The four men around the table in the white-walled room on the third floor of the State Department building were youngish by upper-echelon Washington standards. Their ages ranged from the mid-thirties to the late forties, but their lined faces and hollow look made them old beyond their years. The work they did led to sleepless nights and prolonged periods of anxiety, made worse by their insular life: none of them could discuss the crises they faced in that room with anyone outside it. These were the strategists of covert operations, the air traffic controllers of clandestine activities; roving condors could be shot down on their slightest miscalculation. Others above them might request the broad objectives; others below might design the specific assignments. But only these men were aware of every conceivable variation, every likely consequence of a given operation; they were the clearinghouse. Each was a specialist, each an authority. Only they could give the final nod for the condors to fly.
Yet they had no radar grids or circling antennae to aid them; they had only the projections of human behavior to guide them. They had to examine actions and reactions, not simply those of the enemy but those of their own people in the field as well. Evaluation was a never-ending struggle, which was rarely resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. The “what if” probabilities were geometrically compounded with each new twist of events, each human reaction to abruptly altered circumstances. They were psychoanalysts in an endless labyrinth of abnormality, their patients the products of that disorder. They were specialists in a macabre way of life where the truth was usually a lie and lies too often were the only means of survival. Stress was the factor that frightened them most, for under maximum or prolonged stress both one’s enemies and one’s own people saw things and did things they might not do otherwise. The totally unpredictable added to the abnormal became dangerous territory.
This was the conclusion the four men had reached regarding the crisis late that night. Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Baylor Brown in Rome had sent his cable on priority cipher; its contents required the opening of a dead file so that each strategist could study the facts.
They were beyond dispute. The events at that isolated beach on the Costa Brava had been verified by two on-site confirmations, one of them Foreign Service Officer Havelock himself, the other a man unknown to Havelock named Steven MacKenzie, one of the most experienced undercover operatives working in Europe for the Central Intelligence Agency. He had risked his life to bring back proof: torn garments stained with blood. Everything had been microscopically examined, the results positive: Jenna Karas. The reasons for a backup confirmation had not been made explicit, nor was that necessary. The relationship between Havelock and the Karas woman was known to those who had to know; a man under maximum stress might fall apart, be incapable of carrying out what had to be done. Washington had to know. Agent MacKenzie had been positioned two hundred feet north of Havelock; his view was clear, his confirmation absolute, his proof incontrovertible. The Karas woman had been killed that night. The fact that Steven MacKenzie had died of a heart seizure three weeks after he returned from Barcelona, while sailing in Chesapeake Bay, in no way diminished his contribution. The doctor who had been summoned by the Coast Guard patrol was a well-established physician on the Eastern Shore, a surgeon named Randolph with impeccable credentials. A thorough postmortem was conclusive: MacKenzie’s death was from natural causes.
Beyond Costa Brava itself, the evidence against Jenna Karas had been subjected to the most exhaustive scrutiny. Secretary of State Anthony Matthias had demanded it, and the strategists knew why. There was another relationship to take into consideration: one that had existed between Matthias and Michael Havelock for nearly twenty years since student had met teacher in the graduate program at Princeton University. Fellow Czechs by birth, one had established himself as perhaps the most brilliant geopolitical mind in the academic world, while the other, a young, haunted expatriate, was desperately searching for his own identity. The differences were considerable, but the friendship was strong.
Anton Matthias had come to America over forty years ago, the son of a prominent doctor from Prague who had hurried his family out of Czechoslovakia under the shadow of the Nazis and was welcomed by the medical community. Havelock’s immigration, on the other hand, was managed covertly as a joint exercise of American and British intelligence; his origins were obscured, initially for the child’s own safety. And where Matthias’s meteoric rise in government was sparked by a succession of influential political figures who openly sought his counsel and publicly extolled his brilliance, the much younger man from Prague proceeded to establish his own worth through clandestine accomplishments that would never see the light of day. Yet in spite of the dissimilarities of age and reputation, intellect and temperament, there existed a bond between them, held firm by the elder, never taken advantage of by the younger.
