ERROL
I'd never told Elizabeth about it. Not once. I'd never included it in any of the dozens of reports I'd sent either to 'George' at the Call Centre, or had told either Gabriel or Claudia. Why?
I'd gone rogue.
It had been personal. It had been because Paige had been with me while I had bought those cowboy boots, the ones I'd wear line-dancing. Paige had got all embarrassed in the store when I put the boots on and tried a few steps - going through tricky steps, right there.
Okay, there was a reason why I reacted so badly to the guy who I found out was 'Errol Bengoster', who I'd then tracked down from his 'Washington Liberty' credit card. He'd ogled Paige.
Paige was 13 at the time! She was my daughter!
I think I now know why I've not told anyone about going to his place, sticking a BBQ fork into his hand, and warning him to 'stay away from children'. He'd looked leeringly at Paige, he with an obviously over-sexed-up teenager of his own, one who he couldn't keep his hands off of. Paige was, back then, 13, herself going on 33…. she was smart, and Elizabeth and I were going to have a few years of having our hands full.
I'd not known it with Bengoster, but when me, Yousaf Rana, and Elizabeth had stuffed Annelise into a suitcase, I again became very protective of Paige. I did not want her one day to be stuffed into one.
As I'd said to Elizabeth, "Paige is not equipped to deal with this shit." What I didn't say was that perhaps I was not either.
If I had internalized all of that, I certainly would not have been able to accept, much less be able to do, the operation with Kimmy Breland. My work, Elizabeth's and my illegals work, it was a long slide into stuff that was destroying us.
Destroying me.
Kimmy? For Christ's sake, she was born the same year as Paige. Should I be sticking a BBQ fork into my own hand?
PILING ON
Things were piling up. I realize I have not brought up Martha here, nor 'Clark Westerfeld'. Holy shit, she'd taken me to see kids that we could adopt. There's a story there - but let's just say that Martha had been gold. But at least she was an adult.
I've not brought up much to do with Stan - nor even EST, a self-help group that I'd dragged him to following his divorce. EST. American-style self-help like you would not believe, about the opposite of what it was to be Russian, particularly a Russian male. (Remember when Emmett Connors had said that Russian women were not to be treated too gently, or they wouldn't respect you? Now THAT'S a Russian talking…..)
Stan and Sandra - divorced. Stan and Tori, they met at EST - she was quite the whirlwind for him. Stan came over to our place for beer to talk about Tori, about how weird it was for him and her to make out at his house, the one in which Sandra had once lived. Боже мой, совершенно, совсем.
Après-Sandra, Stan had emptied many beer bottles at our place. Me, friend that I was, I reported to The Centre that my FBI neighbour was particularly vulnerable those days. (Disbelieve me if you want, but it never occurred to me that The Centre might operationalize that comment! Fine friend I turned out to be.)
Then the real piling on. Elizabeth and I were fighting about Paige - no, not church, my God, Jesus was now a topic in our house! - about whether or not Paige should be recruited as a second-generation illegal. I mean, Jesus Christ, look how the Connors turned out!
There were other things - too many to list here.
Suffice it to say - me getting involved with Kimmy Breland, to gain access to the CIA Afghan group's leader's house…. I more than felt like shit with that. It could not be a one-and-done with Kimmy.
Fuck.
Remember Elizabeth's comment from years ago, that our kids were part of our cover? Was that only what our kids were? Would Paige one day be stuffing people into suitcases?
Kimmy Breland. She was how low I had sunk. It never occurred to me, that one day I could be stuffing her into a suitcase. (No, that never happened. It almost became worse, until I finally said, 'enough'.)
THE AFGHAN GROUP - NOVEMBER 1982
The Centre, it had ordered us to infiltrate anything to do with America's support of Afghan rebels, the ones who were killing our Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan.
It was at Cooper's Bar and Grill that we'd photographed Yousaf Rana with the CIA's Afghan group. (At the bar I'd ordered a Miller, but the waitress brought Miller's lite, hopefully not an omen of bad things to come.) More to the point, Yousaf had brought us straight to the inner workings of the CIA's Afghan people.
One of whom was Ted Paaswell - a CIA agent going through a divorce, selling his house, and needing money. Perfect!
I'll keep this short - Paaswell's boss's daughter, Kimberly, babysat for the Paaswells. After bugging Paaswell's mobile phone device - Kimmy, as she was called, used to linger in Paaswell's car when he'd drive her home, telling him how much she liked older men.
She was 15.
Kimmy was ripe to be manipulated - that was the jist of it all. It was a way for us to get into her father's house - Isaac Breland, the CIA's head of the Afghan group. Breland and Kimmy's step-mother, were rarely there. Kimmy was mostly alone in that huge house. Or hanging out with friends, smoking dope and getting into bars as under-aged teenies.
Because of the nature of how she could be run - it was me to do it. Fuck.
Elizabeth helped with the identity I'd use to manipulate her. To Kimmy, I was James, a guy who could get her both fake I.D. to get into bars, as well as some good weed. (The weed, I got that from Gabriel!)
What did I initially get from Kimmy? She'd told me of a new album out that teens loved - which I immediately ran out and bought, for Paige for her coming 15th birthday - a peace offering for destroying her Bible. Paige was ecstatic.
Even that present to Paige made me feel soiled.
