The firebird affair

He continued after a long pause. “And guess what? Two days after our Oakton meeting, Garment phoned that professor at the University of Arizona I mentioned to you. The experts’ expert on fingerprinting. Then he phoned an old FBI buddy to talk about the most up-to-date information on fingerprinting and DNA.”

Holz finished his soup and set the bowl aside. “Now I was absolutely sure.”

“That’s not admissible evidence, Mac,” I said. “All circumstantial stuff, kind of cat-and-mouse game.”

Holz considered this, skewing his eyes. “I know. But we’re not dealing here with a robbery or some low-grade crime. Here you’ve got treason and an extremely clever guy. A professional intelligence officer. So I had to play a mind-fucking gambit. Get him to confess. It’s like a chess game.”

“Hell chess!” I said.

There was a gleam in his eyes. “You should know. The opponent thinks he knows what you’re going to do, and you need to come up with one wholly unexpected move that would convince him he’s trapped and heading to a certain defeat…”

“Yeah,” I said. The shimmering light from the water fountain above ground made silvery strings on the glass ceiling, and I remembered taking adolescent Rick to lunch here on Sundays, which was the only reason for him agreeing to visit the National Gallery. I loved the sound of his laughter as he ran through the underground passage.

Holz glanced around and lowered his voice. “I feel shitty. God knows I do. How do you go after a guy who’s your long-time friend?”

Holz was the last person I could imagine being overwhelmed by guilt. But I remained silent.

He sighed. “I said to myself, if he doesn’t confess immediately, I’ll turn him over to the FBI. Right away. But if he does, well…”

“So he confessed immediately.”

Holz ignored my remark. “I phoned him. I think he’d expected it. I suggested we meet at the main baseball pitch in Nottaway Park. A Little League game was under way and we watched two runners sprinting for home off a hit to empty center. The first made it easy, but there was a throw to the plate for the second. Joe whooped with the parents as the second slid safely under the tag. That’s what I call cool, he said.

“Then we walked down the hill to the soccer pitch. I told him that his game was up and I had evidence. I mentioned the phone intercepts, and he said right away, ‘Did Kate and Rick help you set me up?’ I assured him that they had no idea about my little deception. I could hear in his voice that he was relieved. I imagine that the notion of his daughter conspiring against him must have been unbearable.”

I caught bits and pieces of conversations around us. Then came the sound of faraway laughter. Holz sneaked a look at his wristwatch. We got up, placed our trays on a conveyor belt, and walked into the tunnel.

“And that was all?”

“Pretty much.” He signed.

For just a second, I thought the look on his face was one of regret.

“He asked me to give him a couple of days,” Holz went on. “The way he said it, I knew what he had in mind. It was written on his face. He looked like a ghost. Had I said no, I’m going to turn you in right now, I thought he was about to do something drastic. Honest to God, I thought he had a pill with him, or a revolver. I said, ‘Okay, but there’s a price you have to pay: I need to know a few things.’ I cleared up a few things—my last gift to the Agency.”

Holz went silent.

We came out of the east wing of the National Gallery, and sat on a stone bench facing the water fountain. Outside, the Mall was bathing in the afternoon sun, and couples were lounging on the golden slopes of the Capitol Hill where the gods hold their assemblies above the world.

I said, “And he agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I’d rather not go there,” he said emphatically.

“But you got a quid for your quo?”

“Yup.”

“Who knows? I told him we knew all about Istanbul. He didn’t seem surprised. I imagine he thought Rashidov had betrayed him.”

“So you let him off the hook,” I said, keeping my tone matter of fact.

Holz looked at me, as if gauging my reaction. “I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to give him a way out.”

Whoa? I said to myself, taken aback by his self-confidence. “How could you be sure he’d not try to escape?”

Holz smiled bitterly. “Go where? He was finished. He was dying anyway, his cancer had spread. They had operated on his prostate, but that was too late. He didn’t have much time left. Besides, this was the only way to preserve his dignity and reputation.”

Shouldn’t I feel some sort of dark relief, I wondered; after all, justice of some sort had been served. Retribution had put paid to the betrayal.

Now that the shock of Holz’s revelation had passed, the reporter in me was coming to the fore. Composing a post-mortem on an incredible tale of treason, I considered the shape of the story. It could be handled as a spot story, or a long magazine piece in Sunday’s paper. But what about Rick and Kate?

I was already going there in my mind and I wasn’t crazy about the path my mind was taking. I shook my head, as if to counter my own bleak thoughts, and turned to Holz. “What do people in the agency say?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged and mustered a lethargic smile, as if that said it all. “All we are and all we do these days is about Nine-Eleven.”

“Nothing? You must be kidding.”

“Lots of people are going to turn up for the memorial service at St. Alban’s. They’ll all praise him. ”

“You mean you didn’t tell the Agency.”

