The Brotherhood of the Rose Read online

  Hardy studied the small details in Philby’s dossier, almost laughing when he found what he wanted: Philby had once been a journalist—in the Spanish Civil War. Abruptly everything fit. Philby and Burgess had known each other as students at Cambridge. Maclean had also gone to Cambridge. In the ’30s, each of them had been sympathetic to communism but then had undergone a drastic change, all at once preferring capitalism, joining the British diplomatic service.

  Of course, Hardy thought. They’d been approached by the Russians and agreed to become deep-cover Soviet agents.

  5

  “That made my reputation,” Hardy said. The sour vermouth tainted his breath. “People forget I’m the man who unmasked Philby.”

  “Some of us know who the legends are,” Saul said.

  “Me and Eliot.” Hardy drank. “The golden boys. Eliot scored his points by using ex-Nazis and ex-Fascists who rebuilt their intelligence networks after the war, this time working for us. It seemed we couldn’t do anything wrong.”

  “What’s his background?”

  “He didn’t tell you even that much? Boston. His family was in the Social Register. His father went to Yale, then worked for the State Department. Shortly after Eliot was born in 1915, his father died when the Germans sank the Lusitania. His mother died in the 1918 flu epidemic. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Eliot’s an orphan?” Saul felt a chill.

  “Like you and Chris. Maybe that explains his interest in the two of you.”

  “He went to an orphanage?”

  “No. He didn’t have any grandparents or uncles and aunts. There were some distant relatives who might have taken him in. His inheritance was large enough that supporting him wouldn’t have been a problem. But a friend of his father offered to raise him—a man with influence in the State Department. Eliot’s relatives agreed. After all, this man could train Eliot as his father would have wanted. The man had wealth and power.”

  “Who?”

  “Tex Auton.”

  Saul’s eyes widened.

  “That’s right,” Hardy said. “One of the designers of the Abelard sanction. Eliot got his training from Auton, who helped to establish the ground rules for modern espionage. You could say Eliot was there at the start of everything. Of course, before the war, America had no separate intelligence network. The military and the State Department did it all. But after Pearl Harbor, the OSS was formed, and Auton encouraged Eliot to join. Eliot went to England to receive his training. He ran some effective operations in France. He liked the work, so after the war he made the shift when OSS became the CIA. Auton had retired by then, but Eliot often went to him for advice, and the most important thing Auton told him was not to try for the top positions in the agency.”

  “But for an ambitious man, that advice makes no sense.”

  “It does if you think about it. How many directors and deputy directors has the agency had over the years? So many I can’t remember them. Those positions are political appointments. They change with whoever’s in the White House. The real power in the agency—by which I mean the consistent power—lies just below the deputy director and his subordinate: the number four position, nonpolitical, nonappointed, based on merit, on experience within the agency.”

  “So Eliot took Auton’s advice.”

  Hardy nodded. “He rose as high as he dared. Hell, one president even offered him the directorship, but Eliot turned it down. He wanted to keep his job secure. But he also wanted more power, so he broadened his base, arranging for more and more agents to be responsible to him, spreading his influence into operations in every hemisphere. Chief of counterintelligence. He got that title in 1955, but he had considerable clout even in the forties. Senators, congressmen, presidents, they depend on elections. Eventually they have to leave office. But Eliot never had to worry about elections. Year after year, regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans ran the country, Eliot kept the number four slot in the agency. Only one other man ever managed the trick of holding power so long.”

  “J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “Right. But Hoover’s dead now, so it’s no exaggeration to say that Eliot’s been the most consistent influence in American government since the forties. Mind you, Eliot always faced the danger of another ambitious man coming along to bump him out of his number four position. To give himself an edge, he investigated anyone who might be a threat to him. Presidents, cabinet members, the various directors of the agency, it didn’t matter who. Maybe he learned that tactic from Hoover, or maybe Auton taught it to him. But he put together the best-documented collection of scandals you can imagine. Sex, booze, drugs—you name a vice, he found out about it. Tax evasion, conflict of interest, kickbacks, bribery. If someone threatened to take away Eliot’s power, Eliot simply showed that person his file, and all threats stopped. That’s why he’s still in the agency even though he’s past the age for retirement. Because of those files.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Anybody’s guess. Maybe a bank vault in Geneva. Maybe a locker at the local Y. Impossible to tell. Believe me, people have tried to find them. He’s been followed, but he always loses a tail.”

  “You still haven’t told me why you investigated him.”

  Hardy thought about it. “Another hunch. You remember how Eliot always insisted there were other Communist agents, not just Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, but a lot more, hidden here and in Britain, high in the government? In particular, he felt sure we had a Russian spy in the agency. He used this theory to explain the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs disaster, the JFK assassination. Whenever we started a new operation, the Russians seemed to know about it beforehand. Eliot’s theory had seemed paranoid. Now it sounded convincing. Everybody in the agency started checking on everybody else. We got so busy looking behind our backs, suspecting each other, no work got done. We never found the spy. It didn’t matter. Eliot’s theory did as much damage as any spy could have done. In effect, he paralyzed the agency, and that’s what started me thinking. Maybe Eliot protested too much. Maybe Eliot himself was the spy, cleverly disrupting the agency by insisting there was a spy. That was Kim Philby’s tactic. Accuse someone else, and no one suspects the accuser.”

