me.”
Lovely words. She’d heard them before and believed them. Could she believe them now? All men were gifted liars in the early days. Getting laid seemed to inspire them. She was about to say something droll and cool when he stepped into the fire glow and she saw him in that golden light. She let the blanket fall and for a while stopped thinking about anything at all.
LONDON
THE STAG AT BAY, SHOREDITCH
“So . . . let’s review,” said Mandy, relaxing into the booth now that she had made her kill. “It all starts with the Glass Cutters, doesn’t it?”
“Looks like it,” said Dalton, reaching for his cigarettes, realizing as he did so that England, like all the nanny nations of the West, had banned smoking in public bars. Feeling a tad aggrieved, he called for a Guinness.
“What are they doing right now?”
“They’re still working on all the Venona subsets,” said Mandy. “All the intercepted cables from the Cold War and later. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“I know what the Glass Cutters do, more or less. Decryption’s not my thing. I suck at math and I hate crosswords. But I thought they wrapped up the Venona project in the eighties. Moynihan had all the Venona decrypts made public in ’ninety-five. Nobody even noticed, although the cables confirmed that Joe McCarthy was dead right about Alger Hiss and his Harvard—”
Mandy rolled her eyes, reached over, and patted his hand.
“What ever . Let it go, Micah. Ancient history. You’re in danger of turning into this saggy old sorehead, pounding the long bar at the Hicksville VFW until your false teeth pop out: ‘Lissen up, sonny. Joe McCarthy was a gol-dern hero, I tell ’ee, ba tunderin’ Jaysus!”
“He was a hero, a Marine combat vet, and I am not a saggy old—”
“Perhaps not yet, Micah, but you’re well on your way. Can we get back to my subject, please? The Glass Cutters picked up where Venona left off, and now they’re working their way through all the intercepted cables that Venona couldn’t crack, as well as new stuff from the seventies and eighties. They’re triangulating the cipher codes by using archival communiqués from places the Russians pulled out of when the Evil Empire collapsed. The Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Estonia, what used to be East Germany.”
“What’s this ‘Venona 95 Unidentified Cover Designation 19’ thing?”
“Yes. I saw that reference, and I admit I have no idea. From the context, I’d guess that Stalin had a source close to Roosevelt who was never exposed. They only know him as ‘Unidentified Cover 19.’ People who looked into it a few years back figured this 19 guy could have been Harry Hopkins, but he died of cancer in ’forty-six, so there wasn’t a lot of attention paid. Other people said he was Eduard Beneš, and others were dead certain he was Owen Lattimore, or that it was code for Alger Hiss, although he worked for the GRU, not the KGB, and his code name was ‘Ales.’ So, it’s still up for grabs. Find out who he was and then maybe you open up the box a bit—”
“You can bet they’re trying,” said Dalton.
Mandy nodded.
“Yes. As far as the decrypt itself, it looks like a report to a Soviet control officer named Viktor on talks Roosevelt and Churchill were having with Stalin about opening up a Second Front. Dated May 29, 1943.”
“Cather was only ten in ’forty-three. He got to West Point in ’fifty-two, I think. Missed Korea. MOS was G2, Military Intelligence. Worked against Castro, and may have been in Bolivia when the military shot up Che Guevara in ’sixty-seven. Did Vietnam, from ’sixty-eight to ’seventy-one. Served in Eye Corps, out of Anh Khe, up near the DMZ. Stallworth used to say he was probably MAC-SOG, and, if he was, he went the distance too, three tours in the open and a lot of black work. Did Phoenix in Laos and Cambodia. ADC at the Paris Accords in ’seventy-three. Got the Beirut watch after Hezbollah butchered Bill
Lovely words. She’d heard them before and believed them. Could she believe them now? All men were gifted liars in the early days. Getting laid seemed to inspire them. She was about to say something droll and cool when he stepped into the fire glow and she saw him in that golden light. She let the blanket fall and for a while stopped thinking about anything at all.
LONDON
THE STAG AT BAY, SHOREDITCH
“So . . . let’s review,” said Mandy, relaxing into the booth now that she had made her kill. “It all starts with the Glass Cutters, doesn’t it?”
“Looks like it,” said Dalton, reaching for his cigarettes, realizing as he did so that England, like all the nanny nations of the West, had banned smoking in public bars. Feeling a tad aggrieved, he called for a Guinness.
“What are they doing right now?”
“They’re still working on all the Venona subsets,” said Mandy. “All the intercepted cables from the Cold War and later. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“I know what the Glass Cutters do, more or less. Decryption’s not my thing. I suck at math and I hate crosswords. But I thought they wrapped up the Venona project in the eighties. Moynihan had all the Venona decrypts made public in ’ninety-five. Nobody even noticed, although the cables confirmed that Joe McCarthy was dead right about Alger Hiss and his Harvard—”
Mandy rolled her eyes, reached over, and patted his hand.
“What ever . Let it go, Micah. Ancient history. You’re in danger of turning into this saggy old sorehead, pounding the long bar at the Hicksville VFW until your false teeth pop out: ‘Lissen up, sonny. Joe McCarthy was a gol-dern hero, I tell ’ee, ba tunderin’ Jaysus!”
“He was a hero, a Marine combat vet, and I am not a saggy old—”
“Perhaps not yet, Micah, but you’re well on your way. Can we get back to my subject, please? The Glass Cutters picked up where Venona left off, and now they’re working their way through all the intercepted cables that Venona couldn’t crack, as well as new stuff from the seventies and eighties. They’re triangulating the cipher codes by using archival communiqués from places the Russians pulled out of when the Evil Empire collapsed. The Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Estonia, what used to be East Germany.”
“What’s this ‘Venona 95 Unidentified Cover Designation 19’ thing?”
“Yes. I saw that reference, and I admit I have no idea. From the context, I’d guess that Stalin had a source close to Roosevelt who was never exposed. They only know him as ‘Unidentified Cover 19.’ People who looked into it a few years back figured this 19 guy could have been Harry Hopkins, but he died of cancer in ’forty-six, so there wasn’t a lot of attention paid. Other people said he was Eduard Beneš, and others were dead certain he was Owen Lattimore, or that it was code for Alger Hiss, although he worked for the GRU, not the KGB, and his code name was ‘Ales.’ So, it’s still up for grabs. Find out who he was and then maybe you open up the box a bit—”
“You can bet they’re trying,” said Dalton.
Mandy nodded.
“Yes. As far as the decrypt itself, it looks like a report to a Soviet control officer named Viktor on talks Roosevelt and Churchill were having with Stalin about opening up a Second Front. Dated May 29, 1943.”
“Cather was only ten in ’forty-three. He got to West Point in ’fifty-two, I think. Missed Korea. MOS was G2, Military Intelligence. Worked against Castro, and may have been in Bolivia when the military shot up Che Guevara in ’sixty-seven. Did Vietnam, from ’sixty-eight to ’seventy-one. Served in Eye Corps, out of Anh Khe, up near the DMZ. Stallworth used to say he was probably MAC-SOG, and, if he was, he went the distance too, three tours in the open and a lot of black work. Did Phoenix in Laos and Cambodia. ADC at the Paris Accords in ’seventy-three. Got the Beirut watch after Hezbollah butchered Bill
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