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Though he was not accustomed to receiving youthful and relatively junior CIA staffers at his home, except on a summons, he seated himself in a leather club chair, gestured Roth to sit opposite him, and quietly asked for the meaning of the visit. Carefully, Roth told him.
The DCI was over seventy, an unusual age for the post, but he was an unusual man. He had served with the OSS in World War II running agents into Nazi-occupied France and the Low Countries. After the war, with the OSS disbanded, he had returned to private life, taking over a small factory from his father and building it to a huge conglomerate. When the CIA had been formed to succeed the OSS, he had been offered a chance to join by the first Director, Allen Dulles, but had declined.
Years later, a wealthy man and a major contributor to the Republican party, he had noticed and attached himself to a rising ex-actor who was running for the governorship of California. When Ronald Reagan won the White House, he had asked his trusted friend to take over the CIA.
The DCI was a Catholic, long widowed, and a strict moral puritan, and he was known in the corridors of Langley as a tough old bastard. He rewarded talent and intelligence, but his passion was loyalty. He had known good friends go to the torture chambers of the Gestapo because they had been betrayed, and betrayal was the one thing he would not tolerate under any circumstances. For traitors, he had only a visceral loathing. For them, in the mind of the DCI, there could be no mercy.
He listened carefully to Roth’s narration, staring at the gas log fire where no flame burned on such a warm night. He gave no sign of what he felt, save a tightening of the muscles around the dewlapped jaw.
“You came straight here?” he asked when Roth finished. “You spoke to no one else?”
Roth explained how he had come, like a thief in the night into his own country, on a false passport, by a circuitous route. The old man nodded; he had once slipped into Hitler’s Europe like that. He rose and went to fill a tumbler from the brandy decanter on the antique side-table, pausing to tap Roth reassuringly on the shoulder.
“You did well, my boy,” he said. He offered brandy to Roth, who shook his head. “Seventeen years, you say?”
“According to Orlov. All my own superior officers, right up to Frank Wright, have been with the Agency that long. I didn’t know who else to come to.”
“No, of course not.”
The DCI returned to his chair and sat lost in thought. Roth did not interrupt.
Finally the old man said, “It has to be the Office of Security. But not the Chief. No doubt he’s totally loyal, but he’s a twenty-five-year man. I’ll send him on vacation. There’s a very bright young man who works as his deputy. Ex-lawyer. I doubt if he’s been with us more than fifteen.”
The DCI summoned an aide and caused several phone calls to be made. It was confirmed the deputy Head of the Office of Security was forty-one and had joined the Agency from law school fifteen years earlier. He was summoned from his home in Alexandria. His name was Max Kellogg.
“Just as well he never worked under Angleton,” said the DCI. “His name begins with K.”
Max Kellogg, flustered and apprehensive, arrived just after midnight. He had been about to go to bed when the call came, and he was stunned to hear the DCI himself on the line.
“Tell him,” said the DCI. Roth repeated his story.
The lawyer took it all in without blinking, missed nothing, asked two supplementary questions, took no notes. Finally he asked the DCI: “Why me, sir? Harry’s in town?”
“You’ve only been with us fifteen years,” said the DCI.
“Ah.”
“I have decided to keep Orlov—Minstrel, whatever we call him—at Alconbury,” said the DCI. “He’s probably as safe there, even safer, than back over here. Stall the British, Joe. Tell them Minstrel has just come up with more information of only U.S. interest. Tell them their access will be resumed as soon as we’ve checked it out.
“You’ll fly in the morning”—he checked his watch—“this morning by designated flight straight to Alconbury. No holds barred now. Too late for that. The stakes are too high. Orlov will understand. Take him apart. I want it all. I want to know two things, fast. Is it true, and if so, who?
“As of now, you two work for me—only for me. Report direct. No cut-outs. No questions. Refer them to me. I’ll handle things at this end.”
The light of combat was in the old man’s eyes again.
Roth and Kellogg tried to get some sleep on the Grumman from Andrews back to Alconbury. They were still ragged and tired when they arrived. The west-east crossing is always the worst. Fortunately, both men avoided alcohol and drank only water. They hardly paused to wash and brush up before going to Colonel Orlov’s room.
As they entered Roth heard the familiar tones of Art Garfunkel coming from the tape deck.
Appropriate, thought Roth grimly. We have come to talk with you again. But this time there will be no sounds of silence.
But Orlov was cooperation itself. He seemed resigned to the fact that he had now divulged the last piece of his precious “insurance.” The price of the bride had been offered in full. The only question was whether it would be acceptable to the suitors.
“I never knew his name,” he said in the debriefing room. Kellogg had elected to have the microphones and tape recorders switched off. He had his own portable recorder and backed it up with his own handwritten notes. He wanted no other tape to be copied, no other CIA staff present. The technicians had been sent away; Kroll and two others guarded the passage beyond the now-soundproofed door. The technicians’ last job had been to sweep the room for bugs and declare it clean. They were plainly puzzled by the new regimen.
“I swear to that. He was known only as Agent Sparrowhawk, and he was run personally by General Drozdov.”
“Where and when was he recruited?”