“I see no point. Do you?”

“Well—” I was mulling that one over. I hadn’t thought about such a possibility, to be honest, and was not sure what to say. So I gave him a vague nod.

“You know we’re always blamed whenever something goes wrong. They say Nine-Eleven was a massive intelligence failure even if we’d warned the president a month earlier that Bin Laden was going to attack the American homeland. That really sticks in my throat. I mean, being dragged through the mud in headlines.”

“They can say that’s no actionable intelligence, we didn’t provide a time and a place, but hell, you never get a time and a place. Have you ever heard of policy failures? No, only intelligence failures. So I bitch and moan about the Agency all the time. But I love it all the same. It’s my life. I know I sound like a boy scout now, but making Garment’s treason public would touch off another shit storm in Washington, more Agency bashing. To me, that doesn’t make much sense.” He stopped, then his tone of voice dropped quite bit. His facial grimace seemed to say that a lie can sometimes be better than the truth. “We’re an easy target—we can’t fight back openly. God knows we’re broken, but we can still do the job. I’m not going to do any damage. Loyalty, pal. In a strange way I guess I care more for my colleagues than for the institution itself.”

I was surprised by this unexpected outburst. Holz was not the kind of guy given to emotion. I said after a while, “So you didn’t tell them?”

“The main thing is that the traitor was punished.”

“So you didn’t tell them?”

“Because we’ll bury this whole goddamned affair for good.” He raised his eyebrows and gave me a meaningful nod. “You and I.”

I wanted to laugh. “You and I?”

“Yes. No one else will ever know.”

I shook my head. I had never considered this possibility either, and I didn’t know quite how to manage it. A thought struck me: all my life I’ve lived with the illusion that I made the most important decisions in my life—when in fact such calls were made for me by other people, or by circumstances.

“You’re one crazy son of a bitch, Mac!” I said.

“I ‘m sure you agree with me,” he said. The restraint anger in his voice was unsettling.

Now we were waiting for the lights to turn green to cross Constitution with its magnificent government buildings stretching as far as eye could see, their massiveness, their fixity and accumulated robustness shouting their imperial mission to the world. Holz‘s limo was at the corner of Pennsylvania, its emergency lights flashing, and I wondered how the driver knew where to pick him up and when.

I said, “What makes you so sure?”

“You don’t want Rick’s child to have a traitor for a grandfather, do you? You’ve also got to consider Rick and Kate.”

“C’mon Mac!”

“Do you think their relationship would survive?”

We crossed the street in silence. Knowing all this was like dying—dying slowly as the truth sank in and spread like an infection. I tried to imagine what Kate would do if she knew the truth, and the thought sent shivers down my spine. Holz was probably right, I thought. Who’s going to tell Kate that her father was a Russian spy? Good God. I couldn’t do it. And Rick? I shuddered at the thought. That could be the end. Kate would take it, I suspect, as a double betrayal—betrayed by her dad but also by me for having helped expose him.

“Just so we’re clear about it,” Holz said in a tone of tautly reined anger. “In case you’re tempted to write something, I’ll categorically dismiss everything you produce as work of an overwrought and sick imagination.”

I believed him.

His voice slipped back into neutral. “Needless to say, the Agency would go apeshit. Everybody would believe you’d invented the whole thing. We’d make you pay. We have our ways, you know!”

“Why are you talking bullshit, Mac? You know damn well I’ll not write it.”

“I know you won’t, but just in case.” He signaled the driver. “Can we take you somewhere?”

“No thanks,” I said and looked around at the empty grandeur of imperial Washington. “I need air. I want to walk.”

The limo halted in front of Holz. “I’m officially retiring a week from Monday. It’s all set. Jane is already down in Virginia Beach. Arguing with the contractors. We’re building a new house. You must come down to visit.”

“Sure.”

I exploded. “Oh God, Mac, you’re a damned liar! You said…”

He interrupted, “I didn’t lie to you.”

“You told me…”

“You’d asked me if I’d sent her to Moscow to spy on you. Wasn’t that your question, eh? And I said no, and that’s the truth. She was sent to Moscow by the science division.”

“Fuck that shit! It all depends what is is, eh?” Suddenly everything about the man rubbed violently against the exposed nerve endings of my nervous system.

“Listen up,” Holz said, resuming his normal, sterile tone. “There’re a few things you may not know.”

“Lots of things I don’t know.”

“Before she left Moscow, she turned in her resignation. My hunch is that that had something to do with you. She must have discovered her conscience at the bottom of her suitcase.”

He climbed into the limo, and rolled down the window.

“Before I forget, I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s the address and phone number. She’ll be there after October 25.”

