Chapter Twenty-Five

He’s looking at an article published in Espionage News, a long-defunct publication whose title tells it all. This article was in part penned by Helen, her name listed prominently among the three other contributors writing about the CIA activities in Denmark in the late 80s.

Except that it is Helen’s name listed as he’s never seen it before: Helen Karla McReady.

He sits for a full minute, staring at the name. Transfixed. It’s an instant match for him; he can recall everything about that night on the ferry from Cork to France. With the help of a few mini-Stolis, he and Vosenko were talking about old times and about the researches for Jake’s book on a fourth mole. And Vosenko told him there were rumors among his fellow officers of a high-placed American mole. He can hear Vosenko’s accented English: “Codename Carlo. Or maybe Carla. Too many years ago.”

At the time, it was “Carlo” that made the impression on him, having just seen Armitage’s photo of Reni with the inscription, “To Carlo, mit Liebe…”

But now he wonders. Wonders at the coincidence of the other name: Carla/Karla. He had no idea how Vosenko would spell the name, it was only spoken. And he heard it as if it were from the Italian or the Spanish.

Shakes his head. Son of a bitch. Did the KGB have a sense of irony? Use the name of the famous Smiley nemesis from Le Carre—Karla? And that just happens to be Helen’s middle name?

And then he remembers what Tania told him that day just before Huber took her prisoner: that Reni’s nickname for her lover, for the father of her child was Carlo. So did that explain the inscription on her photo at Armitage’s house?

So, not Carlo, but Karla who is the fourth mole.

Slow down, pal, he counsels himself. They must be putting powerful stuff in the Portland water. Turning paranoid.

And then the subconscious, subliminal comes gushing out. He’s taken notice of these, but has stuffed them down, ignored them, bottled them up too long. Without even questioning the possibility of Carlo being a fiction, another diversion.

Name them, then, asshole, his critical persona demands. You’re suddenly so sure of yourself. Name them.

Okay, here goes. Helen was head of Counterintelligence in Copenhagen when Alexeyev was summoned to Moscow.

Wonderful. Could be pure coincidence of time and place. And is a competent spook going to make her cover that easy to blow?

Fine. Here’s more. And this one stings. Who knew where I was staying in Vienna? Only person I talked to was Helen. She called not long after Vosenko and I arrived, joked about hoping I wasn’t in the usual ratty pension in the Eighth. Right? And I told her, no way. Uptown now. The Intercontinental. And then guess what? Huber comes visiting there.

Oh, bloody hell. Must be somebody else you told about it, he tells himself. There was Moody. He knew. Make him your fourth mole if that’s all you got.

But he ignores this as the final gush of repressed memory arrives. This comes to him all of a piece, unbidden. Almost unremarked at the time. Arrival in JFK. So deal with this one. I get to JFK, feeling bad I haven’t called Helen to warn her about Armitage. And she says, “So, you’re sure he’s Carlo?”

And fuck me, but I hadn’t told her about the Armitage/Carlo link yet.

She might have heard it from Tania. Friends who knew that the father of Reni’s kid was named Carlo. Made the connection.

But shakes his head at this. That’s a bridge too far.

And now the entire house of cards folds. Once suspicion sets in, it will not be limited, restricted. All fair game.

The couple that did the cooking and housework for Armitage in Blue Ridge, what the hell was their name? Doesn’t matter, though. What’s important is that Armitage told them he was returning to Arlington. But that was four days before I discovered the body, Jake thinks. And the body, according to its rate of decomposition, was three to five days dead. Probably closer to three by the looks of it.

So, Armitage didn’t leave when he said he would, right? Stayed on a day. Why? Was he actually expecting me to come? But how could Armitage know I’d connected him with Reckoning? Was he expecting somebody else, somebody he trusted, somebody he’d worked with in the past, somebody who came with a gun?

And, Huber was dead. Right. Armitage knew that. But no way could he imagine his son would be so stupid as to keep all the emails from Carlo. So why would Armitage kill himself?

And even if he panicked, and decided it was all over, there is no way finicky Armitage is going to kill himself like that. He’s more the sleeping pills and brandy sort. The sort to pass out when nicking himself while shaving, so he’s damn well not going to want blood and brains flying.

No. Armitage would take the easy way out.

And he’s not going to kill himself after making plans that no one will find him for days and days. That he’s going to putrefy in his lovely study on his fancy Kashan carpet. It’s inconceivable. His last appearance on the world stage an oozing mass of stink?

Plus, confess it all? Give it up on a platter in a suicide note like that? Bullshit. That’s not the Armitage I knew. He’d laugh it all off if accused, call it delusional. Old boy, you have well and truly gone off the deep end.

