The small boys all looked at James. He smiled.
“You’re the Indian,” James said to George.
54
March 1964
Camp Peary, Virginia
You ask me about a statue? Subotin said.
Yes—a bronze statue, Harris said. A statue of the Chekist Feliks Dzerzhinsky. When was it put up in front of KGB headquarters? What year?
Statues come, statues go, Subotin said. Who knows?
Hillsinger knew what a problem this question was for Subotin, although Subotin himself apparently did not. It was taken as axiomatic inside the CIA that all good KGB members would know exactly when the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky—Vladimir Lenin’s first Chief of State Security—appeared outside their headquarters, since the CIA house view was that this particular decorating decision marked an explicit KGB turn, toward being more aggressive overseas. In theory, this belief was similar to the thought that all Americans would know where they were when they learned President Kennedy was shot. Whether any of it was true or not, here today the reality was that Harris was asserting, in a code understood very well by the CIA audience behind the glass, that Subotin was absolutely not who he said he was.
I ask again: how could you not know? Harris said.
No—I ask you, Subotin said. What is statue on top of U.S. Capitol building? Eh? Tell me.
According to Wise Men panel protocol, Harris was meant to be neutral, but in fact he was presenting the case for the prosecution—specifically, the case that Felix Subotin was a defector planted at the CIA by the KGB to discredit the information of the earlier defector, Astrakhov. Harris was highlighting a list of inconsistencies in Subotin’s earlier interviews, while behind the glass Cressie highlighted those moments that particularly contradicted Astrakhov’s information. For Hillsinger, one or two of the disconnects were odd—he claimed to have information about foreign operations when he was nominally posted to the KGB’s domestic-spying apparatus—but on the whole they were minor, well within the scope of normal defector anomalies. As a rule, defectors exaggerated their own access and value. The Counterintelligence view, however, seemed to be that the sheer weight of these inconsistencies would do two things: one, prove that Subotin was a false defector maliciously sent to spread disinformation; and/or, two, scare any of the assembled Wise Men away from taking Subotin’s side of the argument in any internal debate. The strategy seemed to be working especially well on Danziger, the man from the Far East division.
Subotin is a massive fraud, Danziger said, behind the one-way glass. It’s terrifying he got this far into the system.
And now we come to Oswald and the assassination of President Kennedy, Harris said, on the other side of the glass.
While under normal circumstances this might have been explosive material, Hillsinger and other senior staff were all aware the agency had already come to the view that the KGB could not be definitively linked to the assassination. The one thing everyone in that room already knew about Subotin was that he had confirmed the preexisting consensus of KGB noninvolvement.
Yes, Oswald, Subotin said. I already tell this a thousand times. KGB think Oswald crazy, they interview him but don’t pursue anything. Anyway, when in Soviet Union Oswald is living in Minsk. Minsk is shithole, no dangerous spy live in Minsk. Nobody want to expel him, though, because to expel someone takes a lot of departments, very dangerous politically, and nobody think this crazy American is worth risking his career. So Oswald file is passed to million people, nobody want it, everyone keep passing it on. I do this myself for same reason.
Harris and Subotin rehashed the Oswald material that everyone already knew.
They ask me for a recommendation on Oswald, Subotin said. I say don’t expel, too many headaches. Send him home. Give him name of someone to contact in U.S. so he feel like big man. I suggest Hans Kallenbach, but my supervisor say no, that contact is sensitive. I think they make up a name and phone number in New York and send Oswald to airport.
Hillsinger had leaned forward at the mention of Hans Kallenbach. This, surely, was deep Counterintelligence material that Angleton had not meant to expose.
Yes, yes, Kallenbach, Harris said. We already know about him.
Who the hell is Hans Kallenbach? Todd, the Office of Security man, said to Cressie back behind the glass.
A third party who Moscow uses to move money in the States, Cressie said. He’s a Swiss national, so we’re constrained.
At the time, Hillsinger knew Kallenbach’s name only slightly, as a contact of Peregrine Wilkie’s. Several years earlier, Hillsinger had been told by a friendly FBI contact—off-the-record and as a courtesy—that Hannah Quick was about to be summoned to the New York City Board of Education to answer questions about her membership in the Communist Party. Hillsinger had immediately called Peregrine Wilkie from a pay phone, and Peregrine in turn had sent John Wilkie to Hannah and Billy’s apartment in Harlem to negotiate a surrender. When Hillsinger saw John Wilkie for lunch later that month, Wilkie had outlined the terms, which Hillsinger thought were unduly favorable. Wilkie had also listed the investors Peregrine had recruited, including Hans Kallenbach, who at the time had just moved to New York to open the American branch of Kallenbach Bros., an exclusive private bank out of Zurich. Wilkie said all the best Europeans had vouched for Kallenbach. Hillsinger’s own impression was that he was a playboy first and financier second.
Show them my cell, Subotin said to Harris, pointing at the glass.
You don’t have a cell, Harris said. You have a room.
Ask him to see it, Subotin said to the men behind the glass. Ask Harris why important KGB defector is kept in jail. Ask him why this man is tortured.
Are you ready to continue? Harris said. It’s time to talk about Mexico City.
55
When James said, “You’re the Indian,” George had not moved until one of the small boys jumped up and screamed, “Run!”
He walked calmly to the door. Outside, Penny knelt at the side of the house, drinking water from the hose.
“What does it mean when they say I’m the Indian?” George said.
“It means run.”