The Innocents Club

“I gather the Russians have sent forces southward through Armenia,” he said.

The deputy grimaced. “Bastards just can’t resist mixing into it, can they?”

“They’ll say they’re looking to protect the country’s soft underbelly in case the situation spills across borders.”

“That’s what they’re saying, all right. Situation’s turning into a bloody circus. The Russians, Iran, Iraq, Greece, Cyprus—all getting their knickers in a twist. And, of course, the usual charges that we’re behind everything, orchestrating the situation for our own nefarious ends.”

Tucker nodded. The truth was less tidy than anybody’s simplistic explanations would have it, but it didn’t change the fact that once again, policy wonks like Geist here had gotten themselves caught on the horns of their own short-sightedness. It had probably seemed like a good idea after the Gulf War to enforce a no-fly zone to protect Saddam Hussein’s Kurdish opponents in northern Iraq. Except now that they no longer had Baghdad to worry about, the Iraqi Kurds were free to come to the aid of their unhappy brethren living across the border in Turkey, launching a full-scale assault on the weakest link in the NATO chain.

“Kind of makes you long for the good old black hat– white hat days of the cold war, doesn’t it, Jack?”

“No kidding. Look, I gotta get back upstairs real quick. National Security Council’s meeting this afternoon, and we’re trying to come up with a position that doesn’t absolve the bloody Turks, who are anything but blameless, but doesn’t piss them off so much they take their ball and go home.” Geist laced his fingers across his flat belly and tipped his chair back on two legs. “So where are we on this Navigator business? Learn anything useful over there?”

He fixed Tucker with the dramatic, piercing stare that was infamous inside the agency for setting younger, less experienced operatives off on uncontrollable fits of stammering. The effect was lost on Tucker, who could out-glower anyone—although he did consider pointing out that the furniture in this crummy office was strictly ancient government surplus and probably not up to the physics of two-legged rocking.

He decided against it. Geist was an ambitious hotshot looking for quick glory, the first to claim credit when an operation went right, and to distance himself when one went sour. If he ended up ass-over-teakettle, it’d be nice payback for the open cynicism he’d shown when he heard that a has-been like Tucker had been handed a personal message from the Navigator.

It was no surprise that, rather than call a meeting of the small committee that had vetted Tucker’s trip to meet the Navigator, Geist had nominated himself to drop in alone for a debriefing. He was hedging his bets—still downplaying the business internally, but determined to stay on top of things in case there was any chance of a major payoff.

“We’ve got about fifteen hundred pages’ worth of what looks to be the genuine article,” Tucker said carefully. “Originals, not copies. I can do the initial examination myself. Eventually, I’ll need a couple of computer people, Russian-language capable, to log it all in and create a secure database I can cross-reference and run against our own files.”

One of Geist’s eyebrows rose. “That all? Sure you don’t want us to take one of the Crays offline and dedicate it to this little assignment?”

Tucker ignored the sarcasm. “I could do it manually, but it would take time. I get the sense we don’t have that long. There’s a reason the Navigator chose to give us these particular documents out of all the millions inside Moscow Center. Sooner we know what all’s in them, sooner we’ll know why.”

“Did he give any hint where they’re coming down on support to Iraq or the Kurds?”

Bloody Geist, right on schedule, Tucker thought. Man suffered from chronic, extreme tunnel vision, never seeing past his immediate interests.

“He never mentioned the Kurds,” he said evenly, walking a fine line between overplaying or underplaying his hand. He didn’t want anyone he couldn’t control looking over his shoulder until he knew how much damaging information was in the files.

The key, he realized as he studied the deputy’s rumpled shirt and the bags under his sleep-deprived eyes, was to reinforce the notion there was nothing here that bore on Geist’s current problem. Once Geist was satisfied of that, he’d be out the door, hurrying to put himself back at the center of the high-profile crisis du jour. Jack Geist wasn’t the type to let a little thing like a door opening into an old enemy’s inner sanctum distract him from those areas in which he felt he could shine.

Still balancing on the chair’s rear legs, Geist two-fingered the mottled yellow manila file Tucker had set apart from the others. It was a nice fake from a guy who, Tucker happened to know, didn’t read a word of Russian. A good thing, too, since the name spelled out on the spine, albeit phonetically and in Cyrillic script, was “Benjamin Bolt.”

