Aaron Elkins: Fellowship Of Fear

The man put down his pencil and took a half-finished cigarette from an ashtray before looking at Gideon. He had a natty, carefully trimmed little mustache and short dark hair. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, he made no effort to hide the boredom in his eyes. Gideon didn’t like him at all.

"Have a seat. Glad to see you," he said, the words brimming with bureaucratic indifference. "Do you go by doctor or mister?"

"I go by doctor." Ordinarily, it would have been, "Call me Gideon."

"Doctor. Fine. Well, I suppose Charlie Chan told you who I am?"

"Mr. Marks, if you have some questions, please ask them. I have some things to do this afternoon."

"He didn’t, I see. Well, I didn’t call you in about the incident last night. I’m not in law enforcement."

"You’re not in the NATO Security-in NSD?"

"Yes, I’m in NSD, which you’re apparently unfamiliar with, so let me give you the two-bit lecture." His weary sigh was so elaborate that Gideon began to wonder if he was being offensive on purpose.

"The NATO Security Directorate is concerned with threats to the international security of the NATO community, with particular emphasis on terrorism and espionage. To oversimplify things-"

"Wait, hold it a minute. What does this have to do with me? Did that attack have something to do with espionage? Were they terrorists?"

Again a sigh, this time an exasperated one. Marks leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and looked at the ceiling. "Dr. Oliver, I’ve already told you once; I’m not interested in that incident. I’ve examined it with care, and it is of no interest to me. This interview has no connection with it. Period."

With an effort, Gideon stifled the impulse to say it was pretty interesting to him

"Now," Marks went on, "to oversimplify things, there are four main branches of NSD. Three of those branches deal with espionage, more or less. The other, Safety, functions in effect, like an ordinary police department-an international police department, however. It’s concerned with protection of life and property. Murder, robbery, that sort of thing. That’s your friend Lau’s province. Now, the Second Bureau, of which I am a deputy director, is, so to speak, the counterespionage branch. Our job is to counteract enemy agents and terrorists. There is another branch concerned with routine intelligence operations, and then there is Bureau Four, our own little internal secret police."

It was an ill-chosen term to use in this building, Gideon felt, but Marks smiled as if he had said something witty. "The Fourth Bureau keeps us all honest," Marks went on. "It polices our own agents, as well as nationals of member countries who are suspected of spying for the other side."

He stopped abruptly. The two-bit lecture was over. "Any questions?"

"Yes. You’ve given me an awful lot of so-to-speaks and in-effects. If it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate having my information more precise. And I don’t know that oversimplifications are necessary."

"Dr. Oliver, this isn’t a college classroom. Everything you need to know, you’re being told."

"Damn it, you asked me if I had any questions."

The little mustache twitched, the brow contracted, and apathy suddenly changed to clear-eyed, man-to-man candor. "All right, in all frankness, we need your help, Dr. Oliver. We want you to work with us." He inhaled massively on the stub of his cigarette and let the smoke out through tightened lips: Bogart leveling with Claude Rains in Rick’s nightclub.

"Sorry, Mr. Marks, but if you’re expecting a yes or no to that, I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me a lot more."

"I know. I’m just trying to decide how much you can be told." He stood up suddenly and made what Gideon assumed was his momentous-decision face. "I’m going to ask the director just how much we can share with you."

As he walked to the door, he placed his hand on Gideon’s shoulder and tightened it in a gesture of trust and conspiracy. Good God, thought Gideon, the man must have been trained in a used-car salesmen’s school. Closing Technique Number Four: "Just a minute, I’ll have to ask my supervisor if we can go that low." (Smile, shoulder pat.) "I’ll do my best."

He sat alone for a few minutes, trying to make something of the conversation so far. Marks might be a buffoon, but this was certainly NSD headquarters, and he had just been asked, as far as he could tell, to spy for them. And all this naturally had no connection with an attack by two professional thugs-spies? agents?-last night. He wondered if they had learned from John Lau of his deductions based on speech patterns or if they shared Lau’s apparent suspicion that he was a world champion karate master. No, that was ridiculous; he dismissed the thought. He wished he hadn’t gone so long without a decent night’s sleep.

In about fifteen minutes, Marks returned with a round, rumply man in his late sixties. Wrinkled gray trousers belted six inches below his armpits and cuffed well above his shoe tops gave him a jolly, elfin quality slightly out of kilter with his watery blue eyes. He moved quickly, reaching out to shake hands with Gideon before Marks had introduced them.

"Monsieur Delvaux, Dr. Oliver."

"How do you do, Professor. Please sit down." With the greeting came an exhalation of cheese and wine. M. Delvaux had been interrupted at his dejeuner.

"Do not smoke, please," he said from the side of his mouth to Marks, who raised his eyes heavenward-in Gideon’s line of sight, not Delvaux’s-and stubbed out his cigarette. Marks seated himself at a side chair, leaving the one behind his desk for Delvaux, but the older man perched on the large windowsill-he had to hop to get up-and began to speak rapidly and softly in a flowing French accent.

"I would like to give you some background on what Mr. Marks has been telling you. For some time now, we have known-this is between us in this room, you understand- about a Soviet action of some sort that is now being planned. We don’t know what that action is, but we know that it requires certain secret information from a number of NATO bases. The surreptitious procurement of that information is among the highest priorities of their intelligence machine; its prevention is among ours. We are asking your help in an activity that may be of the greatest service to your country and to the cause of peace. To yourself, there is very little danger, virtually none."

"What exactly are you asking me to do?"

"Simply to tell us if anyone, at any of the bases to which you are assigned- anyone -asks you to obtain or transmit sensitive information from that base to himself or to anyone else."

To his faint surprise, Gideon was disappointed. "You’re not asking me to do anything? Just report back to you?"

"That’s correct. If the occasion arises." The blue eyes looked steadily at him.

"Well, of course I’ll do that. I’d have done it without your asking."

"I’m glad to hear that. Are there any further questions I can answer? If not, I’ll leave you in Mr. Marks’s capable hands." He hopped down from the sill.

"I do have some questions," Gideon said. "You said there was very little danger to me. Unless I’m missing something, I can’t see any risk at all."

"You’re quite right. A poor choice of words on my part. My English is far from perfect." He smiled, revealing stumpy, yellow teeth with gaps between them. His eyes didn’t smile.

"I imagine the details are secret," said Gideon, "but can you give me some idea of what sort of thing they’re after?"

This time the eyes smiled a little. "Ah, we would tell you if we knew, but the sad fact is that we don’t know."

"You don’t know what they’re looking for?"

"We do not."

"Then…how will you know if you’ve kept them from getting it? Or if you haven’t? Or how to try?"