I held the paper in my hand without looking at it. Did he suspect, I wondered, the lascivious proposals of my imagination, the seductions that I put together at night from my memory of Amanda’s supple body, or of the touch of her hands.

“For whatever it’s worth.” Holz kept raising his hands as if aping Tom Hanks in the movie Big. “My informants tell me that she’s inquired about you. But then again, as you’d say, the CIA is not the most reliable of sources.”

58

The celebration and thanksgiving for the life of Joseph Eliot Garment was held at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, next to the National Cathedral. Outside the church, black limousines lined Wisconsin Avenue; the overflow limos took positions on 36^th Place and outside the Greek cathedral on Garfield.

Two former CIA directors, a retired Virginia senator, two current cabinet members, a hedge fund grandee who spoke with a German accent that gave a sense of profound wisdom to even the most banal of his observations, several former and current ambassadors, a right-wing columnist who started out as a speech writer for Nixon, and members of Washington’s non-elected patrician elite. I knew that Holz must be somewhere in the crowd, but I had been unable to spot him.

We all rose and sang, Now the day is over.

The first lesson was read by Timothy Metcalf, Garment’s long-time friend and former deputy attorney general. He intoned lines from Lamentations:

This was followed by Psalm 121, led by Kate: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hill from whence cometh my help. She managed to keep her emotions bottled up as she read.

Chris read Psalm 15: Lord, who shall abide in the tabernacle? Who shall dwell in the holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.

Remembrances were full of usual effusiveness, the speakers stressing Joe Garment’s patriotism, generosity, and humility. Then we stood up again and sang, My eyes have seen the glory. This was followed by the commendation, the blessing by the Reverend Charles Eklund, and the dismissal.

When it was all done, the organist lustily struck BiltonHilton

eethoven’s Ode to Joy and the mourners walked a short distance to the reception hall

Outside, red and yellow leaves were twisting in the air.

I spotted Holz in the reception hall. He was standing in the line of mourners waiting to extend condolences to the bereaved widow. Meanwhile, the waiters were serving drinks and canapés, and after a decent interval, the grim tone of the gathering was supplanted by a cocktail party atmosphere. The crowd included people who called themselves analysts and strategists, and heads of institutes funded mainly by different parts of the military industrial complex; they exchanged the latest rumors about the evenings at the White House, who was up and who was down at the State Department and various parts of the Pentagon, and other personnel matters. This made me realize I no longer enjoyed standing for long periods surrounded by too many unfamiliar faces.

I moved to the fringe of the party when I saw a familiar face. “Todd darling,” Maggie Dobbs waved enthusiastically. Then she took my hands into hers and brushed her hair against my cheek.

Deftly, I grabbed two glasses of white wine from a passing waiter and presented one to her. “You look fabulous, as usual,” I flattered her, looking over her silky black outfit. I was relieved that she didn’t say anything inane about the death of Garment or pretend to sorrow for him. Instead she leaned in close to me, her scent filling my lungs, and whispered: “I hear you’ve been appointed new ombudsman.”

“It’s not yet official,” I said.

“My sources tell me it’s a done deal,” she said, fixing me with her big brown eyes. She paused and then hoisted her glass. “Here’s to you.”

We clinked glasses.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Let’s have lunch.”

“Yes, sure,” I said.

I glanced around and saw Rick motioning me to join him and Kate. “I have to go,” I said as I moved away. I saw her blink, then recover with a puzzled smile.

59
“You’re coming home with me after this?” I asked Rick and Kate after the reception.

“Rick will go with you,” Kate said. “I’m going to stay with my mother for a few days. She needs me now.”

Rick said, “Kate’ll join us next week.”

Rick had become such a likeable young man, I thought, wanting to embrace him. But it was a strange feeling to find myself alone with him. I feared an intimate exchange. It had been much easier to show parts of my hidden life in emails; it was like picking thoughts off the top of my head and casting them into the electronic universe without the benefit of mature deliberation. Now I had to tell him about Joe Garment’s secret life. Or did I? I tried to imagine the grief that Kate would feel if she were told. She didn’t have to know, I thought. As Holz would say, a person is as truthful as he can afford to be. I was sure I couldn’t afford to be untruthful with Rick. I didn’t want our new intimacy to end— I wanted it to have more life. I only had to remind myself of that most excruciating eye contact I had ever put myself through; that moment years ago had become a mnemonic for me, reminding me of the anger and the pain I’d suffered for failing to level with my son. Not this time around, I thought. Things had to be confronted head on. Right away. Tonight.

I dreaded his reaction.

As I geared up for a Serious Talk, a phone call from my friendly neighbor Lisa gave me a reprieve. She was inviting us over for drinks.