  “You suspected, though.”

  Hardy shrugged. “Let’s say I was jealous. We started our careers together. At first, we were equally brilliant. But over the years, he had more successes. He rose higher while I stayed where I was. If things had been different, maybe I could have equaled him.” He raised his glass. “I guess I wanted to bring him down and in the process pull myself up. I kept remembering my first big success. Maybe I could repeat it—exactly the same. I told you Eliot went to England for his OSS training during the war. We didn’t know much about espionage, but the British did. The man in MI-6 who taught him. You’ll never guess who he was.”

  Saul waited.

  Hardy drained his glass. “Kim Philby.”

  6

  Saul stopped breathing. “Eliot’s a mole?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Why the hell mention Philby if You’re not accusing—?”

  “It’s only what I thought. I can make assumptions, but they’re meaningless without proof.”

  “And you don’t have the proof.”

  “I told you I never got that far. When Eliot had me sacked, my office was sealed. My apartment, my car, my safety-deposit box were searched. Every scrap of paper even vaguely related to the agency was taken from me.”

  “Including your research?”

  “I never wrote it down, thank God. If Eliot had seen a file on him, if he thought I was dangerous… well, he wouldn’t trust a drunk. I’d have had a sudden heart attack or fallen off a building.”

  “You remember what you learned?”

  Hardy straightened indignantly. “Of course. I’m not—look, he’s a man of habit, so I have to become suspicious when I find variations in his routine. In 1954—his travel vouchers tell an interesting story—he made several une
xplained trips to Europe. For a week in August, he dropped completely out of sight.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Without leaving an address or a phone number where the agency could reach him in an emergency?”

  “I see your point.”

  “I can trace him to Belgium. After that…” Hardy lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke.

  “And no one questioned his disappearance?”

  “Not only wasn’t it questioned, the next year he got promoted. For all I know, he’d been sent on a mission, and his promotion was a reward for success. All the same, that missing week…”

  “If he’s a mole, he could have been meeting with his KGB control.”

  “That suspicion occurred to me. But it’s sloppy tradecraft. I can think of too many other less mysterious ways for the KGB to get in touch with him. Why invite attention by having him disappear like that? Whatever the reason for his disappearance, it was obviously necessary—something that couldn’t be done any other way.”

  Saul frowned. As the air conditioner rattled, he shivered but not from the chill.

  “Something else,” Hardy said. “In 1973, he disappeared again—this time for the last three days in June.”

  “To Belgium again?”

  “Japan.”

  “So what’s the connection?”

  Hardy shrugged. “I’ve no idea what he did on those trips. But I keep going back to my first assumption. Let’s say during the war, when he went to England, he joined Philby, Burgess, and Maclean in becoming a Soviet double agent.”

  “Or a triple agent.”

  “Could be.” Hardy scratched his chin. “I never thought of that. He could have pretended to go along with Philby, planning to use his relationship with the Soviets to the advantage of the United States. He always liked complexity, and being a triple agent’s the most complex role of all. The difference is the same. Whether a double or a triple agent, he’d have been in contact with the KGB. Someone had to pass messages to him, someone so much a part of his routine no one would question if they regularly got in touch with each other, someone with freedom of movement, preferably with European connections.”

  “And you found him?”

  “Roses.”

  “What?”

  “As much as complexity, Eliot loves roses. He structures his day around them. He exchanges letters with other enthusiasts. He sends and receives rare varieties.”

  Saul felt a jolt. “And goes to flower shows.”

  “In Europe. Particularly a show in London every July. He hasn’t missed that show since the first one in ’46, right after the war. A perfect meeting place. He always stays with a friend who owns an estate near London… Percival Landish Junior.”

  Saul inhaled sharply.

  “So you recognize the name?” Hardy asked.

  “His father represented England’s intelligence network at the Abelard meeting in ’38.”

  “An interesting pattern, don’t you think? Auton, who was also at that meeting, became friends with Landish Senior. Eliot—Auton’s foster son—became friends with Landish’s son. By the way, the senior Landish was Philby’s supervisor.”

  “Jesus,” Saul repeated.

  “So I have to wonder,” Hardy said. “Was Landish Senior a mole as well? The trouble with believing in a conspiracy is that after a while you can make anything fit your theory. Have I got too much imagination? Let’s put it this way. If Eliot works for the Soviets, Landish Junior would be my candidate for the courier passing messages. He’s perfect. He occupies the same position in MI-6 that Eliot does in the CIA. Like Eliot, he’s been insisting there’s a mole in MI-6. If Landish Senior worked for the Soviets, maybe Landish Junior continued the job after his father died.”

  “The question is how to prove it.”

