19
Tests and Passing Grades
“He is an odd duck,” Owens observed. The dossier was the result of three weeks of work. It could have gone faster, of course, but when you don’t want the news of an inquiry to reach its subject, you had to be more circumspect.
Dennis Cooley was a Belfast native, born to a middle-class Catholic family, although neither of his deceased parents had been churchgoers, something decidedly odd in a region where religion defines both life and death. Dennis had attended church—a necessity for one who’d been educated at the parish school—until university, then stopped at once and never gone back. No criminal record at all. None. Not even a place in a suspected associates file. As a university student he’d hung around the fringes of a few activist groups, but never joined, evidently preferring his studies in literature. He’d graduated with the highest honors. A few courses in Marxism, a few more in economics, always with a teacher whose leanings were decidedly left of center, Owens saw. The police commander snorted to himself. There were enough of those at the London School of Economics, weren’t there?
For two years all they had were tax records. He’d worked in his father’s bookshop, and so far as the police were concerned, simply did not exist. That was a problem with police work—you noticed only the criminals. A few very discreet inquiries made in Belfast hadn’t turned up anything. All sorts of people had visited the shop, even soldiers of the British Army, who’d arrived there about the time Cooley had graduated university. The shop’s window had been smashed once or twice by marauding bands of Protestants—the reason the Army had been called in in the first place—but nothing more serious than that. Young Dennis hadn’t frequented the local pubs enough that anyone had noticed, hadn’t belonged to any church organization, nor any political club, nor any sports association. “He was always reading something,” someone had told one of the detectives. There’s a bloody revelation, Owens told himself. A bookshop owner who reads ...
Then his parents had died in an auto accident.
Owens was struck by the fact that they’d died in a completely ordinary way. A lorry’s brakes had failed and smashed into their Mini one Saturday afternoon. It was hard to remember that some people in Ulster actually died “normally,” and were just as dead as those blown up or shot by the terrorists who prowled the night. Dennis Cooley had taken the insurance settlement and continued to operate the store as before after the quiet, ill-attended funeral ceremony at the local church. Some years later he’d sold out and moved to London, first setting up a shop in Knightsbridge and soon thereafter taking over a shop in the arcade where he continued to do business.
Tax records showed that he made a comfortable living. A check of his flat showed that he lived within his means. He was well-regarded by his fellow dealers. His one employee, Beatrix, evidently liked working with him part-time. Cooley had no friends, still didn’t frequent local pubs—rarely drank at all, it seemed—lived alone, had no known sexual preferences, and traveled a good deal on business.
“He’s a bloody cipher, a zero,” Owens said.
“Yes,” Ashley replied. “At least it explains where Geoff met him—he was a lieutenant with one of the first regiments to go over, and probably wandered into the shop once or twice. You know what a talker Geoff Watkins is. They probably started talking books—can’t have been much else. I doubt that Cooley has any interest beyond that.”
“Yes, I believe he’s what the Yanks call a nerd. Or at least it’s an image he’s cultivating. What about his parents?”
Ashley smiled. “They are remembered as the local Communists. Nothing serious, but decidedly bolshie until the Hungarian uprising of 1956. That seems to have disenchanted them. They remained outspokenly left-wing, but their political activities effectively ended then. Actually they’re remembered as rather pleasant people, but a little odd. Evidently they encouraged the local children to read—made good business sense, if nothing else. Paid their bills on time. Other than that, nothing.”
“This girl Beatrix?”
“Somehow she got an education from our state schools. Didn’t attend university, but self-taught in literature and the history of publishing. Lives with her elderly father—he’s a retired RAF sergeant. She has no social life. She probably spends her evenings watching the telly and sipping Dubonnet. She rather intensely dislikes the Irish, but doesn’t mind working with ‘Mr. Dennis’ because he’s an expert in his field. Nothing there at all.”
“So, we have a dealer in rare books with a Marxist family, but no known ties with any terrorist group,” Owens summarized. “He was in university about the same time as our friend O’Donnell, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but nobody remembers if they ever met. In fact, they lived only a few streets apart, but again no one remembers if Kevin ever frequented the bookshop.” Ashley shrugged. “That goes back before O’Donnell attracted any serious attention, remember. If there were a lead of some sort then, it was never documented. They shared this economics instructor. That might have been a useful lead, but the chap died two years ago—natural causes. Their fellow students have scattered to the four winds, and we’ve yet to find one who knew both of them.”