We were sitting on her balcony on a warm October afternoon. Rick and Lisa were engaged in intense conversation about his screenplay. My mind wandered. My own attitude toward the late Joe Garment was murky; I could not determine in my own mind how to measure his responsibility for the misfortunes that befell our family. Holz was right, I thought. You bring your own weather to the picnic.

All these thoughts came to me in a swirling mist of doubt as Rick was telling how he would shape my Russian narrative into a screenplay.

“The rule is,” I heard him telling Lisa, “that a writer should never include in the narrative something that has happened to him without changing it. So I’m imagining changes I’d make.” He and Arnie would have a different ending, he said; a resolution of some sort to make the viewing experience more satisfying.

“Exactly,” Lisa said enthusiastically.

Suddenly, I knew the screenplay was a bad idea. The story must remain buried for a long while. A rapid series of images raced through my mind. They all morphed into the image of Joe Garment. A few weeks ago, in fact throughout that summer, I was assuming that Hector had somehow directly contributed to Emily’s death. Now I was no longer sure. But did I need to tell Rick what had happened? “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said angrily under my breath. Of course I did.

The fact was that in the spring and summer of 1991 a group of high officials led by the KGB chairman and the defense minister had plotted to depose President Gorbachev. Their first attempt, in late May, never got off the ground; their second, in August, failed. The plotters ended up in jail. Garment evidently had a role in the first attempt—his job was linked to the doomed scheme of smuggling Professor Voronov to the United States. The professor was supposed to be the “smoking gun,” expose Gorbachev’s supposedly treasonous behind-the-scene maneuver.

Emily and I were nothing more than two insignificant pawns accidentally caught up in the great power struggle of an unraveling empire. The lives of small people can change overnight; it’s just that we see that much later. I didn’t want to burden him with this knowledge, I thought, but there was no way of avoiding it. I owed it to him. Speak your heart, I said to myself, except the heart doesn’t speak and language will have to do.

That was what I told Rick as we were sitting later that evening on my balcony and I recounted for him my last conversation with Holz. We drank port. In the distance were the two flashing red lights at the tip of the Monument. Rick’s moon-white face seemed impassive in the smoky light of the evening.

“So you agree with Holz?”

“Absolutely,” I answered.

“Bury this forever? Like it never happened?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain to me what this whole thing was about. Who was chasing you in Moscow? How did that woman die? All that stuff.”

I watched Rick’s unhappy face, as his loyalty to Kate warred with his desire to curse her father. He hesitated, then pushed himself off the chair, went in to fetch the port bottle, and I had an awful feeling that he wanted to get drunk.

“Garment was a nasty piece of work,” I said.

“That’s for sure,” he said quickly.

“Now, listen, we don’t speak ill of the dead. Tonight is the last time you and I talk about it. I mean it.”

“There goes the screenplay,” Rick said suddenly.

“Yes,” I said.

“Someone as sharp as Kate would put two and two together, I’m afraid. “

I grunted in agreement.

“I’ll tell Arnie that you wanted to keep the narrative private and I have to respect your wishes.” Something in Rick’s voice, the sadness, the determination, told me that he meant it.

“That’s okay.”

“What about Amanda,” Rick said. ”Or should I call her Joyce?”

“She resigned from the agency. Holz said his spies tell him she’d been inquiring about me. He gave me her phone number.”

“Are you going to call her?”

“I don’t know.”

The phone rang. It was past one in the morning.

“It’s Kate,” Rick said to me, then picked up the phone. “Yes, honey. Dad and I are drinking port on the balcony at looking at the DC skyline.” Rick sounded unusually cheerful. I thought he didn’t want her to sense how traumatic the last few hours had been for him, or to suspect he was keeping something secret from her. “Oh, you can’t sleep?”

Rick got up. She can’t sleep, he mouthed, going to the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

He came back ten minutes later saying Kate wanted to talk to me.

“How’s the baby,” I said.

“It’s moving. I can feel it now.”

“Fantastic!” I said. “If it’s very active, it’s a boy.”

“Who says?”

“That’s what the Chinese say. Old wives’ tales, I guess.”

“I’ll go for an ultrasound exam after we get back home.”

“Sure.”

“We’re talking.”

“Rick tells me that Amanda’s been asking about you.”

“That’s what Holz says.”

“So she was CIA after all, keeping an eye on you. Boy, that’s what I call a dream assignment.” She laughed. “But then she suddenly quit. Why do you think she quit?”

“Holz said she found her conscience at the bottom of her suitcase.”

“ I think she cares for you. She felt guilty.”

Rick moved closer to shout into the receiver, “I forgot to tell you that Holz gave Dad her phone number.”

Kate said, “How marvelous! You’ve got to call her!”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Life is a bit frantic at the moment.”

“You must, Dad.” It was the first time that she called me dad. “I hope you’ll do it.”

“We’ll see,” I said.