weapons, fighter jets, and missiles to Israel in the years from 2003 to 2007. He has been charged with four counts of conspiracy to commit espionage, including disclosing documents relating to national defense and acting as an agent of Israel.”
“So he’s in custody?”
“He was released on $300,000 bail. His passport was taken also.”
“I haven’t seen anything in the press about this.”
“So far, it’s been under wraps because of its sensitive nature. But the Agency feels that Isaacson borrowed several classified documents related to national defense from the army’s research centre between 2003 and 2007, took them to his home in New Jersey, where he would then hand over the documents to an Israeli consular official, who would photograph them in the basement. He took documents linked to modified designs for F-15 jets and several others related to nuclear weaponry. Everything was classified as ‘Restricted Data.’ The documents contained information concerning the weapons systems used by F-15 fighter jets that the United States had sold other countries.”
“Which other countries?” Alex asked.
“Well, modified F-15s have been sold to Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea.”
“So where does this come back to Michael Cerny?” Alex asked.
“Right here,” Quintero said, opening a second file. “Isaacman’s handler was someone operating in the United States under the code name of ‘Ambidextrous.’ Look at this.”
Quintero pushed forward a series of surveillance photographs taken at restaurant rest stops along the New Jersey Turnpike. He identified Isaacman in the photograph. With Isaacman was the man that the FBI had identified as “Ambidextrous.” “Recognize him?” Quintero asked.
Alex looked carefully. The man she saw looked like a younger version of Michael Cerny, from the years just before she had known him.
“I recognize him,” Alex said. “But I don’t get it. Was Cerny one of your CIA people or not?”
“Cerny worked for us as an outside contractor for many years,” he said. “He was recruited in the Czech Republic during the 1990s. In previous generations he would have been a Marxist and probably a KGB snitch. But by then there was no place for a good young Red to go, so he went into capitalism. Clever mind. Well, you had experience with him so you know. He had nothing to sell so he created his own product by spying on people. His mother was an instructor at the university in Prague, and his father was a dockworker on the Danube who hated educated people. Unofficial marriage, rocky relationship as you might imagine. The son of a dedicated teacher and an antiintellectual. Do you like that? Just think how screwed up the young man must have been.”
“I think I’ve seen examples,” Alex said.
“For the first few years he worked for us he always seemed to have an interesting bag of goods he was selling. He worked out well for many years. He had contacts all over Europe. He brought us useful snippets of gossip from embassies from Ankara to Amsterdam. Had an ear to the ground just about everywhere. So we bought a lot of what he was selling. We sent him to the FBI for a second look, and he passed their inspection too. He’d been involved in a lot of dirt, but nothing that had ever been worked against the United States. So for our purposes he was clean. Don’t take this the wrong way, but he was exactly the type of man we liked to recruit.”
“I’ll take that exactly the way you meant it,” Alex said. “And I couldn’t agree with you more.”
“Anyway, eventually Cerny expanded his range. He wanted his solo sessions. He volunteered to run operations against specific targets for us. Sometimes he even brought us the target and sold us on why we needed to hit it. He started getting expensive, but the yield was always good. Like Federov.”
“I assume that Federov might have been a target he brought to you,” Alex said. “Rather than vice versa.”
“I can’t really comment on that.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m assuming I’m correct.”
“Should I refer back to my suggestion about your being too clever?”
“If you like.”
For a moment Quintero seemed ill at ease with her assumption.
“Don’t send yourself in the wrong direction,” he said. “We had no reason to suspect there was any vendetta between Federov and Cerny.”
“After working with him for how many years?” she asked.
Quintero glanced down for a moment at his files, as if to remind himself.
“Fifteen. And again, Federov had been convicted of felonies in US courts,” Quintero said. “He was guilty of far more than we ever convicted him on. He was a tax cheat who owed the government several million dollars, and he was involved in violence in Ukraine that put US lives and interests in jeopardy. He used to run whorehouses, fake charities, and had been arrested for assaulting family members and police officers. Don’t make a case for him, Alex.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying-”
“Cerny was an Eagle Scout compared to Federov. Cerny wanted to run an operation to put Federov out of business. Cerny may not have been the most shining knight in our court, but matched against Federov, Cerny was a no-brainer. We’d make that same call a hundred times out of a hundred.”