Owens walked to the comer of his office to pour a cup of tea. A chap with a Marxist background who attended the same school at the same time as O‘Donnell. Despite the total lack of a connection with a terrorist group, it was enough to follow up. If they could find something to suggest that Cooley and O’Donnell knew each other, then Cooley was the likely bridge between Watkins and the ULA. That did not mean there was any evidence to suggest the link was real, but in several months they had discovered nothing else even close.
“Very well, David, what do you propose to do?”
“We’ll plant microphones in his shop and his home, and tap all of his telephone calls, of course. When he travels, he’ll have a companion. ”
Owens nodded approval. That was more than he could do legally, but the Security Service didn’t operate under the same rules as did the Metropolitan Police. “How about watching his shop?”
“Not easy, when you remember where it is. Still, we might try to get one of our people hired in one of the neighboring shops.”
“The one opposite his is a jewelry establishment, isn’t it?”
“Nicholas Reemer and Sons,” Ashley nodded. “Owner and two employees.”
Owens thought about that. “I could find an experienced burglary detective, someone knowledgeable in the field....”
“Morning, Jack,” Cantor said.
“Hi, Marty.”
Ryan had given up on the satellite photographs weeks before. Now he was trying to find patterns within the terrorist network. Which group had connections with which other? Where did their arms come from? Where did they train? Who helped with the training? Who provided the money? Travel documents? What countries did they use for safe transits?
The problem with these questions was not a lack of information, but a glut of it. Literally thousands of CIA field officers and their agents, plus those of every other Western intelligence service, were scouring the world for such information. Many of the agents—foreign nationals recruited and paid by the Agency—would make reports on the most trivial encounter in the hope of delivering The One Piece of Information that would crack open Abu Nidal, or Islamic Jihad, or one of the other high-profile groups, for a substantial reward. The result was thousands of communiques, most of them full of worthless garbage that was indistinguishable from the one or two nuggets of real information. Jack had not realized the magnitude of the problem. The people working on this were all talented, but they were being overwhelmed by a sea of raw intelligence data that had to be graded, collated, and cross-referenced before proper analysis could begin. The difficulty of finding any single organization was inversely proportional to its size, and some of these groups were composed of a mere handful of people—in extreme cases composed of family members only.
“Marty,” Jack said, looking away from the papers on his desk, “this is the closest thing to impossible I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe, but I’ve come to deliver a well-done,” Cantor replied.
“What?”
“Remember that satellite photo of the girl in the bikini? The French think they’ve ID’d her: Françoise Theroux. Long, dark hair, a striking figure, and she was thought to be out of the country when the photo was made. That confirms that the camp belongs to Action-Directe.”
“So who’s the girl?”
“An assassin,” Marty replied. He handed Jack a photograph taken at closer range. “And a good one. Three suspected kills, two politicians and an industrialist, all with a pistol at close range. Imagine how it’s done: you’re a middle-aged man walking down the street; you see a pretty girl; she smiles at you, maybe asks for directions or something; you stop, and the next thing you know, there’s a pistol in her hand. Goodbye, Charlie.”
Jack looked at the photograph. She didn’t look dangerous—she looked like every man’s fantasy. “Like we used to say in college, not the sort of girl you’d kick out of bed. Jesus, what sort of world do we live in, Marty?”
“You know that better than I do. Anyway, we’ve been asked to keep an eye on the camp. If we spot her there again, the French want us to real-time the photo to them.”
“They’re going to go in after her?”
“They didn’t say, but you might recall that the French have troops in Chad, maybe four hundred miles away. Airborne units, with helicopters. ”
Jack handed the picture back. “What a waste.”
“Sure is.” Cantor pocketed the photo and the issue. “How’s it going with your data?”
“So far I have a whole lot of nothing. The people who do this full-time ... ”
“Yeah, for a while there they were working around the clock. We had to make them stop, they were burning out. Computerizing it was a little helpful. Once we had the head of one group turn up at six airports in one day, and we knew the data was for crap, but every so often we get a live one. We missed that guy by a half hour outside Beirut last March. Thirty goddamned minutes,” Cantor said. “You get used to it.”
