Chapter 16

When I left the safe house, a quick glance at my watch told me I'd been there the better part of seven hours. It was all I could do to keep from bouncing up and down on my toes like Peggy or Tink were prone to do whenever they got excited.

I couldn't believe Roberts had gone unnoticed for so many years. Why hadn't someone picked up on the signs? The man was absolutely convinced of his own intellectual and professional genius. No one was as smart, or clever, or ... just think of an adjective and you're probably covered. The thing of it was, he really wasn't that bright. Or clever, or anything else. The man had gotten away with years of spying due mostly to the inertia and incompetence of his superiors. It shouldn't have been me who finally twigged to the damn fool.

Harold Sylvester Roberts was born May 18th 1943, in St. Louis. His father, Donald, was away with the Marines in the Pacific when he was born and his mother, Alice, was left to raise the boy on her own. Both parents were in their 30s when their only child was born.

After the war Donald became a fireman and served for thirty years before retiring as Deputy Chief of Engine Company 5125, Spanish Lake District, just north of the city proper.

Harold was raised primarily by his mother and her sister, who moved in with the family following the death of her husband in the opening stages of the Korean War.

His father was distantly cold to the boy (I had no problem relating with the man on that score), never much more than the family bread winner and disciplinarian. Father and son had little or nothing in common.

Following high school, where he was thought of as a bit of a geek, Harold, now going by Hal, went off to the University of Missouri where he majored in chemistry. As a graduation requirement he had to take two years of a foreign language. Hal chose Russian, which I learned was a popular choice among college students in the mid-1960s. The Cold War had many of them believing that the language might come in handy if a shooting war broke out with the Soviet Union. Hal also studied the masters of Russian literature: Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

After getting his B.S. degree, Hal applied unsuccessfully for a position as a cryptographer with the NSA. It was explained to him that the rejection was due to budget cutbacks. It was the middle of the Vietnam War, and Roberts wasn't terribly eager to be drafted. He again turned to higher education, enrolling in his alma mater's Dental School.

Despite getting good grades, Roberts tired of dental school. Instead he began telling his classmates that he had decided to become a psychiatrist. Donald Roberts helped his son test the waters by getting him a weekend job as an orderly at a city-run mental hospital. There Hal got his jollies pretending to be a doctor, calling mental patients into an office and interviewing them.

In 1968 Hal read My Silent War by Kim Philby. He thought the book was terrific, deciding then and there he was somehow going to pull off a caper just like Philby's.

He even mentioned this ambition to a couple of classmates.

Clue number one; to which, understandably enough, no one paid any attention. College kids spout dreck like that all the time and no one give it, or them, a second thought.

Hal got married in 1969. That same year he finally decided he didn't want to be a psychiatrist any more than he wanted to be a dentist and ended up getting an MBA in accounting.

Donald Roberts retired in 1973, just in time so watch his son join the St. Louis police department. Harold couldn't remember what at the time motivated him to join the police, but he seemed to believe it was divinely ordained.

Clue number two indicating Mr. Roberts was missing a few marbles.

While still in the academy some bright bulb noticed his MBA and he got yanked and asked if he'd like to join a new special unit whose main function was to go undercover among their own kind and bust cops on the take. He didn't even have to give the offer much thought.

Harold Roberts had taken his first steps into the shadowy world of espionage.

Clue number three.

Unfortunately for Hal, something about him made his bosses distrust him. Too inquisitive about the wrong things; digging into the background of the mayor rather than the officers he was assigned to. His section chief started thinking he was working for some other city of stage agency. He was forced out in 1975.

One of his mentors suggested he apply to the FBI, which he did and was turned down. He applied again six months later and was accepted.

Hal's first assignment, after leaving the FBI academy, was investigating white-collar crime in Columbus, Ohio. But the FBI wasn't about to waste an agent with an MBA and who also had big city police experience. As soon as they thought he was sufficiently seasoned, he was assigned to the bureau's field office in New York City, a plum assignment considered second only to headquarters in Washington.

