"Okay, fine, but how did you get him off. There was something about a defector you uncovered-"
"Hell, the government's case didn't amount to a hill of beans," Blaine interrupted. "What they had was the uncorroborated testimony of an admitted spy, that Weinberg fella, and a bunch of papers. There was no question that the papers came from Dick. The question was, did Dick give 'em to Weinberg or did Weinberg steal them? They didn't have a scut of real evidence that Dick had turned them over. Weinberg had no messages, no communications from Dick at all, and he had free access, as a clerk, to everything in Dick's office. Of course, in those days an accusation was about the same as a conviction. They got Alger Hiss and fried the Rosenbergs on cases just about as bad. I wasn't about to let that happen to Dick."
"So you short-circuited the process with this mysterious defector."
"I did. You'll want to know how I pulled it off?" Teasingly.
"Yes. According to the articles and books I've read, you've never been straight on the issue. That's what's fed the conspiracy accusations over the years."
"Well, Miss Ciampi, I don't reckon a smart girl like you would've swallowed much of that old horseshit-pardon my French."
"Does that mean you're going to tell me the real story, Mr. Blaine?"
There was a long pause on the line, long enough to make Marlene think she might have been cut off. But Blaine remained connected. He cleared his throat heavily and said, "Matter of fact, I told Selma the whole thing, back then, Selma and Dick both. I told them what I'd found out, and how I'd found it out, and I said I wasn't going to use it unless they thought it was right. I said, and I remember this like it was yesterday, the two of them holding hands, sitting on straight chairs in the interview room in that damn prison they had him in, and I told them that the government was bound and determined to see Dick convicted of treason and that they would find some way to do it, and that they'd probably ask for the death penalty. And Dick asked me, would it hurt the country, what I was planning to do, and I said, no, I didn't think so, and he told me to go ahead with it. Damned if I knew if it'd hurt the country. About then I wouldn't've cared if it meant the Russian navy could steam into New York. I just wanted him out of that place and safe."
He paused again, and Marlene heard the sound of drinking and a clunking noise, as if a glass had been set down. "So there's no reason not to let you in on the conspiracy after all this time. Everyone's dead, just about, except me and Selma, and a bunch of the small fry. The judge and prosecutor gone; Dick, of course. The chief witness, Weinberg, died in prison. Lord knows where Reltzin and Gaiilov are, dead too, probably. And as far as national security"-he drew the word out long and mockingly-"I expect the Republic will survive the revelation."
"Gaiilov?" asked Marlene.
"Hah! See, you've wormed it out of me already. Yeah, that was the boy. Armand Dimitrievitch Gaiilov. Talk about your conspiracy! My Lord, you couldn't start a conspiracy in this country if your life depended on it; folks here just like to talk too much. They ain't comfortable with secrets. How it happened, I was sitting in the Navy Club in Washington worrying about how I was going to get Dick out of this mess, when I heard two fellas talking. They were huddled together at the bar and I was sitting in a club chair about six feet away with my back to them. They were sort of arguing in a polite way about something or other and then I heard a name that made my ears perk up. I had good hearing back then; getting deaf as a post now. I got this thing makes the phone louder. Anyway, one of 'em said something like, 'But he says that Weinberg was the only contact,' and the other one said, 'Well yes, that's the point. He's trying to protect Dobbs. It means he's a mole.' And the other one said, 'Damn it, Gaiilov's no mole. He's given us loads of stuff that checks out,' and then he went on to name all kinds of stuff with names like Hatrack and Boneyard, secret files of various kinds, I imagined, but by then I wasn't really paying too much attention. When they left, I asked the barman who they were and he gave me a couple of names and I checked them out and sure enough they were CIA."
"How did you do that-check them out?"
"Oh, it wasn't much of a problem. Washington was still a small town back then. I'd had some connection with naval intelligence, being a former naval person and all, and I asked some friends and they asked their friends and that's how it was done. What it was, anyway, was that an employee of the Soviet mission to the UN in New York had just walked out one day and stopped in at FBI headquarters and said he wanted to defect. He claimed to be KGB. Of course, the CIA got into it right away, and of course they leaned on this guy something fierce to make sure that he wasn't a phony defector. It stirred up quite a ruckus in the Agency, so I learned, because one faction, Bissell and them in operations, thought he was genuine, and another faction, Angleton and his friends, thought he was a phony, a double agent. Anyway, the real kicker was that this joker, Gaiilov, said he knew all about Reltzin and Weinberg, and yeah they were spies, but he'd never heard anybody in the KGB mention Dick Dobbs."
"The point being," Marlene put in, "that if you thought Mr. Gaiilov was a double, then you'd expect him to try to cover for Dobbs, the master spy, but if you thought he was on the level, then Dobbs had to be innocent."
The man chuckled, a dry rustling sound. "Yep, you got it. I reckon you can figure out the rest. I called a meeting in Judge Palmer's chambers with the U.S. attorney, Paul Gerrigan, and I told him that I intended to call Armand Gaiilov as a witness. Well, when that got back to the CIA it let the skunk loose in amongst the choir. There was a great gnashing of teeth, I expect, and it must've brought the internal battle to a head. The last thing they wanted was a fella who they didn't know whether he was a spy or not getting hauled up in open court under oath to testify about Dick Dobbs. So they said they wouldn't do it, couldn't do it, for national security reasons, and I said in that case, I'd settle for a subpoena duces tecum-the transcripts of all their debriefs of Gaiilov. Well, of course, they said I couldn't have that either. Judge Palmer hemmed and hawed, and I got shouted at a good deal, and accused of being a Red communist myself, but after Palmer had stared down the barrel of the Sixth Amendment for a while, he told them they had to let Gaiilov testify. He said, 'Gentlemen, the Constitution in the instant case allows me no leeway. The witness may indeed refuse to answer on grounds of national security or prior oath, at which point I will make a determination as to whether such refusal is justified, but there can be no prior bar to Mr. Dobbs's right to call whomsoever he will to his defense.' "
"And the government dropped the case."
"They did."
"Very fancy," said Marlene, with sincerity.
"Why, thank you kindly, miss. I thought so myself at the time."
"Weren't you worried that he might get up on the stand and lie for the Agency and say that Dobbs was the one?"
"Oh, that was a possibility, of course. On the other hand, a good half of the CIA had staked their reputations on the idea that Gaiilov was genuine. If he lied about Dick, I would've treated him as a hostile witness, and then I'd've had reasons to call the CIA big shots up there to confirm, or try to deny, Gaiilov's original exculpation of Dick. No way they were going to open up that bag of cats. They'd've looked like a bunch of fools. And, my dear, if there's one thing the CIA can't stand, it's public embarrassment. They don't mind one bit walking out there to the wall with a blindfold and a last cigarette, but make 'em look like a horse's ass? Hell, they'd do anything on God's earth to stop that."
"Well, this has been real interesting, Mr. Blaine, and I don't want to take up any more of your time. I'd just like to ask: do you have any material you think would be useful on this project-from the case, or from your association with Mr. Dobbs? And could you give me the names of anyone who might've been familiar with the case that I could talk to?"