said quietly. “They recruited Hawthorne.”
“We tried,” said Captain Henry Stevens, chief of naval intelligence. There was no apology in his sharp reply as he braced his lean fifty-year-old body in the chair as if conveying a sense of physical superiority over the obese DCI. “Hawthorne was a dupe of the first rank and never accepted the fact. In plain words, he was a goddamned fool and wouldn’t believe us when we presented him with irrefutable proof.”
“That his Swedish wife was an agent, or at least a paid informer, for the Soviets?”
“Precisely.”
“Whose proof?”
“Ours. Meticulously documented.”
“By whom?”
“On-scene sources; they confirmed it to a man.”
“In Amsterdam,” said Gillette, no question in his statement.
“Yes.”
“I read your file.”
“Then you saw how indisputable the data was. The woman was under constant surveillance—Christ, married two months after their meeting to a ranking undercover officer of naval intelligence—and seen,
photographed
,going into the rear entrance of the Soviet embassy at night on eleven different occasions! What else do you need?”
“Cross-checking comes to mind. With us, perhaps.”
“Covert operations computers do that.”
“Not always, and if you don’t know that, you should be demoted to seaman.”
“I don’t have to take that from you, civilian.”
“You’d better take it from me—from someone who has a regard for your other accomplishments—or you might find yourself in a courtroom, both civilian and military. That is, if you survived twenty-four hours after Hawthorne learned the truth.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve read
our
file on Hawthorne’s wife.”
“So?”
“You spread the word and had every asset in your Amsterdam orbit swear under N.I. Code Twelve—severe anonymity—that Hawthorne’s wife, an interpreter with full clearance, was working for Moscow. Each was instilled with the exact words right down the line. ‘Ingrid Hawthorne is a traitor to NATO; she makes constant contact with the Soviets.’ It was all like a broken record playing the same phrase over and over again.” “It was true!”
“It was false, Captain. She was working for us.” “You’re out of your mind—I don’t believe you!” “Read our file.… As I piece it together, so your hands would appear clean, you passed another lie that happened to be the truth, a fatal truth. You sent word through a selected asset with KGB internals that Mrs. Hawthorne was a double agent, that her marriage was real, not a ceremony of convenience, as the Soviets believed it was. They eliminated her and dumped her body in the Heren Canal. We lost an extraordinary penetration and Hawthorne lost a wife.”
“Oh, my God!” Stevens writhed in his chair, his body jerking nervously back and forth between the arms.“Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us?” Then abruptly, he stopped, his eyes riveted on the director. “Wait a minute! If what you say is true, why didn’t she ever tell Hawthorne?”
“We can only speculate. They were in the same business; she knew about him, but he didn’t know about her. If he had, he would have forced her to stop, obviously knowing the risks.”
“How could she
not
tell him?” “Scandinavian sangfroid, perhaps. Watch their tennis players. She couldn’t stop, you see. Her father died in a Siberian gulag as an anti-Soviet activist captured in Riga when she was quite young. She changed her name, built her own dossier, learned fluent Russian as well as French and English, and went to work for us in The Hague.”
“We had none of that in our records!”
“You could have had it if you’d picked up a telephone before making decisions. She was logged out of the system.”
“Bullshit! Who the hell can trust
anybody
?”
“Maybe that’s why I’m here, young man,” said Gillette, his narrow, flesh-encased eyes conveying equal parts contempt and understanding. “I’m a pretty
“We tried,” said Captain Henry Stevens, chief of naval intelligence. There was no apology in his sharp reply as he braced his lean fifty-year-old body in the chair as if conveying a sense of physical superiority over the obese DCI. “Hawthorne was a dupe of the first rank and never accepted the fact. In plain words, he was a goddamned fool and wouldn’t believe us when we presented him with irrefutable proof.”
“That his Swedish wife was an agent, or at least a paid informer, for the Soviets?”
“Precisely.”
“Whose proof?”
“Ours. Meticulously documented.”
“By whom?”
“On-scene sources; they confirmed it to a man.”
“In Amsterdam,” said Gillette, no question in his statement.
“Yes.”
“I read your file.”
“Then you saw how indisputable the data was. The woman was under constant surveillance—Christ, married two months after their meeting to a ranking undercover officer of naval intelligence—and seen,
photographed
,going into the rear entrance of the Soviet embassy at night on eleven different occasions! What else do you need?”
“Cross-checking comes to mind. With us, perhaps.”
“Covert operations computers do that.”
“Not always, and if you don’t know that, you should be demoted to seaman.”
“I don’t have to take that from you, civilian.”
“You’d better take it from me—from someone who has a regard for your other accomplishments—or you might find yourself in a courtroom, both civilian and military. That is, if you survived twenty-four hours after Hawthorne learned the truth.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve read
our
file on Hawthorne’s wife.”
“So?”
“You spread the word and had every asset in your Amsterdam orbit swear under N.I. Code Twelve—severe anonymity—that Hawthorne’s wife, an interpreter with full clearance, was working for Moscow. Each was instilled with the exact words right down the line. ‘Ingrid Hawthorne is a traitor to NATO; she makes constant contact with the Soviets.’ It was all like a broken record playing the same phrase over and over again.” “It was true!”
“It was false, Captain. She was working for us.” “You’re out of your mind—I don’t believe you!” “Read our file.… As I piece it together, so your hands would appear clean, you passed another lie that happened to be the truth, a fatal truth. You sent word through a selected asset with KGB internals that Mrs. Hawthorne was a double agent, that her marriage was real, not a ceremony of convenience, as the Soviets believed it was. They eliminated her and dumped her body in the Heren Canal. We lost an extraordinary penetration and Hawthorne lost a wife.”
“Oh, my God!” Stevens writhed in his chair, his body jerking nervously back and forth between the arms.“Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us?” Then abruptly, he stopped, his eyes riveted on the director. “Wait a minute! If what you say is true, why didn’t she ever tell Hawthorne?”
“We can only speculate. They were in the same business; she knew about him, but he didn’t know about her. If he had, he would have forced her to stop, obviously knowing the risks.”
“How could she
not
tell him?” “Scandinavian sangfroid, perhaps. Watch their tennis players. She couldn’t stop, you see. Her father died in a Siberian gulag as an anti-Soviet activist captured in Riga when she was quite young. She changed her name, built her own dossier, learned fluent Russian as well as French and English, and went to work for us in The Hague.”
“We had none of that in our records!”
“You could have had it if you’d picked up a telephone before making decisions. She was logged out of the system.”
“Bullshit! Who the hell can trust
anybody
?”
“Maybe that’s why I’m here, young man,” said Gillette, his narrow, flesh-encased eyes conveying equal parts contempt and understanding. “I’m a pretty
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