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By Root 801 0

a staffer for a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Henderson had been briefed in by serious members of the FBI's Intelligence Division. 'Legal' KGB officers had diplomatic covers, and if caught could only be PNG'd - declared persona non grata - and sent home. So they were secure from serious mishandling on the part of the American government, which was the good news; the bad news was that they were also more easily tracked, since their residences and automobiles were known. Illegals were just that, Soviet intelligence officers who came into the country with false papers and who if caught would end up in federal prison until the next exchange, which could take years. Those facts explained Marvin's superb English. Any mistake he made would have serious consequences. That made his relaxed demeanor all the more remarkable.

'Baseball fan, eh?'

'I learned the game long ago. I was a pretty good shortstop, but I never learned to hit a curve ball.' The man grinned. Henderson smiled back. He'd seen satellite imagery of the very place where Marvin had learned his trade, that interesting little city northwest of Moscow.

'How will it work?'

'I like that. Good, Let's get down to business. We won't be doing this very often. You know why.'

Another smile. 'Yeah, they say that winters at Leavenworth are a motherfucker.'

'Not a laughing matter, Peter,' the KGB officer said. 'This is a very serious business.' Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.

'I know. Sorry,' Henderson apologized. 'I'm new to this.'

'First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?'

'Yes, Marvin.'

'For starters? Peter, we'll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It's a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don't ever write it down.'

'HVR-309.'

'Put your messages in this.' He passed something under the table. It was small and metallic. 'Don't get it too close to your watch. There's a powerful magnet in it. When you walk past my car, you can bend down to pick up a piece of litter, or rest your foot on the bumper and tie your shoe. Just stick the container on the inside surface of the bumper. The magnet will hold it in place.'

It seemed very sophisticated to Henderson, though everything he'd just heard was kindergarten-level spy-craft. This was good for the summer. Winter weather would require something else. The dinner menu arrived, and both men selected veal.

'I have something now if you're interested,' Henderson told the KGB officer. Might as well let them know how important I am.

Marvin, whose real name was Ivan Alekseyevich Yegorov, had a real job, and everything that went along with it. Employed by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company as a loss-control representative, he'd been through company training on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to the Washington regional office, and his job was to identify safety hazards at the many clients of the company, known in the trade as 'risks.' Selected mainly for its mobility - the post even came with a company car - the job carried with it the unexpected bonus of visiting the offices of various government contractors whose employees were not always as careful covering up the papers on their desks as they ought to have been. His immediate boss was delighted with Marvin's performance. His new man was highly observant and downright superb at documenting his business affairs. He'd already turned down promotion and transfer to Detroit - sorry, boss, but I just like the Washington area too much - which didn't bother his supervisor at all. A guy with his skills, holding a fairly low-paying job, just made his part of the office look all the better. For Marvin, the job meant being out of the