The Roberts' purchased a four-bedroom house in Scarsdale, a suburb in Westchester County. By then the family had grown to one girl and three boys. Money was tight, what with Hal barely making $40,000 a year. The fact of the matter was that, at the time, New York City garbage men made more money a year than the average FBI agent. This made them ripe for subversion and corruption. In high cost of living areas, like New York City, many FBI families were just scraping by with the aid of food stamps.

During their three-year stay in Scarsdale, Hal had approached several Russian agents in New York and offered them secrets in exchange for money. Exchanges were made, and it wasn't long before he was counting out $20,000 in $100 bills in the basement, stacking the money into a small shoe box and hauling it off for deposit into a Swiss account.

Back in the city, in the Jacob Javits building, Hal displayed a certain competence, occasionally even brilliance, but the kind that would take him only so far. Hal had a problem. The ideal agent, FBI or CIA, is a used-car salesman—you've got to be able to sell yourself. Roberts didn't have the necessary interpersonal skills. He was able to see problems, see solutions and implement them. But his solutions were not always easy for his peers to follow. He constantly had to explain, and he had little patience with those he considered less intelligent than himself. Which was just about everyone.

Hal's problem? Brains are nice, but you still have to have personal skills to rise up the ladder in management. And even though it was the FBI, it was still management.

By the time Harold Roberts was sent to Washington in 1981 he'd come to realize that any dreams he had of being part of the FBI hierarchy just weren't going to materialize. Silent Hal was considered an odd duck among his fellow agents who had begun calling him the mortician and Dr. Death (Roberts had eyed me strangely when I started laughing at that point in his story) behind his back because of his dour demeanor and fondness for black suits. (I didn't think he'd appreciate the humor ... and I was absolutely positive his ego wouldn't let him recognize the irony.)

In Washington, Hal was at first assigned to plan and justify the bureau's multibillion-dollar budget for Congress. In 1984 he was bumped up to the Soviet Analytical Unit. His clearance was raised to a classification above Top Secret.

Not enough of the FBI's multibillion-dollar budget was going to the agents in those days. In expensive places, like D.C. and New York, it was particularly tough. If the Russians were willing to offer enough money, there were people desperate enough to accept.

On September 14^th, 1986, Harold Roberts mailed a letter to Nikolai Dubrini, a KGB colonel under cover as a travel agent, who was living in Alexandria, Va. Inside was a second envelope which said, DO NOT OPEN. TAKE THIS LETTER TO VLADIMIR R. KARPOV. Karpov was head the Soviet espionage operation in Washington.

(I found this bit of information quite interesting, because I had met Karpov just before he returned to Russia in 1996. Just a few months prior to his departure the man had made me another one of those unbelievable offers to leave my present employers and come to work for — [insert foreign government or radical organization of your choice here.])

Roberts was met and recruited within days. He and his handler made arrangements for drop sites and agreed on payment schedules ... and Harold Roberts began his career as a spy. After sending the Soviets a coded note, Roberts made good, from the Soviets' point of view, dropping off his first package of secrets in a recreational area, which happened to be across the street from the Roberts' first house in Northern Virginia. A few days later, the KGB responded by dropping off $50,000 in $100 bills at the same drop site.

Over the next ten years, Roberts delivered more than 8,500 pages of secret documents to his KGB handlers. Some contained satellite positions and nuclear deployment plans. A great many were simply downloaded from FBI computers and the discs--a total of 39-- were included as part of the package. In return he received $900,000 in $100 bills, some jewelry and a Rolex watch. The Soviets also claimed, in a letter Roberts had kept locked in a safety deposit box, to have deposited another $900,000 in funds in a Moscow bank for his retirement. The cash allowed him to put his children through private Catholic schools more than 50 miles away in Maryland.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union Jose Garcia (the code name he'd started using when he first began selling secrets back in New York) cut back significantly on his deliveries, but continued to irregularly offer up tidbits to the new Russian intelligence apparatus.