Those who confirmed the evidence against the Karas woman understood that there was no room for error, just as the strategists understood now that the cable from Rome had to be studied carefully, handled delicately. Above all, for the time being, it had to be kept from Anthony Matthias. For though the media had announced that the Secretary of State was off on a well-deserved holiday, the truth was something else. Matthias was ill—some, in whispers, said gravely ill—and although he was in constant touch with State through his subordinates, he had not been in Washington for nearly five weeks. Even those perceptive men and women of the press corps who suspected another explanation beneath the vacation ploy said nothing and printed nothing. No one really wanted to think about it; the world could not afford it.
And Rome could not become an additional burden for Anthony Matthias.
“He’s hallucinating, of course,” said the balding man named Miller, putting his copy of the cable down on the table in front of him. Paul Miller, M.D., was a psychiatrist, an authority on diagnosing erratic behavior.
“Is there anything in his record that might have warned us?” asked a red-haired, stocky man in a rumpled suit and an open collar, his tie unknotted. His name was Ogilvie; he was a former field agent.
“Nothing you would have read,” replied Daniel Stern, the strategist on Miller’s left. His title was Director of Consular Operations, which was a euphemism for section chief of State’s clandestine activities.
“Why not?” asked the fourth strategist, a conservatively dressed man who might have stepped out of an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal for IBM. He was seated next to Ogilvie. His name was Dawson; he was an attorney and a specialist in international law. He pressed his point. “Are you saying there were—are—omissions in his service files?”
“Yes. A security holdover from years ago. No one ever bothered to reassess, so the file remained incomplete. But the answer to Ogilvie’s question might be found there. The warning we missed.”
“How so?” asked Millar, peering over his glasses, his fingers spread across his balding hairline.
“He could be finally burned out. Over the edge.”
“What do you mean?” Ogilvie leaned forward, his expression none too pleasant “Evaluation depends on available data, goddamn it.”
“I don’t think anyone thought it was necessary. His record’s superior. Except for an outburst or two, he’s been extremely productive, reasonable under very adverse conditions.”
“Only, now he’s seeing dead people in railroad stations,” interrupted Dawson. “Why?”
“Do you know Havelock?” asked Stern.
“Only from a field personnel interview,” answered the attorney. “Eight or nine months ago; he flew back for it. He seemed efficient.”
“He was,” agreed the director of Cons Op. “Efficient, productive, reasonable—very tough, very cold, very bright. But then he was trained at an early age under rather extraordinary circumstances. Maybe that’s what we should have looked at.” Stern paused, picked up a large manila envelope, and removed a red-bordered file folder, sliding it out carefully. “Here’s the complete background dossier on Havelock. What we had before was basic and acceptable. A graduate student from Princeton with a Ph.D. in European history and a minor in Slavic languages. Home: Greenwich, Connecticut. A war orphan brought over from England and adopted by a couple named Webster, both cleared. What we all looked at, of course, was the recommendation from Matthias, someone even then to be reckoned with. And what the recruiters here at State saw sixteen years ago was fairly obvious. A highly intelligent Ph.D. from Princeton willing to work for bureaucratic spit, even willing to perfect his linguistic dialects and go into deep-cover work. But that wasn’t necessary—the language part. Czech was his native tongue; he knew it better than we thought he did. That’s what’s here; it’s the rest of his story and could be the reason for the breakdown we’re witnessing now.”
“That’s a hell of a leap backward,” said Ogilvie. “Can you sketch it for us? I don’t like surprises; retired paranoids we don’t need.”
“Apparently, we’ve got one,” interjected Miller, picking up the cable. “If Baylor’s judgment means anything—”
“It does,” Stern broke in. “He’s one of the best we’ve got in Europe.”
“Still, he’s Pentagon,” added Dawson. “Judgment’s not a strong point.”
“It is with him,” corrected the Cons Op director. “He’s black and had to be good.”
“As I was about to say,” continued Miller, “Baylor includes a strong recommendation that we take Havelock seriously. He saw what he saw.”
“Which is impossible,” said Ogilvie. “Which means we’ve got a whacko. What’s in there, Dan?”