Thirty minutes, Jack thought. If I’d left my office thirty minutes earlier, I’d be dead. How am I supposed to get used to that?
“What would you have done to him?”
“We wouldn’t have read him his constitutional rights,” Cantor replied. “So, any connections that you’ve been able to find?”
Ryan shook his head. “This ULA outfit is so goddamned small. I have sixteen suspected contacts between the IRA and other groups. Some of them could be our boys, but how can you tell? The reports don’t have pictures, the written descriptions could be anybody. Even when we have a reported IRA contact with a bunch they’re not supposed be talking to—one that might actually be the ULA—then, A, our underlying information could easily be wrong, and B, it could be the first time they talked with the IRA! Marty, how in the hell is somebody supposed to make any sense out of this garbage?”
“Well, the next time you hear somebody ask what the CIA is doing about terrorism—you won’t be able to tell him.” Cantor actually smiled at that. “These people we’re looking for aren’t dumb. They know what’ll happen if they get caught. Even if we don’t do it ourselves—which we might not want to do—we can always tip the Israelis. Terrorists are tough, nasty bastards, but they can’t stand up to real troops and they know it.
“That’s the frustrating part. My brother-in-law’s an Army major, part of the Delta Force down at Fort Bragg. I’ve seen them operate. They could take out this camp you looked at in under two minutes, kill everybody there, and be gone before the echo fades. They’re deadly and efficient, but without the right information, they don’t know where to be deadly and efficient at. Same with police work. Do you think the Mafia could survive if the cops knew exactly where and when they did their thing? How many bank robberies would be successful if the SWAT team was waiting inside the doors? But you gotta know where the crooks are. It’s all about intelligence, and intelligence comes down to a bunch of faceless bureaucrats sifting through all this crap. The people who gather the intel give it to us, and we process it and give it to the operations teams. The battle is fought here, too, Jack. Right here in this building, by a bunch of GS-9s and -10s who go home to their families every night.”
But the battle is being lost, Jack told himself. It sure as hell isn’t being won.
“How’s the FBI doing?” he asked.
“Nothing new. The black guy—well, he might as well not exist so far as anyone can tell. They have a crummy picture that’s several years old, an alias with no real name or prints to check, and about ten lines of description that mainly says he’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut. The Bureau’s checking through people who used to be in the radical groups—funny how they have mostly settled down—without any success so far.”
“How about the bunch who flew over there two years back?” Not so long ago members of several radical American groups had flown to Libya to meet with “progressive elements” of the third-world community. The echoes of that event still reverberated through the antiterrorism community.
“You’ve noticed that we don’t have any pictures from Bengazi, right? Our agent got picked up—one of those horrible accidents. It cost us the photos and it cost him his neck. Fortunately they never found out he was working for us. We know some of the names of the people who were there, but not all.”
“Passport records?”
Cantor leaned against the doorframe. “Let’s say Mr. X flew to Europe, an American on vacation—we’re talking tens of thousands of people per month. He makes contact with someone on the other side, and they get him the rest of the way without going through the usual immigration-control procedures. It’s easy—hell, the Agency does it all the time. If we had a name we could see if he was out of the country at the right time. That would be a start—but we don’t have a name to check.”
“We don’t have anything!” Ryan snapped.
“Sure we do. We have all that”—he waved at the documents on Ryan’s desk—“and lots more where that came from. Somewhere in there is the answer.”
“You really believe that?”
“Every time we crack one of these things, we find that all the information was under our nose for months. The oversight committees in Congress always hammer us on that. Sitting in that pile right now, Jack, is a crucial lead. That’s almost a statistical certainty. But you probably have two or three hundred such reports sitting there, and only one matters.”
“I didn’t expect miracles, but I did expect to make some progress,” Jack said quietly, the magnitude of the problem finally sinking in.
“You did. You saw something that no one else did. You may have found Françoise Theroux. And now if a French agent sees something that might be useful to us, maybe they’ll pass it along. You didn’t know this, but the intel business is like the old barter economy. We give them, and then they give us, or we’ll never give to them again. If this pans out, they’ll owe us big-time. They really want that gal. She popped a close friend of their President, and he took it personally.
“Anyway, you get a well-done from the Admiral and the DGSE. The boss says you should take it a little easier, by the way. ”
“I’ll take it easy when I find the bastards,” Ryan replied.