How was it that I discovered what he'd been up to when no one else had? Totally and completely by accident.

I was visiting the FBI headquarters, early in 1998, on a scavenger hunt for some corroborating data on a potential CIA mole, when I was witness to an incident.

Roberts was a misogynist and made no bones about it. He distrusted all women, including his mother and wife; for him women were nothing more than human clay, to be molded so that they fit comfortably into his distorted world view.

An administrative assistant, Anna Boston, had been called into a meeting by Roberts on February 5 without warning. The subject, according to Roberts, was petty and revolved around someone whispering to someone else that she was about to be fired. He thought that Boston was the source of the rumors. Boston said she wasn't and the other people in the meeting backed her up. Squabbling on this matter continued for nearly thirty minutes until Boston, having noticed that it was almost time to catch her carpool, left the meeting abruptly and began securing her desk. While she was doing so, Roberts came up behind her and shoved her to the floor.

Which is when I wandered onto the scene.

Harold Roberts was a large man, in decent shape for a guy almost 55 years old, not quite a tall as I am but close in weight. His dark hair was just beginning to show signs of grey at the temples. His suit was immaculate, his tie and pocket handkerchief were matched and on his wrist was a gold Rolex watch. He looked, I thought, like a Wall Street banker. A banker who'd just knocked down a twenty four year old woman.

"I'm your unit chief and you'll damn well do what I tell you. And I want you back in the meeting. Now!"

He began shaking her as she lay on the floor and then tried to drag her back to his office. Boston called for help and then punched her boss in the chest until he let go.

Roberts backed up a step, his face red with anger and exertion, and was about to make another grab for the woman. I stepped in between the two.

We stared at one another for about fifteen seconds, and his face gradually returned to a more normal shade.

Then he looked down to the badge clipped to my pocket. Then back up to my eyes.

"This is none of your business, and you'd do well to stay out of it." he growled.

"My business is whatever I decide it is." I told him. He seemed surprised that I hadn't backed down. And I wondered what else might be going on inside this bully disguised as an executive. So I linked.

Oily, dark, cautious, contemptuous, condescending, arrogant, sneaky, aggressive, disdainful, haughty ... and worried. Not fearful, but worried.

I was obviously aggravating the man. Partly because of our proximity (we were only standing about five inches apart); partly because large, aggressive males seem to take an instant dislike to me; and partly because the man had recognized me. Not by name, but by description.

And once he connected that with my official function he got worried. And that's when I twigged.

"I don't believe we've met before. My name is Ike Blacktower. I'm Deputy Director of Internal Security at the CIA."

He was as outwardly calm and collected as anyone I'd ever come across. Not a tick or twitch of the eye, not a quiver of the chin or a wetting of the lips. Not an ill timed swallow or a dilation of the pupils.

Inside he went absolutely freaking nuts.

Roberts nodded his head in acknowledgment. "My apologies. I'm afraid I lost my temper and behaved rather unprofessionally."

He turned on his heel and retreated to his office, slamming the door shut behind him.

I helped Anna Boston to her feet and offered my support if she chose to file a complaint or charges.

I learned later that Boston had checked herself into a hospital and was treated for bruises. The next day she went to the police, but the FBI told them it was an internal matter, and the case wasn't prosecuted. Roberts was merely suspended for five days without pay for the assault. Boston was reassigned to a different department.

I went back to the FBI when I heard about his suspension, and Boston's reassignment. I informed the Director of my suspicions and suggested that an investigation might be wise.

Blowing sunshine up your skirt is the phrase that best describes the response I got. And nothing happened.

Eventually I got fed up. But it took time and a major shock to my system, before I was prepared to wander back out of my yard.

I'd gone off the reservation before, as our field types like to say, but not often and never into another of our government organizations. Not since I'd become an official part of the CIA. Before didn't count ... not as far as I was concerned.

I'd taken out the odd embassy based spymaster on occasion, but only in the interests of keeping a new double from being exposed or scotched. Snatching Roberts wasn't even close to the same thing. It was departmental poaching and I knew that no one was going to be pleased.

