The Deceiver

the byways, taking lunch in the sun at The Bull at Bisham, whose oak beams were set before Queen Elizabeth I was born.

On his second evening, Joe Roth stopped by for a drink. For the first time he met the remarkably plain Mrs. Bailey and Clara, a gawky child of eight with straight plaits of ginger hair, eyeglasses, and buck teeth. He had never met the Bailey family before; his superior was not the sort of man one associated with bedtime stories and barbecues on the lawn. But the frostiness of Calvin Bailey seemed to have mellowed, though whether it was the fact of enjoying an extended vaca­tion among the operas, concerts, and art galleries that he so admired, or the prospect of promotion, Roth could not tell.

He wanted to tell Bailey of the strain caused by Orlov’s bombshell, but the DCI’s orders had been adamant. No one, not even Calvin Bailey, the Head of Special Projects, was to be allowed to know—yet. When the Orlov accusation had been either shown to be false, or had been justified with hard evidence, the top echelon of the officers who ran the CIA would be personally briefed by the DCI himself. Until then, silence. Questions were asked, but none answered, and cer­tainly nothing was volunteered. So Joe Roth lied.

He told Bailey the debriefing of Orlov was progressing well but at a slower pace. Naturally, the product Orlov remem­bered most clearly had already been divulged. Now it was a question of dragging smaller and smaller details from his memory. He was cooperating well, and the British were happy with him. Areas already covered were now being gone over again and again. It took time, but each recovering of an area of product brought a few more tiny details—tiny but valuable.

As Roth sipped his drink, Sam McCready turned up at the door. He had Denis Gaunt with him, and introductions were made again. Roth had to admire his British colleague’s per­formance. McCready was flawless, congratulating Bailey on a remarkable success with Orlov, and producing a menu of proposals the SIS had come up with to enhance Bailey’s visit to Britain.

Bailey was delighted with the tickets to the operas at Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. They would form the high point of the family’s twelve-day visit to London.

“And then back to the States?” asked McCready.

“No. A quick visit to Paris, Salzburg, and Vienna, then home,” said Bailey. McCready nodded. Salzburg and Vienna both had operas that were among the pinnacles of that art form anywhere in the world.

It turned into quite a jolly evening. The overweight Mrs. Bailey lumbered around dispensing drinks; Clara came to be presented before bed. She was introduced to Roth, Gaunt, and McCready, who gave her his lopsided grin. She smiled shyly. Within ten minutes he was delighting her with conjuring tricks. He took a coin from his pocket, flicked it in the air, and caught it, but when Clara forced open his clenched fist, it was gone. Then he produced the coin from her left ear. The child shrieked with delight. Mrs. Bailey beamed.

“Where did you learn that sort of thing?” asked Bailey.

“Just one of my more presentable talents,” said McCready.

Roth had watched in silence. Privately the troubled CIA agent wondered if McCready could make the allegations made by Orlov disappear with the same ease as the coin. He doubted it.

McCready caught his eye, reading his thoughts. Gently, he shook his head. Not now, Joe. Not yet. He turned his atten­tion back to the now-devoted little girl.

The three visitors left after nine o’clock. On the pavement McCready murmured to Roth, “How goes the investigation, Joe?”

“You’re full of crap,” said Roth.

“Do be careful,” said McCready. “You’re being led up the garden path. By the nose.”

“That’s what we believe of you, Sam.”

“Who’s he nailed, Joe?”

“Back off,” snapped Roth. “As of now, Minstrel is Com­pany business. Nothing to do with you.”

He turned and walked quickly away toward Grosvenor Square.

Max Kellogg sat with the DCI in the latter’s library two nights later with his files and his notes, copies of bank drafts, and photographs, and he talked.

He was tired unto death, exhausted by a workload that would and should normally have taken a team of men double the time. Dark smudges ringed his eyes.

The DCI sat on the other side of the old oak refectory table he had caused to be placed between them to carry the paper­work. The old man seemed hunched into his velvet smoking jacket. The lights shone on his bald and wrinkled head, and beneath his brows his eyes watched Kellogg and flicked over the proffered documents like those of an aged lizard.

When Kellogg had finally finished, he asked, “There can be no doubt?”

Kellogg shook his head. “Minstrel provided twenty-seven points of evidence. Twenty-six check out.”

“All circumstantial?”

“Inevitably. Except the testimony of the three bank tellers. They have made positive ID—from photographs, of course.”

“Can a man be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone?”

“Yes, sir. It is well precedented and amply documented. You do not always need a body to convict of murder.”

“No confession needed?”

“Not necessary. And almost certainly not forthcoming. This is one shrewd, skilled, tough, and very experienced operator.”

The DCI sighed. “Go home, Max. Go home to your wife. Stay silent. I’ll send for you when I need you again. Do not return to the office until I give the word. Take a break. Rest.”

He waved a hand toward the door. Max Kellogg rose and left. The old man summoned an aide and ordered a coded telegram on an “eyes only” basis to be sent to Joe Roth in London. It said simply: “Return at once. Same route. Report to me. Same place.” It was signed with the code word that would tell Roth it came directly from the DCI.

The shadows over Georgetown deepened that summer night, as did the shadows in an old man’s mind. The DCI sat alone and thought of the old days, of friends and colleagues, bright young men and women whom he had sent beyond the Atlantic wall and who had died under interrogation because of an informer, a traitor. There had been no excuses in those days, no Max Kelloggs to sift the evidence and produce an overwhelming case. And there had been no mercy in those days—not for an informer. He stared at the photo before him.

“You bastard,” he said softly, “you double-dyed traitorous bastard.”

The following day a messenger entered Sam McCready’s office at Century House and deposited a chit from the cipher room. McCready was busy; he gestured to Denis Gaunt to open it. Gaunt read it, whistled, and passed it over. It was a request from the CIA in Langley: During his vacation in Europe, Calvin Bailey was to be provided with access to no classified information.

“Orlov?” asked Gaunt.

“Gets my vote,” said McCready. “What the hell can I do to convince them?”

He made his own decision on that. He used a dead-letter drop to get a message to Keepsake, asking for a meeting without delay.

In the lunch hour McCready was informed in a routine note from Airport Watch, a division of MI-5, that Joe Roth had left London again for Boston, still using the same phony passport.

That same evening, having gained five hours crossing the Atlantic, Joe Roth sat at the refectory table at the DCI’s mansion. The Director sat opposite him, Max Kellogg to his right. The old man looked grim, Kellogg merely nervous. At his home in Alexandria he had slept for most of the twenty-four hours between his arrival there the previous evening and the telephoned summons to return to Georgetown. He had left all his documents with the Director, but they were again in front of him now.

“Begin again, Max. At the beginning. Just the way you told it to me.”

Kellogg glanced at Roth, adjusted his eyeglasses, and took a sheet from the top of the pile.

“In May 1967, Calvin Bailey was sent as a Provincial Officer, a G-12, to Vietnam. Here is the posting. He was assigned, as you see, to the Phoenix Program. You’ve heard of that, Joe.”