Deep Lie (34 page)

“I have been spying for some days here at this place for your CIA. Now, you must help me go to an American embassy. You are an American.”

“Now, hold on a minute, do you have any idea what those people would do to me if they found you aboard this boat?”

“Yes, I think so,” Appicella replied.

“I know a great deal of what this man, Majorov, who runs that place, would not like me to know. I think it is better if I don’t tell you these things, but if they caught up with us, they would never believe I had not told you. You and I would listen to each other’s screams down the halls of Lubyanka prison, I think.”

Lee stared at the Italian, dumbfounded.

“Swell,” he finally managed to say.

“What do we do now?”

“We go to the American Embassy, as I said before,” Appicella said, as if talking to a child.

“I am afraid I don’t know exactly where we are. Do you?”

Lee waved him toward the chart table.

“There,” he said.

“We’ve just left Liepaja, and we’ve been sailing due west for about an hour.”

“Mmmm,” Appicella mused.

“I think we must go to Stockholm. It looks closer than Copenhagen. Where were you bound?”

“To Copenhagen, and I still am, but I’d like to get rid of you as soon as possible, I think. Stockholm, is that where you’d like to go?”

“If you please,” said Appicella.

“I wonder if I might go on deck for a moment,” he said. looking queasy.

“It was very close under the sail bags

“By all means,” Lee said, earnestly, “and if you have to toss your cookies, for God’s sake, do it over the leeward rail, will you?”

Appicella hurried past him, climbed into the cockpit, and did as he had been told.

“I feel much better, now,” he said, taking deep breaths.

Lee looked quickly about them.

“Well, you can’t stay up here for long,” he said, worriedly.

“If we’re spotted by another boat, it’s going to have to look as though I’m alone.”

Appicella nodded.

“Yes, I think I will be comfortable below now. Might I have a glass of milk, please?” He climbed back down the companionway ladder.

Lee followed him.

“I haven’t got any milk left; how about orange juice?”

Appicella nodded.

“If that is all you have.”

“Listen, uh… what’s your name again?”

“Appicella, Emilio Appicella,” he replied, extending his hand.

“Please call me Emilio.”

“I’m Will Lee, Emilio,” Lee said, feeling absurd.

“Call me Will.”

“Well, Will, I don’t know quite how you fetched up in Malibu, but I am very glad you did.”

“Yes. I suppose you must be. What did you call the place?”

“Malibu. as in California. It’s what the Russians call it.”

“Have a seat, Emilio.” They both sat down at the saloon table.

“How long had you been there?”

“Only a few days. I came to do a small job for this Majorov, one his people could not do themselves. When finished, they would not allow me to leave.”

“What is that place, a college or something?”

“Perhaps, I do not know everything they do there, and think it is better that you do not know what I know of it since I do not know if the C1A would find you trustworthy.”

Appicella spread his hands.

“Forgive me, it is nothing personal, you understand.”

Lee laughed loudly.

“You’re forgiven, Emilio, and you’re right, I shouldn’t know about all this. Look. I would take you to Stockholm, but I’ve got a date in Copenhagen, and I’m already going to be a day late. You’re just going to have to put up with my company for about two and a half days.”

“No, no, that is not possible,” Appicella said with finality.

“Do you have a radio?”

“Yes, but the antenna was lost with the original mast It’s useless.”

Appicella got up and went to the chart table. He pointed “This island, Gotland, is it Swedish?”

“Yes.”

“Then please take me there. I’m sure I can get from there to Stockholm. I must get to the American embassy ‘there at once. In two days, it may be too late.”

Lee looked at the chart. It was only about seventy-five miles to Ostergam, on the east coast of Gotland. They might make that by lunchtime tomorrow. He ought to call Kate, too; she would be in Copenhagen first and might worry, and she should be told about his sighting of Majorov.

“Oh, well, all right. I’ll drop you in Ostergam; that looks big enough for some sort of airport. Do you have a passport?”

“Oh, yes. It won’t have an entry stamp for Sweden, though. Where have you come from?”

“Finland.”

“Good, I’ll just say the Finns didn’t stamp it.”

“Won’t it have an entry stamp for Russia?”

“No, the Russians don’t stamp your passport. They give you a little visa booklet, instead, and they take it back when you leave the country.”

“Good, I don’t want to have to explain where I found you.” He thought for a minute.

“Maybe Ostergam isn’t such a bad idea. I’ve got to order a new rig for this boat.

They can ship it on to Copenhagen from the factory. You ever done any sailing, Emilio?”

“Alas, no. But I will do what I can to help.”

“Well, what you can do right now is go sit in the cockpit and keep a lookout for any boats. We don’t want to bump into anything.”

Appicella went into the cockpit, and Lee plotted a course for Ostergam, then went on deck, reset the autopilot, and adjusted the sails. They were moving along nicely in a fresh breeze.

“Okay, everything’s shipshape. I’m going to get some badly needed sleep. You keep a sharp eye out and call me if you see another boat, okay?”

“Of course,” Appicella replied.

“I will do exactly as you say. And Will…”

Lee stopped on the companionway ladder.

“Yes?”

“You have probably saved my life, and perhaps, a great many others, too. Thank you very much.”

“Don’t mention it,” Lee replied.

“I take stowaways out of the Soviet Union all the time. Anyway, we’re not in Sweden, vet.”

“I feel sure we will make it.” Appicella said.

