THE CONGRESSMAN PUT DOWN the transcription of his son’s latest report. He frowned, thought for a few seconds, then did something he almost never did—he called for the original tape and something to play it on.
The Congressman tried to remember how the Agency operated before automatic phone recorders. Mostly, it seemed, by-guess-and-by-God, with field agents dictating things to shorthand experts. Who could make mistakes. Who, even if they didn’t make mistakes, wound up knowing altogether too much. The agents, of course, rarely had the leisure to write their own reports. It was frequently at the risk of their lives that they got to phones at all.
Now the calls were recorded by a machine at the Washington end of an 800 number (which wouldn’t turn up on anyone’s phone bill). The machine could recognize enough English to obey priority code commands and channel the call to the Congressman no matter where he happened to be.
Then the tapes were brought to one government typist who had absolutely no interest in anything he typed, a strict eyeballs-to-fingers man who would have faithfully reproduced pig Latin from a tape, if the next higher civil service grade asked him to. He was no risk, especially since the Agency had a full-time man who did nothing but keep an eye on this typist. The reports and tapes were sealed by the typist in a steel box, handed to the Agency man, and delivered to the Congressman.
It was supposed to be a foolproof system, or as close to one as humans could get in a society that frowned on tongueless slaves. But now, the Congressman wanted to hear the tape. He wanted to know whether the typist had somehow been reached and was now feeding his unknown boss disinformation, or if his son had become suicidal.
From the sound of the tape, neither. Here the boy had deliberately blown his cover, or confirmed that it was blown, which was just as bad. He had let a suspected Russian agent know that they were on to him, which was worse. And he had fallen in love, which was ridiculous.
Love, or something like it, as the song said. Here it was, right at the end of the report, right after the part where he tells about that phone call to Smolinski.
“Operative VB subject sub prime one. No obstacle foreseen.” Then, breaking code, Trotter’s voice added, “Just thought you’d like to be the first to know.”
VB. Abbreviation for the Italian phrase volere bene, meaning (literally) to want well, but idiomatically, to love. It might be important to an operation that somebody involved in it was in love with somebody. In love, as opposed to simply having it off (for which there was a totally different code word), meaning the person in question had a strength that proper action could bolster, if you needed him strong, or a weakness that could be exploited, if you needed to exploit him.
So there had to be a word for it, and the alphabet-soup boys in codes and ciphers had supplied one. The Congressman supposed it was a good one. It was impossible to forget, once you’d learned it. It was short and easy to hear over the phone.
But the Congressman had damn well never suspected an agent would use it in referring to himself.
Even when it happened, they never put it in a goddam field report. Even when it happened, once before, to his son.
The Congressman had sent his son into the field early. College campuses, radical groups. The boy had infiltrated one at a fancy Eastern university, and stumbled on a plan to plant a bomb under the steps of the administration building. Sort of a tribute to the plan some Columbia students years earlier had failed to carry out by virtue of blowing themselves up in constructing the bomb.
The Congressman’s son’s friends, though, had been more skillful, and the bombs had been planted. The boy was new with the group, so they hadn’t told him in advance. But this girl he’d been sweet on, while not actually taking part in building the bomb, had been told where it was and when it was going to go off.
Well, there’d been no obstacle to the completion of that mission, either. The old man’s son had to make the girl talk, and he had, and she had died. Turned out she had a bad reaction to the hypnotic drug the boy had used because he didn’t have the heart to beat it out of her.
The Congressman blamed himself. It had never occurred to him that his son would be stupid enough to fall for a girl who was stupid enough to join a group of violent radicals.
What he’d forgotten was that while the boy had brains, and talent, and training, he also had a fully functioning set of emotions and hormones, and this had been his first chance to get any practice with them.
After that, his son had gone on the run, changing his name every few months. When the Congressman needed him, he had to go find him and force him to start the new mission. Only start it, mind you, because once his son got a taste of the action, there was no keeping him back. He was born to do this kind of work.
It was only the boy’s damned pride and stubbornness (inherited, the Congressman knew, from the woman who bore him) that led him to keep up the pretense that he hated it all.
Until now. The Congressman was tired and light-headed, too tired to be doing this, really, but he rolled back the tape and played his son’s report again. He didn’t listen to the words—by now he practically knew them by heart. He was listening for tones of voice, for the attitude that shaped the words.
He was afraid to let himself believe what he was hearing. Or what he wasn’t hearing.
There was no bitterness in his son’s voice this time, no irony, or cynicism, or resignation, or any of the things the old man had gotten used to in these reports. There was not even the tone of hatred for him personally that the Congressman had become used to hearing, and it surprised him to realize how happy that made him. The Congressman had always told himself, and believed, that he had conceived and raised the boy as a weapon of war, unique in the world, as a gift to his country; that he did not need the boy’s love or admiration so long as he had his respect and his fear.