  7

  Erika stopped halfway down the aisle and leaned toward a passenger in a window seat. “Sir, fasten your seat belt, please.” She wore an attractive El Al attendant’s uniform. Because of the hurried arrangements, she’d been given a limited choice of women for whom she could substitute. Her height, hair color, and facial structure had been similar to a scheduled member of the flight crew. But the woman whom Erika had replaced and who was now driving south from Miami toward Key West on a sudden all-expenses-paid vacation was a bit smaller than Erika, so the uniform fit tightly, emphasizing the contour of her breasts. The males on board looked pleased instead of puzzled.

  Continuing down the aisle, she made sure everybody’s seat belt was fastened. After asking a woman to slide her bulky purse into the space beneath the forward seat, she scanned the passengers. No one was smoking. The seats were locked in their upright position, the food trays folded up and secured. She nodded to another attendant and walked toward the front, where she turned to survey the passengers again. As much as she could determine, none of them reacted strangely to her. No eyes tensed when she looked at them. No passenger avoided her gaze. Of course, a well-trained operative wouldn’t have made those mistakes. All the same, she went through the formality—to fail to do it would have been her own mistake.

  She knocked on the cockpit door and opened it. “Anybody up here want some coffee?”

  The pilot turned. “No, thanks. The ground crew loaded the baggage. We’re cleared to taxi.”

  “How’s the weather look?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Blue skies all the way,” Saul answered beside her. He and Chris—looking handsome in their pilots’ uniforms—carried documents authorizing them to be supervisors on this flight. They sat at the rear of the cockpit, watching the crew, who had no reason to doubt they were what they claimed. With Erika, they’d boarded early, via the private stairs to the service entrance in the passenger tunnel, avoiding surveillance in the terminal. Their credentials had been beautifully forged. Again the Israeli embassy’s Misha Pletz had worked his magic.

  As the jet backed from the boarding platform, Erika returned to the passengers, double-checking for signs of recognition in anyone’s eyes. A man seemed captivated by her figure. A woman looked apprehensive about the takeoff. Passing them, she decided they were nothing to worry about, though now that the jet was in motion it didn’t matter if a hit team had come on board. El Al excelled in security precautions. Three of the passengers—at the front, the middle, and rear—were plainclothes airline guards. Beyond the windows, two heavy cars abruptly appeared, flanking the jet as it left the terminal toward the runway. In the cars, she noticed large grim men licensed to carry the automatic weapons they held out of sight—standard protection for this airline so often victimized by terrorists. When the plane touched down in London, two more cars would appear and escort the jet to the terminal. Inside the airport, the El Al section would be discreetly but effectively guarded. Under these conditions, a hit team foolish enough to move against Erika, Saul, and Chris would have to be suicidal.

  Her sense of relief passed quickly. As she made sure the food lockers in back were securely locked, she remembered with dismay that she’d have to pass out cocktails and meals, mothering the passengers through the flight.

  The senior attendant picked up a microphone. “Good evening.” Static crackled. “Welcome to El Al’s Flight Seven Fifty-Five to—”

  8

  London. Despite the blue sky forecast, gray drizzly clouds hung over the city. Though burdened by her duties during the flight, Erika had nonetheless found time to consider the implications of what she’d learned.

  The story Chris and Saul had told her about the Franklin School for Boys disturbed her. She herself had been raised on an Israeli kibbutz and as a consequence had been conditioned as well. But though like them she was skilled as a soldier and an operative, she sensed a difference.

  Granted, she’d been separated from her mother and father and raised by foster parents. Still, the entire community had given her love. Every Israeli was a member of her family. In a country so often attacked that many children lost both their natural and foster parents, grief became bearable if the nation a
s a whole was the ultimate parent.

  But Saul and Chris had been shown no love except by Eliot, a love that had been a lie. Instead of the healthy atmosphere of a kibbutz, they’d endured an austere youth of rigid discipline and deprivation—not for the sake of their country, but instead for the secret motives of the man who claimed to be their benefactor. What kind of mind could have imagined such a plan?

  Twisted. Perverted.

  Like Saul and Chris, she’d been trained to kill. But she did it for her country, for the survival of her people, and with sadness, grieving for her enemy, whereas Saul and Chris had been purged of distracting emotion, denied their dignity, made into robots at Eliot’s command. No noble principle justified what had been done to them.

  Now their conditioning had failed. Though Erika enjoyed being reunited with them—especially Saul, for whom an affection she’d thought was dead had been revived as strongly as ever—her principal objective had to be idealistic: to help her country, to repair the damage Eliot had done to Israel when he’d made it seem responsible for killing the president’s friend. Saul and Chris, though, had a different motive. Personal, and under the circumstances ironic, because emotional. They’d reached the limit of a lifetime’s abuse. They’d been betrayed.

  Now they wanted revenge.

  9

  At the London airport, the three of them passed through a private customs area set aside for airline personnel. The escorts Pletz had arranged to meet them waited inconspicuously on the other side. Avoiding the busy passenger section of the terminal, they left through a rear exit reserved for airport employees, their escorts first checking outside, then forming a phalanx through which Erika, Chris, and Saul stepped out to a bulletproof car. They drove past an airport guard at an open metal gate, then merged with the noisy London-bound traffic.