Sidney Sheldon - Windmills Of The Gods

He heard the sounds of the dogs rushing at him before he saw them. They came flying out of the darkness, charging at his throat. He aimed the dart gun and shot the one on his left first, then the one on his right, dodging out of the way of their hurtling bodies. And then there was only stillness.

The intruder knew where the sonic traps were buried in the ground, and he skirted them. He silently glided through the areas of the grounds that the television cameras did not cover, and in less than two minutes after he had gone over the wall” he was at the back door of the villa.

As he reached for the handle of the door he was caught in the sudden glare of floodlights. A voice called out, “Freeze! Drop your gun and raise your hands.”

The figure in black carefully dropped his gun and looked up. There were half a dozen men spread out on the roof, with a variety of weapons pointed at him.

The man in black growled, “What the devil took you so long? I never should have gotten this far.”

“You didn’t,” the head guard informed him. “We started tracking you before you got over the wall.”

Ley Pastemak was not mollified. “Then you should have stopped me sooner. I could have been on a suicide mission with a load of grenades. I want a meeting of the entire staff in the morning, eight o’clock sharp. The dogs have been stunned. Have someone keep an eye on them until they wake up.”

Ley Pastemak prided himself on being the best security chief in the world. He had been a pilot in the Israeli Six-Day War and after the war had become a top agent in Mossad, one of Israel’s secret services.

He would never forget the morning, two years earlier, when his colonel had called him into his office and said, “Ley, Marin Groza wants to borrow you for a few weeks.”

Mossad had a complete file on the Remanian dissident. Groza had been the leader of a popular Remanian movement to depose Alexandres Ionescu and was about to stage a coup when he was betrayed by one of his men. More than two dozen underground fighters had been executed, and Groza had barely escaped with his life. France had given him sanctuary. Then lonescu had put a price on his head. So far, half a dozen attempts to assassinate Groza had failed, but he had been wounded in the most recent attack.

“What does he want with me?” Pastemak had asked. “He has French government protection.”

“Not good enough. He needs someone to set up a foolproof security system. He came to us. I recommended you.”

“I’d have to go to Francer’

“‘Only for a few weeks. Ley, we’re talking about a mensch. He’s the man in the white hat. Our information is that he’ll soon have enough popular support in Remania to knock over Ionescu. When the timing is right, he’ll make his move. Meanwhile, we have to keep the man alive.”

Ley Pastemak had thought about it “A few weeks, you said?”

“That’s all.”

The colonel had been wrong about the time, but he had been right about Marin Groza. He was a white-haired, fragile-looking man whose face was etched with sorrow. He had deep black eyes, and when he spoke, they blazed with passion.

“I don’t give a damn whether I live or die,” he told Ley at their first meeting. “We’re all going to die. It’s the when that I’m concerned about. I have to stay alive for another year or two. That’s all the time I need to drive the tyrant Ionescu out of my country.”

Ley Pastemak went to work on the security system at the villa in Neuilly. He used some of his own men, and the outsiders he hired were checked out thoroughly. Every single piece of equipment was state-of-the-art.

Pastemak saw the Remanian rebel leader every day, and the more time he spent with him, the more he came to admire him. When Marin Groza asked Pastemak to stay on, Pastemak agreed, saying, “Until you’re ready to make your move.”

At irregular intervals Pastemak staged surprise attacks on the villa, testing its security. Now he thought, Some of the guards are getting careless. I’ll have to replace them.

He walked through the hallways checking the heat sensors, the electronic warning systems, and the infrared beams at-the sill of each door. As he reached Groza’s bedroom he heard a loud crack, and a moment later Groza began screaming out in agony.

Ley Pastemak passed Marin Groza’s room and kept walking.

THE Monday-morning executive staff meeting was under way in the seventh-floor conference room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Seated around the large oak table were Ned Tillingest, director of the CIA; General Oliver Brooks, Army Chief of Staff; Secretary of State Floyd Baker; Pete Connors, chief of counterintelligence; and Stanton Rogers.

Ned Tillingest, the CIA director, was in his sixties, a cold, taciturn man burdened with maleficent secrets. There is a light branch and a dark branch of the CIA. The dark branch handles clandestine operations, and for the past seven years Tillingest had been in charge of both sections.

General Oliver Brooks was a West Point soldier who conducted his personal and professional life by the book. He was a’company man, and the company he worked for was the United States Army.

Floyd Baker, the Secretary of State, was of southern vintage, silver-haired, distinguished-looking, with an olo-fashioned gallantry. He owned a chain of influential newspapers around the country and was reputed to be enormously wealthy.

Pete Connors was black Irish, a stubborn bulldog of a man, hard-drinking and fearless. He faced compulsory retirement in August. As chief of counterintelligence, Connors held sway over the most secret, highly compartmentalized branch of the CIA. He had worked his way up through the various intelligence divisions, and had been around in the good old days when CIA agents were the golden boys. In fact, Pete Connors had been a golden boy himself. As far as he was concerned, no sacrifice was too great to make for his country.

Now, in the middle of the meeting, his face was red with anger. “This idiotic people-to-people program has to be stopped. We can’t allow the President to give the country away. We-“

Floyd Baker interrupted. “The President has been in office less than a week. We’re all here to carry out his policies and-“

“He sprang his plan on us. We didn’t have a chance to get together a rebuttal.”

Ned Tillingest turned to Stanton Rogers. “Connors has a point. The President is actually planning to invite the communist countries to send their spies here posing as attaches, chauffeurs, secretaries, maids. We’re spending billions to guard the back door, and the President wants to throw open the front door.”

General Brooks nodded agreement. “I wasn’t consulted, either.

In my opinion, the Presiden’s plan could destroy this country.”

Stanton Rogers said, “Gentlemen, some of us may disagree with the President, but Let’s not forget that the people voted for Paul Elhson. We have to support him in every way we can.” His words were followed by a reluctant silence. “All right, then. The President wants an update on Remania. What’s the situation with President Ionescu?”

“lonescu’s riding high in the saddle,” Ned Tillingest replied. “Once he got rid of the CeauSSescu family, all of CeauSSescu’s allies were either assassinated, jailed, or exiled. Since he seized power Ionescu’s been bleeding the country dry. The people hate his guts.”

“What about the prospects for a revolution?”

Tillingast said, “Ah, That’s rather interesting. Remember a couple of years back when Marin Groza almost toppled the lonescu government?”$

“Yes. Groza got out of the country by the skin of his teeth.”

“With our help. Our information is that there’s a popular ground swell to bring him back. Groza would be good for Romania, and good for us. We’re watching the situation.”