“An ugly early life,” replied Stern, lifting the cover of the file and turning several pages. “We knew he was Czech, but that’s all we knew. There were several thousand Czechoslovakian refugees in England during the war, and that was the explanation given for his being there. But it wasn’t true. There were two stories: one real, the other a cover. He wasn’t in England during the war, nor were his parents. He spent those years in and around Prague. It was a long nightmare and very real for him. It started when he was old enough to know it, see it. Unfortunately, we can’t get inside his head, and that could be vital now.” The director turned to Miller. “You’ll have to advise us here, Paul. He could be extremely dangerous.”
“Then you’d better clarify,” said the doctor. “How far back do we go? And Why?”
“Let’s take the ‘why’ first,” said Stern, removing a number of pages from the dossier. “He’s lived with the specter of betrayal since he was a child. There was a period during adolescence and early adulthood—the high school and college years—when the pressures were absent, but the memories must have been pretty horrible for him. Then for the next sixteen years—these past sixteen years—he’s been back in that same kind of world. Perhaps he’s seen too many ghosts.”
“Be specific, Daniel,” pressed the psychiatrist.
“To do that,” said the director, his eyes scanning the top page in his hand, “we have to go back to June of 1942, the war in Czechoslovakia. You see, his name isn’t Havelock, it’s Havlíček. Mikhail Havlíček. He was born in Prague sometime in the middle thirties, the exact date unknown. All the records were destroyed by the Gestapo.”
“Gestapo?” The attorney, Dawson, leaned back in his chair. “June, 1942 … came up in the Nuremberg trials.”
“It was a sizable item on the Nuremberg agenda,” agreed Stern. “On May twenty-seventh Reinhard Heydrich, known as der Henker—the hangman—of Prague, was killed by Czech partisans. They were led by a professor who’d been dismissed from Karlova University and who worked with British intelligence. His name was Havlíček and he lived with his wife and son in a Village roughly eight miles outside of Prague where he organized the partisan cells. The Village was Lidice.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Miller, slowly dropping the cable from Borne on the table.
“He wasn’t noticeably in evidence,” commented Stern dryly as he shifted the pages in his hand. “Afraid that he might have been seen at the site of Heydrich’s assassination, Havlíček stayed away from his house for nearly two weeks, living in the cellars at the university. He hadn’t been spotted, but someone else from Lidice had been; the price was set far Heydrich’s death: execution for all adult males; for the women, conscription—slave labor for the factories, the more presentable sent to the officers barracks to be Feldhuren. The children … they would simply ‘disappear.’ Jugendmöglichkeiten. The adaptable would be adopted, the rest gassed in mobile vans.”
“Efficient bastards, weren’t they?” said Ogilvie.
“The orders from Berlin were kept quiet until the morning of June tenth, the day of the mass executions,” continued Stern, reading. It was also the day Havlíček was heading home. When the word went out—the proclamations were nailed to telephone poles and broadcast over the radio—the partisans stopped him from going back. They locked him up, sedated him with drugs; they knew there was nothing he could do, and he was too valuable Finally, he was told the worst. His wife had been sent to the whore camps—it was later learned that she killed herself the first night, taking a Wehrmacht officer with her—and his son was nowhere to be found.”
“But he hadn’t, obviously, been taken with the other children,” said Dawson.
“No. He’d been chasing rabbits, and he came back in time to see the roundups, the executions, the corpses thrown in ditches. He went into shock, fled into the woods and, for weeks, lived like an animal. The stories began spreading through the countryside: a child was seen running in the forest, footprints found near barns, leading back into the woods. The father heard them and knew; he had told his son that if the Germans ever came for him, he was to escape into the forests. It took over a month, but Havlíček tracked the boy. He had been hiding in caves and trees, terrified to show himself, eating whatever he could steal and scratch from the ground, the nightmare of the massacre never leaving him.”
“A lovely childhood,” said the psychiatrist, making a note on a pad.
“It was only the beginning.” The director of Cons Op reached for another page in the dossier. “Havlíček and his son remained in the Prague-Boleslav sector and the underground war accelerated, with the father as the partisan leader. A few months later the boy became one of the youngest recruits in the Dětská Brigáda, the Children’s Brigade. They were used as couriers, as often as not, carrying nitroglycerin and plastic explosives as messages. One misstep, one search, one soldier hungry for a small boy, and it was over.”
“His father let him?” asked Miller incredulously.
