IV

Late Monday Morning

MOSCOW (AP) … A small group of Soviet dissidents calling themselves Activists for the Democratic Movement boldly picketed on Red Square early this morning.

The marchers carried signs that called for the immediate end to the harassment of Andrei Amalrik, author of the book Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?.

The picketing was quickly broken up by Moscow Civil Police.

Neither Tass, Pravda nor Izvestia mentioned the incident.

“I’ve let my people go. We’re done for the most part except for a few minor, last-minute details.”

Mahoney looked up from his incredibly piled desk at Anderson who had just come through the door. For a moment his mind refused to leave the military dossiers McCann had finally dropped off a couple of hours ago.

Carlisle had checked off which of the Russian military high command had been at yesterday’s gathering at Dzerzhinsky Square, and although that information did not really tell Mahoney very much he nevertheless found the dossiers interesting. Together they formed a fairly accurate picture of the Communist Party’s struggle for world military leadership since 1917, and especially since World War II.

Anderson looked around. “How in God’s name can you work in this mess?”

“I don’t work in here,” Mahoney laughed. “This is just a warehouse.” He nodded toward a file in Anderson’s hand. “Something more for me?”

The chargé d’affairs came all the way into the office and handed the file across the desk. “The president’s finalized itinerary and the preparations we’ve made. It’s all there.”

Mahoney took the file from him and laid it atop a pile of dossiers that all but buried his telephone. “You said your people are done and gone already?”

Anderson nodded. “They’re leaving now.”

“Did you clear that with Carlisle?”

Anderson flared, but held his temper in check. “I don’t work for Carlisle.”

Mahoney smiled tiredly, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and rubbed the lids with his fingertips. “Sorry, Stewart, guess I’m just a little tired.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Anderson said. “We’re all tired. And, yes, Carlisle did give me the okay to start winding down.”

Mahoney opened his eyes. “When was that?”

“He left my office about twenty minutes ago. Asked me to drop my report off to you and then bring you along to a meeting.”

“Everyone?”

Anderson shook his head. “No. Just Carlisle, you, me, and Congdon. The others have already gone or are going.”

“No one said anything to me.”

“He didn’t want to disturb you.”

Mahoney laughed. He suspected that Carlisle did not want to be confronted by the fact that Bennet had blown the whistle to Dr. White. Mahoney was sure that either the economist had mentioned his conversation with Bennet to Carlisle, or Carlisle had figured it out for himself. In any event, Carlisle knew that Mahoney was aware of Bennet’s indiscretion.

“Have a seat, Stewart.”

Anderson glanced toward the open door. “Carlisle wanted us upstairs right away.”

“He can wait a couple of minutes,” Mahoney said, indicating a chair that was less piled with files than the others in the small room. “Go ahead and put that stuff on the floor.”

Anderson hesitated a moment longer before he finally removed the stack of file folders and laid them carefully alongside the desk on the bare wooden floor.

Carlisle’s hold on everyone in the embassy seemed almost demonic at times. Anderson, Switt, McCann, almost everyone complained about him behind his back. But when the man called, they all jumped.

Despite this hold on Anderson, Mahoney was still convinced that the chargé d’affairs was a bright man more interested in doing a good job than promoting his own career. Moscow was an unusual place and it bred unusual attitudes and postures on its Western visitors, a phenomenon that Carlisle recognized and capitalized on.

“What do you think our friends in Dzerzhinsky Square are up to?” Mahoney asked softly, a slight smile on his face.

A startled look crossed Anderson’s features, but a moment later he returned the smile. “Not assassination,” he said. “Whatever can be said about them, stupidity is not among the comments generally heard.”

“Agreed,” Mahoney said. “But are you certain?”

“Come on, Wallace,” Anderson said, sitting forward. “What the hell would it gain them? World War III? If this were Peking, or even Cairo, or perhaps Havana, I might be worried. But Christ, this is a civilized country with just as much at stake as us.” He shook his head. “No. Definitely not assassination.”

“What then?”

“If you really mean what else might they be up to, I haven’t the foggiest. But if you mean why the coincidence between the Dzerzhinsky Square meeting, the president’s scheduled arrival, and the sudden increase in the Middle East tension, then I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I think it is just a coincidence.”

Mahoney kept his expression straight. “Stewart, in the last twelve hours Soviet surveillance of this embassy and its off-duty personnel has tripled in intensity. Additionally, Switt’s overnight report indicates that a general roundup of all Soviet citizens who had had recent contact with this embassy—including people whose parties you have recently attended—has begun. Can you explain that?”

