The firebird affair

“Forgive what?”

“This will come out sooner or later, I’m sure, and I’d rather you hear it from me. It’s not what it sounds like.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I kind of helped arrange your Tribune assignment to Moscow.”

“You did what?”

Holz lifted his hand to stop me. “I felt you needed a Tribune cover, just in case something goes wrong. Fortunately everything went smoothly.”

I felt stupid. And angry.

I stood up and began to pace around. The suspicion forming slowly in the back of my mind now began to solidify. “Jesus Christ! You fucking invented Voronov’s disappearance! You dirty fucking son of a bitch! You knew all along where he was.”

“Not exactly,” he said forcefully. “There were rumors Voronov had disappeared and rumors can easily harden into facts. Plus the chatter. Filled with code words and names talking about a potential scientist from Russia, about money, all sorts of things. One day the chatter drops off. Abu Ali or Abu Ibrahim or Abu whatever go silent, and if they are not communicating, we can’t hone in on them. Now what do you do if you’re an analyst? You go with what you’ve got.” He smiled benignly. “Raw intelligence is like the Bible: you can pick out bits to make any argument you please.”

I returned to my seat, mulling over his last sentence. “Boy, there’s a lot of margin for error in that, isn’t there. What happens if you fuck up? Or is that when we discover how easily words can escape their meanings?”

“You learn how to live with it, pal,” Holz said. “It’s different when it comes to your political masters. In this case, the president was shitting green apples. No kidding. God knows, he easily gets rattled. So we got the president to talk to your publisher about sending you to Moscow.”

“Who the fuck is we?” I said, deciding to press on.

Holz grinned. “I only reminded my director that you personally knew Voronov, then let nature take its course.” He shrugged. “The director’s nature.”

“You’re a devious fucking bastard you are, Holz,” I said, plaintively.

Whenever I felt I was getting closer to this man, whenever I knew I was undergoing a shift in sympathies and was getting to like him and like him a lot—his alluring self-confidence, his calm, his logical mind—he’d pull some atrocious trick to make me hate him. Of course he could truthfully insist he had not pressured the director, who, as Holz said, had full access to all raw intelligence and could have concluded whatever without anyone being any the wiser. But he knew I wasn’t buying it.

Holz tried to depressurize the atmosphere by grinning. “It worked, didn’t it? You can’t say I didn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“Jesus,” I moaned, shaking my head in self-disgust; what folly to permit myself any kind feelings toward this man, I thought. What else was he holding back from me? “It’s been nice knowing you, Mac. I’m done. Hector is not going to be my white whale. I mean that.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, now that we’re so close,” Holz said. “I’ll keep my end of the bargain.”

Holz held open the front door. “One last thing.” The expression on his face reminded me of someone who in a flash sees a possible path to victory. “There’s one more thing you could do.”

“Fuck you, Holz.”

Holz paused and grimaced as if he had discarded this one things after a debate with himself. “Nah, forget it.”
55

Holz’s duplicity didn’t shock Rick at all. “He meant well, dad,” he said after I told him about my final talk with Holz.

I didn’t argue.

Rick and I began to talk more frequently that fall.

After I called him to report on my final conversation with Holz, Rick called two days later. We talked for an hour, and for once it was not about family matters. He hated the new No Child Left Behind Act, which required him to bring all his eighth-graders up to proficient levels as measured by standardized tests of the state of California.

That call was important, because it led to other calls, and pretty soon we were talking like any expectant grandfather talks to his grownup son. One time we discussed a project he had conceived together with another Costa Mesa middle school teacher named Arnie. During the summer, Rick said, he and Arnie had started writing a screenplay about a dysfunctional Orange County family.

“So what happened,” I asked.

“The stuff we got down on paper seems too contrived.”

“Oh?”

“Then we both got fascinated by your trip to Russia. I let Arnie read your long email, and he loved it. I thought it would make a great screenplay, provided you’d let me use it. We’d also change the plot to fit our needs.”