“He couldn’t stop him. The boy found out what they’d done to his mother. For three years he lived that lovely childhood. It was uncanny, macabre. During those nights when his father was around, he was taught his lessons like any other school kid. Then during the days, in the woods and the fields, others taught him how to run and hide, how to lie. How to kill.”
“That was the training you mentioned, wasn’t it?” said Ogilvie quietly.
“Yes. He knew what it was like to take lives, see friends’ lives taken, before he was ten years old. Grisly.”
“Indelible,” added the pyschiatrist “Explosives planted almost forty years ago.”
“Could the Costa Brava have triggered them forty years later?” asked the lawyer, looking at the doctor.
“It could. There’re a couple of dozen blood-red images floating around, some pretty grim symbols. I’d have to know a hell of a lot more.” Miller turned to Stern, pencil poised above his pad. “What happened to him then?”
“To all of them,” said Stern. “Peace finally came—I should say the formal war was over—but there was no peace in Prague. The Soviets had their own plans, and another kind of madness took over. The elder Havlíček was visibly political, jealous of the freedom he and the partisans had fought for. He found himself in another war, as covert as before and just as brutal. With the Russians.” The director turned to another page. “For him it ended on March tenth, 1948, with the assassination of Jan Masaryk and the collapse of the Social Democrats.”
“In what sense?”
“He disappeared. Shipped to a gulag in Siberia or to a nearer grave. His political friends were quick; the Czechs share a proverb with the Russians: “The playful cub is tomorrow’s wolf.’ They hid young Havlíček and readied British M.I.6. Someone’s conscience was stirred; the boy was smuggled out of the country, and taken to England.”
“That proverb about the cub turning into tomorrow’s wolf,” interjected Ogilvie. “Proved out, didn’t it?”
“In ways the Soviets could never envision.”
“How did the Websters fit in?” asked Miller. “They were his sponsors over here, obviously, but the boy was in England.”
“It was chance, actually. Webster had been a reserve colonel in the war, attached to Supreme Command Central. In ’48 he was in London on business, his wife with him, and one night at dinner with wartime friends they heard about the young Czech brought out of Prague, living at an orphanage in Kent. One thing led to another—the Websters had no children, and God knows the boy’s story was intriguing, if not incredible—so the two of them drove down to Kent and interviewed him. That’s the word here. ‘Interviewed.’ Cold, isn’t it?”
“They obviously weren’t.”
“No, they weren’t. Webster went to work. Papers were mocked up, laws bent, and a very disturbed child flown over here with a new identity. Havlíček was fortunate; he went from an English orphanage to a comfortable home in a well-to-do American suburb, including one of the better prep schools and Princeton University.”
“And a new name,” said Dawson.
Daniel Stern smiled. “As long as a cover was deemed necessary, our reserve colonel and his lady apparently felt Anglicization was called for in Greenwich. We all have our foibles.”
“Why not their name?”
“The boy wouldn’t go that far. As I said before, the memories had to be there. Indelibly, as Paul put it.”
“Are the Websters still alive?”
“No. They’d be almost a hundred if they were. They both died in the early sixties when Havelock was at Princeton.”
“Where he met Matthias?” asked Ogilvie.
“Yes,” answered the director of Cons Op. “That softened the blow. Matthias took an interest in him, not only because of Havelock’s work but, perhaps more important, because his family had known the Havlíčeks in Prague. They were all part of the intellectual community until the Germans blew it apart and the Russians—for all intents and purposes—buried the survivors.”
“Did Matthias know the full story?”
“All of it,” replied Stern.
“That letter in the Costa Brava file makes more sense now,” said the lawyer. “The note Matthias sent to Havelock.”
“He wanted it included,” explained Stern, “so there’d be no misunderstanding on our part. If Havelock opted for immediate withdrawal, we were to permit it.”
“I know,” continued Dawson, “but I assumed when Matthias made a reference to how much Havelock had suffered in … ‘the early days,’ I think he wrote, he meant simply losing both parents in the war. Nothing like this.”
“Now you know. We know.” Stern again turned to the psychiatrist. “Any guidance, Paul?”
“The obvious,” said Miller. “Bring him in. Promise him anything, but bring him in. And we can’t afford any accidents. Get him here alive.”
