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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

A short story: The price for playing the game

 



“I was thinking, just now before your late arrival” the Old Boy said looking over the front window of a restaurant called the Happy Hamburger “Do you recall when this was the Au Pied de Cochon? They had an ancient large lobster in a tank in the window.

“I remember it well.” He said looking over the building.

Because the Russian compound is just up the street a mile or so, it was our meeting place for Soviets who were considering a defection. It was also a favorite watering hole of little creature named Vitaly Yurchencko. Do you know the name?

He frowned and then shook his head “No.” he said “It doesn’t ring a bell” 

“Towards the end of the Cold War Yurchencko was assigned to the Russian compound up on Wisconsin Avenue as chief of security, or, in other words, the guy that prevented defections. He was a man-about-town, liked the Americans to call him “Vity”. He was a lush” the Old Boy stopped and looked at his companion and said whispered “So many of those Russians are you know” and then continued walking “Every bartender in every posh tavern in town knew him”

One day, he walked into the FBI building downtown asking to defect. He claimed to be frustrated with his stagnant life as a Russian spy, his failed relationships with his wife and so on so and so forth”

“He handed over to two of our own men as KGB agents: Ronald Dallton and Lee Howard. We knew about them already and we had been sending them disinformation for a year or so before Yurchenka showed up but we could not be sure if the KGB knew that we knew about them. So we went along with it.”

“Why would the KGB turn in double agents?” he asked

“I suspect they knew we were on to them or perhaps they were of no more use to them. Collateral damage, old boy. The price for playing the game”

“He’ll live on in history as a fake defector, but I spotted him as a fake from the start.” Defector indeed” he spat out the last words “You see the KGB almost never used fake defectors. They are a proud people, the Russians. Defection would be a propaganda problem for them. The Soviet Union was a workers paradise, they said. So why would a ranking member of the Intelligence community defect? That led to one of many misunderstandings with that idiot Yurchenka. He assumed we would not leak his defection to the media. We explained that had one of our defected to the KGB the Russian press would never stopped writing about it. But he was in fact a legitimate defector but he was insane. A very disturbed individual let me assure you. The entire time we had him he was deeply, clinically depressed. He was in love with a woman married, a true beauty, wife of a Russian diplomat. He convinced us that she loved him as well. He said that if we could arrange for her to be with him in America, he would give us all the information we could possibly want. So we found the woman, he husband was assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Canada at the time. She refused to meet with him. Said she was not in love with him and in fact thought him something of a snake. Finally, we convinced her to meet him.”

“How much?” he asked.

“It cost the American taxpayer a cool half million dollars, cash” The Old Boy said shaking his head “We arranged the meeting in a hotel room. Once there she slapped him, called him a despicable traitor and a disgrace to the Soviet Union and I believe she spat on him as well before she stormed out.” He chuckled slightly “Turns out our Canadian people didn’t think to search her. She was wired, with a camera. Goddamn KGB filmed the whole thing. Took our money too” 

As you can well imagine that only deepened his depression. We pressed him for more information but said he had a stomach ulcer. It was almost all that he talked about. Claimed that Russian Doctors couldn’t cure him. We had him examined by the very best people. They could find no ulcer. In fact they could not find anything wrong with him at all on any level. We told him and that and he said we were lying and he became, if it were humanly possible, more depressed.

Well by then, we’d had enough of comrade Chebatriova but we still weren’t sure what he was or what purpose he may or may not have been serving, or was he, as I advocated, simply a lunatic.? The Old Boy turned and shrugged and then held up his right index finger “We had to find out”

That night I was lying in bed, couldn’t sleep started to think, and it hit me. The next morning I went down to the mail room at Langley picked out a young man who I deemed might look good in suit and took him to my office. We spoke and it turned out he was a recent grad from…..” 

