have all my marbles. And certainly my suspicions could be wrong. If and when anything happens to me, it will happen. It’s just that I’m allowed to be scared, aren’t I?”
I had never known him to be hysterical, so his quiet fear un nerved me.
All I could say was, “I think you’re probably overreacting.” He smiled, a slow, sad smile. “Maybe so. Maybe not.” He reached for a large manila envelope and slid it across the table toward me. “A Mend … or, rather, a friend of a friend … sent this to me.”
I opened the envelope and removed an eight-by-ten glossy color photograph.
It took me a few seconds to recognize the face, but the instant I did, I felt sick to my stomach.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. I was transfixed with horror.
“I’m sorry, Ben. But you had to know. It rather settles any doubts as to whether Hal Sinclair was murdered.”
I stared, my head reeling.
“Alex Truslow,” he went on, “may be the last, best chance the Company has. He’s been valiantly trying to rid CIA of this for want of a better word, cancer that afflicts it”
“Are things really that bad?”
Moore gazed at the reflection of the room in the dark panes of the French doors. His eyes got a far-off look. “You know, years ago, when Alex and I were junior analysts at Langley, we had a supervisor who we knew was fudging an assessment grossly exaggerating the threat posed by an Italian extreme-left splinter group, just so that he could double the size of his operating budget. And Alex faced him down. Called him on it.
Even then the guy had brass balls. He had a kind of integrity that seemed out of place, almost bizarre, in such a cynical outfit like the Agency. As I recall, his grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in Connecticut, from whom Alex probably inherited that kind of ethical stubbornness. And you know something? People came to respect him for it.”
Moore took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and massaged them. “Only problem is, I’m not sure there are any others left like him. And if they get to him the way they got to Hal Sinclair … well, who knows what might happen?”
FOUR.
I didn’t get to bed until well after midnight. It was too late to catch the last shuttle back to Logan, and Moore wouldn’t hear of my staying in a hotel, what with the various empty rooms in his house now that his children had all left. So I spent the night in his comfortable guest bedroom on the third floor and set the digital alarm clock for six a.m. so I could get to the office at a decent hour.
About an hour later I suddenly sat up in bed, my heart pounding, and switched on the bedside lamp. The photograph was still there. Molly must never see this, I told myself. I got up from the bed, and, in the bright yellow lamplight, slipped the photograph into the manila envelope and zipped it into a side compartment in my briefcase.
I switched off the light, tossed and turned for a few moments, until I surrendered and put the light back on. I could not sleep. As a rule I avoid sedatives, in part because of my Agency training (one must always be ready to bound out of bed on an instant’s notice), and in part because, as an intellectual-property attorney, the last thing I need during the day is the hangover from anything sleep-inducing.
So I put on the television and looked for something suitably soporific.
C-SPAN usually does it for me. On CNN, as it turned out, was a news-talk program, Germany in Crisis. Three journalists were discussing the German situation, the German stock market crash, and the resulting neo-Nazi demonstrations. They appeared to be in rather heated agreement that Germany was in imminent peril of succumbing to another dictatorship, which would present the world with a terrifying prospect.
And, being journalists, they seemed quite certain about it.
One of them I recognized immediately.
He was Miles Preston, a British newspaper correspondent. Ruddy-cheeked, a sparkling wit, and (unlike most Brits I
I had never known him to be hysterical, so his quiet fear un nerved me.
All I could say was, “I think you’re probably overreacting.” He smiled, a slow, sad smile. “Maybe so. Maybe not.” He reached for a large manila envelope and slid it across the table toward me. “A Mend … or, rather, a friend of a friend … sent this to me.”
I opened the envelope and removed an eight-by-ten glossy color photograph.
It took me a few seconds to recognize the face, but the instant I did, I felt sick to my stomach.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. I was transfixed with horror.
“I’m sorry, Ben. But you had to know. It rather settles any doubts as to whether Hal Sinclair was murdered.”
I stared, my head reeling.
“Alex Truslow,” he went on, “may be the last, best chance the Company has. He’s been valiantly trying to rid CIA of this for want of a better word, cancer that afflicts it”
“Are things really that bad?”
Moore gazed at the reflection of the room in the dark panes of the French doors. His eyes got a far-off look. “You know, years ago, when Alex and I were junior analysts at Langley, we had a supervisor who we knew was fudging an assessment grossly exaggerating the threat posed by an Italian extreme-left splinter group, just so that he could double the size of his operating budget. And Alex faced him down. Called him on it.
Even then the guy had brass balls. He had a kind of integrity that seemed out of place, almost bizarre, in such a cynical outfit like the Agency. As I recall, his grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in Connecticut, from whom Alex probably inherited that kind of ethical stubbornness. And you know something? People came to respect him for it.”
Moore took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and massaged them. “Only problem is, I’m not sure there are any others left like him. And if they get to him the way they got to Hal Sinclair … well, who knows what might happen?”
FOUR.
I didn’t get to bed until well after midnight. It was too late to catch the last shuttle back to Logan, and Moore wouldn’t hear of my staying in a hotel, what with the various empty rooms in his house now that his children had all left. So I spent the night in his comfortable guest bedroom on the third floor and set the digital alarm clock for six a.m. so I could get to the office at a decent hour.
About an hour later I suddenly sat up in bed, my heart pounding, and switched on the bedside lamp. The photograph was still there. Molly must never see this, I told myself. I got up from the bed, and, in the bright yellow lamplight, slipped the photograph into the manila envelope and zipped it into a side compartment in my briefcase.
I switched off the light, tossed and turned for a few moments, until I surrendered and put the light back on. I could not sleep. As a rule I avoid sedatives, in part because of my Agency training (one must always be ready to bound out of bed on an instant’s notice), and in part because, as an intellectual-property attorney, the last thing I need during the day is the hangover from anything sleep-inducing.
So I put on the television and looked for something suitably soporific.
C-SPAN usually does it for me. On CNN, as it turned out, was a news-talk program, Germany in Crisis. Three journalists were discussing the German situation, the German stock market crash, and the resulting neo-Nazi demonstrations. They appeared to be in rather heated agreement that Germany was in imminent peril of succumbing to another dictatorship, which would present the world with a terrifying prospect.
And, being journalists, they seemed quite certain about it.
One of them I recognized immediately.
He was Miles Preston, a British newspaper correspondent. Ruddy-cheeked, a sparkling wit, and (unlike most Brits I
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