“I agree that’s the optimum,” interrupted the red-haired Ogilvie, “but I can’t see it ruling out every option.”
“You’d better,” said the doctor. “You even said it yourself. Paranoid. Whacko. Costa Brava was intensely personal to Havelock. It could very well have set off those explosives planted thirty years ago. A part of him is back there protecting himself, building a web of defenses against persecution, against attack. He’s running through the woods after having witnessed the executions of Lidice; he’s with the Children’s Brigade, nitroglycerin strapped to his body.”
“It’s what Baylor mentions in his cable.” Dawson picked it up. “Here it is, ‘Sealed depositions,’ ‘tales out of school.’ He could do it all.”
“He could do anything,” continued the psychiatrist. “There are no behavioral rules. Once he’s hallucinated, he can slip back and forth between fantasy and reality, each phase serving the dual objectives of convincing himself of the persecution and at the same time ridding himself of it.”
“What about Rostov in Athens?” asked Stern.
“We don’t know that there was any Rostov in Athens,” Miller said. “It could be part of the fantasy, retroactively recalling a man in the street who looked like him. We do know the Karas woman was KGB. Why would a man like Rostov suddenly appear and deny it?”
Ogilvie leaned forward. “Baylor says Havelock called it a blind probe. Rostov could have taken him, gotten him out of Greece.”
“Then why didn’t he?” asked Miller. “Come on, Red, you were in the field for ten years. Blind probe or no blind probe, if you were Rostov and knowing what you knew was back at the Lubyanka, wouldn’t you have taken Havelock under the circumstances described in that cable?”
Ogilvie paused, staring at the psychiatrist. “Yes,” he said finally. “Because I could always let him go—if I wanted to—before anyone knew I’d taken him.”
“Exactly. It’s inconsistent. Was it Rostov in Athens, or anywhere else? Or was our patient fantasizing, building his own case for persecution and subsequent defenses?”
“From what this Colonel Baylor says, he was damned convincing,” interjected the lawyer, Dawson.
“A hallucinating schizophrenic—if that’s what he is—can be extraordinarily convincing because he believes totally what he’s saying.”
“But you can’t be sure, Paul,” insisted Daniel Stern.
“No, I can’t be. But we’re sure of one thing—two things, actually. The Karas woman was KGB and she was killed on that beach on the Costa Brava. The evidence was irrefutable for the first, and we have two on-site confirmations for the second, including one from Havelock himself.” The psychiatrist looked at the faces of the three men. “That’s all I can base a diagnosis on; that and this new information on one Mikhail Havlíček. I’m in no position to do anything else. You asked for guidance, not absolutes.”
“ ‘Promise him anything …’ ” repeated Ogilvie. “Like that goddamned commercial.”
“But bring him in,” completed Miller. “And just as fast as you can. Get him into a clinic, under therapy, but find out what he’s done and where he’s left those defense mechanisms of his. The ‘sealed depositions’ and ‘tales out of school.’ ”
“I don’t have to remind anyone here,” interrupted Dawson quietly. “Havelock knows a great deal that could be extremely damaging if revealed. The damage would be as extensive to our own credibility—here and abroad—as from anything the Soviets might learn. Frankly, more so. Ciphers, informers, sources—all these can be changed, the networks warned. We can’t go back and rewrite certain incidents where intelligence treaties were violated, the laws of a host country broken by our people.”
“To say nothing of the domestic restrictions placed on us over here,” added Stern. “I know you included that, I just want to emphasize it. Havelock knows about them; he’s negotiated a number of exchanges as a result of them.”
“Whatever we’ve done was justified,” said Ogilvie curtly. “If anyone wants proof, there’s a couple of hundred files that show what we’ve accomplished.”
“And a few thousand that don’t,” objected the attorney. “Besides, there’s also the Constitution. I’m speaking adversarily, of course.”
“Horseshit!” Ogilvie shot back. “By the time we get court orders and warrants, some poor son of a bitch over here has a wife or a father shipped to one of those gulags over there, when someone like Havelock could have made a deal. If we could have placed a tap on time, assigned surveillance, and found out what was going on.”
