“Have you ever uncovered a leak, Robert?”
“Yes. Two. Both way back. They were picked up in hours. The NSA employee concerned has spent the last two years manning a dish aerial on some lonely rock in the Pacific, and the guy who suborned him never quite worked out how his company went bust inside six months. In the second case we intercepted the whole deal at an early stage and the information passed on was both spurious and damaging to the company that received it. The NSA person concerned not only was dismissed without a reference but never quite understood why she was called in by the IRS to look at her tax returns for the previous eight years. It cost her seventeen thousand bucks.” He shrugged. “So that’s the picture. Cards on the table. Not even the President could ask for that stuff without authentication of grounds. It’s dynamite and we know it. OK?”
“I’ll pass it on. But I guess they’ll raise it again from time to time. Any points from you?”
Macleod smiled. “Yes. Same sort of query. Our Polish and Soviet people think you’ve been holding back on them in the last few months.”
“What grounds do they give?”
Macleod pulled out a slip of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and read it before he looked back at Shapiro.
“They say that the exchange of information shows a very obvious deterioration. Routine stuff, OK, but your usual top-level stuff has been missing. Seems they set great value on that information.”
“How great a value?”
“My impression was that they consider that that ‘special source’ material is vital.”
“They’re right in saying that. It’s dried up I’m afraid.”
“They told me that they’ve put a lot of cash and effort into supporting that operation. They’re not pleased. I need to give them a convincing explanation or I think it can mean a high-level hassle. Way above you and me. And the possible withdrawal of reciprocal information.”
“The explanation’s simple, Jake. Our man disappeared some months back. We assume that he’s in the bag.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Why weren’t we told?”
“Because we don’t know what’s happened. He may not have been picked up. He boarded a scheduled domestic flight from Warsaw to Moscow. The plane never landed at Sheremetyevo. We’ve cast around a bit but we’ve drawn a complete blank and we don’t want to indicate an interest that would blow his cover if it isn’t already blown.”
“Can I tell my people this?”
“We’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why? Don’t you trust our people?”
“We just don’t want to stir the pool. He may be in the Lubyanka but not talking. He may be dead. He may have been involved in an air-crash that they have never publicised.”
“We’ve got people in both Warsaw and Moscow who could keep their ears to the ground if they knew more.”
Shapiro shrugged but didn’t reply, and Macleod said, “Would you talk to my guys?”
“If London clear it—yes.”
Macleod pointed to the red phone on his desk. “Call ’em, Joe. I’ll leave you alone.” He smiled. “It’s auto-scrambler. And it’s not monitored.”
Shapiro talked with London for nearly an hour and it was only his suggestion that if they came clean with the CIA they might cooperate on an exchange that made London agree to him going ahead. A meeting was arranged by Macleod for the following day in Washington.
Macleod walked with Shapiro from his hotel to the meeting in the private house in Foggy Bottom. It was a modest town house on 24th Street not far from Washington Circle. There was a small, neat front-garden and a white picket fence and a paved pathway that led to the front door.
Macleod made the introductions and Shapiro noticed that he only introduced two of the three men. The third had nodded and half-smiled but had not been named or introduced.
Goldsmith and Merrick were typical of the broad spectrum of American society from which the CIA recruited its officers. Goldsmith was tall and lean and in his early fifties. He had taught history at Berkeley, specialising in the history of revolution. Merrick was in his thirties, heavily built and already showing a tendency to pudginess, but he had a sharp mind and a forceful personality. Son of a California fruit farmer he had surprised his contemporaries by his success at Yale. And surprised them even more when he was invited to join a well-established law firm in Washington. When he had successfully represented various interests of the CIA he had been recruited, not as a legal adviser, but as a clear-minded situation evaluator.
They listened attentively to Shapiro’s report on the disappearance of Phoenix. He had not been entirely candid about all the operation, particularly in its early days, and he had said nothing that would enable them or their colleagues in Warsaw to pinpoint Phoenix’s identity or official position in the Polish security service. When he finished it was Merrick who started the questions.
“This guy, Phoenix, how good was his Russian?”
“At least as good as his English. He was bi-lingual and Russian was his first language.”
“And his Polish?”
“Fluent but not perfect.”
Goldsmith said, “Have you considered that he may have gone over—defected?”
“Of course.”
“And your evaluation?”
“Unlikely to the point of not worth considering seriously.”
“And how likely is it that he would talk under pressure?”
Shapiro shrugged. “Who can tell? He had the usual training but our experience is that you can never tell until it happens. Sometimes it’s the tough macho who’s spilling the beans after ten minutes and your ivory tower intellectual who goes silent to the Gulag.”
“If you had to bet, which way would it go?”
“Not talking.”
Goldsmith looked
