  "OK, why don’t you drop past my office Monday and well go to the Ritz-Carlton at Tyson’s for lunch?”

  "Bad idea. Can I see you on Union Street tonight?" He meant a bar in Old Town Alexandria.

  "I hate that place, and you know it. And, besides, I hadn’t planned to go into town this weekend. And it’s been snowing up here."

  "Harry, it's not social.” The voice paused for effect before continuing, “Moscow rules."

  Jake Liebowitz, my oldest and spookiest pal, sounded serious. I didn't demur. "OK, nine PM"

  The line went dead as Liebowitz replaced the receiver.

  Angus eyed me suspiciously. The fierce-hearted little black dog looked forward to our weekends together.

  "It was Jake. He wants to see me tonight."

  Angus didn’t reply, but I could tell he wasn’t pleased.

  Remembering the unlit cigar in my hand, I returned to the fireplace and struck a large wooden match against the rough stone, studiously avoiding an accusatory stare from Angus as I held the flame an inch below the tip of the Série “D” Partagas, one of the last Habanos in my humidor.

  I sat down at the small round oak table I used for breakfast and thoughtfully sipped the remaining coffee.

  “This may turn into an exciting weekend, after all,” I said to the dog.

  *****

  Driving through the outskirts of Alexandria, Virginia, the headlights of the old Jeep illuminating the sparse snowflakes still suspended, sparkling in the air, I was intensely curious about Jake's summons. We had climbed through the ranks together, Jake the more politically astute, probably a lot smarter than me, as well as a first-class field operator. He had disproven the adage that those who stand in the middle of the road get hit by traffic and landed a plum job as Deputy Chief of the Russia Section. He now sat in the office next to Morley. It occurred to me that Jake was yet another of the friends I had pushed away.

  I parked near Old Christ Church and navigated the warren of dark streets in the north end of town before turning south toward the lights of King Street. My SDR (Surveillance Detection Route) completed, I kept to the river side of Union Street, finally pausing a half block away from the meeting place to scan the exterior of the bar before going in.

  The place had one thing going for it - a superb locally produced beer - and a lot of things against it, including a well-deserved reputation as a noisy yuppie ‘meat market.’ I spotted Jake at a booth at the rear nursing his standard Old Fashioned and shouldered my way through the crowd that smelled of Hugo Boss and hair gel to slide into the seat opposite Jake.

  I couldn’t suppress a grin at the sight of my old friend and extended a hand across the table. Quirky but tough, Jake Liebowitz’ appearance was immutable: saturnine, bald and corpulent, always with a harried expression. He took my hand only perfunctorily and did not return the smile. His hand was damp with perspiration. A habitual fidgeter, he was fairly vibrating now. His eyes darted constantly around the bar.

  A waitress approached the booth, and I ordered a beer. "What's up, Jake? You don't look very well."

  The eyes kept moving. Jake had not removed his coat as though he expected to have to leave in a hurry.

  He greeted my arrival with a question. “Were you careful coming here?”

  “You said ‘Moscow Rules.’”

  “Good,” he said, still unsmiling. He wrapped pudgy fingers around his Old Fashioned and refused to meet my eyes.

  "Did you ever meet Jim Thackery?” he asked the table. “Young guy, only about thirty-five. Would have been just coming into Russian operations about the time you were leaving for Paris."

  I thought back and pulled up a fuzzy image of a tall, earnest young man anxious to be recruited into the then prestigious Russia Section. I had seen him just a few times during quick visits to Washington.

  "I vaguely recall him. Spoke decent Russian for someone named Thackery. Picked it up at Middlebury, I think. Nice kid, but no ball of fire. Why do you ask?"

  "He's dead."

  Jake pulled the corners of his mouth downward. He slurped his Old Fashioned, then dug one of the cherries out of the glass and popped it into his mouth, discarding the stem on the tablecloth.

  "What happened?”

  I wondered what this was all about. I had no special connection to Thackery.

  Jake noisily gnashed the cherry before answering. “He was killed on an assignment. I want you to look into it.”

  Such deaths were extremely
rare in those days, but I didn’t see the connection, and now I felt foolish. My interest in temporary assignments was at low ebb. My interest in everything was at low ebb.

