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“Nope,” said Anna. She signed the form and handed it back to Stone.

“Jolly good!” said Stone. “Now let’s begin. I have told each of you a bit about what I have in mind, and I would like to fill in some of the blanks this morning. The simplest introduction I can give is to say that our mission here will be to practice a form of alchemy.”

“Alchemy?” asked Anna, not sure she had heard him right.

“Yes, indeed. But in our case we will be creating something much more precious than gold. We will be taking weakness—­specifically the current political and military weakness of the United States—and transforming it into strength. And we will be accomplishing this magic by using the only real tool available to the alchemist, a calculated sleight of hand.”

“Sorry,” said Anna, “but I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not, but be patient. I promise it will become clear. What I want to do, by way of beginning our dialogue, is explain to you how I normally spend my time. Is that agreeable?”

Anna and Taylor nodded their heads. Since they first laid eyes on him, each, in different ways, had been wanting to know what Stone actually did.

“I believe I mentioned separately to each of you that my title is Director of Special Projects for the Soviet Bloc Division. What does that entail? you have undoubtedly wondered. What ‘special projects’ might I be directing? The simple answer is that I do whatever suits my fancy. But what I have concentrated on, for some time now, is a particular variety of what might be called, for lack of a better term, deception.”

“And what variety might that be?” asked Taylor.

“I’m coming to that. Patience, please. Let’s not be in any rush. Would you like some coffee? Tea? Marjorie told me she would have some here for us.”

Anna and Taylor both shook their heads. “Go ahead,” said Taylor. “We’re all ears.”

“Very well. My sort of deception, to put the matter bluntly, has sought to convince the Soviets that CIA operations are broader and more aggressive than is actually the case at present. My mission, if you will, has been to camouflage the frail and demoralized American intelligence service we know all too well, and to paint an alternative picture of a service that remains robust and stouthearted; and then to make the Soviets chase the robust-looking shadows I throw in their way.”

“How on earth can you do that?” asked Anna. “The Russians aren’t stupid.”

“No, indeed. They are smart and thorough, but also quite paranoid. And those are precisely the qualities I have sought to exploit. The secret is understanding how they operate. Shall I give you an example?”

“Yes, please,” said Anna.

“Take CIA operations in Moscow. The truth is that the agency has very little on the ground there these days. We have few real agents and few real operations. But it is possible to create an illusion that we are more active by pushing certain buttons. The Soviets actually make it easy. The KGB, you see, simply doesn’t believe that we are as inert and incompetent as we appear. So they go to extraordinary lengths to try to discover what we’re really up to, and in doing so, they operate by certain standing rules. You just have to know what they are.”

“Such as?” pressed Taylor.

“Such as: If an American diplomat is seen entering an apartment building where a Soviet with real secrets resides, that Soviet citizen is automatically placed under surveillance for a minimum of one year. Sometimes he is simply transferred to a less sensitive job until the KGB is sure he has not been in contact with any Western intelligence service. Obviously this sort of surveillance adds to the difficulty we face in actually recruiting any Soviets. But do you see how we might use it to our advantage?”

“By flooding the system,” said Taylor.

“Precisely,” said Stone. He was beaming. “When officers of the Moscow station come calling on me in Washington. I suggest that they visit certain apartment buildings in Moscow from time to time. All they need to do is stick their heads in the door, or ring a bell, or linger by a dark alleyway for a few minutes, or make a meaningless chalk mark on a wall somewhere, and the alarm bells go off in Moscow Center. A new counterintelligence case is opened on poor comrade so-and-so who lives in apartment 3-B.”

“Do they really fall for it?” asked Taylor. It sounded too easy.

“Yes. If you do it right. You can’t be too obvious, and you have to mix it up with other techniques. Would you like another example?”

“Please,” said Anna. Taylor was shaking his head and smiling as he considered Stone’s ruse.

“The KGB has a similar standing rule with regard to dead drops. They know our people in Moscow spend a lot of time looking for potential drop sites. So they carefully track where Americans go. And whenever they see one of our people near someplace that might make a good drop—an irregularity in the brickwork along the side of a building, or a knothole in a tree in Gorky Park, or a loose stone in a wall somewhere up on the Lenin Hills—they stake it out.”

“What do you mean?” asked Anna.

“I mean they maintain fixed surveillance on that spot—usually with a television camera—twenty-four hours a day for at least a year. They are tireless, you see. That is part of their operating style. So what does the Director of Special Projects do in confronting this vast and seamless web of surveillance? What would you do, Anna?”

“I’d send the CIA station on an Easter egg hunt, looking for phony drop sites.”

“Yes, of course you would,” said Stone. “And not just that. Sometimes you would fill those phony drop sites with phony messages for phony agents. And some of the messages would interlock, painting a picture of broader operations whose purposes Moscow Center could only guess at.”

“It’s very clever,”