Again a look of genuine surprise and concern crossed Anderson’s features. “I wasn’t aware of that,” he said softly.

“I take it you’ve felt no tightening of attitudes recently?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Anderson snapped angrily.

Mahoney just stared at him, and a few moments later Anderson’s anger seemed to evaporate.

“You’re asking me to do your job for you. What the hell am I supposed to say?”

“As far as you’re concerned their sudden activity came out of the blue?”

Again a flash of anger crossed Anderson’s face, and again it disappeared just as quickly. The man was young and relatively inexperienced, Mahoney thought, and yet he was fairly quick on his feet. One day, if he survived the political meat grinder that was the American diplomatic corps, he would be good. Mahoney doubted that Anderson was somehow pulling some little game with Carlisle. That thought had crossed his mind, but Anderson’s attitude of genuineness and real concern about the situation was beginning to dispel Mahoney’s supicions.

Always think the unthinkable. Look for the incongruities. Way back in Mahoney’s mind there was still the hint that all was not as it seemed to be.

He sat forward and then slowly got to his feet. His legs ached. Anderson followed suit. “Sorry,” Mahoney said. “I just had to cover all the bases.”

Anderson still looked hurt. “I am working on your side.”

“I know,” Mahoney said, coming around his desk and taking Anderson by the elbow. “Now let’s go see what Carlisle has got planned for us.”

Anderson stopped at the door and looked into Mahoney’s eyes. “What do you think is going on, Wallace?” he asked earnestly.

Mahoney reflected a moment, and then slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, Stewart. And that’s as honest as I can be at this moment.”

“Yeah,” Anderson said, and together they went down the narrow corridor and took the elevator upstairs to the conference room just off Carlisle’s office.

Mahoney came naturally by his suspicious nature because of his long and varied career within the intelligence community.

His background included U.S. Army G-2 during World War II in which he had worked at first as a cipher clerk and later as a messenger boy and near the end as an interrogator contacting pockets of SS resistance in the Obersalzburg. The last had been dangerous, but he had been young and had enjoyed it.

Those years had brought him his first contact with the Russians whom he had always been curious about as a people. And his service had scratched an itch, that had continued to grow as he got older, to learn what made people and their governments do the things they did.

He became an intelligence evaluator—as they were called in those days—when the Central Intelligence Agency was formed in 1947, and later, during the Korean Conflict, he became an analyst. Same job, same pay, different title.

His office after the fighting in Korea had been in a ramshackle tenement building in New York City. The routine in those days was childishly simple. Every morning the previous day’s intelligence summaries based on Soviet newspapers, magazines, books, radio broadcasts, and agent data, would go out in triplicate with three of their people dressed as common workmen. They were supposedly three men in the slum building who were lucky enough to have jobs, and therefore not suspect when they left every morning and returned every evening.

Later, after much of the McCarthy paranoia had passed, and everyone realized that under every rock there wasn’t a Communist waiting to subvert the government, the entire shooting match had moved out into the open, so to speak, down to the CIA’s new building at Langley, just outside of Washington, D.C. The entire shooting match, that is, except for Mahoney who was fired.

It was a sloppy setup, but apparently no one had been watching very closely, because it had worked.

Out of a job for a few months, so the scenario was orchestrated, Mahoney ranged around New York, finally landing a position with the U.N. as a trade specialist. Later the State Department, in a supposed fit of genius, hired him, and in 1971, at long last, he had been shipped to West Berlin.

He had been promoted to senior analyst by the CIA and yet he still had his work as a trade mission specialist as a cover. From that moment he had been a busy man.

The work in West Berlin had been mediocre, but so had the intelligence data he had been funneled to analyze, so at Langley it was decided that it was time for bigger and better things. Namely Moscow. That was one year ago, and so far he had done well.

But that Monday morning he was still bothered because everything in the past twenty-four hours had happened so unexpectedly. Usually there was some kind of advance warnings, even slight warnings, that often only in retrospect told them something had been bound to happen. But for this there had been nothing.

*   *   *

The White Room, as it was called, was electronically clean. Except for that fact, however, it was like every other room in the American embassy. It was long and narrow. Cracked plaster walls. A barred, shuttered window at one end and the plain wooden door at the other. A parquet wooden floor that creaked, and a very low suspended-tile ceiling.