  “I'm cheerfully arranging pleasure trips for my fellow bureaucrats these days, and I don't want anything to do with the bunch that's running ops now, including you, and they don’t want anything to do with me. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. I’m turning you down, Jake, because I no longer care and because Barney would never let me within a mile of Russia Section anyway. You’re the Deputy Chief, so find someone else."

  Jake regarded me wearily from beneath shaded lids, but his response, when it came, was delivered with considerable asperity.

  "Oh, no, Harry. You're not 'out of it.'" He emphasized the words 'out of it,' in a particularly nasty way. "None of us is ever 'out of it,' because we can’t get it out of our blood, out of our thoughts. The trade is that seductive, and I know you too well. Whether you like it or not, I'm going to tell you a story. You will listen to it because you can't help yourself. And when I am finished, you will be very much back INTO it. Have no doubt."

  Jake was in a foul temper, and he was at least partially correct in his assessment. I shrugged. "OK, Jake. Tell me the damned story. The drinks are on you, by the way."

  I had already lost enthusiasm for the conversation.

  Jake smirked humorlessly.

  "Thackery died in Austria four days ago. He was skiing in the Tyrol, near Kitzbühel. We put out word that it was a heart attack." He shot a crafty look across the table. "Helped along with a needle, for Chrissake."

  Jake looked even more nervous than before. He was fairly humming with anxiety now.

  "A needle?"

  Jake's eyes flashed a momentary gleam of triumph. He was sinking the hook.

  "I think the Russians killed him. I think it was 'mokroye delo', a 'wet affair.' Just like the goddamn Bulgarians and their umbrellas, except this time the poison was extremely fast acting. It had to be the fucking Russians."

  I was disbelieving. Contrary to popular fiction, even during the darkest days of Soviet-American rivalry, the CIA and the KGB had not gone about routinely bumping off one another’s officers. We roughed one another up occasionally, and the Russians definitely dusted American agents when they caught them. They sometimes used exotic assassination techniques on émigrés and those of their own that strayed from the pack.

  I still didn't see what any of it had to do with me, but curiosity led where caution told me I had no business treading.

  "OK. Maybe it was the fucking Russians. Why are you blessing me with the information?"

  Jake stopped vibrating for a moment and looked up, the smirk returning to his face. He was manipulating the conversation, had probably rehearsed it. But to what end?

  Jake stared at me for a few heartbeats before proceeding.

  "Because you’re the only one who can do it," he said finally.

  I shook my head and tried to look surly.

  “I told you I’m out of it for good. As I said, you could never convince anyone in the Russia Section, let alone Barney, to hire me for any job.”

  Jake snorted and hunched over the table as much as his paunch would allow. He plucked the second cherry from his drink and waved it in the air as he spoke.

  "Consider what I have just told you. One of our guys is zapped by the Russians.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “A phony cause of death is spread about and everybody feels sorry for young Jim, and a collection is taken up for the widow. But we know that young Jim was really murdered. What do you think our reaction is?"

  I wasn't biting. Liebowitz was going to tell me anyway.

  "I talked to Morley about it. He’s not happy, but he doesn’t want to rock the boat. There’s too much invested in liaison with the Russians, and that’s too important to risk upsetting them with accusations we can’t prove. He would probably even ask for their help, but there are complicating factors. He said it’s best we keep it on the back burner until something crops up that might explain it. Russia’s like the Wild West these days, and it could have been a rogue operation, he says. But what I can’t figure out is why our man Thackery would have been targeted by anybody."

  Jake snorted again. "Murdering an intelligence officer is not a random occurrence. I think Thackery was killed by a Moscow Center-trained professional, and I want to know why."

  I agreed with Jake's characterization of KGB practices. They would train the Irish and the Palestinians how to make bombs. The Czechs would make money selling plastique to KGB clients like the Libyans, and people would die in places like Berlin, Beirut, and Belfast. The truly imaginative stuff, but they kept to themselves because the CIA would recognize it if it were used, and the Russians could not afford such close identification with mayhem on foreign soil.

  Against my better judgment I asked the obvious question.

  "What was Thackery doing in Austria?”

  Jake managed to look smug in spite of his nervousness. "That’s why I’m talking to you right now."

  CHAPTER 7 – Intersection

  Jake sucked the dregs of his Old Fashioned from around the tiny lumps of melting ice that remained in his glass.

