Free I Minus 72 by Don Tompkins Page A

ever tell anyone about the list?” Grant
asked.
    “Oh, possibly. Since it was an unusual
occurrence I may have talked about it at a staff meeting. If so,
probably fifteen people, both civilian and military, heard about
it. I don’t know. They were all cleared, though, and they were just
administrative types. I think I used it as an example of what can
happen if we didn’t follow procedures.”
    “Sir, I may ask you later
to help us put together the list of people who were at that staff
meeting. Right now I’ll see if I can get the minutes of all the
staff meetings during your tour. I’ll let you know if I need
anything further. I’m going to attempt to compile a list of all the
people who might have heard or seen that list. We’ll have to check
on the current whereabouts of each of them. It’s possible that we
might have had a mole who fed the list of names back to the
Soviets. If that’s the case, your name would probably have been
mentioned. Thanks for your time today and if you think of anything
that might help, anything , no matter how
insignificant you think it is, please call me.”
    “I will, Colonel, you can count on it.” the
President-elect said earnestly, then returned to eating his
sandwich.
    Grant took that as a signal the meeting was
over, so he stood up, said goodbye and left.

Chapter 14
     
    I minus 48
    Moscow
     
    Drugs, the Eastern European thought. That’s
the key. Not like the old days when you had to torture information
out of people. He didn’t mind the killing, but torture was
distasteful to him. All the screaming and blood and then having to
dispose of the bodies to keep others from knowing they were
tortured before they died. And it took too long, sometimes days.
Today you just gave ’em a shot and seconds later they’re
blabbering, answering everything you ask. You can even add a
substance that keeps them from remembering anything about the
incident. He was so accurate at mixing drugs now that they wouldn’t
even miss the time. But Koslowski had to die anyway. No one who had
seen his name could live. Now he had six new people he hadn’t known
about before his visit to Krakow. They might have seen his name and
would also have to die over the next few weeks. It surprised him to
find that some of them now lived in Russia and all but one of those
in Moscow, his home for now.
    He thought about all the years he had fed
disinformation through Koslowski, throwing in just enough real
stuff to keep the Americans believing all the lies. Now he had been
secretly indicted by the Russian government for throwing in too
much real information, supposedly giving the Americans an uneven
edge and costing Russia valuable leverage. His one trusted contact
remaining in the new intelligence services had sent him a message
to disappear. If they could find him, they were going to arrest him
and he knew he’d never be found. There would never be a trial. The
KGB hadn’t gone away, it was just renamed and they were as ruthless
and lethal as ever. He was sure, though, that he had kept his new
identity secret enough so that no one could track him down. His
code name was the only link between his old identity and his new
identity. Of course they knew the code name and his old identity.
That’s how they provided him with the disinformation and how he
told them what information the people in Koslowski’s network were
giving to the Americans. He didn’t see everything all the people
gave, but enough to give the Soviet Union and later Russia a little
edge. Knowing both what lies he was feeding the Americans and what
real information the others gave, allowed his government to control
America’s reaction in certain situations. And yes, sometimes he had
to throw in more real information than he probably should have, but
he wanted the Americans to trust him enough to believe the
misinformation he supplied.
    Also, he wasn’t naïve enough to believe he
was the only double agent the Soviets used. There could have