Back in the screening room, the projectionist brought in the Sat.u.r.day afternoon reels and Manny started in on them. Halfway through one reel he straightened in his seat and called, "Morris, you want to go back and run that one again." Manny leaned forward. On the screen, a man with the heavy shoulders and thick torso of a wrestler and disheveled, vaguely blond hair had joined the line boarding a Scandinavian Airline flight to Stockholm.

"Oh my G.o.d," Manny whispered. He stood up and called, "Freeze that frame and make up some prints." Turning, he hurried from the screening room.

The task force handling the ae/PINNACLE affair convened in the small office down the hall from the DD/O's shop at 5:55 P.M. Present and presiding was Bill Colby. Seated around the table were the other regulars: Ebby Ebbitt, Jack McAuliffe, Jim Angleton, and Manny Ebbitt.

Colby had been under a great deal of pressure in recent months, and looked it. At the moment he was desperately trying to shield the Company from the fallout that would inevitably accompany a Presidential impeachment or resignation. And then there was the lingering bitterness over "the family jewels." In 1973, the CIA had come under fire when it turned out that most of the people involved in the Watergate break-in had CIA ties. When Congress began breathing down the CIA's neck, Colby, then DD/0, had drafted an order instructing CIA employees to report any Company activities that might be "outside the legislative charter of this agency." The result was a 693-page single-s.p.a.ced brief, which Colby had eventually turned over to Congress. He was convinced that letting out what he called the "bad" secrets would protect the "good" ones-the ident.i.ty of agents and details of ongoing operations. Angleton, the most outspoken of the Directors many critics inside Langley, told anyone who would listen that Colby couldn't have done more harm to the Company if he'd been a paid Soviet agent. "What we have going for us is the generally accepted notion that we are the good guys," Angleton would say. "Wound this notion and you cripple the Company."

Now, peering wearily through his eyegla.s.ses, Colby studied the grainy photograph that the security people had printed up. "You're positive this is ae/PINNACLE?" he demanded grumpily; the last thing he needed right now was to lose the rare defector-in-place who was spying for the Company from inside the Soviet emba.s.sy compound.

"It's Kukushkin, all right," Manny a.s.sured him.

"There wasn't a Russian in sight at the airport," Jack noted. "So there is no reason to think he was being coerced into getting on the plane."

Ebby said, "I looked at the footage myself. At any point he could have b.u.t.tonholed a policeman and demanded political asylum. The fact that he didn't speaks for itself-he was going of his own free will and volition."

Angleton's listless eyes suddenly focused on the DD/0; he knew that, deep down, Elliott Ebbitt and his people were hoping ae/PINNACLE was a phony defector, which would mean Kukushkin's serials were disinformation and Leo Kritzky was innocent. "Do we know what happened to ae/PINNACLE in Stockholm, Elliott?" Angleton inquired.

Ebby pulled a deciphered cable from a file folder. It had originated with the Company's Chief of Station in Stockholm and was stamped "Top Secret and "Eyes Only." "A Russian matching ae/PINNACLE's description was in transit at Stockholm airport. He purchased two bottles of aquavit before he boarded the early evening Aeroflot flight to Moscow."

"Doesn't sound like someone who's worried about being arrested when he arrives," Colby commented.

"We have some indication that his wife, Elena Antonova, and his seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ludmilla, may have been on the regular Friday afternoon New York-Moscow Aeroflot flight," Jack said. "Two women named Zubina, apparently mother and daughter, were listed on the manifest- Zubina is Elena Antonovas maiden name. Manny is the only one who could really recognize her but he hasn't had a chance to look at the Kennedy Airport surveillance clips. The flight stopped for refueling in Stockholm and the pa.s.sengers were taken into the airport lounge for coffee and cakes. One of the waitresses there remembers seeing a short, heavy Russian woman with close-cropped hair and a thin girl, aged seven or eight. We've wired mug shots to Stockholm of Elena Antonova and Ludmilla, taken from the State Department forms filed by all foreign diplomats posted to Washington- we're waiting on confirmation now."