Mahoney and Anderson took their places at one end of the long conference table next to Carlisle and Congdon who had been deep in discussion.

When they had entered the room, Congdon had looked up, and for the briefest of instants Mahoney had the distinct impression that Congdon felt guilty about something. But then the moment passed, and Mahoney found himself wondering if he had really felt that at all, or if it was just his imagination and tiredness.

The conference table was bare except for a single ashtray in front of Mahoney’s position. No one brought in any files or took any out with them. There were no notepads or pencils available, no blackboards, no recording devices. Everything that was brought in to these meetings was carried in a man’s mind; everything that went out, left the same way.

Carlisle began the meeting.

“Before I ask for your preliminary analysis there are a number of items you need to know to bring you up to date.”

“Farley, why don’t you cut the bullshit and get to the point? I’m tired and I want to go home to bed,” Mahoney said. It was the first time Mahoney had ever called his boss by his first name, but there was no flicker of expression on Carlisle’s face. Congdon, however, smiled.

“I’ve ordered LOOK SEE wound down. At least on the surface,” Carlisle said, staring straight at Mahoney. “I’ve sent Anderson’s people home already. They’re done anyway, and they’d just be getting in the way.”

Mahoney suddenly found himself not caring. He was tired, he thought. “In the way of what?” he asked nevertheless.

“I was rather hoping you would tell me that. But not yet. First I’ll add to what you already know.”

Mahoney waited for him to continue. When he got home he was going to have a nice, long, leisurely bath. And then Marge would rub his back. He might have a drink or two, and then he was going to sleep for about a year and a half.

“Langley came in on this six hours ago.”

Mahoney sighed. “Then I’m off the hook.”

“On the contrary, you’re very much on center stage at the moment. They figure we’re the closest to the situation, so they’ve agreed to funnel information this way.”

Mahoney forced himself to be interested in what Carlisle was saying. And what the man was telling him was extraordinary. The CIA’s home office people rarely let their field personnel blow their own noses without direction. “Spell it out, Carlisle,” he said, sitting forward. “But without the embellishments.”

“A number of curious things have been happening over the past twenty-four hours. Very curious things indeed.”

“Such as,” Mahoney prompted. He was beginning to lose his patience. He wondered what kind of an expression Carlisle would have on his face if someone were to throttle him.

“Such as the fact there has been a dramatic increase in KGB operations worldwide.”

“What?”

“Coincident with the gearing up here in Moscow, the Soviet embassy in Washington has apparently pulled out all the stops. Their people from Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, and everywhere have suddenly tightened up. A number of them have dropped out of sight. Completely. Without warning. One minute they were there, under surveillance, and the next minute our people were left holding the bag.”

“What else?” Mahoney was suddenly not liking this very much.

“The Soviet trade delegation to the U.N. has become incommunicado.”

“There’s more?”

“A lot more,” Carlisle said, and it seemed to Mahoney that the man was almost enjoying this. “The Soviet embassy in Mexico City, their largest, looks like a circus. And in Berlin all the stops have been pulled as well. Every building we have there is under heavy microwave scan. Half our safehouses worldwide have come under surveillance. What was left of my own operations in Lisbon and Chile have been shut down.”

“Which means they know about you.”

“Which means they know about me and about a lot of other things.”

Mahoney could hear the rain as a sudden gust of wind shifted against the shuttered window, and he shivered. Something big was going on. But what?

Dr. White had ended up a very cooperative soul, but for all his sudden, cheery goodwill he had been able to provide very little in the way of hard intelligence.

As far as could be determined the KGB had not done much of anything during the past months or even days to husband funds for such an obviously huge operation.

Normally, if the KGB was planning on mounting some major offensive, whether it be a secret war somewhere, the gear up of a new network, or even their favorite game—a one-time all-out push for data—a diversion of funds was begun as early as two months in advance. The indicators were subtle but detectable if you knew what to look for. A slowdown in production at a farm tractor factory in Minsk when farm tractors were desperately needed. A sudden, if miniscule, price increase in truck tires from Baku. A new ceiling imposed on oil imports.

From all across the Soviet Union the rubles were called home in tiny amounts from here and there, but totalling sometimes tens of millions.

The KGB was essentially the same as any other large organization; it had a budget. Overruns on the budget, overruns beyond its normal operating range, called for special funding.

No such special funding had been called for in this instance. That in itself was odd and made even odder by the facts Carlisle had just given. It cost big money to do the things he said the Russians were doing worldwide.

