A month later, Witold presented Forsyth with an audio tape of a closed meeting of the frantic Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party arguing about whether to comply with or ignore an order from KGB Director Chebrikov to arrest fractious Wujek miners and Gdánsk shipyard workers in the Solidarity movement. WOLVERINE/3, the statuesque clerical assistant in the secretariat whose name was Agnes Krawcyk and who, alarmingly, was an adrenaline junkie, had stuck a microphone and small wire recorder (assembled by WOLVERINE/5, the electronics whiz named Jerzy) under the president’s dais before the meeting. Even as he submitted the reports—subsequently graded a rare O for outstanding—Forsyth freaked. The WOLVERINEs would not last if they kept taking the insane risks of the past months, he yelled at Witold. And the use of two WOLVERINEs in the same operation violated the tenet of keeping WOLVERINE network members compartmented from each other. It was risky enough that Witold knew everyone’s name. This had to stop.
Over a holiday dinner of zrazy zawijane, succulent roulade of beef with onion, mushrooms, and silky dark gravy, at his aunt’s Rome apartment, Witold smiled at Forsyth—how far they had come together—and said that given Forsyth’s motherly concern, he would postpone for now his plan to kidnap the KGB rezident in Warsaw and deliver him hog-tied to Forsyth in time for Christmas. They toasted with a glass of Chopin wódka. In the three years of Forsyth’s Rome tour, the WOLVERINE network had produced hundreds of intelligence reports of high interest, and had informed Washington policymakers on the dangerous last throes of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Headquarters promoted Forsyth and presented the Medal of Achievement to Witold.
When the Soviet Union imploded in 1989 and Poland came back into the light, Forsyth proposed that his five WOLVERINEs be kept together and on the active-duty roster. He envisioned the team traveling as commercial reps for various Polish companies selling machine tools, pumps, and software in denied areas—North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Russia—countries murderously difficult for traditionally covered CIA officers. The statuesque Agnes Krawcyk, moreover, had joined the Faculty of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow where she finally earned her degree as a licensed conservator of antique terra-cotta, plaster, and ceramic artworks. Forsyth envisioned operational foreign travel for Agnes with cover as a restorer of art.
With relative freedom of movement in these countries, said Forsyth, the team could discreetly conduct required operational acts. The WOLVERINEs had been trained over the years and were proficient in street surveillance, surreptitious entry, site casing, recruitment, and intelligence reporting. All of them spoke fluent Polish and Russian, as well as the requisite French, German, and Satellite Proto English. They were self-sufficient, aggressive, natural risk takers, and fiercely loyal to Forsyth, who was like a god to them. Then Headquarters intervened.
There was protracted bureaucratic wrangling over Forsyth’s proposal for the WOLVERINEs. The new breed of CIA leadership—mostly politically ambitious former analysts and administrators who for decades had resented the verve and hegemony of the Directorate of Operations and now perversely sought to reform the DO into oblivion—viewed these five fanatic Slavs (or whatever they were) as retro Cold War dinosaurs. Besides, collection in the modern age was shifting to drones, and satellites, and massive electronic listening posts. Classic HUMINT (human intelligence) such as an officer talking to a clandestine source, the one sure way to obtain the plans and intentions of the opposition, was atrophying as an overly dangerous and time-consuming method of collection. Most CIA bureaucrats frantic to avoid operational flaps wanted nothing to do with case officers, collectors, operators, cowboys, scalp takers, mustangs, old whores, headhunters, or five fucking Eastern European WOLVERINEs for that matter, who could create only blue ruin and wind them up in front of a congressional oversight committee.
