The Falstaff Enigma (9 page)

"You've just called Bob Oberheim a mole
." Austin's voice was almost panicky.

"Not necessarily.
Someone, maybe Don Clements, could have talked him into sending you. That's something we're going to have to find out." Kemp's implication did not register with Austin.

"What makes you arrive at this conclusion?"

"I can't give you any hard facts. I saw Alexandrevich the day after the general defected, which was about twelve hours before you met with Oberheim. That means that if the assault team was ready to go when I saw their leader, then it confirms my theory. Someone, be it Oberheim or whoever, was busy planning to get you over here and the team was waiting for your arrival. If the team wasn't ready until after Oberheim met with you, then my theory is not strongly supported. However, as I've said earlier, I believe that a team of KGB specialists would have been ready within a few hours of arriving in Ankara. They could do all of the planning using satellite photos and maps readily available in Moscow."

Austin was now tired of all this speculation and starting to think of going home.
Home. My wife
. "I have to call my wife." He said it gently, his eyes pleading with Kemp.

“I know what needs to be done. Let me handle it. But you will be talking to her soon. She believed me when we talked and knows you are fine.”

Austin relaxed slightly. “Okay,” he nodded. His mind returned to the facts and theories they were developing. He suddenly felt like a defense lawyer representing a client in a capital murder case. And he was his own client. "Anyway, your point is moot. How could we ever know one way or the other?"

"We are going to find out."
It was spoken by Kemp as a father would issue a command to his son. John Kemp was going to lead an analyst who had never seen action before the previous twenty-four hours on an odyssey to discover the identity of a mole somewhere in the U. S. intelligence community. At least that's what John Kemp thought.

"What do you mean, 'we're going to find out'?"
Austin responded.

"Just that, Robert.
You and I will find out whether there is a traitor among us – or not."

"Oh no."
Austin rose from his seat and walked to the window opening on the back alley. "You and your buddies at the Company can do this cloak and dagger crap. I'm going home to my wife."

Kemp jumped to his fee
t, his face flushed with anger. He was putting on an act to convince Austin, but Austin could never know that. "Look, you're caught up in something bigger than either of us and you can't walk away from this. You are marked for death by an organization that makes the Mafia look like Boy Scouts and if you go home you'll be pronouncing a death sentence on your whole family. Your life is now a completely different ball game – and so is mine – and I have absolutely no idea if this nightmare is going to end today, tomorrow, or ever. We are on our own and I mean alone. I can't even go into the Company, because if we're facing a mole then I'm as good as dead inside the CIA.

"I have not told them that we made contact and, as I
told you earlier, I’m pretty sure they don’t know about this place. I intend not to tell them we're together, but they know you are alive, or at least they will once the ruins of the embassy are cleared away and they can't find your body. That probably gives us a week before they will figure out that we have teamed up, so we will have to use that time wisely. The wild card is that the NSA probably intercepted the call I just made to your wife. But based on what I know of the NSA, it will take them a while to sort out that call and get it in front of the right people at the Company. I still think we have a week.

"But just get those thoughts of a cozy, secure home out of your mind, because you and I are both trapped in this nightmare until we can force ourselves out and that is completel
y up to us. Do you understand?"

Austin was leaning his head against one of the vert
ical shafts of the window frame. Every word said by Kemp penetrated to his bones. The logic had no flaws; Austin had to accept. "Yes," came his reply in a barely audible volume. "Where do we go from here?"

"We're going out for a night on the to
wn."

"Oh great.
Now you're a damned comedian."

Kemp sat down.
"I'm sorry. We need to go out and do a few things. We are going to get you a Canadian passport. Then we are driving to Istanbul. In the morning, we will join a tour bus heading to Athens. From Athens, we will fly to Zurich, and then I'm going to contact the CIA and tell them that I've got some hot tips on a band of Armenians that may have been involved in the bombing and I'll be indisposed for a week or so."

"Why?"

"Because you and I are going to Washington to visit Don Clements."

"We don'
t even know where he works."

"True, but I have contacts that will give me the information we need without any record being kept of the inquiry."

"Then why are we going to Zurich?"

"To get money.”
Kemp noticed the look of interest in Austin's eyes and decided to elaborate. "You know how the spy movies always have secret Swiss bank accounts?" Austin nodded. "Well, it's basically true. For certain field agents, such as myself, who can quickly find themselves in tricky situations, the Company gives a fifty thousand dollar bonus to be put away as one sees fit. I put most of mine into a couple of accounts in Zurich. It's even tax free."