  "Do you agree with me so far?" He challenged, pressing for a reaction.

  I was tiring of his elliptical way of getting to the point.

  "What did Thackery's meeting report say?"

  "What meeting report?"

  Jake produced a small, bitter smile still looking into his glass, probably hoping he might find another cherry. He paused reflectively for a moment and then hunched over the table to get his face closer to mine.

  "This was supposed to be a no-brainer. No contact with anyone from Vienna Station and the report to be submitted by hand when Thackery returned to Washington."

  "No one found any trip notes in his luggage or on his body?"

  "Nope. Unless the Austrian cops found something, but we’re fairly certain there was nothing. Our relations with them are excellent."

  Jake slouched back into the corner of the booth watching me out of the corner of his eye to see if I was taking the bait.

  "Cut the fan dance, Jake."

  He launched what might have passed for a smile in my direction and reached into his coat pocket to extract a tattered envelope that he placed ceremoniously on the table between us.

  "Take a look. I dug these out of the library yesterday afternoon.”

  I gingerly picked up the envelope and opened the flap. Nestled inside were two Xeroxed clippings from Viennese newspapers. The first, dated mid-January, reported that the Russian Embassy had contacted local authorities concerning the disappearance of visiting Gosbank official Sergey Mikhailovich Stankov. Airline records showed that he had arrived in Vienna, but he had never reported to the Embassy. The second clipping was dated 3 February and reported that the Russian official still had not been found.

  I stared at the name. It all came together now – the reason for Jake’s confidence that I would agree to become involved. Stankov was no stranger.

  I returned my attention to Liebowitz. "What day did Thackery meet Stankov in Vienna?" He asked.

  "It would have to have been February 2nd or 3rd, a little less than a week ago. Thackery arrived in Vienna on a flight from Frankfurt late in the evening on Sunday the 31st. He died February 4th on a ski slope in the South Tyrol."

  If Thackery had met Stankov in Vienna the evening of 2 February and left the next day for a ski holiday on Uncle Sam’s dime, his murder was even harder to explain. If he had been carrying anything of value he would surely have returned to Washington immediately. And what had happened to Stankov, to "Otto?" If the SVR were indeed behind Thackery’s creative murder, they may well have been searching for Stankov and come upon Thackery by chance. They might even by now have Stankov in custody. But if that were so why would the Russian Embassy have notified the authorities that he was missing?

  I suddenly realized I was taking a lot on faith and fixed Jake with a s
peculative stare. That worthy shook his head sadly.

  “You think I'm making this crap up? Why would I?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe you've finally gone all the way around the bend?"

  Jake finally relaxed.

  I downed the last of my beer. "I believe you, but there are a lot of holes to be filled in. You're assuming that Thackery's death and Stankov's disappearance are connected. On the surface I'll admit it’s a pretty safe assumption. But why would the Russians snatch Stankov and then report him missing to the Austrian Police? As a matter of fact, we really don't know if Stankov and Thackery met at all. Any one of several sets of circumstances, no matter how improbable, could fit the facts as we know them. What if Stankov didn't show up, but Thackery decided to go on his skiing jaunt all the same?"

  The answer was obvious, but I wanted to hear Jake say it just the same.

  "Shit for brains!" Jake could turn a nice phrase when he wanted to, and I couldn’t suppress a grin. "He would have continued going to the treffpunkt until the meeting did take place. The fact that he left Vienna on the 3rd means he met Stankov the day before, on the 2nd."

  "Yeah, yeah, you're right, of course. Do forgive me for thinking out loud."

  "You call that 'thinking?'"

  "You are too kind.

  "Look, no matter what Barney Morley might want to believe, this is serious stuff. I admit that my idea is nothing more than a working theory, but it’s all there is, and it’s a damned reasonable theory. Trouble is nobody is really doing anything to get to the bottom of it, or somebody wants to sweep it all under the rug, avoid any investigation into the Stankov case. The medics know how Thackery died. Barney Morley and the people on the Seventh Floor know too, but they can avoid taking action because the lawyers say there is no legally acceptable proof of Russian involvement." Jake snorted. "So do they think ‘legal proof’ will just drop into our laps WITHOUT any action? ‘Things have changed,’ they told me.”