“Sometimes you have to back off. You look like hell. You’re tired. Fatigue makes for errors. We don’t like errors. No more late hours, Jack, that comes from Greer, too. You’re out of here by six.” Cantor left, denying Jack a chance to object.
Ryan turned back toward his desk, but stared at the wall for several minutes. Cantor was right. He was working so late that half the time he couldn’t drive up to Baltimore to see how his daughter was doing. Jack rationalized that his wife was with her every day, frequently spending the night at Hopkins to be close to their daughter. Cathy has her job and I have mine.
So, he told the wall, at least I managed to get something right. He remembered that it had been an accident, that Marty had made the real connection; but it was also true that he’d done what an analyst was supposed to do, find something odd and bring it to someone’s attention. He could feel good about that. He’d found a terrorist maybe, but certainly not the right one.
It’s a start. His conscience wondered what the French would do if they found that pretty girl, and how he’d feel about it if he found out. It would be better, he decided, if terrorists were ugly, but pretty or not, their victims were just as dead. He promised himself that he wouldn’t go out of his way to find out if anyone got her. Jack went back into the pile, looking for that one piece of hard information. The people he was looking for were somewhere in the pile. He had to find them.
“Hello, Alex,” Miller said as he entered the car.
“How was the trip?” He still had his beard, Dobbens saw. Well, nobody had gotten much of a look at him. This time he’d flown to Mexico, driven across the border, then taken a domestic flight into D.C., where Alex had met him.
“Your border security over here’s a bloody joke.”
“Would it make you happy if they changed it?” Alex inquired. “Let’s talk business.” The abruptness of his tone surprised Miller.
Aren’t you a proud one, with one whole operation under your belt, Miller thought. “We have another job for you.”
“You haven’t paid me for the last one yet, boy.”
Miller handed over a passbook. “Numbered account, Bahamian bank. I believe you’ll find the amount correct.”
Alex pocketed the book. “That’s more like it. Okay, we have another job. I hope you don’t expect to go with it as fast as before.”
“We have several months to plan it,” Miller replied.
“I’m listening.” Alex sat through ten minutes of information.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Dobbens asked when he was finished.
“How hard would it be to gather the information we need?”
“That’s not the problem, Sean. The problem is getting your people in and out. No way I could handle that.”
“That is my concern.”
“Bullshit! If my people are involved, it’s my concern, too. If that Clark turkey broke to the cops, it would have burned a safehouse—and me!”
“But he didn’t break, did he? That’s why we chose him.”
“Look, what you do with your people, I don’t give a rat’s ass. What happens to my people, I do. That last little game we played for you was bush league, Sean.”
Miller figured out what “bush league” meant from context. “The operation was politically sound, and you know it. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that the objective is always political. Politically, the operation was a complete success.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that!” Alex snapped back in his best intimidating tone. Miller was a proud little twerp, but Alex figured he could pinch his head off with one good squeeze. “You lost a troop because you were playing this personal, not professional—and I know what you’re thinking. It was our first big play, right? Well, son, I think we proved that we got our shit together, didn’t we? And I warned you up front that your man was too exposed. If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have a man on the inside. I know your background is pretty impressive, but this is my turf, and I know it.”
Miller knew that he had to accept that. He kept his face impassive. “Alex, if we were in any way displeased, we would not have come back to you. Yes, you do have your shit together,” you bloody nigger, he didn’t say. “Now, can you get us the information we need?”
“Sure, for the right price. You want us in the op?”
“We don’t know yet,” Miller replied honestly. Of course the only issue here is money. Bloody Americans.
“If you want us in, I’m part of the planning. Number one, I want to know how you get in and out. I might have to go with you. If you shitcan my advice this time, I walk and I take my people with me.”
“It’s a little early to be certain, but what we hope to arrange is really quite simple....”
“You think you can set that up?” For the first time since he’d arrived, Sean had Alex nodding approval. “Slick. I’ll give you that. It’s slick. Now let’s talk price.”
Sean wrote a figure on a piece of paper and handed it to Alex. “Fair enough?” People interested in money were easy to impress.
“I sure would like an account at your bank, brother.”
“If this operation comes off, you will.”
“You mean that?”