He thought for a moment and said “One of those colleges they have in one of the states”

He signaled that they should continue walking while he checked the sky for impending rain “I asked him why he was with us and he replied that he wanted to be a spy so I knew then that we had out man. I called in the domestic people and we explained to the boy that we were assigning him to act as a sort of bodyguard for recent Russian defector. He was not ever, under any circumstances at all, to discuss his private life with Chebatriova.

A few weeks later we pulled the kid in for a talk and told him to disregard everything we had told him not to tell Chebatriova and that he was to take Chebatriova out to dinner or drinks, anywhere away from the safe house and tell Chebatriova everything about his short career with our company. So the kid takes Chebatriova out to Au Pied de Cochon and tell him everything that we told him not to tell him, his recent narrow graduation form college and how he had worked in the stock room at Langley and so on.

The kid says that Chebatriova eyes went as large as plates, his mouth was open. He got the message. He was useless to us and he knew and now we knew it. He says to the boy “They think I am joke?”

“I don’t know” answers the boy and at that Chebatriova gets up and walks to the bathroom and climbs out a window. He walked up the hill to the Russian compound. There had been two other re-defectors, Betova and Chebatriova were their names and the KGB let be known far and wide that both had been welcomed back with open arms. Yurchenka apparently thought the KGB might treat him well if he returned. The Soviet Embassy called a press conference where Yurchenka announced he had been kidnapped and drugged by us.

“Why did he bust out the window?” He asked “Why didn’t he just walk out the front door?”

The Old Boy shrugged “Who knows? He was a madman.”

“Do we know what happened to him?”

“Oh yes” the Old Boy smiled “Yurchencko vanished for a while but several days after the Soviet Union fell a group of KGB boys rounded up Yurchenka and those two other re-defectors, Betova and Chebatriova, and shot them dead. Dumped them in the forest someplace. Our own man, Lee Howard, the one Yurchencko gave us. He defected to Russia. Lived there for some years. They married him off to a KGB agent. The same day they killed Yurchenka, Betova and Chebatriova, she killed him. Karate chop to the neck.”

 

 

A short story: The Company’s Dime

 

As always, the two old spies met instead at the Tombs on 36th Street because meeting on the Hill was too obvious. The Tombs was good enough to serve their purpose, especially during when the students from Georgetown where in town. Their noise drowned out all conversations. 

The lawyer, that’s what they called him, was a contract man for the company. He worked on staff to a senior US Senator and the company’s man on Capitol Hill. In that capacity he had sole access to a seven figure slush fund and many other less impressive tools. 

He had proven his worth to Langley when his team of three information technology specialists and a Senate building janitor hatched a successful break into a protected database used by Senate Intelligence Committee staff. Once inside the data base, his team delated accurate files that detailed the company’s most sensitive activities with “modified version” files. Several years before that, another team he employed had placed monitors on computers of every chief of staff on the Hill.

He met the two men from Langley as they all entered the Tombs together. Taking a standard covert seat in back of the restaurant they ordered lunch and with that done sat back in their seats. 

The lawyer spoke first.

“You know the owner named this place after T.S. Eliot’s poem, "Bustopher Jones: The Cat about Town."

“But it’s called the Tombs,” Ash said.

“Yes, of course, I meant the Tombs is mentioned in the poem.”

“T.S Eliot knew about this place?” Ash asked “Wasn’t he from Europe or something?”

“No,” the lawyer started hesitantly. “What I meant was….” 

In mid-sentence he realized that in his attempt to explain himself, poetry and Eliot were fruitless. Company men are not known for their literary interests.

“Why don’t we get down to it” Anderson said. “Why are we here?”

Pleased to be onto a new subject and choosing to overlooks Anderson’s obnoxious ways, the lawyer answered, “The Company’s name is being mentioned on the Hill and not in a good way.”

“Nothing new there,” Ash smirked in an all too blatant play to win Anderson’s approval.

