The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews (32)

League of Nations

“You’re as bad as Angleton,” said Acting Director Farrell to Benford, who was standing in front of the spotless desk in the DCIA’s office on the seventh floor of Headquarters. Unsullied by cables, memos, or ops plans, the Director’s workspace contrasted wildly with Benford’s desk three floors down in CID, which more closely resembled downtown Tokyo after Godzilla walked through. “You counterintelligence fanatics waste time chasing shadows that don’t exist.” Angleton had been the zealous messianic CI chief in the seventies who saw Soviet disinformation and provocation under every rock. Benford shifted his feet slightly.

Farrell was a lank-haired economics analyst from the Directorate of Intelligence who was, in the eyes of the jaundiced workforce in Langley, an unlikely pick to run the Agency, even temporarily. He had dishwater eyes, a waxen complexion, a reedy cartoon voice, and an abiding, singular interest in promoting himself. Farrell had first been noticed by POTUS as a fellow internationalist with a healthy dislike of CIA cowboys. Farrell had further endeared himself to the White House after publicly declaring he would credit the assessments of Headquarters-based analysts regarding the political situation in any given country, rather than rely on the estimations of the Chief of Station on the ground, an apostasy increasingly in vogue after the drowning of DCIA Alex Larson. As Farrell’s comment became common knowledge, operations officers in the foreign field continued their work, silently toasting the Acting Director at recruitment dinners worldwide.

“This mole is hardly a shadow,” said Benford, controlling the impulse to tell this ponderous bureaucrat he was a preening cockatoo. “His existence has been corroborated by a sensitive asset in Moscow.” The Director snorted.

“It’s always the same,” Farrell said. “Sensitive asset says something, and we go off on a wild-goose chase. It’s absurd. What asset reported this?” The Director had the right to ask about any source, including true name, but Benford protected his restricted-handling cases jealously, usually referring to them only by cryptonyms.

“DIVA, our top source in Russia, her intelligence has been impeccable, she’s stolen secrets from inside the Kremlin itself.”

Farrell made a face. “I prefer to avoid that hackneyed phrase, ‘steal secrets.’ Stealing implies extralegal and morally reprehensible methods.”

“It’s the definition of espionage, since Judas kissed Jesus,” said Benford. “What do you call it?”

Farrell looked up, nettled at his tone. The two men glared at each other. “We don’t steal secrets,” he said.

Benford kept a straight face. “I’ve heard that homily before, somewhere. It’s as imbecilic now as it was then.”

Farrell swiveled in his chair, turning his back on Benford. “I didn’t call you up here to listen to your old-line retrogressive cant. I called you because I understand you are not fully briefing the three nominees for the Directorship. You are to brief them all unreservedly, with no evasion, including the reporting from this star asset of yours. Do you understand? Full briefings.”

“The asset is in a precarious position. The intelligence can be sourced directly to her,” said Benford, already knowing what he was going to do.

“Stop this pedantry,” snapped Farrell. “The nominees all have top-secret clearances. Brief them. Everything. Am I clear?”

“You’re going to get your ass fired, Simon,” said Forsyth. They were sitting in Benford’s office. Lucius Westfall was squeezed on the couch, trying to keep a teetering stack of files from falling on him and onto the floor.

“We suspect that one of the candidates for the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is a mole run by Moscow Center. The Kremlin’s candidate. If MAGNIT is selected as DCIA, the Agency will cease to exist, and the United States will be blind to overseas threats. It will be worse than Philby, worse than Ames or Hanssen.”

“We’d have to exfil and resettle hundreds of assets,” said Forsyth. “Not just the Russians, but sources in China, North Korea, and Cuba.”

“The cereal aisle at the supermarket in Alexandria is going to look like the League of Nations, with all the ex-agents grocery shopping,” said Westfall, who once babysat for a Chinese defector, and knew how impossible most defectors could be.

“Those will be the ones we agree to settle. There will be a lot of low-level Joes left behind, who’ll be tossed in jail, or retired without pension,” said Forsyth.

“You’re both forgetting the ones who won’t leave and will try to gut it out,” said Benford. “The ones they’ll feed to the lions.” They were all thinking about Dominika.

“So you’re willing to risk your career to defy the Director?”

“In trade for DIVA? What would you do?” They all knew the answer to the question, including the greenhorn on the couch, who already felt fiercely protective of the blue-eyed Russian.

“Time for a barium enema,” said Benford. “Lucius, I’ll need your help.” Westfall’s eyes widened. He frantically wondered whether this could possibly be a medieval secret rite of initiation in the Operations Directorate or, as plausibly, an unsavory personal practice of Benford’s in which he, as factotum, was somehow expected to assist. He was sure it had not been listed as one of his professional duties.

Westfall was immeasurably relieved, though alarmed at the scope of the sedition, when Forsyth and Benford explained what “barium enema” meant—a counterintelligence test—and what they wanted. Just then, Benford’s secretary walked in with lunch, a cardboard box with Styrofoam cups of egg-drop soup from the cafeteria, which had become popular with the recruitment of SONGBIRD. She handed around cups as the room grew silent except for the sound of Benford slurping.