Miller nodded emphatically. “Direct access. Training facilities, help with travel documents, the lot. Your skill in helping us last time attracted attention. Our friends like the idea of an active revolutionary cell in America.” If they really want to do business with you, it’s their problem. “Now, how quickly can you get the information?”
“End of the week good enough?”
“Can you do it that fast without attracting attention?”
“Let me worry about that,” Alex replied with a smile.
“Anything new on your end?” Owens asked.
“Not much,” Murray admitted. “We have plenty of forensic evidence, but only one witness who got a clear look at one face, and she can’t give us a real ID. ”
“The local help?”
“That’s who we almost ID’d. Nothing yet. Maybe they’ve learned from the ULA. No manifesto, no announcement claiming credit for the job. The people we have inside some other radical groups—that is, those that still exist—have drawn a big blank. We’re still working on it, and we have a lot of money out on the street, but so far we haven’t got anything to show for it.” Murray paused. “That’ll change. Bill Shaw is a genius, one of the real brains we have in the Bureau. They switched him over from counterintelligence to terrorism a few years back, and he’s done really impressive work. What’s new on your end?”
“I can’t go into specifics yet,” Owens said. “But we might have a small break. We’re trying to decide now if it’s real or not. That’s the good news. The bad is that His Royal Highness is traveling to America this coming summer. A number of people were informed of his itinerary, including six on our list of possible suspects.”
“How the hell did you let that happen, Jimmy?”
“No one asked me, Dan,” Owens replied sourly. “In several cases, if the people hadn’t been informed it would have told them that something odd was happening—you can’t simply stop trusting people, can you? For the rest, it was just another balls-up. Some secretary put out the plans on the normal list without consulting the security officers.” This wasn’t a new story for either man. There was always someone who didn’t get the word.
“Super. So call it off. Let him get the flu or something when the time comes,” Murray suggested.
“His Highness won’t do that. He’s become quite adamant on the subject. He won’t allow a terrorist threat to affect his life in any way.”
Murray grunted. “You gotta admire the kid’s guts, but—”
“Quite so,” Owens agreed. He didn’t really care for having his next king referred to as “the kid,” but he’d long since gotten used to the American way of expressing things. “It doesn’t make our job any easier.”
“How firm are the travel plans?” Murray asked, getting back to business.
“Several items on the itinerary are tentative, of course, but most are set in stone. Our security people will be meeting with yours in Washington. They’re flying over next week.”
“Well, you know that you’ll get all the cooperation you want, Secret Service, the Bureau, local police, everything. We’ll take good care of him for you,” Murray assured him. “He and his wife are pretty popular back home. Will they be taking the baby with them?”
“No. We were able to prevail on him about that.”
“Okay. I’ll call Washington tomorrow and get things rolling. What’s happening with our friend Ned Clark?”
“Nothing as yet. His colleagues are evidently giving him rather a bad time, but he’s too bloody stupid to break.”
Murray nodded. He knew the type.
Well, they wanted me to take off early, Ryan thought. He decided to accept an invitation to a lecture at Georgetown University. Unfortunately, it was something of a disappointment. Professor David Hunter was Columbia’s enfant terrible, America’s ranking authority on political affairs in Eastern Europe. His book of the previous year, Revolution Postponed, had been a penetrating study of the political and economic problems of the Soviet’s unsteady empire, and Ryan, like others, had been eager to hear his new information on the subject. The speech had turned out to be little more than a rehash of the book, with the rather startling suggestion at the end that the NATO countries should be more aggressive in trying to separate the Soviet Union from her captives. Ryan considered that to be lunacy, even if it did guarantee lively discussions at the reception.
At the end of the talk, Ryan moved quickly to the reception. He’d skipped dinner to make it here on time. There was a wide table of hors d’oeuvres, and Jack filled his plate as patiently as he could before drifting off to a sedate corner by the elevators. He let others form knots of conversation around Professor Hunter. On the whole, it was nice to be back at Georgetown, if only for a few hours. The “Galleria” in the Intercultural Center was quite a contrast to the CIA institutional drab. The four-story atrium of the language building was lined with the glass windows of offices, and a pair of potted trees reached toward the glass roof. The plaza outside was paved with bricks, and known to the students as Red Square. To the west was the old quadrangle, and the cemetery where rested the priests who had taught here for nearly two hundred years. It was a thoroughly civilized setting, except for the discordant shriek of jets coming out of National Airport, a few miles downriver. Someone jostled Ryan just as he was finishing his snacks.