“Have you got the slightest reason to believe there’s anything important here?” Geist inquired, flipping disdainfully through the pages.

Tucker suppressed the urge to yank the file out of his hands, but there was little chance Geist would recognize what he was looking at. Geist had come up the ranks through a series of mostly Middle East–station assignments. The Soviet collapse, combined with the recent agitation of tin-pot dictatorships like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, had fallen on his career like manna from heaven.

“I’ve done a preliminary flip-through,” he said. “It’s a mixed bag of old KGB operations—external agents, a few internal dissidents who were ‘disappeared’ into the Gulag.”

“Sounds like ancient history. KGB’s dead.”

“Not dead. Not even dying. Regimes come and go in Russia, but the security service is forever. New guys come to power, think they’ve lopped off its head, but it just grows two more. Been that way for centuries. The Navigator, more than anyone, knows that. That’s how he managed to survive as long as he did.”

“No doubt. But I think we’ve got the situation pretty much in hand these days, Frank. There’ve been a lot of changes since you were on the old Soviet desk—operations you’re not aware of, new sources we’re running over there. Hell, we’ve even got some cooperative bilateral programs going with our new Russian friends.”

Watching the deputy’s smug self-assurance, Tucker’s thoughts flashed on the Navigator sitting across from him, the dwindling bottle of vodka between them. Lifting his glass at one point, Deriabin had offered a raspy toast. “To friendship between nations. Of course,” he added, “there are no friendly intelligence agencies, are there, my friend? After all, where would we be without our enemies?”

Geist closed the manila folder. “You say these are old ops?”

“Pretty much. Doesn’t mean some of the players aren’t still in place.”

“You saying he gave us active sources? Now, why the hell would he do that?” The deputy’s voice dripped disbelief, and he pushed the file away. “I’m having a lot of trouble buying that this isn’t some whopping disinformation ploy designed to waste our time. What do you want to bet this Navigator character wants us looking the other way while his people are busy on some new scheme?”

“No argument.”

“You agree?” Geist sounded surprised.

“That this could be nothing but a bunch of irrelevant junk, manufactured to distract us for God knows what purpose? It’s possible. Unlikely, though.”

“Why unlikely?”

“Because of the source.”

“The source is Georgi goddamn Deriabin. Right? You did meet him? He’s not dead, like Moscow Station was thinking?”

“Met him face-to-face for five hours.”

“Guy’s got cheek, I’ll give him that,” Geist said, shaking his head and leaning back on his precarious perch again. “Forty years he’s worked against us, now I’m supposed to believe he wants to make nice? Give me a break.”

“I’m just telling you how I read it.”

“How you read it?”

Tucker found himself once more the object of that practiced, thousand-yard stare. Seconds ticked by, the silence broken only by the drumming of the deputy’s fingers. He had the impression he was supposed to be quaking in his boots, worrying about whether his own loyalty was suspect.

He waited it out, knowing that if Geist sniffed any hint of anxiety, he’d take the files away and either bury them or pass them over to someone else. Tucker couldn’t let that happen. He needed to maintain control. Impress Geist with the files’ potential so he’d get the time he needed, but not get him so worked up that he’d panic and set up some kind of task force.

“So, what’s the deal?” Geist said finally. “Deriabin looking to walk? Cold war glory days are over, so now he wants us to set him up in a Miami Beach mansion?”

“Nope.”

“Then what?”

What, indeed? Tucker frowned, wishing he had an easy answer. “He wants to leave a legacy, I think. I don’t know exactly what, but I can tell you this—he’s dying.”

The chair legs finally dropped to the floor. “Say what? He tell you that?”

“Yeah, but even if he hadn’t, I would’ve known. His skin’s the color of that folder there.”

The deputy’s eyes strayed back to the mottled yellow file on the desk. “No kidding.”

“Liver cancer, apparently. He says they’ve given him three months, max.”

Geist’s right hand rotated in an impatient, forward-rolling notion. “And so—?”

“I think he’s looking to settle a score before he kicks off.”