I didn't care or give a damn.

Roberts had remembered me right away. I figured he would. As I've been told so many times over the years, I'm hard to forget.

He didn't want to talk. Kept asking for a lawyer.

He resisted a good twelve minutes before spilling his guts. I got it all on tape, audio and video, as well as three signed confessions.

I was ready for the congressional dog and pony show.

"I could really use your help." I told them, as I eased into the chair.

Janis Karpinski sat slouched behind her desk, peering over the tops of her reading glasses at me, while Evan DeBerg sat perched at the side of her desk; one leg up on the desk's top and one on the floor supporting most of his weight.

Janis pursed her lips momentarily before leaning forward and putting her forearms on the blotter. Evan looked mildly amused.

"Are we talking personally or professionally?" she asked.

Bringing Janis into the practice had been Evan's idea. He'd realized right off the bat, and I agreed with him, that far too much of my time was going to be taken up with the CIA. There was no way I'd be able to devote any serious attention to any significant number of patients on anything even remotely like a regular basis. So, he reasoned, the simplest solution was to bring in another partner who could.

He and Janis had known and respected one another for several years, worked together from time to time and found, to their surprise, that they had no professional animosity. I gathered, at the time, that this was unusual. Later on I discovered that professional loathing and jealousy are more the rule than the exception. That I ever imagined things would be otherwise I can only chalk up to a momentary lapse in my normal cynicism.

For a woman in her early fifties, Janis wasn't bad looking. She was no raving beauty, and from the pictures of her and her family on the wall behind the desk, she never had been, but she'd changed over the years, from a rather plain looking young woman into a rather striking older one. There was a depth of character in her face. You only had to look once to realize that she'd been there, done that, kicked the guy with the t-shirt in the balls and told him to piss off. Janis had reams of self-confidence and assurance, yet still managed to exude compassion, sympathy and understanding.

She also had a rather stiff-necked sense of morality, which I often found to be seriously at odds with her chosen profession. Freud, on the other hand, would probably have liked Janis ... if he could have gotten past her being a woman. Mother Nature would have looked a lot like Janis. But without the funky reading glasses and shapely legs.

"Both." I told her.

She pushed back from the desk and sat up straighter. "What's the problem?"

I glanced over at Evan. "It's your call."

"If it was only me being exposed here I wouldn't care."

"The problem we discussed before?" he discreetly inquired.

"We've worked most of that out on our own."

"Wasn't as bad as you thought it would be, was it?" he said with a grin.

"No ... much worse."

His grin melted.

I smiled fondly at the man. "It could have been worse, I suppose. All it took to mend things was a broken nose and bloody lip on my part. They all came out of it in one piece." My smile faded. "Lilly, Peggy and I have reached an understanding of sorts. What I need help with is a problem between me and Izzy."

"What sort of problem Ike?" Janis asked.

"Izzy doesn't like me."

The motherly woman cocked her head slightly. "Excuse me?"

"She doesn't like me." I repeated softly. "She also resents me for, as she puts it, constantly coming to her rescue."

"Well, that's understandable." Janis murmured. "No one wants to feel as if they have no control over their life. If you rescue her that implies that she can't do it herself."

"Janis, I understand that, but some of the spots she's gotten herself into ... well, let's just say there's no way she'd survive without help."

Janis gave me the evil eye. "You mean without your help?"

I returned her glare levelly. "No, I'm sure a squad of Marines or a team of doctors could have done just as well."

She gave me a look of puzzlement mixed with condescension.

"There's something else you should know about Izzy, and I know she won't like that I've told you, but it's probably important. She has a very strong submissive streak."

Janis' brow furrowed deeply. "Submissive how?"

"Sexually." I said, feeling my face grow warm. "She tends to be aggressive with women, and in her regular activities, but she enjoys being sexually dominated."

"What about your other ... women?"

I shook my head. "No. Well, Peggy to a much lesser degree. With her it's more like a game we play. With Izzy it can get serious in a big damn hurry."