But maybe they were trying something new. Maybe they had taken a lesson from the Americans in deficit spending. Maybe.

Then there was Munson and his communications reports. Early this morning he had come to Mahoney with the last of the overnight logs, and he had seemed genuinely disappointed.

“People are coming and people are going. If I were them I would have hired a couple of traffic cops. But there has been no increase in their network communications, nor has there been any increase in their apparent power consumption. It’s business as usual.”

Mahoney had told the embassy’s chief of communications to hold off on any further reporting unless the situation changed. He had not heard another thing from the man since then.

Bennet hadn’t done a damn thing, and in fact had made himself scarce ever since Dr. White had blown the whistle.

McCann had brought the military dossiers in earlier, but had offered no comment.

Congdon had been strangely silent, offering up very little in the way of hard information except to cover the points that President Forsythe hoped to raise with Brezhnev on Thursday.

Which left Anderson and Switt. Anderson knew nothing. Or rather, Anderson had gotten no tickles as to what might be going on over in Dzerzhinsky Square. And Switt had only been able to provide the information that the KGB was watching the American embassy very carefully. But Switt had also mentioned that as far as he and his people could determine, the Russians were watching all the other embassies in town with the same vigor as well.

Mahoney brought his attention back to Carlisle who had been staring at him all the while, but there was no clue visible in his expression as to what the man was thinking.

“You mentioned sending Anderson’s people home because they were getting in the way of something.”

“Right,” Carlisle said. “I’m sure you’ve seen Switt’s reports. They’re watching us pretty closely.”

“Us and every other embassy in town.”

“The others are not our concern. What concerns me is our posture. They took immediate notice that we were suddenly very busy. They also know about how long it takes to prepare for a presidential visit. Anderson said he was done with his work, so I had to cut it at that. To go on any longer would have been to hand them a message on a silver platter: Hey there, we’re running an operation. What would you like to know?”

“So we’re back to business as usual,” Mahoney said.

“That’s right. At least we are on the surface. But when and as intelligence data is gathered, it will land on your desk.”

Mahoney offered no comment, and he was sure he could detect a slight note of impatience in his chief’s eyes.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” Carlisle said, turning to Congdon. “Anything to add?”

Congdon took a moment to answer, as if he was mustering up his thoughts into some kind of presentable order, which was unusual for the man. Congdon was known as the “hip-shooter,” a nickname Mahoney himself had given the man.

“While the other slob is taking a bead, I can draw my gun and get a couple of shots off,” Congdon had told him once, evidently proud of the tag. “You can usually scare off the cowards that way.”

A lack of understanding of Carlisle’s motives was in itself understandable; Carlisle had that kind of personality. But Congdon had been something of an enigma over the past twenty-four hours.

“I’ve got three things to add,” he finally said, staring across the room neither at Carlisle nor at Mahoney.

Alarm bells began jangling along Mahoney’s nerves. This was not the Congdon he knew. And as if in response to Mahoney’s sudden concern, Congdon turned toward him and smiled.

“I’ll be brief. I promise, Wallace. I want to go home to bed as badly as you do.”

Mahoney was not reassured, but he nodded for the man to go on.

“Three points which Carlisle raised yesterday, and to which I can now add a little something,” he began. “Number one: We assume the KGB is running some kind of an operation unknown to us at this point. It would be my guess they’re after another data push like they did in ’64 and again in ’69 and ’72.”

Mahoney shook his head. “I’ve already dismissed that. In each of those instances they spent upward of twenty million rubles. Dr. White tells me there have been no diversions of funds in the past six months. At least none so obvious as to put them in the tens of millions range.”

“Number two,” Congdon continued as if he had never been interrupted. “The Middle East situation is coming to a head, which is the reason President Forsythe is coming here on Thursday. Now, if I were the Russians, and if I were supplying the Arab bloc with say, tactical nuclear weapons, I would be worried at this moment that someone might know about it. So I would be mounting an operation to find out who knew just what.”

“That one is a little thin, George,” Mahoney said, smiling. “If that was the case, they’d be watching Israeli operations, perhaps Langley, perhaps the Arab countries themselves and, perhaps stretching it a bit, even us here in Moscow. But why the all-out push elsewhere? Like Mexico City. Like the other embassies here in town.”

“As a diversionary tactic?” Carlisle offered. “A cover?”

“Rather expensive way to do business, wouldn’t you say?”