"a.s.suming, for a moment, that Elena Antonova and Ludmilla were on the Friday Aeroflot flight to Moscow," Ebby said, "do we have any idea what prompted them to return?"

Jack and Manny shook their heads. Angleton sucked on a cigarette, then corkscrewed it out of his mouth and said, "My people came across an item in the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaia Zvezda which could shed some light on this." Everyone stared at Angleton and he basked in the attention. "The Russian Central Asian high command announced the appointment of a Colonel General Maslov as commander of Soviet missile bases in Kazakhstan," he said. "You'll remember that Kukushkin's father-in-law, a Colonel General Zubin, held this post. The brief communique said that Maslov's predecessor had been granted sick leave. The tour of duty for area commanders of missile bases is normally five years; Colonel General Zubin's tour had twenty-two months more to run. Reading between the lines, he would have had to be pretty ill to cut short the tour and bring in a replacement."

Colby said, "So Kukushkin's wife and daughter could have been summoned back to Moscow to be at his bedside."

"The pieces fit, which means we're nibbling at the edge of something that's true," Angleton said. "If Kukushkin's wife and daughter were summoned home on the spur of the moment, he wouldn't have had time to arrange for the three of them to defect."

"And he couldn't have stopped them from going back without arousing suspicion," Manny put in.

"Why would Kukushkin himself have gone back, and on such short notice?" Colby asked.

"He sure went back in a hurry," Jack said. "He didn't wait for the regular weekly Aeroflot direct flight but took the SAS flight to Stockholm and caught a connecting flight to Moscow."

"Maybe the father-in-law bought the farm," Manny said. "Maybe Kukushkin went back for Zubin's funeral."

Angleton said, "I'll have my people who monitor Soviet newspapers keep their eyes peeled for an obit."

The phone on a side table buzzed. Ebby s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, listened for a moment, said "Thanks" and hung up. "You don't have to look through the New York surveillance reels," Ebby told his son. "The waitress in the Stockholm lounge positively identified Kukushkin's wife and daughter from photographs."

"All of which could mean ae/PINNACLE is alive and well in Moscow," Colby said. "That would be a relief."

Manny, whose loyalty to Leo Kritzky was matched by his feelings of responsibility for the defector Kukushkin, didn't look relieved. "I won't breathe easy until ae/PINNACLE's back in Washington and I can personally debrief him."

Angleton shut his eyes, as if his patience were being put to the supreme test. "What makes you think he'll return to Washington?"

"I just a.s.sumed-"

"We've noticed that the Russians tend not to fly diplomats and their families across the Atlantic if they have less than six months to serve on station," Angleton remarked. "It's surely connected to budgetary considerations; when it comes to money the KGB has the same problems we have. Kukushkin's tour was due to end in December, which is in five months. And don't forget that they wanted to recruit him for the KGB's new Disinformation Directorate. With his father-in-law sidelined and his tour in Washington running down, he may not be able to weasel out of the posting this time around."

Jack turned to Manny. "You set up emergency procedures for contacting him in Moscow?"

Manny nodded. "We agreed on a primary and a secondary meeting place for the second and fourth Tuesday of every month."

Colby said, "That gives us fourteen days."

Jack said, "We won't really know what the situation is until someone's talked to Kukushkin."

"I suppose we ought to alert one of our people in Moscow," Colby said.

Angleton came awake again. "At ae/PINNACLE's last debriefing, he warned us that the KGB had started coating the shoes of American diplomats with a scent that trained dogs can follow. Which means that our people are tracked when they service dead drops. We'd be running the risk of blowing Kukushkin if we sent one of our emba.s.sy-based officers to the rendezvous."

Jack agreed. "Whoever contacts Kukushkin ought to come in from the outside. It should be a one-shot deal. He should come in and meet him and go out again."

Manny and his father exchanged looks. Ebby smiled and nodded; his son had matured into a seasoned CIA officer during the three months that he had been handling the Kukushkin defection. Watching Manny across the table, Ebby was extremely proud of him. And he knew what Manny was going to suggest before he opened his mouth.

"It has to be me," Manny declared, and he quoted something Director Colby had said at the task force s first meeting: "A friendly face is worth its weight in gold."