"Amazing."
Austin shook his head. "You guys live in a completely separate world. How do you maintain a grip on normalcy? No, don't answer that. I don't think I want to know the answer right now." Austin walked back to the table and sat down. "Where do we go from Zurich?"

"We'll fly to Toronto and then drive to Detroit.
We could go through Kennedy but that place has more spotters than a battlefield. In Detroit we'll catch a flight to Baltimore and then drive to Washington."

"You are a very thorough man."

"I plan to arrive unannounced."

"And what about my wife? I don't want to just disappear for a week or two."

Kemp knew what Austin wanted to do most. "You can't call her now. She is safe where she is. The ability of the KGB to operate in the US is quite poor. It is one thing the FBI is very good at. When we get to the US, then you can call her."

Austin did not argue.
He knew only too well how closely overseas communications were monitored by both sides. Kemp continued, "In fact, you can't call her at all because I assume your phone will be bugged. I want you to call a close friend of your wife and have her visit your wife and tell her that you are okay. Since I also think that by then your house will be bugged, you need to have your friend talk to your wife while walking outside."

Austin looked Kemp in the eye.
"Are you all so pragmatically cold?"

"It's what has to be done.”
Kemp wanted to cut off this confrontation before it began. "Now let's go do what we need to do to be ready to fly out of here. Grab your things, we won’t be back. Tonight we will stay in Istanbul." Kemp quickly rose and walked out the door into the hallway. "Are you coming?" Austin followed.

It had taken the men six hours to obtain two new passports and drive the 240 kilometers to Istanbul. The bus to Athens left early the next morning so there was time for a good night's sleep. The bus driver was an old friend of Kemp’s and he adroitly added two passengers to his manifest in exchange for a crisp $100 note. This method of getting across the Turkish-Greek border had been developed by the field agent personally. It always worked well. By the afternoon, they were safely aboard a Swiss Air flight to Zurich.

A
fter they passed through Swiss passport control, Kemp led the pair on a search for the right phone booth. Austin spoke. "You didn't tell me I was getting a diplomatic passport."

"We
need them. I'm carrying things in my bag that would get us very arrested if discovered."

About ten minutes later,
John Kemp stepped out of the phone booth. The conversation with the CIA officer in the U.S. Embassy in Paris had been phrased in such a way that any unauthorized ears would be hard-pressed to interpret. It was a method of obscure conversation that seemed to come naturally to any veteran of the spy business. Austin spoke first. "How did it go?"

"He believed everything I said.
In fact, the official line out of Langley is that the Armenians did do it and that you were kidnapped by them before the blast."

"What?"

"I'm serious." Both men were silent as they walked to the taxi stand. Kemp seemed to have a revelation. "That must be it. There has to be a mole behind this. There is no way in the world that the Company thinks the Armenians did this. The facts are too obvious to the educated. And the bit about your being kidnapped; only someone who knew you got away from the Embassy alive would come up with that. There is definitely a cover-up and it has to come from someone way up in the ranks. Someone like Bob Oberheim."

As they climbed into the Mercedes taxi, Kemp gave an address to the driver. They were headed to a CIA safe house in Zurich. Unlike their brief stay in Ankara, this was one generally known
to European agents of the CIA. The trip did not take long before the taxi pulled up in front of an aging four story walk-up on Überlandstrasse.

The two men reached the landing before the final staircase up to the third floor
foyer, which had a door on each of its three sides. Kemp was headed for the door in the middle and it could be clearly seen from where Kemp stood now. He stopped with his foot on the first step, simultaneously reaching out with his right hand to stop Austin, who was on the last step of the previous flight.

"
Wha …" Austin was stopped by the look on Kemp's face. It was a look of intense concern, the intensity coming from naked fear. By the time Austin made this realization he saw the gun Kemp had pulled from his waistband at the small of his back. It was a SIG 9mm Parabellum automatic with a three-inch suppressor attached. The weapon was standard issue among the Swiss Army and renowned for its dependability and eight-round magazine. It was also a favorite among the elite cadre of CIA field agents. Austin had no idea when the agent had secreted the weapon in his waistband.

Kemp flicked his wrist a couple of times, a sign for
Austin to back down the stairs. Austin stepped backwards once. The floorboards behind Kemp splintered wildly as if someone had broken through with a pick from underneath the floor. The sound that rang in Austin's ears was louder than he thought it should be, but far quieter than an unmuffled gun. He couldn't figure out where the shots came from, but the man from the CIA knew immediately. Kemp bolted backward and to his right. In the same motion, he raised up his gun and pointed it upward. He was now underneath the killer who was on the staircase above. The rounds came as quickly as the agent expertly squeezed his index finger.