“That’s fantastic, Dad.” Rick sounded quite excited. He went on to describe possible plot adjustments: Amanda could be a freelance assassin hired by the mole to kill the hero; Joseph would head a Russian mafia family; they’d need daily shootouts in the streets.

As he talked on, I couldn’t help thinking of the time I watched baby Rick chasing pigeons in Farragut Square. Now we were talking like a father and son.

The next day, Rick emailed the latest photos of Kate. One of them was taken shortly after the pregnancy test. She smiled a wonderful smile and I understood her charm at once. This was, I said to myself, a real accomplishment. This was what I’d been waiting a long time for.

I was still on leave from the paper, although I had moved into my new office not far from Page’s. One Thursday evening after midnight, the phone rang. I was drifting over the Potomac on a small parachute to which I knew I couldn’t cling for very long when I woke up with a jerk.

“Dad,” I heard Rick’s voice. “Some bad news. Kate’s father died. He had a heart attack while flying to North Carolina for a board meeting.”

“When did it happen?”

“Kate’s mother called about an hour ago.”

“I’m very sorry. How’s Kate?”

“She’s all right, I think. But I’m worried. She’s been very close to her father. We’ll fly out to Washington in the morning. I’ll call you when I know the schedule.”

I told him that Kate and he were welcome to stay in the Rosslyn apartment with me, if that was convenient. Rick thought Kate would probably want to be near her mother. “After the funeral, I’d like to spend a couple of days with you,” he added.

Newspaper obituaries said Joe Garment suffered a heart attack while on his way to a business meeting in Charlotte. He had suffered from prostate cancer, too. But he died apparently instantly aboard an American Airlines Boeing 737 and was pronounced dead by doctors after they landed there. A 2000 photograph of Garment showed a happy man who’d just sold his investment company to a British banking conglomerate at an enormous profit. The obituaries emphasized Garment’s patriotism, his service to the country, his charitable contributions, his various directorships, and the fact that after graduating from Yale, he had volunteered for service in Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. His career in the CIA was described as distinguished, but was not reviewed in detail, the emphasis being on his business talents. The Tribune obituary said a private funeral would be held at the Arlington National Cemetery followed by a Celebration and Thanksgiving service at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church (date to be announced).

We buried Joe Garment on the slopes of the Arlington cemetery, in the shadow of General Lee’s mansion. Only family members and a few family friends attended. I qualified, I guess, as the grandfather of Beverly Garment’s expected grandchild. Rick phoned me and told me to drive to the cemetery at quarter to twelve on Wednesday.

Before going to the cemetery, I took a long walk over to Roosevelt Island. I strolled into the lush forest, all the while guilt nagging away at me. If I had never asked for Joseph’s help, his car might have never been bombed. I thought of Joseph’s wife Audrey and their daughter. Perhaps someone had phoned Audrey in Holland before the news was published in the local papers. On the other hand, I thought, I was doing what I had to do. Was my desire for revenge such a crime?

I sat on a bench for a long time, watching squirrels chase along the path and scamper up into the trees. Then I had to walk back home, put on a dark suit and a black tie.

I arrived early at Arlington National Cemetery. The black hearse and about a dozen big cars followed a few minutes later. As the relatives formed a funeral procession, I saw Rick and Kate heading toward me.

I had been slightly apprehensive about a reunion in a public place, and I could feel my pulse knocking in my ears when I saw them. I looked at him and was almost dizzy with pride. That’s my son: the handsome healthy man with lively brown eyes, curling lashes, and the strong unruly hair he had inherited from his mother; the beautiful Kate dressed in black, her black wide-brimmed hat casting a shadow over her upper face, wearing the ruby brooch that used to belong to my Emily.

Rick and I embraced without speaking a word. He stiffened slightly in surprise but allowed me to hold him longer than I’d expected and I sensed the affection that I had not heard on the phone. Without saying anything, Kate flung her arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks.