“And perhaps that’s why the Agency is overdue for reorganization,” Alex said.
Quintero sighed. He reached again into his file-his bag of tricks. More show-and-tell. He pulled out more photographs, these in color and of recent vintage.
“When Isaacson was arrested, Cerny went missing on us,” Quintero said. “He probably was afraid he would be prosecuted as well. He may have been right, or maybe we would have been willing to let him walk if Isaacson copped a plea and took the fall. We’ll never know. But then Cerny started turning up in another operation that we were shadowing. First he was in Beirut. Then Tel Aviv. Then Cairo. And he was meeting with Russians. The man could not stay away from Russians.”
Quintero laid out more photographs, a nice set from each of the aforementioned capitals. In the photographs she saw Michael Cerny again, flanked by two men whom Quintero identified as Russians, known as Victor and Boris. Both men favored Western suits with open collars. They had a thuggish look about them. Boris was the larger of the two, and each time they were seen with Cerny they appeared to be in the midst of negotiating something.
“Our theory is that Cerny made off with a basketful of goodies to sell,” Quintero said. “And he set up to sell them to his Russian friends. We’ve intercepted a few messages. He shuttles back and forth to Cairo from somewhere else in the Middle East. His code name, ‘Ambidextrous,’ is a self-congratulatory nod to his own abilities, I’m sure.”
“Ambidextrous,” she repeated. “Wonderful.”
“He probably has the information on a series of memory sticks, which I’m sure he has copied. Our guess is that this is his retirement plan. He’ll sell to the highest bidder, but he’s starting with the Russians because he knows them. We all know that the Russians are trying to beef up their nuclear clout again, so they’d be prime customers for anything Cerny might have stolen.” Quintero paused. “But here’s the other disturbing thing,” he added. “Cerny’s Russians have links to the Mossad.”
“Israeli intelligence?” she asked, surprised.
“That’s the way we’re reading it right now,” Quintero said. Then he pushed another file toward her.
“Sit here and read this,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m going for coffee. May I bring you some?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
She accepted the files.
“I’ll be back in half an hour,” he said. “This should give you some background.”
Quintero departed from the room. Alex broke open the seals on the set of files and began to read.
TWENTY-SIX
Alex began her journey through the hardcopy files on Michael Cerny. William Quintero had given her a selection of eighteen cases that Cerny had worked, his entire investigative file within the CIA. Cerny had brought every one of them into the Agency himself on a freelance basis.
Alex looked at the paperwork of the first case:
Case overview: Lester Chamberlain, retired from the CIA, but formerly a low-level case officer assigned to the US Embassy in Vienna. Chamberlain had a Canadian wife named Verna who liked to wander. Verna had had a brief affair with the son of a Russian diplomat during Chamberlain’s final posting to Vienna. Was it a setup? A trap?
Resolution: Michael Cerny had interviewed all the principals and determined that Verna Chamberlain had passed along low-level information overheard from her husband and gleaned from unsecured documents her husband had brought home after work. Chamberlain was allowed to retire from government, but with diminished pension.
Alex closed the file and continued to the next one.
Case overview: James Thomas Barlow, Dept. of US Treasury, assigned to Boston, (2001-2007). Barlow approached by manager of classical Hungarian music quartet and offered cash to intercede on tax collection. Barlow accepted cash bribes of $1500 and $2500. Hungarians had connections into political apparatus of governing party in Hungary.
Resolution: Barlow arrested and terminated from position with Treasury. IRS investigation continuing. (9/2009)
Alex scanned this for a moment. Nothing monumental. She moved through file after file. Cerny’s investigations were mid-level stuff, the type of thing the Agency might buy for inventory or keep on record in case it became a detail from a larger picture. Alex was looking for some such pattern to occur.
Onward she went.
She continued past four o’clock, through a take-out iced coffee. She forged ahead through several more cases. Cerny’s work seemed to be solid. But it was not until she arrived at Cerny’s penultimate case with the Agency that something startled her. It was the case that the man known as Michael Cerny had been involved in immediately before sending her to Kiev. It was a file that had recently been added to the CIA’s inventory and had been shared through British intelligence.