“Excuse me, Doctor.” Ryan turned to see a man shorter than himself. He had a florid complexion and was dressed in a. cheap-looking suit. His blue eyes seemed to sparkle with amusement. His voice had a pronounced accent. “Did you enjoy the lecture?”
“It was interesting,” Ryan said diffidently.
“So. I see that capitalists can lie as well as we poor socialists.” The man had a jolly, overpowering laugh, but Jack decided that his eyes were sparkling with something other than amusement. They were measuring eyes, playing yet another variation of the game he’d been part of in England. Already Ryan disliked him.
“Have we met?”
“Sergey Platonov.” They shook hands after Ryan set his plate on a table. “I am Third Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. Perhaps my photograph at Langley does not do me justice.”
A Russian—Ryan tried not to look too surprised—who knows I’ve been working at CIA. Third Secretary could easily mean that he was KGB, perhaps a diplomatic intelligence specialist, or maybe a member of the CPSU’s Foreign Department—as though it made a difference. A “legal” intelligence officer with a diplomatic cover. What do I do now? For one thing, he knew that he’d have to write up a contact report for CIA tomorrow, explaining how they’d met and what they’d talked about, perhaps an hour’s work. It took an effort to remain polite.
“You must have the wrong guy, Mr. Platonov. I’m a history teacher. I work at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I was invited to this because I got my degree here.”
“No, no.” The Russian shook his head. “I recognize you from the photograph on your book jacket. You see, I purchased ten copies of it last summer.”
“Indeed.” Jack was surprised again and unable to conceal it. “My publisher and I thank you, sir.”
“Our Naval Attaché was much taken by it, Doctor Ryan. He felt that it should be brought to the attention of the Frunze Academy, and, I think, the Grechko Naval Academy in Leningrad.” Platonov applied his considerable charm. Ryan knew it for what it was, but ... “To be honest, I merely skimmed the book myself. It seemed quite well organized, and the Attaché said that your analysis of the way decisions are made in the heat of battle was highly accurate.”
“Well.” Jack tried not to be overly flattered, but it was hard. Frunze was the Soviet staff academy, the finishing school for young field-grade officers who were tagged for stardom. The Grechko Academy was only slightly less prestigious.
“Sergey Nikolay’ch,” boomed a familiar voice, “it is not kulturny to prey upon the vanity of helpless young authors.” Father Timothy Riley joined them. A short, plump Jesuit priest, Riley had headed the history department at Georgetown while Ryan had gotten his doctorate. He was a brilliant intellect with a series of books to his credit, including two penetrating works on the history of Marxism—neither of which, Ryan was certain, had found their way into the library at Frunze. “How’s the family, Jack?”
“Cathy’s back to work, Father. They moved Sally over to Hopkins. With luck we’ll have her home early next week.”
“She will recover fully, your little daughter?” Platonov asked. “I read about the attack on your family in the newspaper.”
“We think so. Except for losing her spleen, there seems to be no permanent damage. The docs say she’s recovering nicely, and with her at Hopkins, Cathy’s able to see her every day,” Ryan said more positively than he felt. Sally was a different child. Her legs weren’t fully healed yet, but worst of all, his bouncing little girl was a sad thing now. She’d learned a lesson that Ryan had hoped to hold off for at least ten more years—that the world is a dangerous place even when you have a mother and a father to take care of you. A hard lesson for a child, it was harder still for a parent. But she’s alive, Jack told himself, unaware of the expression on his face. With time and love, you can recover from anything, except death. The doctors and nurses at Hopkins were taking care of her like one of their own. That was a tangible advantage of having a doctor in the family.
“A terrible thing.” Platonov shook his head in what seemed to be genuine disgust. “A terrible thing to attack innocent people for no reason.”
“Indeed, Sergey,” Riley said in the astringent voice that Ryan had known so well. When he wanted, “Father Tim” had a tongue that could saw through wood. “I seem to recall that V. I. Lenin said the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, and that sympathy in a revolutionary is as reprehensible as cowardice on the field of battle.”