"I don't like it," Jack said. "The man who goes in to contact him could wind up in one of the KGB's Lubyanka dungeons."

Manny said eagerly, "My going to meet Kukushkin makes sense. Either he'll agree to work for us in Moscow or, alternatively, he may let us bring him out-either way we'll be ahead of the game."

Fidgeting uneasily, Colby glanced at Ebby. "He'd be taking one h.e.l.l of a risk."

Ebby said, "He's a consenting adult. Director, and a d.a.m.n good Soviet Division officer who happens to be fluent in Russian."

"Two weeks wouldn't give us time to work up diplomatic cover and immunity," Colby noted. "He'd have to go in naked."

Ebby said, "If we opt for sending a man in from the outside, there's a lot to be said for using someone Kukushkin knows personally, and trusts."

Colby gathered up his notes. "I'll sleep on it," he announced.

"Back up one sentence," Nellie said, her eyes squinting into the duststorm she was about to kick up. "You're going somewhere, right?"

"It's just for a week-"

"You're going somewhere for a week, but you can't take me with you and you won't tell me where you're going?"

Manny shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"You won't tell me where you're going because it's a secret?"

"That's right."

"How do I know you're not running off with another female of the species?"

"d.a.m.n it, Nellie. You're the only woman in my life."

"Is it dangerous? At least tell me that much."

Manny took her hand. "Look, Nellie, if you're going to marry into the Company there are certain thing you need to-"

"Who said anything about marrying into the Company?"

"Well, I sort of a.s.sumed, what with us more or less living together, what with incest being best, that marriage would be on the agenda."

"Marriage? To each other?"

"That's how it's usually done. I marry you and you marry me."

"You're ready to give up your apartment?"

Manny considered the question, raised his eyebrows and nodded.

c.o.c.king her very pretty head, Nellie said, "Manny, are you proposing to me?"

Manny seemed as surprised as Nellie by the turn the conversation had taken. "I suppose you could make a case that I am."

Nellie brought the flat of a hand up to her solar plexus and collapsed onto the couch. "Well, that sort of changes things," she murmured.

Manny sat down next to her. "I sure hope marriage doesn't change things," he said.

"I'm talking about your trip. I've got this theory, Manny. You need to be possessive of the things you don't possess. But once you possess them you can afford not to be possessive any more."

"I'm not positive I follow you."

Nellie leaned over and kissed Manny hard on the lips. "I accept," she announced in a throaty whisper. "I've wanted to f.u.c.k you as far back as I can remember. From p.u.b.erty onward I wanted to marry you. I never changed my mind, not even when you used to beat me up."

"I never beat you up-"

"What about the time you came back from graduate school and shoved me into a snowdrift?"

"You were throwing s...o...b..a.l.l.s at me-"

"So when's the wedding?"

"I'm leaving Friday afternoon. What's that?"

"The ninth."

"Friday, nine August. Which means I'll be back on Friday the sixteenth. We could find a justice of the peace and do the dirty deed that weekend."

Nellie, suddenly short of breath, said, "You really know how to sweep a girl off her feet." She thought a moment. "So if we're getting married a week from this weekend, that makes us engaged, right?"

"I guess it does."

"If we're actually engaged, nothing would be more natural than for y0u to tell your bride-to-be where you're going on this trip of yours." When she saw the expression on his face, she started laughing. "Don't tell me, let me guess: Company wives..."

"...don't ask..."

"...dumb questions."

Leo Kritzky experienced a surge of exaltation: He was not alone in his padded cell!

His companion was the moth that had slipped in from the bleak corridor when Jim Angleton, turning back on the threshold as he was about to leave, thought of a last question. "You have no recollection of liquor being delivered to your door from Kahn's Wine and Beverage on M Street?"

"You keep coming back to Kahns Wine and Beverage-" Leo saw the flutter of tiny wings as the moth, possibly attracted to the bulbs suspended from the ceiling, flew past Angleton's knee. For a harrowing moment he was sure Angleton would notice; noticing, he would summon the guards to hunt down the moth and squash it against the padded wall before Leo could savor the pleasure of its company. Determined not to follow the moth with his eyes lest he betray its presence, he concentrated on Angleton. "Adelle was the one who did all the ordering-in-pizza, groceries, liquor, whatever. I didn't even know where she got the liquor and I never asked. I had too many other things to worry about. And I don't remember making out any checks to Kahns Wine and Beverage."