Carlisle said nothing in reply, and again Congdon continued.

“Number three is the assassination of President Forsythe.”

Anderson, who had remained quiet all that time, sat forward now. “Absurd,” he said.

Congdon turned to him. “President Forsythe is my president as well as yours. And I am just as concerned for his safety as you are.” He turned back to Mahoney. “Which is why I’ve prepared a twixt to send out on your recommendation, strongly urging the president to remain home.”

“I’m finding that theory just as hard to swallow as the others,” Mahoney said slowly.

“I don’t like it either, but there it is,” Congdon said, and he sat back in his chair with a sigh as if he were a schoolboy who had just finished reciting a long and difficult poem from memory.

“What then?” Carlisle asked. “We are open.”

Mahoney took a very long time to speak, but if any of the others were impatient, they did not show it.

At this moment he was more tired than he had ever been in his life, but it wasn’t that he had put in any more hours at one stretch than he had ever put in before. And it wasn’t that he had been overtaxing his mind, at least not more so than on other operations. It was a combination of the fact that he was getting older—at this moment he felt more like ninety-one than sixty-one—and a series of doubts that had nagged at the back of his mind since Sunday morning’s first meeting.

Carlisle. What the hell was going on with the man? Was he for real? Or was he pulling some kind of stupid, albeit dangerous, little game?

Congdon. What was eating him? He definitely was not himself at this meeting, nor had he been himself all through the night and early morning. One week ago Congdon would have been hounding him to slip out of the embassy for a couple of drinks. “Let’s blow this pop stand and raise a little hell,” was his favorite phrase.

Langley. What was going on at CIA headquarters that they were allowing such an apparently important operation to be directed from the American embassy in Moscow? Surely the foreign operations chief realized the unbelievably tremendous difficulties in maintaining secure communications with an Iron Curtain country. Just the increase in secure communications flow had to be like a Las Vegas neon sign.

And Soviet-supplied nuclear weapons in the Middle East? Had Congdon merely presented the scenario as a sort of an analogy? Was he merely guessing? Or was there some hard information floating around that hadn’t as yet landed on Mahoney’s desk?

In Mahoney’s long career he had often been faced with the same choice he was faced with this morning. Play the guessing game with everyone else, or make an honest evaluation that covered nothing more or less than the known facts.

The first choice was the most creative. The specialty Mahoney was very good at. The art he was being paid for. But the second was a delaying tactic that usually provided him with a little more room to think.

He chose the latter.

“Subtracting all the knowns, and guessing at some of the other data,” he began, and Carlisle sat forward, “I can only tell you what is not happening.”

Anderson and Congdon both had blank stares on their faces, but Carlisle’s expression was one of incredulity.

“I can only tell you that the Soviets have not geared up for anything covert. That is to say they seem to be watching, nothing more.”

The room was deathly silent for a long moment, and then Carlisle slammed his open palm on the table. “Watching what, for Christ’s sake?”

Mahoney smiled inwardly. He had gotten to the man. “Who the hell knows?” He shrugged. “I don’t have enough data, and I certainly have not had enough time.”

The range of emotions shifting across Carlisle’s face for several moments was like a sunset. Purple rage changed to the reds of anger that changed to the violets and yellows of disbelief, and finally to the darkness of inscrutability.

Mahoney got to his feet. “If there is nothing more, gentlemen, I am going home to get some sleep.”

“I have instructed every one of our people to keep moving on this one,” Carlisle said with what Mahoney considered brilliant restraint under the circumstances. He got to his feet as well and escorted Mahoney to the door where they paused a moment. Carlisle spoke half under his breath so that Congdon and Anderson who remained seated at the conference table could not hear him. “I’m beginning to sweat, Mahoney. And when I sweat so do you and the others.”

“The president’s visit? Are you buying that?” Mahoney asked, because it seemed to be the question to ask.

“Yes,” Carlisle said evenly. “But only because the president’s assassination would be the most damaging of the three possibilities.”

“Are you going to send out Congdon’s twixt?”

“Not yet,” Carlisle said. He studied Mahoney’s face for a moment. “Go home and get some sleep.”

“Right,” Mahoney said, and without another word he left the conference room.

By the time he had stopped by his office to get his coat and had made his way downstairs, a car was waiting for him by the front door. Carlisle’s doing. He signed out with the marine guard, went out the front door and hesitated a moment on the front stairs.