Janis scratched her chin lightly with one finger, still frowning.

"You don't like being the dominator?" she offered.

"Actually I do. Way too much. And I hate that I like it, because I realize how easy it would be to lose control and I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to enjoy hurting her ... or enjoy her pain."

"So you avoid encounters of that sort?"

"As much as I can, yes."

Janis nodded absently. "Okay, sources of resentment all over the place. For both of you."

"Does Izzy still love you son?" Evan asked, while Janis pondered.

"Oh sure. She just doesn't like me. That's the problem. The conflict between love and dislike is damaging the way we're interacting with one another. What's worse, I think I may have caused the problem in the first place."

"What am I missing here?" Janis asked sharply her eyes flashing between the two of us, before landing on Evan with a wilting glare.

The man shrugged his broad shoulders. "Sorry dear-heart. Doctor/patient privilege." he explained.

Janis turned her glare on me. I took it in, along with the frustration that she was giving off.

"I was a patient of Evan's when we were both still in the military. Back during the Gulf War."

"Does your past history with Evan have any bearing on this current problem?" she asked at last, accepting that there were things he knew but couldn't, or wouldn't, share with her.

"Probably. It's all connected, after a fashion." I sighed briefly. "I'm going to be telling you some things that you won't believe, and some others that if spread around could get me thrown in prison."

"I can keep a secret Ike." she said with just a hint of exasperation. "I've had patients who dealt with classified information before you know."

"There are secrets, and then there are secrets." I said ominously.

"I know you work for the CIA. How much more secret can it get?"

"Jan, even the CIA doesn't know this secret." Evan said.

"And you do?"

"Ike let me in on it before he started working for the government."

"And you never told me?" she accused.

"Ike was my patient ... and eventually my friend. I know how to keep secrets too."

I felt tension mounting between the pair at an alarming rate. Janis needed someone other than Evan to focus her hostility on. So once again I offered myself up.

"Knock it off!" I snarled loudly, broadcasting intense waves of aggressive enmity. Their focus immediately turned to me. Evan got off the desk and moved closer to Janis, his face grim and unfriendly. Janis, on the other hand, had quickly gone from hostile to hungry. Her eyes were wide and glazing with lust.

"I didn't come here to watch the two of you have a lover's quarrel." I reminded them, while at the same time clamping down on my broadcast. As the waves receded, the normal sparkling intelligence in Janis' eyes returned.

And then they went hugely wide as comprehension filled them. "You're empathic!" she gasped excitedly.

I nodded my agreement.

"Show me!" she demanded.

I raised an eyebrow. Evan's face paled beneath his ruddy tan.

"Alright, what kind of proof would you like? Pleasure, pain, despair, terror, love, hate, lust, ambition, naked aggression, masochism, indifference, disappointment, frustration, ambition, PMS, morning sickness, the pain joy and exhaustion of giving birth, or I can show you what it feels like to be shot, stabbed, hit by a car, having the bone or bones of your choice broken, gouged eyes, drug withdrawal, or maybe you'd like to know what it feels like to kill another person ... or to die? Take your pick Janis; there isn't much I haven't felt. Would you like just one, or all of them? How 'bout one right after another until I run out, or maybe you'd prefer to get it all in a single shot?"

"Ike, please ... she doesn't understand." Evan practically begged me.

I didn't take my eyes off of Janis. "No, she doesn't. But that hasn't kept her from making demands ... from acting as if I were nothing more than a sideshow freak. When I explained to you what I could do the first time, you asked politely." I reminded him coldly.

"It also took me a while to figure you out, if you'll recall."

"Less than a month. She's known me for years."

"I've never told her any specifics Ike, not about anything."

I took my eyes off of Janis and shifted up and to the left. There was real fear on Evan's face.

"Thank you, for that. I just assumed you'd told her."

Janis was starting to get extremely angry at being discussed like she wasn't even there.

I linked with the woman and leeched the anger right out, leaving a temporary void.

