Black Gambit Page 7

  They paused a few yards from the house. Sunnenden had a lot he wanted to ask but knew that unless he went inside, one of the boys would be sent out to fetch them. The discussion could come later — but there was one question he had to ask now.

  ‘How do we find this man?’

  ‘Now that,’ said Cory, beckoning the younger man to lead the way to the door, ‘really is the problem.’

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS LATE afternoon before Sunnenden and Cory were able to talk again. Around 3.30 the party started to break up. Sunnenden offered to drive Cory home, hinting to Janet that he needed to pick up some papers anyway.

  Not for the first time Janet wondered why there had been such an abrupt change in her husband’s mood. Before his return from the Middle East everything had been going well; then he had become subdued — his mood not far removed from a time months before when he had made what could have been a damaging mistake. But this time she knew of nothing. And now he had about him this preoccupied almost conspiratorial air.

  What was both strange and worrying was Sunnenden’s unwillingness to discuss it with her. One of the great strengths of their relationship was that they had always talked about everything. She also knew, as she had always known, that her husband needed her resolve to bring out that little extra bit in him. This time she had forced herself to wait for him to volunteer what was happening. She had been reluctant to ask but now, as the house emptied, she decided that later she would.

  Cory and Sunnenden made small talk in the car. Cory wanted to be in his own surroundings before continuing, and Sunnenden felt reluctant to ask questions in case the whole scheme was falling apart. They moved into the lounge and, without asking, Cory poured brandies. Then he excused himself, returning a few minutes later with a small pile of papers.

  ‘All right,’ he said, as they both sat, ‘now let’s pull the whole idea apart.’

  This was the moment in preliminary planning that every intelligence officer both loves and dreads — the moment when the idea becomes real, when it makes sense enough to discuss. The fear of course, is that it won’t stand scrutiny, that an unknown or forgotten factor will emerge and negate everything.

  ‘Before we go on, let me just make sure I’ve got the idea?’ Sunnenden put down his drink, still untouched, and held out his left hand, ticking off points on his fingers as he made them. ‘One, we send in someone who looks enough like Zorin to exchange places with him. Two, somehow they make the switch. And three, the Russian comes out using the American’s papers. Right?’

  Cory nodded. Stated baldly like that, it sounded unlikely but not ridiculous.

  ‘Okay,’ continued Sunnenden, brisk now, slipping into his role as prosecuting attorney, ‘let’s leave aside the two big ones for now — how we find this man and then how we get him out. How much like the subject would he have to look?’

  Cory sorted through the papers he had on his lap. He found the photographs he wanted and handed them to Sunnenden.

  ‘That’s your man,’ he said.

  Sunnenden put on his spectacles. He knew the face: not only was it familiar from newspapers, but he had seen a score of photographs of it since he had first been asked to prepare a brief on dissidents. These pictures, though, were different: they were taken from different angles, different distances. In facial close-ups virtually every pore showed.

  ‘Taken during an ordinary press conference photosession,’ explained Cory. ‘Fairly routine for someone like that if you’ve access and a friendly newspaper photographer around.’ He did not add that in the early days of Zorin’s civil rights agitation the CIA had investigated the possibility that he might be a ‘plant’. He had been cleared of suspicion, but the files remained. ‘They’re two years old, but good enough for our purpose initially.’

  Cory handed over a sheet of paper. ‘You only need glance at it, but those are your man’s statistics as up to date as I could get them.’

  Sunnenden took in the main ones: height, 5ft 11in; weight 171 pounds; hair dark, beard flecked with grey; eyes blue-grey …

  ‘All right,’ Cory went on, ‘we have to take the chance that our American — let’s call him Smith — is not going to be picked up while he’s pretending to be Zorin. If he is, he’s just dead. What we need then is someone who up to a few feet away outside, dressed up, looks and moves enough like him.

