CIA Fall Guy Read online

  “How's the weather down there?”

  “If I were you, I'd bring an assortment of clothes — and your passport. You never know where you may end up.”

  End up? What was going on here? And how did they know she had a current passport? Oh, duh. They could easily check that.

  “Anything else I'll need?”

  “Just your memory.”

  Terrific. “What's the name of the person coming for me?”

  “Ralph. He'll have a grey Chevy sedan.”

  A green belt waved to her as he left the dojo, then she nodded to the two men.

  “And tell no one where you're going. Just say you're going out of town.”

  The men didn't say good-bye; they just turned away.

  Beth walked back into the dojo to put on her Reeboks. Several students still milled around, jawing with each other.

  Shmuel leaned forward, his open gi top framing a hairy chest. Macho. “What did the spooks want?”

  “What?”

  “Don't bullshit me. I can spot one a mile away.”

  Beth stared into Shmuel's eyes. Stephen always said “Don't bullshit a bullshitter.”

  “Me.”

  Shmuel laughed. “What would they want with you?”

  Beth jammed her feet into her shoes. “That's for me to know and for you to find out.”

  Shmuel's eyes blazed. Would she regret her words?

  Outside again on Walnut Street she turned towards her Pine Street townhouse. At the northeast corner of Walnut and 18th she entered Rittenhouse Square. Halfway through the park she collapsed onto a bench, leaned her head against the wood slats.

  She closed her eyes and was back at the 66th Military Intelligence Group, sitting at her secretary's desk on the second floor of the enormous stone building — former Luftwaffe headquarters — as traffic raced alongside the building to exit the eastern edge of Munich and headed toward the lake at Chiemsee where Mad King Ludwig had another one of his castles, Herrenchiemsee, or the mountains in Berchtesgarden where Hitler had his aviary hideaway, Eagle's Nest.

  Around her at their desks sat the U.S. army civilians, the captains, the infantry major who thought the military intelligence unit's security measures lax — all scribbling or telephoning. Or reminiscing with each other. Did civilians wear uniforms in Taiwan in '54 or Hong Kong in '56?

  The highest-ranking civilian in the room, a GS-13, had caused trouble for her. Had actually gotten her fired without ever telling her he could or would. Her own boss had been a GS-12, unable to reverse the firing. The infantry major had patched things up. And she had played the power game from then on, once she had known that a game had been in progress.

  All that was years ago. What could it have to do with her now?

  DAY 2

  Langley, Virginia —

  In a few minutes Kathleen had to meet with George. She twirled an enameled pen — her farewell gift from Rodney. His field reports lit up dots all across the map of Europe. Prague, Paris, Padua. Out in the field. Where the action is.

  Being an African-American didn't hinder her as much as being a woman. Even though almost all the old-timers had worked with women in the field or at their cover assignments, they thought of women as order-followers, not order-givers.

  It was damn hard to find just the right tone, just the right words, whenever she wanted to get a point across. She had to remind herself not to speak too often, too forcefully, too whatever.

  She was determined to make herself an integral part of this operation going down today. Prove that she could handle sensitive situations.

  She had to — if she ever wanted to get a field assignment.

  **

  George signaled for Charles to take a seat, watching as Charles unbuttoned his navy blazer before sitting. Ah, yes, the blazer with the Yale sculling team buttons. Beth Parsons had gone to Penn. Had Charles chosen this outfit to silently cue her in to his superiority?

  “What time will she be here?” Charles asked.

  “Between ten-thirty and eleven. We'll be notified when the car is 10 minutes away.”

  George opened the operation folder lying on his desk. He glanced at the top page. “We'll have plenty of time. He's not arriving until this afternoon.”

  “Where are you going to put her tonight if she has to stay over?”

  He wouldn't tell Charles that this simple question had given him much anxiety. A safe house wasn't necessary; a hotel was too open.

  “With Kathleen.” He had given Kathleen the assignment without asking her permission.

  “Ah,” Charles said. “Yes, that's a good idea.”

  George appreciated that Charles had learned, perhaps at Yale, always to agree with your superiors. This was one of Charles' qualifications that George found most useful. There were a few others. Charles could speak passable German and decent French. He knew which wine to order with which food. And with his blond WASP looks he could look bland and inconspicuous at will, which was practically all the time.

  Kathleen, on the other hand, stood out. A young black woman whose body language said “I'm a professional,” she confounded the men at department meetings. Instructed by George to say nothing unless spoken to, she was invariably asked a question by someone — often to put her on the spot — and she always managed to answer succinctly and intelligently.

  With Kathleen, George had to be extremely cautious.

  **

  Charles strolled back across the hall to his own, smaller, office. He shut the door after telling the young male secretary he shared with Kathleen that he did not wish to be disturbed.

  Then he dropped into his desk chair and smiled. Yes, things were going very well, very well indeed.

