when others had not.
Jeffrey fought to regain his equilibrium. He clawed his way back to the here and now. Yet still he stared at that name.
Ernst Beck. Prematurely balding, not handsome, known to be Jeffrey’s age but happily married, with twin ten-year-old boys. Son of a dairy farmer outside Munich, in Germany’s Bavarian south, where he’d grown up in good sight on a clear day of the towering snow-capped Alps. A modest man, even shy, judging from his file photo — a photo that Jeffrey kept windowed on his console screen while leading
Back in the larger conference room, Jeffrey finished a penetrating debrief from Wilson and Hodgkiss while Parker listened.
Satisfied, Hodgkiss grabbed a secure house phone and dialed an extension. He said, “Admiral Hodgkiss. It’s affirmative,” and put down the phone.
Hodgkiss stood. “From here it all gets harder with every step…. Now that we know what we know, we’re ready for the next meeting. This time, Captain Fuller, don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”
A few minutes later the foursome sat in the enclosed vestibule outside a different conference room. The vestibule itself was highly secure. An aide manning a small desk told Admiral Hodgkiss it would be a while before the meeting was ready for him and his group. Hodgkiss nodded as if he’d already expected this.
Hodgkiss and Wilson took seats on leather easy chairs in one corner and murmured together out of Jeffrey’s earshot. Jeffrey and Mr. Parker sat at opposite ends of a couch by a glass coffee table. A large and very high- ranking assemblage began to show up and go through the inner door, between two more guards. These marines wore full dress uniforms, crisply starched, not combat fatigues — and held rifles with fixed bayonets. They snapped to attention each time a dignitary passed. So did Jeffrey. Hodgkiss, Wilson, and Parker also stood.
The chief of naval operations arrived, the four-star admiral who was the most senior active-duty person in the navy. The director of naval intelligence was with him, a vice admiral, a three-star. They were trailed by aides and staffers. The admirals stopped to shake hands with Hodgkiss and Wilson and Jeffrey. It was military etiquette for a senior to always salute a junior who’d won the Medal of Honor, but the navy — unlike the army — didn’t salute indoors. The CNO and his retinue went inside.
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency got there next; he nodded at Mr. Parker and Parker nodded back — the man was Parker’s ultimate boss, yet Jeffrey sensed there was more to those nods, some sort of question and answer being passed. The DCI was a quiet man, though well-spoken, with a background in high-power Washington think tanks. The DCI’s posture was slightly stooped, yet his gaze was alert and alive; like Parker, he wore a business suit.
Then the army chief of staff went in, the four-star general who headed the active-duty army. An army one- star accompanied him, along with more aides and staff. They all ignored Jeffrey’s group, which seemed very rude behavior. The army chief of staff was known to be well practiced at being hard to read, opaque.
The director of the FBI appeared, gave Jeffrey a dirty look, and went into the conference room. The FBI man projected a thinly veiled mean streak, almost sadistic, and Jeffrey smelled trouble ahead, though he had no idea what might be brewing.
Hodgkiss and Wilson went back to talking privately in their easy chairs. To Jeffrey, judging from their stern expressions and stiff body language, the dialogue wasn’t relaxed.
On the couch, Parker slid over to Jeffrey. “That aide and the guards are cleared for anything they might overhear. That’s why they draw this duty.”
“Makes sense.”
“I am now going to brief you on something else you need to know. It will come up in this meeting and you wouldn’t want to look completely out of the loop.”
Jeffrey had to bite his tongue. “I’m listening.”
Parker spoke to Jeffrey in an undertone. His manner was condescending, impatient, as if he resented needing to fill in a tyro on something in which he possessed vast expertise. The gist was that a German in the enemy’s consulate in Istanbul wanted to defect to America. The German, assigned the code name “Peapod” by the CIA, was a bureaucrat in his country’s trade mission to Turkey. Peapod claimed to have vital information about impending dire German intentions in the Middle East, and he asked to be extracted immediately, but refused to give more details on whatever information he had.
“How did he make contact?”
“We initiated it. Through someone who works for us at a brothel.”
“Prostitute?”
Parker nodded.
“How did you know he wanted to defect?”
“We didn’t. We sometimes recruit married men by extortion, after illicit sex. We wanted more knowledge on Turkish industrial dealings with Germany. Thought we’d made a mildly useful catch, but this guy held out a whole new game plan.”
Jeffrey thought about this. “In Istanbul?”
Parker nodded again.
“Are you trying to say that Peapod originated the other items we just looked at?” Beck’s reports.
“We don’t know. That’s part of what this next meeting is about. If the subjects under discussion are in fact that closely related, Peapod has to tantalize us while being very careful to keep his HumInt contact via the prostitute, and the TOUCHSTONE Alfa SigInt transmission, looking totally separate to save his neck at his end. The Germans stationed numerous seasoned espionage men in Turkey before the war. A lot of that strength is ex- Stasi.”
“Former East German secret police?”
“Very nasty people. They’ve been rolling up our network of in-country agents as if it were child’s play. Peapod will
“How could a trade attache have all that other expertise and access?”
“His job at the consulate might be a cover for entirely different work the Germans have him doing there.”
“This is what you meant before about the Mata Hari stuff?”
Parker glanced at his watch. “We’ll see how much longer before they call us in.” He gestured at the conference-room door. “The more you know, the more you can help assess the situation…. Istanbul is a big seaport. Neutral merchant-ship crews get ashore, then soon sail away somewhere else. Good business for the legal red-light district. That’s how our agent in the brothel relays short messages from Peapod to us.”
“Microdots?”
“Too easy to detect. Peapod pays her in cash, in many small bills, with pen and pencil marks and stains in particular places in the stack to indicate particular words. The seamen in our employ get the money from her as change, and then at their next port of call they phone home, or to a friend in Russia, Yemen, wherever. Relayed on, using different people as cutouts, more phones, it gets to the U.S. roundabout, by word of mouth in cipher phrases.”
“Clever.”
“Necessary. With Germans on one border and Russia in their rear, Turkey has to make a big show of preserving her neutrality. Our operatives with diplomatic cover, when the Turks have the least suspicion they’re CIA, are expelled as personae non grata. Then Turkey refuses to accept credentials of any replacements. That’s another reason we’re so thin on the ground over there, and our agent’s comm links need to be transient sailors.”
Jeffrey thought about this unpleasantness, digesting it.
Zeno was a German code name intercepted by the Allies. The fact that the U.S. even know of that name was top secret. And Peapod was the CIA’s internal code name for a German who wanted to defect. The name Peapod,