  ‘We need someone of the right height and build. That’s the basic. It would be nice if we got things like the eyes right, but we can use contact lenses if we have to. The complexion can be fixed, and Zorin’s got this lovely beard …’

  Cory produced a sketchpad from his pile of papers. ‘Now look at this.’ He left Sunnenden staring at the first page while he poured more brandy. On the page were two pen drawings, both of faces full-on. The one on the right was obviously Zorin. Cory handed Sunnenden the replenished glass and swirled his own. ‘As you see,’ he said, ‘Zorin on the right. The one on the left is Mr Smith.’

  The sketch of Zorin was faithful, but drawn in the style of a cartoon — picking out the main features of the Russian’s face. The other drawing consisted of no more than the outline of the head, a nose the same shape as Zorin’s, the shape of cheekbones, eyes, mouth, and ears.

  ‘All right, turn it over.’

  Sunnenden turned the page. The next pair of drawings was identical except that Smith’s hair had been cut and shaded darker.

  In the next pair Smith had a beard. Gradually the two pictures became the same.

  ‘Keep turning.’

  ‘It looks all right.’ Sunnenden looked cautiously up. ‘But we’re back to finding the right man.’

  ‘Right. But we need less than you’d suppose. I went to see an old contact in New York, someone who used to be out on the Coast with Disney. He’s a makeup man the Company uses from time to time. He’s retired now. An old timer like me.’ Cory smiled.

  While talking, Cory had been riffling through the papers. He found the sheet he wanted.

  ‘These are the essentials. He needs to be about the right height — it doesn’t matter if he’s a bit smaller, we can build him up. Same with the weight, though here he could be heavier and we could slim him down. Fortunately the beard disguises some of the things that could be a problem — like the chin. The nose is pretty important, but a bit can be done to pad it out. Zorin’s ears are fairly normal. He’s got a prominent gold tooth that shows, but we could get a dentist to work on Smith; he wouldn’t even have to know what it was about. Given a few things, we can add the rest ourselves.’

  ‘What about the language?’

  ‘Ideally, yes. I’d like it. I guess it might work without it, but I’d be extra nervous. One important thing we’ve got going for us is that Zorin’s got good English and like a lot of those academics speaks it with an American accent of sorts.’

  ‘All right,’ said Sunnenden. ‘Let’s suppose for now that Smith can be turned into Zorin. Won’t we need experts out there to do it after he arrives?’

  ‘That worried me. But my New York contact reckons it could be done quickly and easily on the spot by Smith himself. We would have to prepare Smith’s change as much as we could in advance.’

  He leaned over Sunnenden’s hair and turned the pages of the sketchpad until he came to the picture he wanted.

  ‘Take the gold tooth,’ he said. ‘That’s obviously taken care of. But we don’t want Smith going into Moscow with it showing all over the place, so its loosely capped. It can be fixed to be just yanked off. Smith would have to be careful biting while he’d got it on, but that’s all.

  ‘Same with the hair. New York figures dye and cut it here and send Smith in with a wig over it. Then all he needs do is take off the wig.’

  It was dark outside, and Cory walked across to the window to work the drapes. Then, as though sensing Sunnenden’s scepticism, he added, ‘It sounds a little crazy, I know, but the more I’ve thought about turning Smith into Zorin the less mad it seems.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve
got to change Zorin into Smith too.’ It was strange: until that moment he had not thought of this part of the problem.

  Cory smiled. He had obviously been waiting with relish for this question.

  ‘Example,’ he said. ‘Smith goes in wearing a wig to disguise the fact that he’s had his hair cut and dyed to look like Zorin’s. Question: What does Zorin do to look like Smith when the moment comes?’

  ‘He puts on an identical wig.’

  ‘Right. And if Smith takes off a white cap to expose a gold tooth, what does Zorin do to hide his?’

  Sunnenden was smiling now. ‘Your New York man thinks it could work?’