“It’s a gray area, Red,” explained Dawson, not unsympathetically. “When is homicide justified, really justified? On balance, there are those who would say our accomplishments don’t justify our failures.”
“One man crossing a checkpoint to our side justifies them.” Ogilvie’s eyes were cold. “One family taken out of a camp in Magya-Orszag or Krakow or Dannenwalde or Liberec justifies them. Because that’s where they are, Counselor, and they shouldn’t be there. Who the hell gets hurt, really hurt? A few screaming freaks with political hatchets and outsized egos. They’re not worth it.”
“The law says they are. The Constitution says they are.”
“Then fuck the law, and let’s put a couple of holes in the Constitution. I’m sick to death of its being used by loudmouthed, bushy-haired smartasses who mount any cause they can think of just to tie our hands and draw attention to themselves. I’ve seen those rehabilitation camps, Mr. Lawyer. I’ve been there.”
“Which is why you’re valuable here,” interposed Stern quickly, putting out the fire. “Each of us has a value, even when he renders judgments he’d rather not. I think the point Dawson’s making is that this is no time for a Senate inquiry, or the hanging judges of a congressional oversight committee. They could tie our hands far more effectively than any mob from the aging radical-chic or the wheat-germ-and-granola crowd.”
“Or,” said Dawson, glancing at Ogilvie, his look conveying a mutuality of understanding, “representatives of a half a dozen governments showing up at our embassies and telling us to shut down certain operations. You’ve been there, too, Red. I don’t think you want that.”
“Our patient can make it happen,” interjected Miller. “And very probably will unless we reach him in time. The longer his hallucinations are allowed to continue without medical attention, the farther he’ll slip into fantasy, the rate of acceleration growing faster. The persecutions will multiply until they become unbearable to him and he thinks he has to strike out—strike back. With his own attacks. They’re his defense mechanisms.”
“What form might they take, Paul?” asked the director of Cons Op.
“Any of several,” replied the psychiatrist. “The extreme would be his making contact with men he’s known—or known of—in foreign intelligence circles, and offering to deliver classified information. That could be the root fantasy of the Rostov ‘encounter.’ Or he could write letters—with copies to us—or send cables—easily intercepted by us—that hint at past activities we can’t afford to have scrutinized. Whatever he does, hell be extremely cautious, secretive, the reality of his own expertise protecting his manipulative fantasies. You said it, Daniel; he could be dangerous. He is dangerous.”
“‘Offering to deliver,’ ” said the attorney, repeating Miller’s phrase. “Hinting … not delivering, not giving outright?”
“Not at first. He’ll try to force us—blackmail us—into telling him what he wants to hear. That the Karas woman is alive, that there was a conspiracy to retire him.”
“Neither of which we can do convincingly because there’s not a damn thing we can offer him as proof,” said Ogilvie. “Nothing hell accept. He’s a field man. Whatever we send him he’ll filter, chew it around for accuracy, and spit it back in the horseshit pile. So what do we tell him?”
“Don’t tell him anything,” answered Miller. “You promise to tell him. Put it any way you like. The information’s too classified to send by courier, too dangerous to be permitted outside these rooms. Play his game, suck him in. Remember, he desperately wants—needs, if you like—his primary hallucination confirmed. He saw a dead woman; he has to believe that. And the confirmation’s over here; it could be irresistible to him.”
“Sorry, Headman.” The red-haired former field agent raised his hands, palms up. “He won’t buy it, not that way. His—what did you call it? his ‘reality’ part?—would reject it. That’s buying a code in a box of Cracker Jacks. It just doesn’t happen. He’ll want something stronger, much stronger.”
“Matthias?” asked Dawson quietly.
“Optimum,” agreed the psychiatrist.
“Not yet,” said Stern. “Not until we have no other choice. The quiet word is that he’s aware of his failing condition; he’s conserving his strength for SALT Three. We can’t lay this on him now.”
“We may have to,” insisted Dawson.
“We may then again we may not.” The director turned to Ogilvie. “Why does Havelock have to buy anything concrete, Red?”
“So we can get close enough to grab him.”
“Couldn’t a sequence be designed—say, one piece of information leading to another, each more vital than the last-so as to draw him in, suck him in, as Paul says? He can’t get the last unless he shows up?”