"You were careful to make sure the orders and the checks were in your wife's maiden name so that n.o.body would stumble across the link between you and Kahns delivery boy, who turned out to be a cutout for the KGB."

With his peripheral vision, Leo saw the moth alight on the padding of the wall above the toilet bowl. He couldn't wait for Angleton to leave so he could formally welcome his visitor. "It's another a.s.sumption of yours that fits in with what you want to believe," Leo said impatiently. "The only problem is that your a.s.sumptions don't add up. Your case is circ.u.mstantial and you know it."

"My circ.u.mstantial case, as you put it, rests on incontrovertible evidence from an irrefutable witness. There's only one way out of all this for you- admit you're SASHA, then cooperate with us in undoing the damage you've done to the Company." Angleton patted his jacket pocket in search of cigarettes as he turned his back on Leo and left the room. A guard bolted the door behind him.

For several minutes Leo continued sitting on the folded blanket with his back against a wall. He suspected that Angleton would be watching him through the pinhole in the door and he didn't want to put the moth in jeopardy. After a long while he decided the coast was clear and let his eyes drift up to the moth, clinging with spread-eagled wings to the padding of the wall behind the toilet. It was by far the most beautiful creature Leo had ever set eyes on in his life. There was a elegant symmetry to the intricate purple and brown pattern on the back of the wings; a graceful sensuality to the elongated hairy undercarriage and the feathery antennas that probed, like a blind man tapping a cane, the microcosm immediately in front of its head. Leo remembered having a high school chum who collected moths. The prize in his collection, grotesquely (so it had seemed to Leo) pinned to cork under gla.s.s, had been a rare species of moth called the Sphinx of Siberia. Leo decided that his moth was every bit as exotic and could qualify as a Sphinx, too. His spirits soared-he took it as an omen, a sign that someone beyond this secret prison and outside of Angleton's immediate circle knew of his predicament and would soon slip into the cell to succor him. He raised a hand in salute to convey to his comrade that they shared not only the same cell, but the same fate.

In the hours and days that followed Leo would make his way to one side of the room or another to visit his fellow prisoner clinging with endless patience to the padded wall. He took to murmuring words of encouragement to it and listened to the message of its body language; with patience, with fort.i.tude, it seemed to be saying, they would both escape from this confinement that could no longer be described as solitary. And as if to drive home the point, from time to time the Sphinx would quit its perch and circle one of the light bulbs for minutes on end, delighting his cellmate by casting large flickering shadows onto the walls.

Angleton noticed the change in his prisoner immediately. Kritzky managed a conspiratorial smile now and then, almost as if he were concealing a delicious secret, and appeared eager to engage Angleton in verbal sparring. He even t.i.ttered out loud when the counterintelligence chief raised the possibility that Leo would die of old age in this cell if he didn't cooperate. Suspecting that one of the jailers might have befriended the prisoner, Angleton had all of the guards changed. Still, Leo's morale seemed to grow stronger by the day. "Sure, operations I had a hand in went bad," he admitted to Angleton during one morning session. "For heaven's sake, Jim, operations you had a hand in went bad, too, but n.o.body's accusing you of being a Soviet mole." Leo cast a glance in the direction of the Sphinx of Siberia and then suddenly started to laugh. Soon he was laughing so hard tears trickled from his eyes. "Maybe someone-" Laughter racked his body, laughter hurt his gut. "Maybe someone should, Jim. I mean, what a Joke it would be if James Jesus Angleton... turned out to be SASHA. Maybe you're going through the motions... oh. G.o.d, it's hilarious... going through the motions of hunting for SASHA to divert attention from yourself. Doubled over, Leo clutched his stomach and gasped for air between spasms of laughter. "Don't you see the humor of it, Jim? The joke would be on the Company, wouldn't it? Oh, Christ, the joke would be on me."

7.