Me, I then said to Elizabeth, "are you sure this is right? We've never run someone so young. For God's sake, she's Paige's age!"
Elizabeth? She had the gall to say that I was using my misplaced protective instinct about Paige, to become sloppy in relation to Kimmy.
She'd said, "Access to the CIA's Afghan boss, make all of the Brelands hard targets. Besides, you heard the Paaswell tape, Kimmy's not exactly naïve."
Yeah. Fifteen and not naïve. Elizabeth continued to accuse me of trying to sabotage any prospect of 'recruiting' Paige for our work. Which, as a matter of fact - I probably was.
BALANCING ACT - DECEMBER 1982
The first thing? Separating Kimberly from her pack. A pack of fifteen year-olds. Nicole, Erica and…..
Kimberly Breland. Separating them was like shooting fish in a barrel.
At first it was hard to tell the difference between her friend Erica and her. Then - duh - Erica with her long brown hair, and Kimberly a frizzy blond. At first I seemed to be finding excuses to fuck up this easy one.
KB: C'mon in Jim, don't worry - my dad and step-mom are out on their charity circuit. This old, echo'ey house, it's all mine all evening. Don't worry about the weed - if we go out on the porch or out back, they've never once suspected anything. I swear, mostly they barely know I'm here.
Jim: I'm sure they care about you. I mean, look around you, I never grew up in a house like this.
KB: A prison is still a prison, Jimbo.
Jim: Say, what is it that you kids listen to these days. - taking one of her ear-pieces - I think I know who I'm going to buy this for…..
KB: Oh, Jim, do I have competition?
Jim: No! But wait a second, kiddo. - pause - Us? This is not what you think it is.
KB: So, Jim, why are you here? - silence -
Jim: Will you give Erica and Nicole their I.D.? I guarantee that you'll have no problems from now on.
KB: Are you good for your guarantees, Jimbo?
Jim: Are either Erica or Nicole coming over to pick them up?
KB: Not tonight they aren't. They can wait until the morning. - silence - Wanna come up and see my room? This place, I have an en suite of my own - privacy for baths and the like.
Jim: Look, Kimmy, I'll come upstairs. But I cannot stay. - pulling out a dimebag of what Gabriel had given him - And if we're going to make a dent in this, we'd better wrap up and head out to the porch.
- they climbed the stairs, at the top with Kimmy's bedroom on the left an office of some sorts to the right. Jim 'mistakenly' turned to the right -
KB: Okay Jim, I hate to be the hall monitor here, but that's dad's office. A 'no-go zone'.
Jim: What did you say he did for a living?
KB: Some Department of Agriculture job. Bo-o-o-oring. - pause, undoing her blouse buttons -
Jim: Okay, okay, be cool, Kimmy. What's going on?
KB: I thought you could come in while I had a bath.
Jim: Okay, let's not get off on the wrong foot, here. You, young lady, have no idea who I am.
KB: Have it your way, Jimbo. Me, I'm going to have a bath, and you can wait out here. Just for you I'll keep my door closed. But if you change your mind, it's not locked. - pause - Still, don't rush off, there's that dimebag to cut into.
Jim: What if your dad drives up the driveway?
KB: At this early hour? Trust me, tonight is one of those midnight junkets, my step-mom chairs major charitable work. Bo-o-o-o-oring. - Kimberley closed her door, Jim waited to hear the bath faucet running -
OPERATION BRELAND, A BRIDGE TOO FAR?
I then went into Breland's office. This part was going to be a piece of cake. It was just a matter of how. No sense bugging the home, it was a cinch that he would not discuss CIA Afghan stuff there - not in detail anyway.
That meant that with Kimmy, this was not going to be a 'one and done' operation. When I spied his brief case, that locked me in - locked me in to returning again and again to this house - Kimberly being my access. Opening it, I saw the stiff bottom spine of the case - by my eye-ball, it would be perfect to fit a recording device into, underneath it.
Driving home back to the warehouse, then to Falls Church to face the teenage issues at home, I wracked my brain.
How was I going to maintain the balancing act with Kimmy? Get access to to Breland's home office, while staying out of fifteen year-old Kimmy's bath-tub with her?
At home? Paige was wanting to be baptised. At Pastor Tim's Reed Street Church in Alexandria.
That's right, I said baptised. If Gabriel was forcing us to 'recruit' her, that was going in the wrong direction.
Kimmy. Paige. Teenagers! I was inventing a honey-less trap on the fly with the former. We'd not been trained to do that. With the latter, I was ripping pages from the Bible in front of her.
My anger was genuine. At myself. At America. At Russia. At Gabriel. Even at Elizabeth - she was taking Gabriel's side.
UNDEREQUIPPED, I TURNED TO EST
No wonder I was at EST. An expensive, group-program advocating radical honesty and no bullshit. Yeah right, demanding 'honesty' from an embedded, Directorate S, KGB illegal living in Falls Church, Virginia! At EST, I was torturing myself - with what I deserved. Lies.
I had to keep it together. No less than our Afghan war was on the line. No pressure. Kimmy was not, and could not be 'one and done'.
Me, I needed another Errol Bengoster to beat the crap out of.
Hypocrisy alert. I'd once objected to Paige's recruitment, because, "she's not ready to deal with this shit."
Yet, Kimmy was even less ready. And with Kimmy, that was my advantage. Who's Errol Bengoster now?