Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

“Looks like Alex hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in ten years,” I observed.

“The next picture does him more justice,” Toby said. He was right; on the cover of The New York Times Magazine , Alex Truslow, his silver hair neatly combed, was beaming proudly. “Can He Save the CIA?” the headline asked.

Beaming proudly myself, I set down the thatch of magazines. “When’s his confirmation by the Senate?”

“He’s confirmed already,” Toby replied. “The day after the appointment — the Senate intelligence committee was persuaded by the President that we need a full-time director in there as soon as possible. A lengthy confirmation process would just cause turmoil. He was confirmed by all but, I think, two votes.”

“That’s terrific,” I said. “And I’ll bet I know who his two opponents were.” I named the committee’s most outspoken extreme-right-wing senators, both from the South.

“Right you are,” Toby said. “But those clowns are going to be nothing compared to the real enemies.”

“Inside the Agency,” I said.

He nodded.

“So tell me this: Who were the thugs masquerading as Italian cops?”

“We don’t know yet. Americans. Private mercenaries is my best guess.”

“Agency?”

“You mean, were they CIA personnel? No — there’s no record of them anywhere. They’re — they were killed. There was a... rather fierce shootout. We lost two good men. We’re running prints, photos, and other essentials through the computers, see what, if anything, turns up.”

He looked at his watch. “And just about now...”

A telephone on a nearby table rang.

“That should be for you,” he said.

It was Alex Truslow. The connection was a good one; his voice sounded so clear it had to have been electronically enhanced, indicating the line was very likely sterile.

“Thank God you’re all right,” he said.

“God, and you guys,” I replied. “You look a little ragged on the cover of Time , Alex.”

“Margaret says I look freshly embalmed. Maybe they chose such an unflattering shot because they ask if there’s going to be a new era, and they conclude: No way, this chap isn’t up to the task. You know — I’m such an old fossil. People always want new blood.”

“Well, they’re wrong. Congratulations on the confirmation.”

“The President really twisted some arms on that one. But more important, Ben, I want you to come back.”

“Why?”

“After what you’ve been through—”

“I don’t have the goods yet,” I confessed. “You told me about a fortune — we’re on secure, right?”

“We certainly are.”

“Okay. You talked about a fortune, a missing fortune, but I had no idea the magnitude of it. Or its origin.”

“Care to brief me?”

“Right now?” I looked questioningly at Toby.

He in turn glanced at Molly and said, “Would you mind terribly leaving us to talk for just a few minutes?”

Molly’s eyes were red and swollen, and tears started down her high cheekbones. She glared at him. “Yes, I would mind terribly.”

Over the phone, Alex said: “Ben?”

Toby went on apologetically: “It’s just that we need to get into some rather boring, technical things—”

“I’m sorry,” she said coldly. “I’m not leaving. We’re partners, Ben and I, and I won’t be excluded.”

There was a long silence, and then Toby said pleasantly, “So be it. But I have to count on your discretion—”

“Count on it.”

Over the telephone, and at the same time to Molly and Toby, I related the gist of what Orlov had told me. As I talked, both Toby’s and Molly’s faces registered their astonishment.

“Dear God in heaven,” Truslow breathed. “Now it makes sense. And so damned wonderful to hear! Hal Sinclair wasn’t engaging in criminal activity at all. The man was trying to save Russia. Of course. Now, please — I want you to come back.”

“Why?”

“For God’s sake, Ben, these men who subjected you to that god-awful torture — they had to be employed by the faction.”

“The Wise Men.”

“Has to be. Nothing else makes sense. Hal must have confided in someone. Someone he depended upon to help him make the elaborate arrangements with the gold. Someone he confided in was a double. How else could they have learned about the gold?”

“Same deal in Boston?”

“Possibly. No, I’d say probably. ”

“But that doesn’t explain Rome,” I said.

“Van Aver,” he said. “Yes. And you ask why I’m insisting you come back.”

“Who was behind that one?”

“On that I haven’t a guess. There’s no evidence to connect it to the Wise Men, though I can’t rule it out. Certainly whoever did it knew the details of your planned meeting with him. Maybe through leakage of cable traffic between Rome and Washington. Or maybe it was local — who the hell knows?”

“Local?”

“Through monitoring of Van Aver’s phone, maybe even the telephones of everyone at Rome station. You know, there’s a good chance we’re talking about some of Orlov’s former comrades. We may never find out for sure. You know, it’s odd.”

“How’s that?”

“There was a time when I would have leapt at the opportunity to head CIA. I would have given anything for the directorship. But now — now that I have it — it feels like a death trap. The long knives are out for me. Far too many powerful people don’t want me in there. It just feels like a death trap.”

“Were you able to read Orlov’s thoughts?” Toby asked as soon as I had hung up.

I nodded. “But there was a wrinkle,” I said. “Orlov was born in the Ukraine.”

“He’s a Russian speaker!” Toby objected.

“Russian is his second language. When I realized that Orlov thought in Ukrainian, I was convinced I’d been defeated. A cruel twist. But then it came to me: That Agency fellow who tested me, Dr. Mehta, had speculated that I was receiving not thoughts per se but extremely low frequency radio waves emitted by the speech-producing center of the brain. I could, in effect, listen in on words as the brain readied them to speak — or not to speak. So I switched our conversation back and forth between English and Russian, since I knew Orlov could speak both. And that enabled me to understand what he thought, since his mind was now putting English words to his Ukrainian thoughts.”

“Yes,” Toby said, nodding. “Yes.”

“And I asked him several questions, knowing that whatever he chose to speak aloud, he would at least think the replies.”

“Very good,” Toby said.

“At times,” I said, “he was trying so hard not to reply that he was thinking the English words he didn’t want to say.”

The painkiller had begun to overwhelm me, and I was finding it hard to concentrate. I wanted nothing more now than to fall back asleep for a few days.

He shifted in his wheelchair, then moved it a few inches closer by flicking a lever. It responded with a quiet whir. “Ben, a few weeks ago a former colonel in the old Securitate” — the Romanian secret police under the late dictator Nicolae Ceauçsescu — “contacted a backstopper well known to us.” He was telling me that the Romanian had contacted a document forger who prepared bogus cover identity papers for freelance agents. “Who in turn contacted us.”

I waited for him to continue, and after a minute or so, he did. “We brought the Romanian in. Under intensive interrogation it developed that he knew of a plot to kill certain highly placed American intelligence officials.”

“Whose plot?”

“We don’t know.”