He had been cooped up inside for twenty-four hours now, and despite the cold, despite the wind and rain, the outside air was better than the closed-in atmosphere of the embassy.

He finally got in the back seat of the car and in a couple of minutes was deposited at the front door of his apartment building.

Like the American embassy, the apartment building Mahoney lived in would have been considered a ramshackle tenement slum in New York, Los Angeles, or Detroit. He had been given a choice of moving to the outskirts of town to a new building six months ago, but had preferred this building because of its central location.

He mounted the steps past the Soviet guardbox, nodded to the man inside, and entered the building. Just inside the door he stopped a moment. Every building in the Soviet Union occupied by a foreigner was assigned a police guard. Mahoney had gotten to know the faces of the guards assigned to this building, but the man outside this morning was new.

Switt had warned him about it last night, but it was disconcerting to see nevertheless.

He trudged upstairs to his apartment on the third floor, the ever-present stench of cooked cabbage in the air. This building housed no one but foreigners. Soviet citizens were not allowed to mingle this closely with Americans—or anyone else for that matter. Most of the people in this building were low-ranking American newsmen, a few Swedish and Danish correspondents, and one low-level diplomat from the Canadian embassy.

A number of the newsmen, especially the Americans, were of the philosophy: While in Rome do as the Romans, and while in Moscow eat cooked cabbage. The smell after twelve months of it nauseated him.

He pulled out his key, but the door was unlocked. He silently cursed as he entered his apartment and closed and locked the door softly behind him. Marge was too trusting a soul. She could never be made to believe that any harm could ever come to her.

“What would anyone want with me?” her line went. “I’m just a dumpy old grandmother.”

He could hear Marge in the kitchen, but he silently crossed the tiny, overstuffed living room and entered their bedroom where he took off his raincoat, and then entered the bathroom and hung it on the back of the door.

Several walls had been knocked out and a lot of paperwork juggled before the Mahoneys had been afforded the luxury of having their own bathroom in such an old building. It was accidental that the bathroom had been located off their bedroom, but all in all it was a luxury well within the station of the chief of the U.S. trade mission, whether the Russians knew that was a facade or not.

He took off his suitcoat, unstrapped his shoulder holster and pulled off his tie, draping them all over a chair in the bedroom. Back again in the bathroom he put the plug in the tub and turned the spigot on full hot. A moment later he could hear Marge calling over the noise of the running water.

“Who is it?” she shouted from the kitchen. “Wallace?”

“No, it’s a burglar,” Mahoney called from the bedroom as he took off his shirt. “I’m here to steal your bathtub.”

Marge appeared in the doorway wiping her hands on her apron, her face beaming. “Do you want something to eat before you take your bath?”

“No, but I do want a drink. And you’d better make it a double. And then I want one of your back rubs.”

She came in the bedroom to where Mahoney was sitting on the edge of the bed undoing his shoelaces and stroked his forehead. “You look tired, old man,” she said softly.

He stopped what he was doing and looked up. “I am,” he said. “And my legs hurt like hell.”

She smiled gently, bent down and pecked him on the cheek, and then went into the bathroom. “I’ll put some epsom salts in the water for you,” she said over her shoulder. “You get undressed and get in the tub, and I’ll get you a drink.”

By the time he was undressed she had fixed his bathwater and had gone back into the kitchen to fix him a drink. Nude, he headed for the bathroom, pausing just a moment to glance at the photograph of his son and daughter-in-law, John and Elizabeth, and the three children. The photo had been taken nearly two years ago and had been sent to him and Marge while they were still in Berlin. The children were hugging a costumed figure of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.

Mahoney smiled, went into the bathroom and climbed gratefully into the hot tub. Maybe in a few months they would arrange to leave Moscow for a few weeks. They needed a vacation. Maybe they could go to Los Angeles to see the kids. Michael could come down from Missoula if he wasn’t busy, and make it a family get-together. He would have to remind Marge to write them a letter.

He lay back and closed his eyes, his thoughts about Marge, about the drink she was making him and about his sons and grandchildren instantly leaving his mind. Instead he found himself going over the operation. The information that had been gathered so far was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Somewhere there was the key piece, the corner, which would give him a start.

He never heard Marge come in with the drink, nor was he aware that she sat on the edge of the tub massaging his temples, watching him sleep, smiling sadly.

Something was intruding on his mind through his sleep, but gently, gently like a velvet hammer on a silk pillow. It was a face whose name he struggled to remember.