“I’m so sorry about your dad,” I whispered, holding her for a long while. I could feel the moment luxuriously expanding and I suddenly realized it was touch that met my yearning. It sealed the reconciliation. It was the touch of my pregnant daughter-in-law that reconnected me to my family, that restored the arc of life’s immortality. And I kept wondering if Rick would even know how in my love for him I needed his approval far more than he needed mine.

Rick motioned that we had to join the mourners who had already formed a funeral procession.

The ceremony was short. The minister recited haunting lines from St. Benedict:

All around me were the sounds of muffled lamentations: the coffin of dark wood with brass handles draped in the Stars and Stripes; the guard of honor; the solitary trumpet playing a lament. After it was lowered into the ground, there echoed the twenty-one gun salute honoring his Purple Heart and Bronze Star. The carefully folded flag was handed to the widow. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen.

I stood in the background, but my mind was elsewhere. I found myself thinking of Joseph and his armored Bentley. He had looked well, my rich friend Joseph; he was healthy and full of life. He also knew his enemies were lurking in the shadows. Of course it would have all been different if he’d been poor—a pointless hypothesis—and so, to move my mind off this depressing topic I thought about Garment’s life. Then my mind drifted. I teared up a bit. Not for Joe Garment, whom I barely knew. No. Looking at a sea of white tombstones, I was imagining Emily’s funeral at the Pacific View Cemetery—the funeral that I couldn’t attend—and the crest of a hill overlooking the ocean where she was put to rest years ago. My father-in-law took me to visit the gravesite later. He was leaning on me—he had prosthesis below his left knee from having stepped on a mine in Korea—as we were looking down at children running in the white foam of the breakers and at the big catamarans homing in the sunset across an ocean the color of blood.

“She’d love this spot. On a clear day, you can see the Catalina islands. You know when she was a girl, we used to sail to Catalina, your wife and I.”

57

The next day I had a call from Holz.

“Really important?”

“Yes.”

“Can you give me an idea?”

Inwardly, I rolled my eyes; after our last conversation, I thought, Holz clearly had a tin ear for the nuances of social intercourse. But I said, “Sure.”

I walked down to Connecticut Avenue, cut over on K Street, then down 17th toward the Executive Office Building whose imperial architecture reminded me of the grand Viennese public edifices built during Kaiser Franz Josef’s reign.

It was a warm October day. The trees were shedding their leaves, which had turned red and yellow. Holz waited on the steps of the Corcoran. In his herringbone blazer, blue button-down shirt, and dark gray slacks, he easily blended into the surroundings. The nation’s ranking spy, I thought, looked like a prosperous accountant or an art history professor at a small Midwestern college inspecting the art treasures of the capital. Real spies—unlike James Bond—are supposed to be inconspicuous.

We proceeded to walk toward the mall, past the stately Red Cross Building and the OAS headquarters with its flags fluttering in the wind.

We talked briefly about Joe Garment. Holz informed me that a memorial service to celebrate the life of Garment would be held at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church on Tuesday.

I said, “You two were very close, right?” Quite apart from being Holz’s deputy in Moscow, I knew that Garment had managed Holz’s investments when he went into the private sector to run a phenomenally successful hedge fund.

“Yeah.” Holz sighed miserably and his body sagged in mock surrender. For some reason, I thought the loss of friend was a burden he had to bear.

“I didn’t know him well,” I said. “But he was very good to Rick and Rick and Kate insisted I join the rest of the family at the funeral.”

“So you attended the funeral?”

“Yes.”

We waited at the corner of Constitution Avenue for the lights to change, then crossed over and continued in silence toward the Washington monument. The Capitol Dome rose in front of us.

“I didn’t tell you about the Turkish answer.”

I made an understanding grunt. “Since I didn’t hear from you, I figured the answer was negative.”

“Nah. Quite the opposite.”