So not suicide, then, Jake thinks. Murder. And odds are the murderer wrote both the suicide note and the workout journal that’s being used to corroborate the handwriting on the note. Clever, that. The thought process and work of a spook.

Which brings on new complications. Who and why? He’s sure that Reckoning died with Huber. That it was all a diversion and cover up to get rid of those who might be able to finger Carlo/Carla/Karla as a Sov mole. Reckoning was not real; Armitage was not in any danger, though his name was on the list.

The way Jake has been looking at it, in this scenario Armitage is the one who made the list.

So, who is going to kill Armitage?

And suddenly Jake’s head is spinning again. Why not just accept what’s obvious? Why make complications? Stick to the physical reality.

“Son of a bitch,” he says aloud.

If not Armitage, then who was the fourth mole?

Helen? Was she the person Armitage cleared the path for at his home in Blue Ridge for a private visit? Did she pop him and leave a written proof of his guilt? Was she the fourth mole, and all the time acting as if she was advising me on my researches? But actually trying to steer me away from her.

Was Reckoning all her set-up then to make Armitage the fall guy for the fourth mole? Come to think of it, Armitage was about as computer literate as a giraffe. Could he have even built the Reckoning site?

This barrage of questions stills his critical persona.

Leans back in his chair. Heart pounding, ringing in his ears.

Still, one part of him does not want to hear this litany of possible evidence. He is much too satisfied with laying it all on Armitage/Carlo. Nicely wrapped up with a red bow. A tidy book, in fact.

And why would Helen become a Sov asset? What the hell motive did she have?

MICE. That’s what the CI instructors pounded into your head at trainings. Money, ideology, compromise, ego. The four deadly sins that would make a person spy against their own country. Jake writes the words down on a pad. Makes a list of them. Focuses on each in turn.

Money? He sure as shit doesn’t see Helen living it up in that crummy house in Washington state. And it’s been years now since all the betrayal went down. Decades since the demise of the ‘Evil Empire.’ So, if she’s got money, she should be spending it at long last. Not much rubber left on her tires, and you damn well can’t take it with you to the grave.

Ideology? Christ, he doesn’t even know if she’s a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or an acolyte of everybody’s sophomore crush, Ayn Rand. And majorly doubtful that she’s a true believer in the Word according to Herr Marx.

Compromise? Other than a foul mouth, he can’t figure out what Kompromat anyone would have on her. Lesbian? Who gives a rat’s ass? Not even back in the 80s. Dipsomania? No way. Taste in pets? Get serious asshole, be counsels himself. Not a time for playground humor.

The one that sticks out for him is the last: ego. Not an inflated ego, but an injured one.

Helen’s forever shtick: an acerbic take on her so-called career. How no one without three of them could get a leg up in the Company. How her achievements in CI usually ended up as promotions and salary boosts for her direct superiors. All of them three-legged, by the way. How the CIA house should be burned down and built anew, taking into account the Mao-era statement that women are half the sky.

“This fucking woman feels like she’s half the mud.” He can still hear her cackle after such a comment.

Holds his chin in his palm now. Exhausted, as if he’s just run a mile.

Was she pissed off enough at the male-dominated culture at CIA to try to tear it apart from within? To serve up all those assets to eventual death in Moscow just to get even? Got you last? And then pin it all on Armitage, whom she clearly despised as the embodiment of that patriarchal system?

Guess it’s time to find out, he tells himself. After all, if my instincts are right here, it means that Helen did not intend for me to come back from Austria. Not alive, anyway. If she’s the fourth mole, that means she wanted to get rid of everybody on the Reckoning list.

And everybody on that list is dead except for me. A chill passes through him at that thought.

If what I’m thinking is true, she’s got to be pissed things didn’t go according to plan. And she may damn well be concocting some other way for me to die.

Get a grip, man. Seems so unreal. Cheap fiction.

But then, maybe Armitage felt the same way with a gun staring him in the face.

I need a bit of reality check, he tells himself.

“No, don’t apologize. I’m your editor. You need to talk, go for it.”

“This is going to sound a bit weird.”

“Weirder than your story already is?”

“Maybe I need to be talked down. Getting all paranoid. Seeing enemies where they don’t exist.”

“Now you are sounding weird.”

“Okay, here’s the thing.” And he proceeds to tell Maxwell about all his suspicions regarding Helen Karla McReady. Even down to her possible motivation.

Maxwell listens. No impatient huff of breath from him.

Finally, “Right. I especially like the Karla angle, the tip of the hat to Le Carre. So what makes you think you’re paranoid?”

“I mean, Helen, for God’s sake. You don’t know her, but she’s the last person you’d think of for something like this.”

“She worked for the CIA, right?”

“Right.”