Austin heard the killer
scream and start to run up the stairs. The unseen assassin had gambled that he could kill Kemp easily but his nerves had gotten the better of him. He knew that he would pay for this lost wager with his life. Kemp's arm was now straight above his head, his left hand supporting his right forearm. The muzzle of the Swiss automatic led the sounds from the footsteps perfectly. Kemp fired three times. The bullets easily pierced the old wooden staircase. The killer's body hit the wooden stairs hard as it tumbled down and came to rest in front of the safe house door.

H
e screamed in Russian! The dead killer screamed in Russian!
What did he scream? Austin remembered: "I'm dead. Wait." What did it mean? Suddenly Austin realized.

"John, cover the
front door. There are more inside."

"How do
…"

"J
ust do it."

Kemp moved into position
and replaced the magazine in his pistol with a new magazine he retrieved from his back pocket. Austin screamed out a sentence in Russian, lowering his voice to simulate that of the dead Soviet killer. Seconds later the apartment door flew open but nobody stood in the doorway. Kemp wanted to fire into the walls on one side of the door, but which side? Then he saw it: the soft glint of blued steel from the muzzle of a pistol as it poked out from the right side of the door. Kemp fired twice. The dead body made a dull thump as it hit the floor of the apartment.

Bullets flew by Kemp's head.
He dropped to a crouch. The bullets had been fired out the door blindly and the third killer was now running to take a new position. Kemp reached down into his sock and pulled out a small Walther PPK automatic. He handed it to Austin, who was relieved to have it. "Stay right there and watch for anyone coming up," came the command from the field agent.

Kemp bolted up the stairs, screaming wildly as he went. When he reached the top of the stairs he grabbed the gun of the first killer in his left hand and
threw it into the open doorway. The muffled shots of one lone killer cut the stale air. Kemp knew immediately that the enemy was by the window in the living room. He dived through the doorway as the assassin recovered from the shock of his own mistake of firing at the thrown gun. Kemp hit the floor and rolled. Two bullets dug into the wood in front of his head. The Soviet killer had jerked his weapon too low. It was a fatal mistake. Kemp stopped on his belly and fired three shots into the darkness. He heard the air knocked out of the lungs of the third killer. Kemp got to his feet and leveled his gun at the man as he dropped to a seated position on the floor and then fell to his left. His head hit the floor and made a sound like a hammer striking solid oak. Kemp walked to him and grabbed the gun from his now dead hand. He quickly turned to scan the rest of the apartment. He had six rounds left. Fortunately, he did not need them.

Zurich was not to be the
safe haven that Kemp expected. As Kemp emerged from the bedroom, Austin was standing in the doorway, the small Walther automatic in his right hand. Kemp continued in a fast pace right past the analyst, who had to quickly move out of the agent’s way. “We are heading out now,” was all Kemp said as he headed back down the stairwell.

On the ground floor,
Kemp went out the back into the alley, Austin quietly following. They soon found a small car park and Kemp headed right for a white Volkswagen Passat, one of the most common cars in Europe. Within seconds the engine was running. They spent the night in a small hotel picked randomly somewhere on the edge of the city.

As their nerves settled down, the planning for the next day began. “I need your passport. These are compromised.” Kemp had thought through every step since leaving Ankara. This was the conclusion he had come to.

Austin did not speak. The adrenalin was still present and his hand shook noticeably as he handed the Canadian passport over. Kemp continued. “Until we get back to the States, we will travel separately. They will be looking for two people travelling together on Canadian passports. I will use a U.S. passport. You will still be Canadian, just a new name. I will fix your passport right now.” Kemp had plenty to choose from in his bag.

The next morning, Kemp
left the analyst in a sidewalk cafe and came back an hour later with $30,000 in cash and travelers checks. He gave Austin $10,000 in travelers checks and both men headed to the airport to buy tickets to Toronto and a continent that Kemp was sure would bring relative safety.

Austin found a copy of the New York Times in the airport. The headline story was on the Arme
nian terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy. There was no mention of Robert Austin or Fyodor Poltovsky or Mark Ridgeway. The American government was now actively covering up an act of war conducted by the Soviet Union on sovereign American territory. The cover-up was complete.