And that, it seemed, had been fine, at least while there seemed to be no hope that the boy would ever feel anything for him but respect and fear.
But now. But now. It might be this Cronus business. The boy identified deeply with the children of Cronus, seemed to take a positive glee in fighting that particular operation and the bastards behind it. It might be because he’d fallen in love, and had some notion of slaying the Red Monster and saving the fair maiden and all she loved from its clutches.
Whatever the reason, there’d been a change in his son; from the Congressman’s point of view, a change for the better.
“Just thought you’d like to be the first to know,” the almost-happy voice on the tape said. The Congressman grunted, reached out and hit a button on the tape machine.
Had P—No, he never used the name the Congressman had given him. What was he calling himself now? The Congressman was upset with himself for forgetting. It was his pride that he never forgot anything.
Allan. That was it. Allan, um, Trotter. Lord, I must be getting old, the Congressman thought.
And that was the point, wasn’t it? For security, the Congressman had handcrafted the Agency around himself. His Agency would be the one group defending the country that could act when action was necessary, without the long gavotte of procedures and clearances the other outfits had to dance. And, with one man making all the decisions, and everyone answerable only to him (who answered only to the President), there would be none of the faultfinding, ass-covering, or excuse-making that sapped an organization’s efficiency and damaged morale.
Of course, that system had one inherent weakness. What happened when the man who was the foundation for this marvelous structure could no longer bear the weight? The day wasn’t here yet, but it was coming. He was an old man, and he was starting to forget things. Like his son’s current name.
His son. That was another reason his son had been born. The Congressman had seen this day coming years ago. Even during the late forties, when the Agency had been born, and McCarthy and his pals were getting wound up, and you couldn’t spit in the District of Columbia without hitting a Russian spy—
God, that McCarthy was a bastard, the Congressman thought. Ruthless and stupid and, in the last analysis, the worst thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War because he had done something so crippling it endangered the very future of the world. He had given anticommunism a bad name. His own name, as it turned out. And the Congressman could think of no greater treachery to America than to make any attempt to expose its enemies suspect—
Where the hell was I? the Congressman demanded of himself.
Oh, right. Even in those days he had known there would be no dearth of dedicated, trustworthy, patriotic Americans who might, if anything happened to him, take over his Agency and run it to the best of their ability.
But who would have the ability? Who but someone with the capabilities bred into him? Who had been trained from birth in the ways nations maneuvered in the dark? Who but a child authored and raised by him personally?
The Congressman had never mentioned it to his son. The break between them had come too early for the subject to have been broached. And despite all the anger and accusations his son had flung at him, that was one thing he had never mentioned, either.
But it was there. That might have been what the boy was really running from all these years.
But now, there could be hope. He might be able to bring his son home. It would take thought and care. If this Regina Hudson was the reason, was it safe to leave her in the picture? A spy with a wife is a distracted man, and a vulnerable man. On the other hand, the Congressman’s son, even distracted and vulnerable, would be worth the full-time dedication of anyone else the old man could think of. Even Rines, who was a distant second. Which reminded him. Rines should be here about now. They had a lot to talk about. Primarily, they would discuss whether they ought to do something about that weasel Smolinski before the Russians pulled him out and made a big propaganda thing out of him, or if they should just let him slide. The Congressman was inclined to the latter. As far as he could tell, the attitude of the American public seemed to be that if someone had a taste of American life and was still asshole enough to want to go back to Russia, he was too stupid to keep, anyway. It might be a little simplistic, but it was the kind of thing that helped the Congressman maintain faith in his countrymen. Still, he’d listen to anything Rines—
Music.
The Congressman could definitely hear music. Distant violins. He also detected a faint odor of melons.
Those two things went together somehow. Something he had read, something someone had told him. He was too angry to pin down the memory right now. What damn fool had put music on an official Agency report tape? He’d track them down, dammit—
The tape wasn’t moving. He’d switched the machine off.
The music got louder and the smell of the fruit was sickening. What did those things mean?
And where was Rines?
And this damn new office was supposed to be soundproof. And clean. It was supposed to be clean. If he ever caught the person who left fruit here to rot, to stink up the place with a heavy, sickly sweetness that was beyond belief, he’d—he didn’t know what he’d do, but it would be something drastic.
This might be secret, but it was a government installation. He was doing important work here, and nobody had the right to make it more difficult.
And then the lightning hit him, like Saul on the road to Damascus, and he was flung from his chair to the ground, and even before he hit, the voices started speaking, deep, resonant, demanding voices whose words were not understandable.
The Congressman wondered, almost abstractly, if this was the Voice of God, and if so, was he speaking Hebrew, or some unknown Heavenly language, or what. Then he remembered. Fruit and music. A stroke. A brain reacting to lack of blood, and he was having one, the lightning and the convulsion and the voices. Be funny if all Saul had was a stroke, wouldn’t it? he thought.
Never mind, he told the voices. If you are God, let Rines get here before I die. Please.