“Over the past 12 years,” the lawyer said, “a man named John Cotton Teale has been a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s 64 years old and works as a senior policy adviser in the Office of Air and Radiation. His base salary is $164,700. He has been with the agency for 19 years. His background is clean. We checked. He grew up in Fairfax County, graduated from the University of Maryland and took his MA from George Washington on the government’s dime. Divorced. His ex-wife is a managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation. No children. Lives in Arlington, near Marymount University. Starting about three years ago Teale started working on a second Masters, in fine arts in writing. At about that same time he was often away from his job and started to cultivate an air of mystery and explained his lengthy absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work for you guys.”

“For the company?” Anderson asked.

“Yes” the lawyer answered. “Was he?”

“No,” Anderson answered.

The lawyer looked Anderson directly in the eye and waited.

“He is not with us,” Anderson said again.

“The problem is,” the lawyer continued, “he travelled to China, South Korea, South Africa and England, Fiji, a couple of dozen other places and all of it, first class air travel, first class hotels, everything, picked up by EPA.”

“First class?” Anderson asked.

“Yes sir. He said it was a CIA requirement necessary for deep cover agents. There was one flight, to London, that cost taxpayers $14,000. A coach ticket would have cost just $1,000.”

“I’m a goddamn senior man with the firm and even I don’t fly first class,” Anderson said.

“Last year he took off two months on sick leave, paid of course, said he had picked up a case of malaria in the Amazon while working for us. At the beginning of this year he took off for about six months. He told his managers he was working on a research project or working for Langley, for you guys.”

“And where was he for six months?” Anderson asked. 

“Based on phone records,” the lawyer said, “he was at his beach house in Cape Cod. He has a summer place there.”

“He has a summer house?” Ash said, mostly for his own benefit.

“And no one,” Anderson asked “not one single person doubted any of this? They just took this nut at his word?”

“Yes and no. On the few occasions he was asked to explain his expenses and his travel he always replied that he was, and I quote “doing sensitive work for another agency.”

“And no one found this,” Ash searched for a word, shrugged and said, “odd?”

“Apparently, no one checked,” the lawyer said. “They just believed him. In fact last year his was given a $25,000 bonus as a retention incentive so he wouldn’t leave the agency and go to work for an energy company.”

A waiter brought water to the table. They waited. When he left, they continued.

“Did he plan to leave the agency and go to work for an energy company?” Anderson asked.

“No. The retention incentive is something the EPA gives out to all its senior people.”

“Maybe we should all find a job with them,” Ash smiled. No one looked at him.

“Anyway,” the lawyer continued, “he started working a four-day work week.”

“I know the answer to this but let me ask anyway,” Anderson said. “Did anyone ask why he was taking the fifth day off?”

“Yes. An administrator inquired and Teale replied….in writing….let me repeat that….he replied in writing….that he had to spend at least one day a week at Langley on paperwork.”

Anderson sat back in his chair and shook his head in disbelief. “He didn’t try to hide this?”

“No. Not at all. In fact on his EPA electronic calendar, he wrote that he was working at the CIA's Directorate of Operations. He told several managers at the EPA that he had been assigned to an interagency, special advisory group between the State, CIA, the White House and for some reason, the EPA. Anyway, is he caught now?”

“How did they catch on to him?” Ash said as he looked around for the waiter. “We should order, I have to get back.”

“One of EPA’s administrators got wind of Teale’s remarkable expense account and started asking questions. The administrator launched an in house investigation and then turned over her findings to the Inspector General Office and they launched their own investigation. They interviewed 140 people at EPA who knew about Teale’s supposed secret agent background. Amazingly not one of them ever suspected Teale was a fraud.”

“Let me interrupt you,” Anderson said as he snapped his fingers in the air for the waiter. “Can we trust the Inspector General’s office to keep this buried?”

“The EPA’s inspector general? Sure”

“Why?”

“Because the Inspector General’s role is to investigate improprieties with their assigned branch of government and if they find anything, they bury it. Basically the Inspector General’s job is to ensure that the branch they work under is never embarrassed”

“Go on,” Anderson said as he turned to look for the waiter.

