December 1993-February 1994, Washington D.C.
Time for business.
National
Press Books gave me a desk at which I sifted
through their Edward Howard publishing contract, perused a media correspondence
file (letters from news organizations to Howard requesting an interview) and
read his manuscript.
At
noon, Sultan and I broke for lunch at Melio's in Spring Valley.
"Wouldn't
it be great if Howard came back to the U.S.?" said Sultan. "Think of the publicity!"
Working on it, I felt like saying.
Sultan
was now consumed with selling the book.
"I've got the sales director from our distributor coming to see
us. He's giving me a hard time,
something about Cold War books being tough to sell these days. But if we could get Howard to return..."
Soon
after, on December 16th, I had my first encounter with Edward Lee Howard.
I keyed his Moscow telephone number and
left a message on his answering machine.
An hour he returned my call.
We
exchanged greetings; Howard sounded serious and sober. I asked how much material he'd already
written.
About
a hundred pages.
How
much more did he intend to write?"
"Another
hundred pages," said Howard.
"Sounds
light, Ed. Even 300 pages would convey
to only 220 book pages."
"Hmmmm. I guess I could write more,” said
Howard. “I wrote my story a couple of
years ago. A lot has happened since
then."
He
said he had imminent plans for a Christmas vacation in Siberia (his own code
for Switzerland). "I'll be back on
the 27th. That's when I intend to start
writing."
"National
Press wants to publish this book in May or June, which means we need a finished
manuscript by early March. Do you think
you can do it?"
"The
contract says March 15th," said Howard.
"I intend to comply with it."
"Don't
worry about spelling or grammar," I said.
"Just let it roll, like you're at a bar telling your story over a
couple of beers."
Howard
chuckled. He could relate to that; it
probably made him thirsty.
A
few weeks later Howard's computer disk arrived, labeled in Howard's hand: ELH
Book WP5.0.
Maybe future evidence against him.
Howard needed more than an editor.
He needed a ghostwriter.
A Fed Ex envelope from Howard arrived one week later. Inside, a letter with this message: Howard would meet me in Zurich,
Switzerland,"13:00 hours," at the reception desk of Hotel Kindli, which, he instructed, we should refer to in all communications as "the kids place."
This greatly relieved Joseph and
Sultan; promise of a face-to-face with Howard suggested progress, though they
conceded his book would no longer be a spring title.
Next I phoned John H. "You boys have been busy."
Another American within the U.S. intelligence community was secretly operating as a mole for the Russians and quite likely passing them secrets.