“Those were hard times, good Father,” Platonov said smoothly. “My country has no business with those IRA madmen. They are not revolutionaries, however much they pretend to be. They have no revolutionary ethic. It is madness, what they do. The working classes should be allies, contesting together against the common enemy that exploits them both, instead of killing one another. Both sides of the conflict are victimized by bosses who play them off against each other, but instead of recognizing this they kill one another like mad dogs, and with as little point. They are bandits, not revolutionaries,” he concluded with a distinction lost on the other two.
“Maybe so, but if I ever get my hands on them, I’ll give them a lesson in revolutionary justice.” It was good to let his hatred out in the open for once.
“You have no sympathy for them, either of you?” Platonov baited them. “After all, you are both related to the victims of British imperialism. Did not both your families flee to America to escape it?”
Ryan was caught very short by that remark. It seemed an incredible thing to say until he saw that the Russian was watching for his reaction.
“Or perhaps the direct victim of Soviet imperialism,” Jack responded with his own look. “Those two guys in London had Kalashnikov rifles. So did the ones who attacked my wife,” he lied. “You don’t buy one of those at the local hardware store. Whether you choose to admit it or not, most of the terrorists over there profess to be Marxists. That makes them your allies, not mine, and it makes it appear more than a coincidence that they use Soviet arms.”
“Do you know how many countries manufacture weapons of Soviet design? It is sadly inevitable that some will fall into the wrong hands.”
“In any case, my sympathy for their aim is, shall we say, limited by their choice of technique. You can’t build a civilized country on a foundation of murder,” Ryan concluded. “Much as some people have tried.”
“It would be well if the world worked in more peaceful ways.” Platonov ignored the implicit comment on the Soviet Union. “But it is an historical fact that nations are born in blood, even yours. As countries grow, they mature beyond such conduct. It is not easy, but I think we can all see the value of peaceful coexistence. For myself, Doctor Ryan, I can sympathize with your feelings. I have two fine sons. We once had a daughter also, Nadia. She died long ago, at age seven, from leukemia. I know it is a hard thing to see your child in pain, but you are more fortunate than I. Your daughter will live.” He allowed his voice to soften. “We disagree on many things, but no man can fail to love his children.
“So.” Platonov changed gears smoothly. “What did you really think of Professor Hunter’s little speech? Should America seek to foment counterrevolution in the socialist states of Europe?”
“Why don’t you ask the State Department? That’s not my part of the world, remember? I teach naval history. But if you want a personal opinion, I don’t see how we can encourage people to rebel if we have no prospect of helping them directly when your country reacts.”
“Ah, good. You understand that we must act to protect our fraternal socialist brothers from aggression.”
The man was good, Ryan saw, but he’d had a lot of practice at this. “I wouldn’t call the encouragement of people to seek their own freedom a form of aggression, Mr. Platonov. I was a stockbroker before I got my history degree, and that doesn’t make me much of a candidate for sympathizing with your political outlook. What I am saying is that your country used military force to crush democratic feelings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. To encourage people toward their own suicide is both immoral and counterproductive.”
“Ah, but what does your government think?” the Russian asked with another jolly laugh.
“I’m a historian, not a soothsayer. In this town they all work for the Post. Ask them.”
“In any case,” the Russian went on, “our Naval Attaché is most interested to meet you and discuss your book. We are having a reception at the embassy on the twelfth of next month. The good Father is coming, he can watch over your soul. Might you and your wife attend?”
“For the next few weeks I plan to be at home with my family. My girl needs me there for a while.”
The diplomat was not to be put off. “Yes, I can understand that. Some other time, perhaps?”
“Sure, give me a call sometime this summer.” Are you kidding?
“Excellent. Now if you will excuse me, I wish to speak to Professor Hunter.” The diplomat shook hands again and walked off to the knot of historians who were hanging on Hunter’s every word.
Ryan turned to Father Riley, who’d watched the exchange in silence while sipping at his champagne.
“Interesting guy, Sergey,” Riley said. “He loves to hit people for reactions. I wonder if he really believes in his system or if he’s just playing the game for points ... ?”
Ryan had a more immediate question. “Father, what in the hell was that all about?”