"I'd never risk your life, or our friendship, that way. Only you know who you can trust, and how far."

I could feel the frostiness leaving my face and a smile form on my lips at his words.

"You're a decent man, and a good friend. I apologize for being so touchy. I've gotten overly sensitive, and I'm not handling it well."

"How sensitive?"

"I don't have to be linked to pick up emotions from people anymore."

"Christ! How can you stand it?"

"It isn't easy. Not here in the city. It wasn't too bad when I was suppressing, but I can't afford to do that now."

Janis' anger started building up again, so I yanked it out. She shuddered violently.

"Would you please stop doing whatever the hell it is you're doing?" she asked meekly.

I glanced over at her. "Better." I said, sending a wisp of approval down the link. Her shuddering increased by a factor of at least three.

"Well, that explains a lot of things." she mumbled under her breath, lowering her head.

"Does it really?" Evan asked her, returning to his seat at the side of the desk, looking in my direction as he did, slightly embarrassed.

"It explains why he avoids dominating Izzy the way she wants. It also explains why Ike comes in for only the most difficult cases. I've been watching you for some time, young man, and while you're smart, clever and insightful, you aren't the best psychologist I've ever met. And yet you never fail to get right to the heart of a problem; no matter how deeply rooted, no matter how obscure or convoluted and no matter how reluctant the patient. And you do it faster than anybody should be able to. Nobody's that good."

"Except that I am that good."

"Obviously. But the question in my mind has always been, how? How can anyone be that good all the time? What special insight do you have into the human condition that Evan and I, with decades more experience, don't?"

"And you think my being empathic explains it all?"

"Of course it does!"

"Janis, you need to rethink your conclusion."

"Oh? Mind telling me why?"

"Well, for starters, being empathic only means I can sense someone else's feelings. Granted, that gives me a degree of insight that you can never have, but that's all it gives me."

Janis frowned. She removed her glasses and let them drop against her formidable breastworks, hanging around her neck by the thin chain clipped to the ear pieces.

"That's right, isn't it? You'd still have to interpret the feelings to make use of them. That would explain why your patients all describe their sessions with you as being more like an interrogation than a conversation. You need a context, a framework. Damn! You're a walking lie detector!"

"Among other things." I agreed.

"Can you read thoughts as well?" she asked eagerly.

"No, that I can't do. I met a girl once who could, but I can't."

"Is there any chance I could meet her? She'd be of invaluable assistance in helping some of our most troubled and difficult patients."

"I'm afraid not." I said, feeling a shadow of regret.

"But..." Janis began.

"The girl was killed Jan. Years ago." Evan explained.

Janis looked thunderstruck. I believe it was more the thought of what good might have been accomplished, rather than the loss of a single human life, which moved her to sorrow. Cynical of me, I know, but there you have it. I was becoming more and more cynical all the time. Which did not bode well for hope.

"I'm sorry Ike. Were you very close?"

"She was my sister-in-law."

"I didn't know you were married ... legally, I mean." Janis did her best to be diplomatic, but we all knew she didn't approve of my personal life style. I'd always done what I could not to rub her nose in it, but there was no avoiding her emotional response when the subject came up.

"For a few months when I was in college the first time, before I joined the Army."

"Is any of that related to your current problem?"

"As I said, it's probably all connected."

"Okay then, you'd better start at the beginning." she suggested.

Two hours later, my mouth and throat as dry as the Iraqi desert I'd once traipsed across, I stopped talking. Janis looked and felt both shocked and amazed. Evan himself looked slightly shook up.

I was just tired. The most exhausting thing for me had been trying to keep from exploding into flame as I related the events of a couple of weeks earlier.

Janis sat up and rapped her knuckles on the desk top to get my attention.

"How many friends would you say you have?" she asked me.

"Depends on your definition of friend."

Janis shook her head slightly. "Don't go getting all presidential on me ... and it doesn't matter how I define the word. What matters is how you do. So, once again ... how many friends?"