“Another intelligence failure?” said Farbissen. “What’s that make it, a major fuckup a year, on average?”
“One a year would be a good year,” said Senator Feigenbaum. Benford smiled.
“Nothing like that,” he said briskly. “It’s what we call a crash dive. Something quite urgent.”
“Yeah, everything you guys do is urgent,” said Farbissen.
“I’m sure you’ll be interested to know an important asset of ours in Moscow has discovered the identity of a highly placed mole in the US government, but unfortunately cannot transmit the mole’s identity due to technical difficulties. We’ve sent a case officer to Russia to exfiltrate the asset—code-named HAMMER—to report the mole’s name so we can arrest the traitor.” Benford heard Forsyth’s chair squeak, but didn’t dare look at him.
“How do you intend to get your man into Russia to meet this HAMMER?” asked the senator, calmly, no alarm on her face. “And how do you propose to spirit him out of the country?” Her decades on intel committees made her familiar with the Game, even though she despised and derogated the Agency with vigor.
“HAMMER will be among the guests at a large reception at President Putin’s Black Sea estate,” said Benford. “Gaining access will be relatively easy for our case officer, certainly easier than doing this in Moscow. Exfiltration will be accomplished by a JAVELIN aircraft, a powered stealth glider. The numerous valleys and plains in the area are more than adequate for STOL aircraft to get in and out.” The short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft was all hogwash, but it sounded good.
“And where is this Russian mole?” said Farbissen, somewhat agitated, whether from fear or congenital disdain was not apparent.
“We do not know,” said Benford. “All we know is that he has been active for some time.”
“I thought you were supposed to be some kind of legendary mole hunter,” said the senator.
“Maybe he’s lost his touch,” said Farbissen, looking at Benford. “Maybe it’s time to turn in your badge.”
From the back, Forsyth saw Benford’s hands shaking. God, what a gamble. What a choice. Deliberately setting up Nate as the ultimate bait. Not even the conspiratorial Russians would consider something so extreme to be a counterintelligence trap. Sacrificing a case officer—for instance by abandoning him behind the Iron Curtain—to save a blown agent had happened before during the Cold War, but an officer had never purposely been set up to protect a source. They both saw it; Benford’s face showed he was trading his soul to sell out Nate. Forsyth knew this was a mortal decision for Simon, one made without the possibility of redemption or exculpation. We all of us are expendable, Benford had once told Nash. Today, that included Benford’s devoir and conscience.
The same briefing was given two more times with the other candidates, each with different code names, the classic barium-enema trap. VADM Rowland was told the CIA asset Nate would contact and rescue was encrypted CHALICE. She was calm and collected at the news, bored as usual. Ambassador Vano was told the agent was encrypted CHRYSANTHEMUM, but his blank stare prompted Benford to mercifully tell him the asset was also known as FLOWER. If he is the mole, thought Benford, looking at that handsome profile powered by room-temperature IQ, the Russians must be better than we thought.
For the three CIA officers, the afternoon was an interminable bad dream, a sightless stumble through a hazy swamp, each of Benford’s compounded lies rendered more bitter by betraying Nate. Admiral Rowland once perked up at mention of the JAVELIN stealth glider, and asked technical questions about the airframe, the answers to which Benford promised to supply. He silently wondered whether Westfall could research gliders and invent a variant they could call JAVELIN. By then he hoped it wouldn’t matter.
As Benford briefed at the front of the room, Westfall leaned over to Forsyth, his own face ashen and eyes wide. “Why not tell Nash ahead of time?” he whispered. “Give him advance warning.”
Forsyth shook his head. He knew how Benford thought. “The surprise has to be genuine,” said Forsyth. “The Russians will be looking for false notes. Besides, Simon knows Nash would have gone in anyway, witting or not. He’ll figure it out in the first ten seconds and sell the deception.”
“And what happens to Nate?” whispered Westfall. He resented this fall-on-your-sword macho bullshit with these ops maniacs. To deliberately do this to Nate was beyond comprehension to Lucius.