Holz sighed and looked around in an instinctive gesture of caution. “A man who looked like Bogumilov served in the Soviet trade mission in Istanbul from 1975 to 1978. He used the cryptonym Rashid Ibrahimov. I’ve seen his photo and there’s no doubt whatsoever that we’re talking about the same person.”

I nodded. “Does that mean you can nail Hector?”

Holz ignored the question. He said, “I have a theory: treason is most often committed to solve immediate personal problems.” He looked in the middle distance as though he was going to tell me about a new chapter in his life.

“There was something Rashidov said that grabbed my attention, something about money not being the only motive. I listened to that portion of the tape over and over again. It must be man’s vanity. I speculated that Hector must have been passed over for promotion, that he was angry. When you’re angry you want to lash out, Rashidov had said. And then, a few months after you commit your first betrayal, you’re promoted. Rashidov said that was a hypothetical.”

“What are we talking about, Mac?”

“There are seven guys who served in Turkey in the late seventies and who were in the Moscow embassy in 1991. Three State, two Agency, and two DIA. Only one of them was due for promotion in 1977. One.” Holz paused for effect. “His promotion didn’t come in 1977; it came through six months later.”

There was a silence now.

“So you have a suspect?”

He stopped walking, bringing us to an abrupt and awkward halt.“Joe Garment.” He chewed on his lower lip. His face got red.

I confess this was a shock.

“That’s crazy!” Joe Garment was one of the toughest anti-communists I’ve ever met. Then again, there are things that reason could never hope to penetrate.

Standing there in the middle of the pavement, I thought about Rick and Kate, and my stomach clenched. The implications were beginning to sink in: Rick and Kate’s marriage, the future of my grandchild. Fortunately, I thought and felt guilty for thinking it, Garment’s heart attack came in the nick of time.

“I know it sounds preposterous, but there it is,” Holz said, his brow corrugated. “It goes to show you that we never know another person, even persons close to us.”

We resumed the walk. Holz summarized what I still thought was his theory: Garment had served in Istanbul in the mid-Seventies. He was supposed to return to Langley in the summer of 1977 and become deputy head of the Counterintelligence Division. “The promotion was blocked due to certain complications resulting from the Church Committee investigation of the Agency; the Director had to appoint another man to the job. In Garment’s file there’s a mention that he had considered quitting. But the guy who got the job didn’t work out. Garment’s promotion was announced in early 1978. By then, he had already crossed over.”

“This is sheer speculation on your part,” I said. “A hunch, Mac!”

“It’s consistent with Rashidov’s remarks.”

We were now on Jefferson Drive, heading in silence toward the Smithsonian castle. Its turrets reminded me of the happy days all those years ago when I was a Wilson Center fellow and had an office in the Smithsonian tower. Joe Garment? I rubbed my eyes with my hands, as if trying to awake from a nightmare. This could not be happening.

I said, pointing my finger at him, “You told me Joe Garment had passed many polygraph tests!”

He nodded—yes, then shook his head. “As my former director used to say, any crook can pass a lie detector with a couple of Valium tablets and a sphincter muscle trick. We were all blind. Look: in 1979, Joe bought a large farm with a big dilapidated house in Middleburg for half a million. No mortgage, pal. Nobody paid any attention because the place was unlivable. After he retired from the Agency, he poured money into it and turned it into today’s Walden House.”

“He became rich after he retired,” I said.

“I know. He handled my money. He became a millionaire during the dot-com boom. Made me some money with his hedge fund. You know, he did a few things for us after he retired.” Some very delicate missions, Holz explained, like making payments to agency clients overseas: a defense minister, trade union executives, newspaper publishers, parliamentarians. Not being formally affiliated with the US government, Garment could pretend to be one of those public-spirited businessmen interested in matters of collective security.

“We frequently met for lunch at the Metropolitan Club and the thought never crossed my mind that he was the third man. Which goes to show that it’s impossible to know another man; it’s hard enough knowing yourself.”