  He removed his tortoise-shell-frame glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It certainly helped to be able to play Lord Peter Wimsey, to act the role of a none-too-bright but harmless arisplainrat. It was amazing what George would say when Charles was around, things George would never say in front of Kathleen.

  No, old George was wary around Kathleen. Thought she was too bright and eager to be trusted. But Charles was such a good boy, such a faithful attendant, that lips could be quite loose around him.

  And did that ever give Charles an advantage. Poor Kathleen. She wouldn't know what hit her.

  **

  Beth fidgeted in the back seat of the car as much as her shoulder belt would allow. She had offered to sit up front with Ralph, had hoped for some conversation that would speed the time. He had said no to the first and not responded to any of her conversational gambits.

  They had already skirted Washington and now they arrived at their destination, the guard at the gate checking them, then motioning them forward.

  Beth followed Ralph through the building until they reached the 4th floor, where he handed her and her suitcase over to a young woman who kept the suitcase and motioned for Beth to enter a door at the far end of the reception room. Needless to say, Ralph didn't say good-bye.

  Inside the room an older man, probably in his sixties, occupied a standard-issue desk. A young woman and a young man faced the desk. The third guest chair was empty.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the older man said. “I'm George MacIntosh and this is Kathleen Walters and Charles Trenchant. Have a seat.”

  Beth slid into the third chair, equidistant between Charles on her left and Kathleen on her right.

  George smiled. “First off, we want to thank you for coming down on such short notice. We really appreciate it.”

  “What is this about?” she said.

  “Yes, this must seem strange,” George said. “I can understand you would have been surprised to hear from us.”

  She glanced at Kathleen, then at Charles. Neither one showed any expression.

  Beth had typed enough reports in Munich to know that people often rattled on when faced with ambiguity and pauses in an interrogation. They'd begin to talk, to fill in the silences. A big mistake. She said nothing, just turned her head to study the rest of
the room.

  The American flag in the far corner looked old, but it did seem to have pride of place.

  George coughed. She looked at him again. George nodded at Charles.

  Charles said, “I don't know how much you've followed the last few years in Europe since the Berlin Wall fell?”

  “Some.”

  “Perhaps you've read there has been a steady stream of humint — human intelligence — coming across the former borders?”

  She nodded.

  “Some of these people worked for us in former times. On occasion there are some who feel they're owed for past services rendered.”

  “Owed a great deal,” George said.

  “And sometimes after all these years it's a problem to determine whether they really are owed.” Charles brushed a blond forelock out of his eyes. “And we have to do the best we can to figure out who's owed what.”

  “It's very simple really,” George said. “We need you to identify someone.”

  “Identify someone? Who could I possibly identify?”

  George nodded at Kathleen, who passed a folder over to Beth. “Open it,” Kathleen said.

  So the woman speaks. Beth had wondered if Kathleen were here for window dressing, to show how progressive the CIA now was, with this twofer — a woman and a black.

  Inside the folder was a report typed in the format Beth had used for reports of meetings between “sources” (never referred to as spies or informants) and their contacts. The analyzing officer's name she recognized — that of her civilian boss in Munich, Jack Lockheim.

  “Read it,” George said. “Take your time.”

  It began: “Source confirms that there has been a doubling of guards outside the factory for the last week. Source offers the opinion that the factory has received a shipment of strategic materiel that may be utilized for the manufacture of long-range missiles to be aimed at the most densely populated cities of Western Europe.”

  Missiles aimed at the most densely populated cities of Western Europe. Beth flashed to the memory of waiting for a ski lift on the top of Germany's tallest mountain, the Zugspitze. The army man next to her in line is explaining his job. “I check on the nuclear arms hidden all over Germany in case the Soviets start a war.” He leans closer. “Believe me,” he says, “you don't even want to consider living through the devastation if we set those weapons off.”

  The soldier had told her this only a week before she typed the report of the possible manufacture of missiles aimed at Western Europe. Which is why she remembered this particular report. Because she had thought then — even if those weapons didn't have nuclear heads — if they were fired the Americans would probably retaliate with nuclear weapons, so they'd all be killed anyway.

  “Is the question do I remember this report? Because I do.”

  “Good,” George said. “Do you remember anything else about this report?”

  “No, should I?”

  George flipped open a folder on his desk and pushed a photo towards her. “This was your boss, was it not, when you worked in Munich?”

  Jack Lockheim, a short, kind man in his forties at the time. He had collected European stamps and liked good German restaurants. He had been nice to her when some of the other men who shared their office space had not.

  “Yes, I worked for Jack Lockheim.”

  “And when you gave notice of quitting your job so that you could travel on your husband's leave, what did Jack do?”

  “Do? He took me out to lunch to celebrate my European travels.”

  “Do you remember where you went for lunch?”

  Beth smiled. “We went to a Russian restaurant that Jack liked. There was a bottle of vodka on every table. You just poured as much as you wanted and the waiter charged you by how much the bottle had gone down. And we had caviar.”

  “Yes,” George said. “And what else happened?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Just take a couple more minutes and think about that lunch.”