They were fortunate that for the next round of briefings, each nominee had scheduling conflicts, so individual sessions had to be scheduled at different times. Benford obsequiously briefed Senator Feigenbaum and her scowling altar boy Farbissen on a sensitive operation to recruit a Russian code clerk in Buenos Aires, based not on any demonstrated vulnerability or regulatory transgression, but simply because the young bachelor was observed to be lonely. Farbissen snorted in derision and the senator muttered “fishing expedition” under her breath, neither of them acknowledging the immense value of recruiting a code clerk.

In reality, Benford had concocted the entire operation. If Feigenbaum/Farbissen were the moles, the Center would quickly recall the blameless code clerk to Moscow—something the cooperative Argentine service immediately could ascertain—to get him out of the crosshairs of perfidious CIA. Benford wasted an hour playacting, trying to convince these two congressional bivalves that the operation had merit. By then, time was up, and Benford had avoided briefing his most sensitive cases—for today. It was a dodge that would work only once.

The next day, Forsyth briefed VADM Rowland. Benford had suggested that Forsyth turn on a little of his salt-and-pepper charm to see if the dour three-striper would react to him. Forsyth later grumpily reported that mildly flirting with the admiral was like throwing cotton balls at riveted steel plate.

“Christ,” said Forsyth. “I wore my dark suit with the Italian pocket square, threw her the case-officer smile, turned on the charm, and complimented her on her inspired management of ONR. I let her catch me looking at her legs, and told her a story about my fiancée who was lost at sea during a typhoon. Nothing. No reaction. I’ve had North Koreans at diplomatic receptions react more than she did. I went home that night and cried into my pillow.”

“Age is the great leveler. It catches up with us all,” intoned Benford, commiserating. “Though it may have been the pocket square.”

Forsyth had briefed the admiral on a troubling case in Panama City involving a recruited but obstreperous senator in the Panamanian Parliament who had befriended an unidentified (and imaginary) Russian diplomat who was “talking out of school.” The senator had refused to identify the Russian until the Station agreed to raise his salary. Benford knew that even the possibility of an unknown Russian dip getting cozy with an access agent from CIA would result in a hasty Russian approach to the venal senator in an attempt to identify the wayward diplomat. (The senator, in fact, was a longtime and loyal asset who would report any inveigling contact or surveillance on him.)

“The admiral listened politely but was clearly not interested,” said Forsyth.

“Probably thinking about magnetic impedance and joules,” said Benford. “She continues to be the least likely of the three, in my view.” He turned to Westfall. “You will brief Ambassador Vano tomorrow. He seems less concerned with rank, and is equable in nature, so he presumably will not object to a briefing from a junior snail. Play it with youthful enthusiasm and make it appear you’re exceeding your brief. Observe his reaction. He is a successful businessman with access, who is vain and inexperienced in intelligence matters. Play on that.”

For a junior analyst who was new to the Operations Directorate, Lucius played his role with a fine hand as the overserious analyst with facts and figures who liked to hear himself talk. He told the ambassador about a (fictitious) Russian naval captain in the Northern Fleet stationed in Murmansk who intended to defect and smuggle himself and his family into Finland in the back of one of the hundreds of 18-wheelers passing through the Vaalimaan Rajanylityspaikka, the southernmost Finnish border crossing on the E18. Westfall bragged that the Russian captain commanded a fleet ballistic submarine, would potentially bring kilos of top-secret naval documents out with him, and would attempt the crossing in two months. This would be irresistible bait for the Russians, who would tear apart every truck exiting the Federation, causing holy chaos at the border, which would be easily observed. Benford was enthused now that he had spread his trail of bread crumbs at the feet of each candidate.

“I anticipate FSB and SVR will collaborate, and that DIVA will be involved in the investigations,” Benford said. “We, therefore, will have positive intelligence on which variant was reported to Moscow.”

“If we ever get her reliable commo,” grumbled Forsyth. “We cannot keep meeting her on the street.”

“Hearsey tells me a new piece of communications gear has been tested and will soon be ready for deployment. He is coming to demonstrate it this afternoon. You should all be here to assess its suitability for DIVA, especially Nash, when he returns from the Orient.”

Nash returned the next day, was sarcastically congratulated by Benford on having resisted using his phallus in the Hong Kong operations, and was briefed on the mole hunt. Hearsey came to Benford’s office and nodded to the officers in the room. Definitely channeling Gary Cooper, thought Nate, noticing his tall man’s habit of instinctively ducking slightly under the door frame. Hearsey wore a soft sports jacket over a pinstripe shirt with khaki trousers, and was carrying a silver ZERO Halliburton attaché case. Behind him, dragging a large black plastic Pelican footlocker, was another tech introduced as Frank Mendelsohn, who was short, slight, dark, shy, and twitchy, about whom Benford whispered, “the guy you don’t want assembling the bomb in the basement.”

Hearsey nodded to Nate. The ops officers had worked with Hearsey before; he’d broken into a German factory with Gable to sabotage centrifuge parts destined for Iran, and he had trained Nate’s friend Hannah Archer before she was assigned to Moscow. Hearsey was what they called an operational tech, a trained engineer who knew you couldn’t sneak a listening device into an office if it came in twelve pieces and weighed six hundred pounds. He understood operations, and his technical solutions reflected that understanding, a rare bird.

