She nodded.
“Flak from an old case officer of Headlight’s who’d apparently been one of his first handlers back in Belgrade. Claimed all our digging around was raising hell with his old networks. Code name Thresher.”
Hearing the name created a prickly sensation in my fingertips.
“Thresher? You’re sure?”
“I wasn’t cleared to know his real identity.”
But I knew it, of course. Breece Preston. Dad had mentioned that Preston and Lemaster might have worked together early on, but he hadn’t known the nature of their relationship, or that the location was Belgrade.
Or had he? Those previous gaps in his knowledge now seemed dubious in light of the news about the fudged polygraph.
“Are you all right?” Humphries was peering at me in apparent concern.
“I’m fine. Just trying to keep everything straight. So, this flap with Thresher?”
“Yes. It made us more cautious than ever. Even if we’d been able to build a better case, I’m not sure how aggressively we could have pushed it.”
“So the whole thing just went away?”
“You have to realize that by then Jim was on the verge of self-destruction, and Lemaster was starting to publish his books. In seventy-four they forced Jim out. A month later Lemaster quit. Just as well, because as soon as Jim left the division quietly began calling in our field men. Blinker, then Taillight. Even if we’d been inclined to open things back up, there was no longer a pressing operational reason to do so.”
She seemed almost ready to conclude, so I asked about some of the particulars of Vladimir’s old memos while I still had the chance.
“What did you know about source Leo, or code name Oleg?”
“KGB men. Leo was one of Oleg’s travelers. Prague, mostly. A waste of time, usually. When he wasn’t whoring he was usually drunk. Oleg sat back on his throne in Moscow and moved pieces across the board. Some people thought he was their Jim Angleton, hunting moles. Others were convinced he was running them.”
“Did you ever come across the names Karloff, Fishwife, or Woodman?”
She furrowed her brow.
“No. Never.”
“What about a source Glinka?”
“That rings a bell.” She paused, gazing off into the corner again. “Yes. From the early seventies. His name showed up in a single report, an intercept out of Leipzig. He was after someone named Pericles, who some of the boys on the Soviet desk were convinced for a while was a possible American mole.”
“Pericles?”
“Jim dismissed it as rubbish. Not that it was much to begin with.”
“Why did he dismiss it?”
“Why do you think? Because the only one of our own sources who ever mentioned the name was Nosenko. If there was anything more to it, then I never heard.”
“So, after Angleton was gone, no more civil war?”
“Peaceful coexistence. And that’s probably how things would have remained if not for that damned interview Lemaster gave in eighty-four. Some scribbler in Washington with an ax to grind.”
This certainly explained at least one reason my handler hadn’t told her my real name. That plus Dad’s possible role. She obviously had nothing but disdain for the Fourth Estate, and for William Cage in particular.
“I’ve seen that piece,” I said. “The one where Lemaster said he’d considered working for the other side?”
She nodded.
“It was like he was teasing us, telling us we’d missed our chance and would never catch him now. I always wondered what Jim made of it, but by then his health was failing, and by all accounts he still believed deeply that Nosenko was a plant. Then he died, of course. May of eighty-seven. I did hear something strange at his funeral. When the Agency went to clean out his house they found a signed copy of Lemaster’s mole novel, The Double Game. ”
“Is that really so surprising?”
“That’s not the odd part. Apparently Jim had scribbled all through it. Page after page, marked and annotated, with tabs and Post-its. Just like he would have done with a field report. Nutty, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Unless he knew how to read between the lines better than the rest of us.”
“So you think he was guilty. Headlight, I mean.”
“I used to. Now? Some nights when I go back over everything in my head it never seems quite as damning. A few points of intersection on a map. Some unexplained coincidence. A source who was probably too good to true. There was always something missing, and I could never decide what. And even if Nijinsky was a bad egg, I suppose Headlight could have been played as much as the rest of us.”
“A victim of his own ambition?”
“Something like that. What finally prompted the reopening of this case, can you tell me? I have my own theory, of course. That damn funeral had to be part of it. An ill wind from start to finish, and a ghost in every corner.” The Nethercutt funeral, no doubt, although I didn’t dare mention that I’d been there. “But beyond that, what can you tell me?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Yes. Thought you’d say that.”
Then she nodded as if I’d passed a security test, little suspecting that I wanted to know the answer more than she did.
26
Valerie Humphries rose from her chair, signaling that our interview was over.
“I’d better page your friend in from the barn.”
She moved stiffly after all that time sitting down, and led me to an alcove near the entrance where there was an intercom with buttons for each outbuilding. She pressed one and leaned toward the panel.
“This is the all-clear, my dear. He’s yours again.”
We waited a few seconds for Litzi’s response. She sounded out of breath.
“Someone just walked past the window out here.”
“Oh, dear. How long ago?”
“A minute, maybe two.”
Humphries seemed unnaturally calm. Both of them did, judging from Litzi’s even tone. Hardly what you’d expect from a pair of glorified librarians with a stalker in their midst, out in the dark and the rain. I pushed the button to speak.
“I’m coming out there.”
“Relax, dear.” Humphries said. “We’ll both go. I have a twelve-gauge, already loaded.”
She opened a closet and indeed hauled out a shotgun.
“Grab that rain slicker. It was my husband’s. A little short, but it will have to do. I’ll take this old trench coat. Now how damn cliche is that?”
“You, uh, trained at the Farm, too?”
“Of course. Just because I ended up in records doesn’t mean I wasn’t properly prepared for anything.”
She pressed the intercom button.
“Help is on its way, dear. Stay with the horses.”
“Okay.”
Humphries handed me a flashlight the size of a large salami.
“If anything moves, put the beam right in his face. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The rain hit us like a stiff wind, pelting our faces. Humphries locked the door behind us and kept the gun