“A counterintelligence officer, if I heard you rightly. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“A spy, in common parlance.” Maxwell pauses for a moment. Then, “So no, she is not the last person I would expect to be involved in something like this. Comes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

“So maybe I’m not yet a danger to myself?” Tries for levity, but it falls flat.

“Look, what I hear from you is the doubts of a writer. Any writer whose book suddenly does a U-turn on him. Upsets the damn apple cart for this Helen to be the malign genius in back of Reckoning. Much better your old nemesis, Mr. Armitage. But you know what?”

Jake doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.

“This new twist is much better than what you were working on,” Maxwell says. “Newspapers have already reported all of that. We are running the risk of selling yesterday’s news. But with this new angle, you get to bring the reader into the story as you yourself discover what the hell is going on. It’s fresh. It’s alive. We’ll beat the news media at their own game.”

“We’re not talking fiction here, Bob. Or games. There’s a squad of folks who have died already. I mean, died for real.”

A sudden coldness now from New York. “You telling me you want to forget the book deal?”

“No. no. That’s not it. I just thought all this Reckoning bullshit was over. That maybe I could relax. Live a life. Not be looking over my shoulder all the time.”

“Well, friend. Book or no book, it sounds like you’re going to be checking your rearview mirror for the foreseeable future anyway. Look, I think you’re on to something here. And I don’t want you to feel pressured by time. Research this. Get to the bottom of things. From a literary point of view, this could be a windfall.”

“Well, I’m sure as fuck happy somebody’s pleased about this. So, fine. I’ll follow my nose on this.”

“Just don’t get it chopped off. And watch your back. She may not be working alone.”

“You know, Bob. That makes me feel so much better. Happy I called.”

“You want Freud, you got the wrong number, friend. I’m not a shrink. I’m an expander. Did you get the contract in your email?”

“Right, yes, I did.”

“Get it signed.”

“Need to take a look at it.”

But no good-bye from Maxwell. Just a dead line.

“We need to talk.”

“So go ahead. It’s called a phone, Jake. You use it to communicate.”

“Face-to-face.” Late in the day now. Got the lights on in his east-facing study.

“What, you worried about a tap? Big fucking bro with his cartoon ear on your phone.”

He says nothing for a moment, collecting his thoughts, jabbing a finger on the article by Helen Karla McReady. Telling himself this is not an act of utter idiocy. Convincing himself to trust his instincts.

Silence broken: “What’s all the drama, friend?” Helen finally asks.

Takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment. “We need to talk about … Karla. With a K.”

Now the silence is coming from her end. And he nods. It’s the kind of silence you’re trained to listen for. The kind of quiet that cuts through bullshit and bravado. He rides it.

But she ends his ride. “Well fuck me. Aren’t you the clever one there Mr. Jacobs.”

Feels like she’s cracking. Opening up. Ready to share. So he goes conciliatory. “I wish I weren’t. Wish I didn’t have to be.”

“And how did you discover my middle name? Got to be a damn fine agent to track that down.”

Her voice is full of sarcasm now. Attempt at peacebuilding just makes her feel stronger, he figures.

“Get real, Helen. Vosenko knew your codename. Plus, I’ve got his cell.”

“Vosenko’s?”

“No. That’s why we need a face-to-face. Cut through all this bullshit. Huber’s.”

“Are you insinuating that Mr. Bell’s invention is cumbrous?”

“Jesus, Helen, I’m trying to communicate here.”

“And Jesus back at you, Jake. What the hell are you getting at? What bullshit do we need to cut through? What freaking codename? Christ, you want a little sit-down, just say it. You’re making me nervous.”

“We need to talk about the fourth mole.”

An exasperated laugh from her end. “Isn’t that what we’ve been going round and round about for the past year?”

“About why the fourth mole…” Say it, he tells himself. Just do it. “Why the fourth mole is you.”

“You fucking crazy, Jacobs? Your adventures in Austria get to your brain?”

“My editor doesn’t think so. I went through the evidence with him. He finds it pretty damn convincing.”

To let her know he’s got an insurance policy.

“Now you’re spreading libel about me?”

“Slander.” He knows she hates being corrected. “Libel’s when it’s spoken. This will be in writing. And no defamation if it’s true, right?”

“You sanctimonious shit, Jacobs. I spent my good time and energy sharing with you. Teaching you, and this is how you repay me. Bastard.”

Her anger sounds real. Wonders if he could be wrong about this.

“Who’s to know you aren’t the fourth mole?” she says.

Which confirms things for him. “I’m driving up there tomorrow. My editor knows I’m going. We’ve got to talk about this. And lock the goddamn cats in your bedroom.”

Jake hangs up before she can protest.

On the other end of the line, Helen’s guest hangs up the extension he was listening in on, goes to the living room where Helen was talking on the phone. “Well handled, Housekeeper.”

“He’s fucking on to us.”