  ‘He does. We can repeat these things right across the board. Give Smith glasses, he takes them off when he wants to start transforming himselt into Zorin, Zorin puts on a pair …

  ‘My New York contact says we can have one other thing going for us. We give Smith a few characteristics that Zorin can adopt when the time comes. When most men look at other people they focus in on one thing. Zorin’s got his beard. We might give Smith a scar, or a funny way of walking. A limp would be an easy one. Something Zorin could adopt quickly and people would notice.’

  A grandfather clock in the hallway began to chime. ‘Six,’ said Cory. ‘I don’t want to get rid of you, but perhaps you shouldn’t leave Janet much longer.’ He paused to see if there was a reaction. There was not. ‘You haven’t said anything to her?’

  ‘No, I wondered whether I should, but decided against it.’

  ‘She knows something is happening?’ Cory had sensed it at brunch. ‘I would tell her something — not the truth, but something that sounds convincing. It will make life easier for both of you. You’ve got yourself into a business where you’ll find that the odd lie makes life bearable.’ He stared down at his glass and Sunnenden got the feeling that the older man was remembering something quite specific.

  The meeting finished soon after that. They agreed that the next step was for Cory to find the right man.

  Only after Sunnenden had gone did Cory realize just how tired he was. Almost too tired to eat, he thought. The week’s newspapers and magazines were still piled on a table in the hallway. He picked up a bundle and carried them to his bedroom. It was a surprisingly feminine room: patterned wallpaper, soft lighting, a double bed with a cane headboard and, by the side of the dressing table mirror, the only memento he had allowed himself to keep, a small watercolour of Sue painted by an artist friend.

  Looking at it and remembering — but just a little — was a nightly ritual.

  *

  In the morning Cory called Denton and arranged a meeting for noon.

  Like Sunnenden, Cory’s first feeling about the substitute for Zorin had been that physical characteristics were the most crucial factor. Now he realized that, although these remained important, there were other vital ones: the man’s willingness to be involved, and his ability to function under the kind of stress that he would face.

  The man could not be an intelligence officer: his capture — and that was a possibility — would be too embarrassing. At the same time, Cory could hardly approach strangers for the job. The answer, if there was one, was probably already on file.

  No one — himself included — could do anything other than guess at the number of Americans whose secrets were on file with government bodies, credit services, detective agencies, and in the records of private companies. Cory would push as many buttons as possible, getting the computers to spill out the information on anyone who satisfied his basic requirements.

  On those computerized files there would be hundreds, perhaps even thousands, who might be worthy of further checks. But in practice Cory’s actions were restricted by the way the files were organized.

  He had worked out and listed what he sought: the man’s size and age limits, race, facial characteristics. Then he added others which would make the subject even more desirable: first, knowledge of Russian, then single status …

  Five government computer files were possible sources, but he discounted three: these were the ones kept by the Treasury, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the CIA. Domestic names on the CIA’s records would be people they had used or men judged politically suspect; neither group was suitable for such an assignment into Russia. HEW’s would also cover people who were suspect politically, though only in the fields the Department covered. The Treasury files were extensive — nine sets in fact, including those of Internal Revenue Intelligence and the Secret Service. But Cory thought it unlikely he would find the man he wanted among such figures as suspected tax avoiders and potential assassins.

  The fourth was Defense, and that was a possibility. The one he favoured most was the fifth — the FBI’s. The men recorded on this computer would be known criminals. Where better to look for a man who might be persuaded to undertake such a mission — in return, of course, for money? And such a man might well have the right psychological makeup. The use of a criminal would be nothing new in the intelligence world.

  The second reason was that Cory knew someone with access to this computer: Denton, a friend since wartime. And with this, as with everything else that might be involved, Cory wanted to work at an unofficial level, using the old buddies system as much as possible.

  Denton was with the FBI’s computer system, the National Crime Information Center.

  Cory took a cab to the Justice Department. One of the young FBI men on escort duty confirmed that he was expected and took him to Denton’s office.

  Cory had not seen Denton in over a year, but they shared a friendship that did not depend on regular meetings.