Riley chuckled. “You’re being checked out, Jack.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need me to answer that. You’re working at CIA. If I guess right, Admiral Greer wants you on his personal staff. Marty Cantor is taking a job at the University of Texas next year, and you’re one of the candidates for his job. I don’t know if Sergey’s aware of that, but you probably looked like the best target of opportunity in the room, and he wanted to get a feel for you. Happens all the time.”
“Cantor’s job? But—nobody told me that!”
“The world’s full of surprises. They probably haven’t finished the full background check on you yet, and they won’t pop the offer until they do. I presume the information you’re looking at is still pretty limited?”
“I can’t discuss that, Father.”
The priest smiled. “Thought so. The work you’ve done over there has impressed the right people. If I have things right, they’re going to bring you along like a good welterweight prospect.” Riley got another glass of champagne. “If I know James Greer, he’ll just sort of ease you into it. What did it, you see, was that Canary Trap thing. It really impressed some folks.”
“How do you know all this?” Ryan asked, shocked at what he’d just heard.
“Jack, how do you think you got over there in the first place? Who do you think got you that Center for Strategic and International Studies fellowship? The people there liked your work, too. Between what I said and what they said, Marty thought you were worth a look last summer, and you worked out better than anyone expected. There are some people around town who respect my opinion. ”
“Oh.” Ryan had to smile. He’d allowed himself to forget the first thing about the Society of Jesus: they know everyone, from whom they can learn nearly everything. The President of the university belonged to both the Cosmos and University clubs, with which came access to the most important ears and mouths in Washington. That’s how it would start. Occasionally a man would need advice on something, and being unable to consult the people he worked with, he might try to discuss it with a clergyman. No one was better qualified for this than a Jesuit, meticulously educated, well versed in the ways of the world, but not spoiled by it—most of the time. Like any clergyman, each was a good listener. So effective was the Society at gathering information that the State Department’s code-breakers had once been tasked to break the Jesuits’ own cipher systems; the assignment had started a small revolt in the “Black Chamber” ... until they’d realized what sort of information was finding its way to them.
When Saint Ignatius Loyola had founded the order, the ex-soldier set it on a path to do only two things: to send out missionaries and to build schools. Both had been done extraordinarily well. The influence passed on by the schooling would never be lost on the men who’d graduated. It wasn’t Machiavellian, not really. The colleges and universities plied its students with philosophy and ethics and theology—all required courses—to mute their baser tendencies and sharpen their wits. For centuries the Jesuits had built “men for others,” and wielded a kind of invisible temporal power, mainly for the good. Father Riley’s intellectual credentials were widely known, and his opinions would be sought, just as from any distinguished academic, added to which was his moral authority as a graduate theologian.
“We’re good security risks, Jack,” Riley said benignly. “Can you imagine one of us being a Communist agent? So, are you interested in the job?”
“I don’t know.” Ryan looked at his reflection in a window. “It would mean more time away from the family. We’re expecting another one this summer, you know.”
“Congratulations, that’s good news. I know you’re a family man, Jack. The job would mean some sacrifices, but you’re a good man for it. ”
“Think so?” I haven’t exactly set the world on fire yet.
“I’d rather see people like you over there than some others I know. Jack, you’re plenty smart enough. You know how to make decisions, but more importantly, you’re a pretty good fellow. I know you’re ambitious, but you’ve got ethics, values. I’m one of those people who thinks that still matters for something in the world, regardless of how nasty things get.”
“They get pretty nasty, Father,” Ryan said after a moment.
“How close are you to finding them?”
“Not very close at—” Jack stopped himself too late. “You did that one pretty well.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Father Tim said very sincerely. “It would be a better world if they were off the street. There must be something wrong with the way they think. It’s hard to understand how anyone could deliberately hurt a child.”
“Father, you really don’t have to understand them. You just have to know where to find them.”
“That’s work for the police, and the courts, and a jury. That’s why we have laws, Jack,” Riley said gently.
Ryan turned to the window again. He examined his own image and wondered what it was that he saw. “Father, you’re a good man, but you’ve never had kids of your own. I can forgive somebody who comes after me, maybe, but not anyone who tries to hurt my little girl. If I find him—hell, I won’t. But I sure would like to,” Jack told the image of himself. Yes, it agreed.
“It’s not a good thing, hate. It might do things to you that you’ll regret, things that can change you from the person you are.”
Ryan turned back, thinking about the person he’d just looked at. “Maybe it already has.”