“I hope you’re right,” Lee said back. then headed for a bunk. He slept the sleep of the ignorant. RULE woke up at four in the morning and couldn go back to sleep. She had felt relieved when Ed Rawls had offered to back her up while she was in Copenhagen, but now she was worried again, and worse, guilty. Everything she knew, every instinct, said the Soviets were going to invade Sweden very soon. As cockeyed as that sounded, even in her own thoughts, it was more important than running off to Copenhagen.

Come to that, she concluded at six in the morning, it was more important than her career or her privacy.

She had a friend who knew Ben Bradlee, at the Washington Post. She picked up the phone and dialed her friend’s number.

Then, before he could answer, she hung up. There might be a better way. She got out of bed and dug in her handbag for her notebook. She found the number scribbled on a page with a lot of trivia. She’d read that he was an early riser; she hoped so. She dialed the number.

“Hello.” The voice didn’t sound sleepy.

“Senator Carr?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Katharine Rule; I’m the head of the Soviet Office in the Directorate of Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“Yes, I believe you were at a hearing with Mr. Nixon recently.”

“Yes, sir. I was. Senator, Will Lee gave me your private number and suggested I call you if it became necessary.”

“You met Will at the hearing, too?”

“Uh. no, sir. Will and I.. have a personal relationship not connected with our work.”

“I see. How can I help you Miss Rule.. excuse me. I believe it’s Mrs. Rule. isn’t it?”

She could hear the wheels turning in his head.

“Yes, sir, I’m divorced from Simon Rule. who is Deputy Director for Operations.”

“Ah, yes, divorced. Well. what can I do for you. Mrs.

Rule?”

“Senator, there is a matter of what I believe to be the utmost importance, that I would like to discuss with you at the earliest possible moment. May I see you this morning at your home before you leave for your office?”

“I have a nine o’clock appointment with the president, Mrs. Rule, but if you could be here by. say, seven o’clock, I will see you then.”

“Thank you, sir, I can be there by that time.” She wrote down the address.

“And, Senator, I hope you will keep this in confidence, at least until you’ve heard what I have to say.”

“Of course. I’ll see you at seven.”

Rule showered and dressed with a feeling of excitement mixed with unease. Before the day was over. she might well be unemployed, or worse, under arrest.

Before leaving the house, she went to her study, switched on the copying machine, and made two copies of everything she had collected in her files. She was pleased to see that the sat shots copied very nicely. She drove quickly through the still-empty streets of Washington, conscious that she was about to take an irrevocable step. Carr’s house was on Capitol Hill, one of a row of Victorian structures that had been gentrified during recent years. He had lived there long before it was fashionable.

He answered the door himself, already in a necktie, but wearing a silk dressing gown over his shirt.

“Come into the study,” he said. leading the way to a sunlit room at the back of the house. They sat next to each other on a leather Chesterfield sofa, while he poured her some coffee. Then he got right to the point.

“Now,” he said, “what’s this about?”

Rule put down her coffee and tore her attention from the oak-paneled room, with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases and photographs of the senator with half a dozen presidents.

She opened her briefcase.

“It’s hard to know exactly where to start, Senator, but I suppose this is as good a place as any.” She handed him a sheaf of papers.

“This is a copy of an Agency document describing a disinformation operation called Snowflower, which ran, or at least, began, in the early summer of 1983. As you can see in the summary paragraph, the idea was to convince the Soviets that Sweden was secretly considering joining NATO, in the hope of scaring them into moving forces into the Baltic, where there is actually no threat to them. The Agency hoped that some of these units would be moved from East Germany, where, as you know, there is a heavy concentration of Soviet ground forces.”

The senator’s eyebrows went up as he read.

“As you know, the Agency is obliged to come to the committee for approval of covert operations, but they never came to us with this. I suppose they could argue that since this didn’t involve troops, it didn’t count, but I wouldn’t buy that.

This could have all sorts of ramifications.”

“I believe it already has. I believe that this operation may have resulted in an entirely unanticipated course of events.” She took him carefully through everything she had—the running aground of a Whiskey class Soviet submarine near a Swedish naval base in October of 1981, and the subsequent sharp increase in submarine sightings in the Swedish archipelago; the background and discovery of Firsov/Majorov and his odd removal from high position in the KGB to the command of SPETSNAZ forces; the indications that what appeared to be a sports complex might really be a submarine and SPETSNAZ base; the marked increase in Swedish studies programs in Soviet universities; the successfully secret Soviet development of a wingin-ground-effect troop transport, previously thought unworkable; the massing of Soviet forces in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, ostensibly for long-planned maneuvers; the recruiting of Emilio Appicella and his electronic message to her The senator listened intently to her presentation, occasionally asking a question.

“I take it.” he said when she paused to sip her coffee, “that you believe the Soviet Union is considering some son of military adventurism in Sweden, is that it?”

“Senator. I believe they have been considering it for a long time: I believe a full-scale invasion may now be imminent.”

Senator Can- blinked.

“That is a very startling statement.

Mrs. Rule. coming from someone in your position.”

“I know. sir. and I hope you will believe that I have not come to that belief rashly ” “You don’t seem like a rash person to me. Mrs. Rule. although I expect there must be people in your agency who would regard such an assessment as rash. coming, as it does. from a woman.”

“I am afraid that is entirely true. Senator.”

“It is my assumption that you have already brought these facts and suppositions to the attention of your superiors. and they have not reacted as you believe they should.”

“That is correct.”