  For the past year Denton’s main role at the FBI, as Cory recalled it, was selling the network to the public and the Congress, and trying to persuade both that the computer was not a foretaste of a 1984-ish America.

  Cory was ushered into Denton’s office. They shook hands and Denton smiled: a king among smiles, combining as it did genuine pleasure and his months of practice of public relations for the NCIC network.

  ‘You’ll stay around for lunch?’ asked Denton.

  ‘If you’re free, I’d love to.’

  ‘Fine. Then if it’s okay with you, I’ll launch right away into my computer spiel and save up everything I want to ask you till then.’

  Cory listened intently as Denton explained the system’s history: it was, said Denton, essentially just a huge automated file cabinet. Here in the FBI were eight of those automated files, computer storage units holding local, state and federal information on wanted persons and stolen property.

  Cory found his attention wandering: his eyes tried to take in the room without reflecting his growing boredom with what was obviously a prepared speech meant to cover everyone from visiting schoolchildren to politicans.

  He found himself wondering how Denton could tolerate the job, let alone enjoy it, as he apparently did. Denton had had a lot of field posts before returning to Washington where, at one time, it was rumoured that he was even a possibility to take over when the Old Man went. Now, to Cory’s mind, his job was no more than riding out the few years to retirement. The NCIC job was one Cory would have regarded as an insult, and to see Denton in it saddened him.

  The lecture went on: 140,000 transactions a day, six thousand terminals throughout the country in police departments and sheriffs’ offices and state police facilities …

  Denton drained his coffee, and put down his cup. Then he gave a broad smile. ‘Oh shit,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I’m giving you all this. I’m so programmed that you just say ‘tell me about NCIC’ and I give you the whole commentary.

  ‘Instead, come on,’ he said, starting to move, ‘let me show you how it works. That’s what you want.’

  It was so smoothly done that Cory wondered whether even this wasn’t rehearsed, like the singer’s reluctant encore or the good politician’s impromptu speech. Denton checked his watch as they passed through the door. It was 12.10. The tour was obviously on schedule.

  Th
e computer room was on the same floor. Cory was surprised by it after Denton’s buildup. It was much smaller scale than he had thought: he had imagined a vast complex like the control room in a Bond film. As it was there were four terminals, resembling a crossbreed of electric typewriters with news agency wire machines. Operatives sat behind only two of them. The only indication that the room was in the FBI building was the posters on the walls for the ten most wanted men.

  Denton paused by one of the manned machines and introduced Cory. Cory nodded attentively as working details were spelled out. He waited for a pause and then asked, ‘What about the CCH files?’ He hoped he had remembered the name rightly.

  He had. ‘Sure, I’d meant to talk about that next,’ said Denton. The Computerized Criminal History file had been added to the computer in November 1971, he explained. Basically it comprised the records of men and women convicted of serious crimes, either federal or in the half dozen states participating in this part of the project.

  ‘At this stage,’ Denton said in a confiding tone, ‘I’d normally explain to you why the existence of these files is a protection of people’s freedom, not a threat as some nutty radicals insist. I’d tell you that all these details were available manually before and that all we’ve done is to make them easier to use. But’ — and there was another smile — ‘I’m taking it we’re on the same side …’

  Cory was surprised to find himself responding unfavourably. The pitch was so strong that he felt himself thinking: Oh yes, and what about military, and Secret Service, and prison and postal inspection and whatever other details are filed away in your same computer? He knew from other sources that they were there. He remained silent.

  ‘Okay,’ said Denton, ‘let’s give you a run-through.’ And then, as though Cory were not present, he added, ‘Sid, can you give me a CCH?’

  ‘Sure thing, Mr Denton.’

  The operative began tapping out keys. They leaned over and watched.

  ‘This is a phoney record, one we keep for testing and demonstration,’ explained Denton. ‘Sidney is asking what they’ve got on a man whose name we don’t know but whose army number we’ve got.’