“A treasure hunt?” asked Ogilvie, laughing.
“That’s what he’s on,” said Miller quietly.
“The answer’s no.” The red-haired man leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “A sequence operation depends on credibility; the better the field man, the firmer the credibility. It’s also a very delicate exercise. The subject, if he’s someone like Havelock, will use decoys, blind intermediaries. He’ll reverse the process by programming his decoys with information of their own, give his intermediaries questions they want answered on the spot; he’ll suck you in. He won’t expect perfect answers; he’d be suspicious as hell if he got them, but he’ll want what we used to call a ‘stomach consensus.’ It’s not something you can write down on paper and analyze; it’s a gut feeling for believability. There aren’t that many good men who could fool Havelock in sequence. One substantial misstep and he closes the book and walks away.”
“And sets off the explosions,” said Miller.
“I see,” said Stern.
And it was clear that the men around that table did see. It was one of those moments when the unkempt, irascible Ogilvie confirmed his value, as he did so frequently. He had been out in that labyrinth called the “field,” and his summations had a peculiar eloquence and sagacity.
“There is a way, however,” continued the former agent. “I’m not sure there’s any other.”
“What is it?” asked the director of Cons Op.
“Me.”
“Out of the question.”
“Think about it,” said Ogilvie quickly. “I’m the credibility. Havelock knows me—more important, he knows I sit at this table. To him I’m one of them, a half-assed strategist who may not know what he’s asking for, but sure as hell knows why. And with me there’s a difference; a few of them out there might even count on it. I’ve been where they’ve been. None of the rest of you have. Outside of Matthias, if there’s anyone he’ll listen to, anyone he’ll meet with, it’s me.”
“I’m sorry, Red. Even if I agreed with you, and I think I do, I can’t permit it. You know the rules. Once you step inside this room, you never go out in the field again.”
“That rule was made in this room. It’s not Holy Writ.”
“It was made for a very good reason,” said the attorney. “The same reason our houses are watched around the clock, our cars followed, our regular telephones tapped with our consent. If any of us was taken by interested parties, from Moscow to Peking to the Persian Gulf, the consequences would be beyond recall.”
“No disrespect, Counselor, but those safeguards were designed for people like you and the Headman here. Even Daniel. I’m a little different. They wouldn’t try to take me because they know they’d wind up with nothing.”
“No one doubts your capabilities,” countered Dawson. “But I submit—”
“It hasn’t anything to do with capabilities,” interrupted Ogilvie, raising his hand to the lapel of his worn tweed jacket; he turned up the flap toward the lawyer next to him. “Look closely, Counselor. There’s a slight bulge an inch from the tip here.”
Dawson’s eyes dropped to the fabric, his expression noncommittal. “Cyanide?”
“That’s right.”
“Sometimes, Red, I find you hard to believe.”
“Don’t mistake me,” said Ogilvie simply. “I don’t ever want to use this—or the others I’ve got conveniently placed. I’m no macho freak trying to shock you. I don’t hold my arm over a fire to show how brave I am any more than I want to kill someone or have him try to kill me. I’ve got these pills because I’m a coward, Mr. Lawyer. You say we’re being watched, guarded twenty-four hours a day. That’s terrific, but I think you’re overreacting to something that doesn’t exist I don’t think there is a file on you in Dzerzhinsky Square; at least not on you or the doctor here. I’m sure there’s one on Stern, but grabbing him is like codes in Cracker Jacks, or us going in and grabbing someone like Rostov. It doesn’t hapnen. But there’s a file on me—you can bet your legal ass on that—and I’m not retired. What I know is still very operative, more so ever since I stepped inside this room. That’s why I’ve got these little bastards. I know how I’d go in and how I’d come out, and they know I know. Strangely enough, these pills are my protection. They know I’ve got them and they know I’d use them. Because I’m a coward.”
“And you’ve just spelled out the reasons why you can’t go into the field,” said the director of Consular Operations.
“Have I? Then either you didn’t listen or you should be fired for incompetence. For not taking into account what I didn’t spell out. What do you want, Teacher? A note from my doctor? Excusing me from all activity?”
