“He was a piece of work, wasn’t he? Jesus, I remember when he nailed Che in Bolivia. He went all the way back to Korea. He was one of the guys we had ashore at the Bay of Pigs, one of the first in and one of the last out.”
“Frenchy was something,” somebody else agreed, and Trewitt recognized Yost Ver Steeg’s voice. “I had no idea he went so far back with Paul.”
“It was Frenchy who got Paul reinstated after he punched Cy Brasher,” another voice offered.
“Paul’s finest moment in the Agency,” somebody—Sam?—said, and there was laughter.
It’s true, thought Trewitt. Chardy was thin-skinned as well as brave and tough, and especially vulnerable to pedants and bureaucratic snipers of the sort intelligence agencies tend to attract in great number. Both his stateside tours, routine administrative pit stops that all career-track officers are expected to pull, had been disasters. And in Hong Kong, Chardy came up against Cy Brasher (Harvard ’49, as he was fond of telling people) in what was referred to still as the Six-Second War. This was 1971, when Chardy was coming off his second long, terrible tour among the Nungs.
Brasher was an imperious, lofty man, cursed with a need to correct everybody. He was widely loathed but exceedingly well connected
(the
Brashers) and had skated without apparent effort to Head of Station in Hong Kong. During the first three seconds of his war with Chardy, he suffered a broken nose and the loss of two teeth; in the second three seconds he took several savage body blows which broke two of his ribs.
“I still worry about this guy, Yost,” somebody said.“Lord knows I despised Cy Brasher as much as anybody. But junior personnel just can’t go around slugging station chiefs, no matter how fatuous an ass the
station
chief is. And if we have to rely on a guy like Chardy, then we are in rather desperate straits.”
“We
are
in rather desperate straits,” said Yost. “Trewitt?”
Trewitt obediently tripped the button, and a picture of Joseph Danzig appeared on the screen.
“The year,” Trewitt said, “is nineteen seventy-three. The year of the operation called Saladin Two.”
Danzig’s famous face filled the room. There’s no reason to show it, really, thought Trewitt, for they all know what he looks like, and all of them will remember what the Agency was like in those days, those Danzig days.
It had been his fiefdom, his ego extension; it existed only to serve his will. He had repaid this fealty, this slavish obedience with contempt and derision.
All of the men in this room had felt his influence, worked in his shadow or under his supervision, tried to guess what he wanted. Joseph Danzig, formerly of Harvard University and then the Rockefeller Advisory Board on Foreign Affairs, had been, under a certain President, Secretary of State. He was almost as famous, in his own way, as that other paradigm of academic-cum-international kingmaker and unmaker, Henry Kissinger, his contemporary at Harvard and in many ways his rival and his equal. Their beginnings were even similar: Kissinger born a German Jew, Danzig, whose family name had been simplified from something unpronounceable to that of the city of his origin by an American Immigration officer, born a Polish one.
But Saladin II and Danzig are linked, Trewitt realized, just as tightly in their way as Saladin II and Chardy. WithoutDanzig there would have been no Saladin II. It was shaped to his specifications, blueprinted to his calculations, implemented at his whim, and aborted by his will.
“Most of you are aware of Saladin Two,” said Yost Ver Steeg, the host of this meeting. “Those who aren’t are shortly to be so. Everything that happens now happens because of what happened then. This crisis we’ve got comes to us courtesy of that famous gent up there.”
“Famous gent”—an uncharacteristic attempt at levity by Yost, who is normally, Trewitt reflected, about as amusing as a fish. Perhaps it’s
“Frenchy was something,” somebody else agreed, and Trewitt recognized Yost Ver Steeg’s voice. “I had no idea he went so far back with Paul.”
“It was Frenchy who got Paul reinstated after he punched Cy Brasher,” another voice offered.
“Paul’s finest moment in the Agency,” somebody—Sam?—said, and there was laughter.
It’s true, thought Trewitt. Chardy was thin-skinned as well as brave and tough, and especially vulnerable to pedants and bureaucratic snipers of the sort intelligence agencies tend to attract in great number. Both his stateside tours, routine administrative pit stops that all career-track officers are expected to pull, had been disasters. And in Hong Kong, Chardy came up against Cy Brasher (Harvard ’49, as he was fond of telling people) in what was referred to still as the Six-Second War. This was 1971, when Chardy was coming off his second long, terrible tour among the Nungs.
Brasher was an imperious, lofty man, cursed with a need to correct everybody. He was widely loathed but exceedingly well connected
(the
Brashers) and had skated without apparent effort to Head of Station in Hong Kong. During the first three seconds of his war with Chardy, he suffered a broken nose and the loss of two teeth; in the second three seconds he took several savage body blows which broke two of his ribs.
“I still worry about this guy, Yost,” somebody said.“Lord knows I despised Cy Brasher as much as anybody. But junior personnel just can’t go around slugging station chiefs, no matter how fatuous an ass the
station
chief is. And if we have to rely on a guy like Chardy, then we are in rather desperate straits.”
“We
are
in rather desperate straits,” said Yost. “Trewitt?”
Trewitt obediently tripped the button, and a picture of Joseph Danzig appeared on the screen.
“The year,” Trewitt said, “is nineteen seventy-three. The year of the operation called Saladin Two.”
Danzig’s famous face filled the room. There’s no reason to show it, really, thought Trewitt, for they all know what he looks like, and all of them will remember what the Agency was like in those days, those Danzig days.
It had been his fiefdom, his ego extension; it existed only to serve his will. He had repaid this fealty, this slavish obedience with contempt and derision.
All of the men in this room had felt his influence, worked in his shadow or under his supervision, tried to guess what he wanted. Joseph Danzig, formerly of Harvard University and then the Rockefeller Advisory Board on Foreign Affairs, had been, under a certain President, Secretary of State. He was almost as famous, in his own way, as that other paradigm of academic-cum-international kingmaker and unmaker, Henry Kissinger, his contemporary at Harvard and in many ways his rival and his equal. Their beginnings were even similar: Kissinger born a German Jew, Danzig, whose family name had been simplified from something unpronounceable to that of the city of his origin by an American Immigration officer, born a Polish one.
But Saladin II and Danzig are linked, Trewitt realized, just as tightly in their way as Saladin II and Chardy. WithoutDanzig there would have been no Saladin II. It was shaped to his specifications, blueprinted to his calculations, implemented at his whim, and aborted by his will.
“Most of you are aware of Saladin Two,” said Yost Ver Steeg, the host of this meeting. “Those who aren’t are shortly to be so. Everything that happens now happens because of what happened then. This crisis we’ve got comes to us courtesy of that famous gent up there.”
“Famous gent”—an uncharacteristic attempt at levity by Yost, who is normally, Trewitt reflected, about as amusing as a fish. Perhaps it’s
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