“The IG’s office compared Beale’s cellphone records to his travel expenses and determined that when he claimed to be in Pakistan and other locations on CIA business, he was really at his Massachusetts’ vacation home.”

“Doing what?” Anderson asked.

“Writing. Teale is an amateur novelist.”

“Let me guess,” Ash added, “spy novels. He writes spy novels.”

“Probably.”

“Why did I know that?” he sighed, smiled too fondly and shook his head.

“Well, the IG’s office called Langley, told them the story and Langley confirmed that he wasn’t with you guys.”

“But Langley never followed up?” Anderson asked.

“No.”

“And Langley never notified the interior decorators?” Anderson asked. The interior decorators was company speak for internal security operations within the company.

“Apparently not,” the lawyer said. “Anyway the IG’s people contacted Teale and told him they wanted him to meet them at Langley. Rather than appear at the meeting, Beale admitted his deception. He’s under house restriction.”

The waiter, a senior at Georgetown Ash reckoned, appeared, apologized for his lateness and took their orders. Two Manhattans, wet. All good company men are drinkers. Three salads, three steaks, coffee. It was on the company’s dime. When the waiter left the lawyer continued, “He’s into the EPA for an estimated $886,000, in the form of unearned pay.” The lawyer continued, “And then there’s fraud, and conspiracy. At the least he’s looking at eight years in federal prison. At the least.”

“The EPA will never press this thing,” Ash said confidently. “They’ll look like idiots.” 

“They don’t have a choice,” the lawyer said. “Somebody squealed to Senator Stroman’s office. Stroman heads up the agricultural committee, he’s from Iowa, a farming state where the EPA is considered a branch of the Nazi party. There’s an election coming. Stroman wants a piece of the EPA’s ass and he’s going, very, very public with this thing.”

“So why are we here?” Anderson asked.

“It’s a heads up. Stroman doesn’t like you guys much either. He’s going to drag the company into this thing because Teale is sticking to his guns on being part of CIA.”

Anderson sat up straight in his chair, leaned forward and smiled. “You can assure the people on the Hill that the company is clean on this one. Absolutely and completely clean.”

Then he leaned back, looked the lawyer straight in the eye, nodded and said,

“Now where’s that fucking waiter?” 

When the meal finished and the lawyer was gone, Ash and Anderson stepped out onto the street.

“I think we’re okay on this one,” Ash said. “No one believes Teale, they figure he’s a nut and besides he doesn’t really know anything.”

“Anderson pulled his lips together tightly, “I’m not so sure.”

“What was he doing for us?” Ash asked.

“Teale? Checking air radiation levels in countries where we’ve let off a few next generation germ bombs. That kind of stupid horse shit. Something to do with cancer. The company figured he already had a good cover to get into those places, he already knew the local scientific community.”

They fell silent and walked down 31st street.

“I think Teale needs to be taken out of this equation,” Anderson said. “Without Teale they have nothing and a heart attack makes sense. He’s the right age for one. Under a lot of pressure, out of a job, facing jail time. He had a heart attack.”

“Chief,” Ash said, “like I said, Teale doesn’t really know anything and you know how Langley doesn’t like domestic accidents. They can be messy.”

Anderson stopped walking, turned and stood very close to Ash and said in a hushed tone, “What can get messy is if someone figures out all the other active participants we have in the rest of government, the GSA, DID, National Archives….all of them working for us and charging their time to every agency in government.”

“The National Archives?” Ash said.

“Sure, you never know, we might need to change history someday. Look at it this way, we have, what? A thousand active participants in the federal government alone, then you toss in a few thousand more in state and local governments. All of them working for us on somebody else’s dime. That gets around and we’re in the midst of a self-made shit storm that could bring down everything and I mean everything. Okay Teale went overboard. We should have kept better track of him. It was a screw up. But we can’t have this. We won’t have this. He’s under house restriction. Go there. Bring the right people. They know what to do. This has to happen.”