As he did typically, Benford had bypassed the orotund Director of OTS and confidentially asked Hearsey to consider solutions to DIVA’s communication problem now that she was to be Director of SVR. He asked the rangy tech to think out of the box, and come up with an answer. It was a little risky for Hearsey to accept and work on a bootleg project for Benford without his own chief’s knowledge, but he couldn’t abide his boss, a nontechnical outsider whom he called a seagull manager. “Swoops in, starts screaming, shits on everything, then flies away,” Hearsey had told Benford.

Hearsey sat on the couch, his knees coming even with his stomach. “I assume it’s okay to talk details in front of everyone,” he said. Benford nodded. “I had the beginning of an idea, so I asked NGA, that’s the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency—the people who fly the satellites—to image SVR headquarters in Yasenevo. They did an ELINT shot, which reads electronic emissions, then the next pass was a MASINT shot, which measures energy. I was looking for two things: that the main buildings radiate electric energy to the outside; and that there is only one main transformer—step-down transformers block energy—in a separate power plant.”

“How’d you do?” said Forsyth.

“Two out of two,” said Hearsey. “The buildings radiate, so there must be miles of wiring inside the walls, and the transformers are in a dedicated power plant on the other side of the compound.”

“My pulse is racing, but what exactly are you telling us?” said Benford.

Hearsey smiled. “You’re going to like this, Simon. The Russians hardened their headquarters on the inside against external eavesdropping, but didn’t think about energy leaking through the wires outside to the surrounding pine forest. The bottom line is that the two main buildings of SVR headquarters in Moscow are in essence a big honking antenna,” he said. “Even the shapes of the two buildings—a fifteen-floor tower connected to a five-floor wing shaped like a Y—act like a Yagi directional antenna.”

“I will not ask what a Yogi antenna is. But how does that help us?” said Benford.

“That’s Yagi, and it’s just what we need.” Hearsey turned to Mendelsohn, who opened the locker and took out a sleek desk lamp composed of a large ebony base, a stainless-steel, L-shaped arm, and a broad black shade. Hearsey smiled and put the lamp on the arm of the couch.

“Stick this lamp on your agent’s desk and plug it into the wall. That’s it. She can dictate, record, or type messages to Simon through this lamp, using the building’s electrical wires as a carrier, even with people present in the agent’s office,” said Hearsey. “Another feature: align documents along the base under the shade and you can photograph them, even while signing them, right in front of a secretary looking over your shoulder. And the lamp will tell her when an incoming message from Simon is waiting for her.”

“How’s it do that?” said Nate.

“An air vortex ring,” said Hearsey.

“What does that mean?” said Forsyth.

“It’ll blow in her ear,” said Hearsey.

“That can’t be a bad thing,” said Westfall.

Hearsey left after two hours, having demonstrated the functions of the desk lamp concealment for DIVA’s covert communications equipment. Hearsey told them the system was encrypted BOLERO, which crypt Simon found fatuous. Nevertheless, he was pleased. Hearsey had outdone himself, supported by the engineering brilliance of Frank Mendelsohn, whose nickname in the office, inexplicably, was Money Shot. The BOLERO transmitter/receiver was interactive, multifunctional, and protected from tampering by retinal-scan permissive-action link. Messages or images that Dominika loaded into the device would be stored until it detected the authentication code from the BATTLEFAT telemetry satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the Arctic Circle. In 3.5 seconds, Dominika’s stored messages would flood through the building’s electrical grid to the satellite, and simultaneous incoming messages would be read by the BOLERO lamp at the other end of the wall plug in DIVA’s office.

“Will these transmissions be detectable inside the building?” Nate asked. “Is it safe?”

“SVR comsec experts solved that problem for us,” said Hearsey. “They shielded the building against external eavesdropping, so our communications don’t emanate inside. We got lucky.”

“I have a question,” said Westfall, ever the analyst. “I understand that transmissions to satellites are vulnerable to radio intercept or direction finding.”

“You mean triangulation,” said Hearsey. “Not with this system. The power is low, like with your SRAC equipment, but, more important, transmissions are diffused. It’s the difference between tracing back a beam in the night sky to find the searchlight, and stuffing fog into a gunny sack.” Benford grunted approvingly at that, a metaphor he could understand.

Frank Mendelsohn then had explained principles of haptic (tactile) communication, organic user interface, and flexible display with bend interactions until Benford began going purple in the face. The not-insignificant consideration of getting the desk lamp into SVR headquarters without arousing suspicion appeared to be a problem until Nate said Dominika could carry it in herself as she moved into the Director’s office and chose new furnishings. The lamp would be cached to her by Moscow Station. Risky but doable. And once the lamp was on her desk, she needn’t step foot on the street to meet a case officer—personal meets would be reserved for when DIVA traveled outside Russia. Benford said they should deploy BOLERO as soon as possible.

DIVA would once more be online, and Benford could begin reading other gentlemen’s mail again, with the exception of the messages to and from MAGNIT. And that was the problem.