“They’ll arrest him, interrogate him, and throw him in prison. Knock him around a little, nothing bad. I know Simon will persuade Department of Justice to offer MAGNIT and SUSAN in a swap for him. The Russians like to get their people back. Saves face. Nash’ll be home for Christmas.”
“Seems like we shouldn’t have to resort to kamikaze missions,” said Westfall, staring at the floor.
Forsyth gripped his arm. “Whichever of these esteemed candidates is MAGNIT—my money’s on that bottom-feeder Farbissen—one thing’s for sure: they will not fail to report this operation to Yasenevo, to save their own ass.”
“What about the Polish woman, Agnes?” said Westfall. “The Russians will really work her over.”
Forsyth shook his head. “You noticed Benford didn’t mention her during his briefings? The Russians won’t be expecting another ringer. Nash and Agnes will be arriving with a gaggle of new art students from Warsaw, part of the restoration crew rotation. The Russians will sniff at the students and Agnes, but with Nate in the bag they’ll have only one concern: who among the two hundred guests is the US-run mole. The cryptonym the interrogators use will tell us who MAGNIT is. HAMMER, CHALICE, or FLOWER.”
“And how do we find out which?” said Westfall. “How do we know this’ll work? Benford’s previous bait stories never got a rise out of the Russians.”
Forsyth shrugged. “Not every trap catches a bear,” he said. “The mole doesn’t report it, no one in Moscow believes it, they decide to wait before acting. Could be anything.”
“And getting the name back?”
“DIVA puts a note in the USV,” said Forsyth. Shit house of cards, thought Westfall. Selling Nate out for a name.
“Nate’s back by Christmas?” said Westfall, doubtful.
“Safe and sound,” said Forsyth. “And DIVA will start reporting the inside scoop on the SVR and the Kremlin right from her director’s desk.”
“Unless a wheel comes off,” said Westfall. Forsyth noticed the young analyst was using more operational slang. And he was also correct: unless a wheel comes off.
In Moscow, Gorelikov was busy trying to improve MAGNIT’s chances: He had set in motion two minutely subtle activniye meropriyatiya, active measures, using two agents from the stable of innumerable assets used by the Kremlin for Putin’s political-influence campaigns around the world. These were favored tactics during the Cold War to spread the communist cant. Now they were designed to sow discord among those who sought to weaken Putin’s kleptocracy. Active measures were most effective when the disinformation was woven into a macramé of truth, which effectively obfuscated the deception. The toolbox was diverse: influence elections, disparage opposition leaders, disrupt inimical allegiances, support friendly despots, circulate disinformation, leak forgeries, and, in extreme cases, use people like Iosip Blokhin to eliminate the most tenacious enemies of the State. The attempted assassination of a Polish-born Pope in 1981 who was encouraging the Solidarity movement in the Gdansk shipyards was an extreme example of an active measure.
A tame journalist named Günter Kallenberger—on Gorelikov’s payroll for decades—from the German investigative magazine Der Spiegel asked for an interview with Senator Feigenbaum’s staff chief, Rob Farbissen. Aware of Kremlin assessment data on the fatuous staffer, Kallenberger asked Farbissen if the senator became DCIA, wouldn’t Farbissen surely become executive director, or perhaps deputy director for administration? If that was the case, what changes or reforms within CIA could allied intelligence agencies expect in the coming years? It was a classic journalist’s open-ended question, in Russian a lovushka, a deadfall, a snare, designed to give Farbissen enough rope to hang himself (and his patron). The voluble Farbissen did not disappoint. He railed to Kallenberger that CIA had evolved from a postwar collection of has-been Nazi hunters to a futile and undisciplined anachronistic agency prone to intelligence failures, and unable to collect on relevant intelligence gaps. Instead, CIA spent its time and resources trying to suborn Russian code clerks in South America in what he called sex traps. The firestorm that erupted in Congress and Europe, and in the indignant editorials in RIA Novosti and TASS went on for a week, at the end of which Senator Feigenbaum withdrew her name from consideration for DCIA. Farbissen left the senator’s staff and became a lobbyist on the hill for the ACA, the American Coal Association.