  The vodka bottle in the middle of the white tablecloth, the group of British officers seated next to them celebrating someone's promotion to captain. A short splainky man stumbling over her feet and offering in German to buy them a drink. She'd understood his offer more from his actions, swinging his bottle in their faces, than from his slurred words. She had thought nothing of him after his companion pulled him away.

  “You mean the drunken man who offered us a drink? His friend pulled him away from our table.”

  “He wasn't drunk and that wasn't his friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It's like this,” George said. “A man named Hans Wermer was at that time passing us information about the economic progress of the workers' paradise in East Germany. He came with some colleagues to Munich to speak at an economics conference on the two Germanys. His family remained in East Germany so he was allowed to come.

  “The day you ate in that restaurant he was there with some of his East German colleagues. Of course the political officer was with to keep them in line. In contradiction of all security procedures, somehow Hans knew that Jack Lockheim received his reports from Hans' case officer. And apparently Hans knew what Jack looked like.”

  Perspiration bathed Beth's palms. Where was this all leading?

  George looked across his office, then back to her. “Hans was somewhat arrogant, pleased as punch to be in the West for the first time. He got up from his table and came over to your table, carrying his table's vodka bottle. He offered to buy you drinks to show you the hospitality of the East. He spoke in German and said something to Jack to let him know who he was. Before Jack could reply, the political officer arrived at your table and pulled Hans away.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because Jack wrote a report of an attempted contact by a foreign national at that meal.”

  “An attempted contact?”

  “Surely you remember that much when you got your job with military intelligence? You were required to report any overtures made to you by foreign governments or any other contacts.”

  Had she broken the pledge she'd signed? If she didn't know he was a foreign national, wasn't that okay not to have reported it?

  “I didn't know it was an attempted contact — I didn't really understand what was said in German. And one drunk German looked like any other drunk German to me.”

  George waved a hand. “No, no, it's okay. You couldn't have known. But Jack did. And he filed a report of the incident and stated that you were with him at lunch. That report went into Hans' folder, which was reviewed when he came forward to make his claim.”

  “But why am I here?”

  George spread his hands on his desk. “You see, Jack Lockheim died a couple of years ago, and Hans' case officer is also dead. We don't have anyone else who could possibly identify Hans. We think he might not be who he says he is. After the Wall fell, lots of identity papers got lost or switched. This might just be an opportunist trying to cash in on the confusion. We need you to try to identify him.”

  The laugh escaped her mouth. “That's over twenty years ago. I saw him for a few seconds. How could I possible recognize him?”

  Charles rustled in his seat. “We know. We have to try.”

  Something didn't compute. Beth didn't believe they thought she could recognize this guy Hans. He must be asking for a lot of money so someone was covering his or her ass, going through the motions, making a check next to everything on a “to do” list, proving everything had been covered by the book, before authorizing or not authorizing this claim.

  This was a time waster like the enormous amounts of time spent in her day on conversations and telexes by civilians at headquarters in Munich, the people engaged in the “life-and-death” decisions of the Christmas gifts of liquor and perfume for the German nationals and for the others who helped the Americans. Decisions of who deserved a $10 bottle of whiskey and who a $20 bottle — bought at the American kaserne's liquor store for which militar
y personnel had ration cards and headquarters had a budget.

  “Why not just show me recent photos when those guys visited me in Philadelphia? Why bring me all the way down here?”

  “Because we realize it's been a long time,” George said. “Body language may be able to help you identify him.”

  “Body language? Are you going to have him hold a vodka bottle in one hand and stumble over me in a pretend drunken stupor?” She laughed again.

  “It's not a funny matter,” Charles said. “You're our only hope.”

  God help the country if she were the CIA's only hope.

  **

  Charles was back in his own office, having begged off lunch with Kathleen and their guest. He did not want to discuss women's things.

  He didn't like women much. Preferred the company of men. Not sexually — he thought of himself as asexual, above the pull of those entrapping emotions. Men offered companionship, good conversation, and they knew how to play the game.

  He'd told George he had a squash game with someone in another department. Just the type of silly-horse thing George expected him to say. If George were to find out Charles hadn't in fact played squash, Charles could always say the game had been canceled at the last minute and he didn't want to intrude on lunch late.

  Good manners. Such a useful affectation. Got one past potentially inquisitive minds.

  Charles picked up his telephone and punched numbers. “It's me,” he said into the receiver. “Calling from the office. I wanted to check on our meeting time tonight.”

  He listened, said “Fine” and hung up.

  Had he done right to call now? The phones here were supposed to be secure, but he never said anything on them he couldn't explain to any official “eavesdropper.” And he tried to avoid calling from his office all together. Sometimes, like today, when things were happening, he'd call using the code of “check on our meeting time tonight.” It really meant he wanted a meeting tonight.

  And tonight it was imperative to meet.

  **

  “Choose anything you like,” Kathleen told Beth as they walked down the cafeteria line. “The food is decent.”