The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

questions—about the spy’s defense design bureau. Krassilnikov was very pleased with himself. He had caught his spy without jeopardizing the sources of the tips that were coming his way.

Langley, 1600 Hours, May 16, 1986

I pushed through the blue door of the DDO’s seventh-floor office, wondering again whose idea it had been to paint all the doors at Langley in garish electric blues, canary yellows, and forest greens. It happened while I was assigned to Hong Kong in the 1960s. Upon my return one summer, I found the old battleship gray motif of CIA headquarters gone, replaced by off-white walls and brightly colored doors. It was supposed to be good for morale. When I walked into his office, Clair George went right to the point.

“It’s Friday. I want you to think about it over the weekend, but I’m planning to send you out to Islamabad to take over the Afghan program.”

In the months since I’d returned to Langley from Africa, I’d become aware that our covert action program with the Afghan resistance had taken a new turn and that Reagan had rewritten the ground rules. I had also heard that the chief in Islamabad running the Afghan program had fallen afoul of Clair’s deputy, Ed Juchniewicz, and that Clair and Casey were deciding on a change of leadership in Islamabad. What I had not heard a hint of was that I was being tipped for the job.

“You really want to wait until Monday for an answer?”

“Talk to your wife. Get her input.”

“She’ll be ready to go. When do you want me out there?”

“Go out and take a look this month, and then get out there by July.”

Marie-Catherine, my wife, was indeed ready to move to Pakistan. A French pied-noir, born in Morocco, she had spent most of her life shifting between France and Africa, where we had met while she was teaching at the French School in Lagos. She had moved across the continent to join me in Khartoum in 1983, and we were married there in 1984. Bill Casey’s “wedding gift” had been telescoping Marie-Catherine’s naturalization process from seven years to about ten days. Pakistan would be no problem for her.

Langley, 1015 Hours, May 19, 1986

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Jack Platt staking out my office, waiting for an opening to slip in on me as soon as I finished my conversation on the secure green telephone, an unambiguous signal for privacy that even Platt would hesitate to violate. But as soon as the handset was in its cradle, he slipped by the gatekeeper and dropped a handful of papers on my desk.

“I need these signed pretty quick, chief. A real rush job.” Platt’s usual laid-back attitude seemed a little forced. I started looking for the flimflam, knowing instinctively that it was probably no accident that Platt was in need of some rush action just as Burton Gerber was away and I was acting division chief.

“Sit down, Jack. You’ve got a minute for me, don’t you?”

“Sure. But this is moving fast, and I saw you were pretty busy, and—”

“It’s okay, Jack,” I said, picking up the sheaf of papers, “I’m not pressed.”

The top document was a standard agency travel order for “operational travel” to Guyana using any mode of transport from “sea to air to surface.” It already had the requisite Latin American Division signatures, and I signed it without particular hesitation. After flipping to the second signature flag, I glanced at the document and set down my pen.

“What the hell is this, Jack?”

“It’s a requisition order for a Winchester thirty-caliber semiautomatic hunting rifle, with four-by-forty scope sight attached, with felt-lined carrying case and fifty rounds of match ammunition.” Platt recited the nomenclature on the requisition form in the stilted monotone of a mentally challenged government supply clerk.

“I know it’s a gun, Jack, but you’re just going to have to tell me who you’re going to kill before I sign off.”

“It’s for MONOLITE. Rankin and I are going down to Guyana to work on him again. Nice gun might soften him up. Guy’s a big hunter.”

“Is this thing going anywhere? Or are you and Rankin just jerking each other off?”

“Who the fuck knows? You do what you can. And you really can sign that, so just go ahead and do it. Trust me.”

I knew that MONOLITE had been a long-term joint developmental target of the FBI and CIA ever since he’d been assigned to the Soviet embassy in Washington in the late 1970s. Platt had been a street case officer then, and a good one, until his drinking problem had sent him to rehab. Sober for five years now, he hadn’t lost his need to continually test the system and those in charge of it.

“And are you going to tell me why this is such a rush?”

“I gotta go out and buy the gun and get it on its way to Guyana today. That’s the rush. MONOLITE pitched up there last year, and Rankin and I thought we’d go down and see if he’s had a change of heart.”

“And you just discovered you needed to get a rifle into this operation this morning? Or maybe it’s because Burton Gerber took off this morning and you thought I’d be an easier touch?”

“What do you think?” Platt cracked a smile for the first time.

“I think you waited until Burton was out of here to bring this in. What is it? The gun, the operation, or the fact that you personally drive Gerber nuts with all your bullshit?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“It’s the gun and the operation and me and all the fucking weird hangups our leader has. But this is worth doing.”

“How long have you been trying to get this guy?”

“Who? Gerber?”

“Goddammit, Jack, quit dicking with me!”

“We’ve been working this guy pretty steady for about six or seven years. I musta pitched him a hundred times.”

“Did he give you anything?”

“He still loves me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that he doesn’t run for cover like every other asshole