“We’ll never know for sure,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” Holz said cryptically. “People in my business know a lot of quick and painless ways to die.”

Startled, I said: “What’s that supposed to mean?” But before finishing the sentence, I knew in a flash what it meant. I saw everything with a new clarity. Joe Garment had taken his own life.

Holz said, “We have pills that make it look as though one’s suffered a massive heart attack. Instant, painless death, for use in emergencies, of course. This was Joe’s emergency.”

“You mean you had proof positive that he was the third man?” I stopped and waited for his answer.

He shook his head. “No. At first it was only a hunch. Then I played a subtle trick on him. Everything depended on his state of mind.”

“But why would he commit suicide?”

“He thought I’d caught him red-handed.” His voice was low. “Which I did --- only after he became convinced that was the case.”

“And then you let him off the hook?”

“Well, not really.”

“When did you start suspecting Garment?”

He waited for a moment before replying. “The first time we met in the Oakton safe house. While you were talking about your meeting Rashidov.” Holz looked around. “What do you say about a light lunch? Are you hungry?”

“There’s a café in the underground passage linking the old National Gallery with the new wing.”

“Fine.”

We took the steps down to the underground passage.

“You said you caught him red-handed,” I said.

We were now standing in line.

“I checked and re-checked personnel files, dates, reports. I still hoped there was a chance that I was wrong. Remember, I told you all that stuff about new fingerprint identification techniques and DNA. Our second meeting at Oakton?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling again annoyed with myself.

“That was mostly bullshit, I’m sorry to tell you.”

“Well, you certainly made it sound quite plausible,” I said.

“Yes,” he said sheepishly, as if this admission held a key to his character. “I was supposed to be convincing.”

So the FBI does not have that fantastic DNA machine, I thought. The defector doesn’t have any artifacts personally handled by Hector. Once again Holz had abused my cooperation, but you had to admire his persistence..

He smiled tolerantly.

I said, “Why, Mac?”

We were now sitting down with our bowls of clear minestrone soup and pastrami sandwiches with pickled cucumbers.

“Because I was setting Joe up,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

For a while, no one spoke. Of course, of course. My admiration vanished as I grasped what he was saying. Holz knew all along that whatever he told me would also reach Rick’s ears and through Kate eventually get to the Garments. This was, I now saw, how he gradually entrapped Joe Garment.

The realization made me feel like I’d been dropped down a very deep hole. I’d thought the Cold War was a war for souls. From Holz’s perspective, it was a war of duplicity and cunning, war in the shadows.

”The truth is that I had asked the defector to steal some items from the KGB archives, but it’s by no means certain that the stuff would be useful, you know, after so many years. That’s if he could get it out. You see, the defector who stole Robert Hanssen’s file managed to do it during that chaotic summer of 1991. It was his insurance policy, which allowed him later to collect a rather substantial reward. The file covered Hanssen’s betrayals up to 1991. Nothing after 1991, even though Hanssen continued to work for Moscow for another decade. Also, the FBI doesn’t have that fantastic new DNA machine yet, but we’re working on it.”

He returned to his soup.

“I figured if Garment was guilty, all I needed to do it rattle his cage. Human nature is remorseless.” He said the last sentence with an air of connoisseurship, as if reminding me that he was a student of human nature. He seemed quite calm, I thought, quite at peace with the world when he continued: “So, I had his phones wiretapped. Home, office, cell, everything….”

I said, “Without a court order?”

For a moment he didn’t reply. He took several spoonfuls of his soup, then began to smile, mockingly, I thought.

“It wasn’t necessary. Garment had business dealings with several Saudi and Gulf investors.”

I stared at him and shook my head. “You’re too fucking much, Mac.”

Holz started to talk about what happened and now he looked, I thought, like a top bureaucrat who knows something that nobody else does. “I counted on his professionalism. An intelligence officer—even a former intelligence officer—always wants to check out the level of threat.”