Edwards was aghast.
“Let Moscow know that Orlov is now based at Alconbury? If Langley ever finds out, there’ll be a war. Why in heaven’s name do that?”
“A test. I believe in Keepsake. I’m convinced he’s genuine. I trust him. So I think Orlov is phony. If Moscow does not react, makes no attempt to harm Orlov, that will be the proof. Even the Americans will believe that. They’ll be angry, of course, but they’ll see the logic.”
“And if by any chance they attack and kill Orlov? You’re going to be the one to tell Calvin Bailey?”
“They won’t,” said McCready. “As night follows day, they won’t.”
“By the way, he’s coming here. On vacation.”
“Who?”
“Calvin. With wife and daughter. There’s a file on your desk. I’d like the Firm to offer him some hospitality. A couple of dinners with people he’d like to meet. He’s been a good friend of Britain over the years. Least we can do.”
Glumly, McCready stumped downstairs and looked at the file. Denis Gaunt sat opposite him.
“He’s an opera buff,” said McCready, reading from the file. “I suppose we can get him tickets for Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, that sort of thing.”
“Jesus, I can’t get into Glyndebourne,” said Gaunt enviously. “There’s a seven-year waiting list.”
The magnificent country mansion in the heart of Sussex, set amid rolling lawns and containing one of the country’s finest opera houses, was and remains a most sought-after treat for any opera lover on a summer’s evening.
“You like opera?” asked McCready.
“Sure.”
“Fine. You can mother-hen Calvin and Mrs. Bailey while they’re here. Get tickets for the Garden and Glyndebourne. Use Timothy’s name. Pull rank, swing it. This miserable job must have some perks, though I’m damned if I ever get any.”
He headed for lunch. Gaunt grabbed the file.
“When’s he due?” he asked.
“In a week,” called McCready from the door. “Call him up. Tell him what you’re fixing. Ask what his favorites are. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.”
Max Kellogg shut himself inside the archives and lived there for ten days. His wife in Alexandria was told he was out of town and believed it. Kellogg had his food sent in, but he mainly survived on a diet of coffee and too many filter kings.
Two archive clerks were at his personal disposal. They knew nothing of his investigation but simply brought him the files he wanted, one after the other. Photographs were dug out of files long buried as being of little further use or relevance. Like all covert agencies, the CIA never threw anything away, however obscure or outdated; one never knew whether someday that tiny detail, that fragment of newsprint or photograph, might be needed. Many were needed now.
Halfway through his investigation, two agents were dispatched to Europe. One visited Vienna and Frankfurt; the other, Stockholm and Helsinki. Each carried identification as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration and a personal letter from the Secretary of the Treasury asking for the cooperation of a major bank in each city. Aghast at the thought that it was being used to launder drug money, each bank conferred among its directors and opened its files.
Tellers were summoned from their desks and shown a photograph. Dates and bank accounts were quoted. One teller could not remember; the other three nodded. The agents took receipt of photocopies of accounts, sums deposited, transfers made. They took away samples of signatures in a variety of names for graphology analysis back at Langley. When they had what they came for, they returned to Washington and put their trophies on the desk of Max Kellogg.
From an original group of more than twenty CIA officers who had served in Vietnam in the relevant period—and Kellogg had expanded the time frame to include a period of two years on either side of the dates quoted by Orlov—the first dozen were quickly eliminated. One by one, the others went out of the frame.
Either they were not in the right city at the right time, or they could not have divulged a certain piece of information because they never knew it, or they could not have made a certain rendezvous because they were on the other side of the world. Except one.
Before the agents arrived back from Europe, Kellogg knew he had his man. The evidence from the banks merely confirmed it. When he was ready, when he had it all, he went back to the house of the DCI in Georgetown.
Three days before he went, Calvin and Mrs. Bailey with their daughter, Clara, flew from Washington to London. Bailey loved London; in fact, he was a staunch anglophile. It was the history of the place that enthused him.
He loved to visit the old castles and stately mansions built in a bygone era, to wander the cool cloisters of ancient abbeys and seats of learning. He installed himself in a Mayfair apartment that the CIA retained for the housing of visiting VIPs, rented a car, and went to Oxford, avoiding the motorway and meandering instead through the byways, taking lunch in the sun at The Bull at Bisham, whose oak beams were set before Queen Elizabeth I was born.
On his second evening, Joe Roth stopped by for a drink. For the first time he met the remarkably plain Mrs. Bailey and Clara, a gawky child of eight with straight plaits of ginger hair, eyeglasses, and buck teeth. He had never met the Bailey family before; his
superior was not the sort of man one associated with bedtime stories and barbecues on the lawn. But the frostiness of Calvin Bailey seemed to have mellowed, though whether it was the fact of enjoying an extended vacation among the operas, concerts, and art galleries that he so admired, or the prospect of promotion, Roth could not tell.
He wanted to tell Bailey of the strain caused by Orlov’s bombshell, but the DCI’s orders had been adamant. No one, not even Calvin Bailey, the Head of Special Projects, was to be allowed to know—yet. When the Orlov accusation had been either shown to be false, or had been justified with hard evidence, the top echelon of the officers who ran the CIA would be personally briefed by the DCI himself. Until then, silence. Questions were asked, but none answered, and certainly nothing was volunteered. So Joe Roth lied.