The strategists glanced briefly at each other, looking uncomfortable. “Come on, Red, cut it out,” said Stern. “That’s not called for.”
“Yes, it is, Dan. It’s the sort of thing you consider when making a decision. We all know about it; we just don’t talk about it, and I suppose that’s another kind of consideration. How long have I got? Three months, maybe four? It’s why I’m here, and that was an intelligent decision.”
“It was hardly the sole reason,” offered Dawson softly.
“If it didn’t weigh heavily in my favor, it should have, Counselor. You should always pick someone from the field whose longevity—or lack of it—can be counted on.” Ogilvie turned to the balding Miller. “Our doctor knows, don’t you, Paul?”
“I’m not your doctor, Red,” said the psychiatrist quietly.
“You don’t have to be; you’ve read the reports. In five weeks or so the pain will start getting worse … then worse after that. I won’t feel it, of course, because by then I’ll be moved to a hospital room where injections will keep it under control, and all those phony cheerful voices will tell me I’m actually getting better. Until I can’t focus, or hear them, and then they don’t have to say anything.” The former field man leaned back in his chair, looking now at Stern. “We’ve got here what our learned attorney might call a confluence of beneficial prerogatives. Chances are that the Soviets won’t touch me, but if they tried, nothing’s lost for me, you can be goddamned sure of that. And I’m the only one around who can pull Havelock out in the open, far enough so we can take him.”
Stern’s gaze was steady on the red-haired man who was dying. “You’re persuasive,” he said.
“I’m not only persuasive, I’m right.” Suddenly Ogilvie pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’m so right I’m going home to pack and grab a cab to Andrews. Get me on a military transport to Italy; there’s no point in advertising the trip on a commercial flight. Those KGB turkeys know every passport, every cover I’ve ever used, and there’s no time to be inventive. Route me through Brussels into the base at Palombara. Then cable Baylor to expect me.… Call me Apache.”
“Apache?” asked Dawson.
“Damn good trackers.”
“Assuming Havelock will meet with you,” said the psychiatrist, “what’ll you say to him?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Once he’s an arm’s length away he’s mine.”
“He’s experienced, Red,” said Stern, studying Ogilvie’s face. “He may not be all there, but he’s tough.”
“I’ll have equipment,” replied the dying man, heading for the door. “And I’m experienced, too, which is why I’m a coward. I don’t go near anything I can’t walk away from. Mostly.” Ogilvie opened the door and left without another word. The exit was clean, swift, the sound of the closing door final.
“We won’t see him again,” said Miller.
“I know,” said Stern. “So does he.”
“Do you think he’ll reach Havelock?” asked Dawson.
“I’m sure of it,” replied the director of Cons Op. “He’ll take him, turn him over to Baylor and a couple of resident physicians we’ve got in Rome, then he’ll disappear. He told us. He’s not going into that hospital room and all those lying voices. He’ll go his own way.”
“He’s entitled to that,” said the psychiatrist.
“I suppose so,” agreed the lawyer without conviction, turning to Stern. “As Red might say, ‘No disrespect,’ but I wish to God we could be certain about Havelock. He’s got to be immobilized. We could be hauled in by authorities all over Europe, fuel for the fanatics of every persuasion. Embassies could be burned to the ground, networks scattered, time lost, hostages taken, and-don’t fool yourself—a great many people killed. All because one man fell off balance. We’ve seen it happen with far less provocation than Havelock could provide.”
“That’s why I’m so sure Ogilvie will bring him in,” said Stern. “I’m not in Paul’s line of work, but I think I know what’s going through Red’s mind. He’s offended, deeply offended. He’s watched friends the in the field—from Africa to Istanbul—unable to do anything because of his cover. He saw a wife and three children leave him because of his job; he hasn’t seen his kids in five years. Now he’s got to live with what he’s got—die from what he’s got. All things considered, if he stays on track, what gives Havelock the right, the privilege, to go over the edge? Our Apache’s on his last hunt, setting his last trap. He’ll see it through because he’s angry.”
“That and one other thing,” said the psychiatrist “There’s nothing else left for him. It’s his final justification.”
“For what?” asked the lawyer.
“The pain,” answered Miller. “His and Havelock’s. You see, he respected him once. He can’t forget that.”