Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

A fire crackled in the fireplace, illuminating the room with a cozy ocher light. We sat in worn leather armchairs before the flames. He sipped a 1963 vintage port of which he was especially proud; I had a single malt.

I appreciated the atmosphere Moore had so carefully arranged for himself. In his town house we were no longer in Georgetown in the 1990s, crammed with video rental places, Tan-O-Ramas, and Benettons, but in Edwardian England. Edmund Moore was a midwesterner, really an Oklahoman, but over his years with CIA he’d become as tweedy and Ivy League as any Yalie or Princetonian in his generation. It wasn’t an affectation; that was simply what happened after enough time in an organization like the CIA. In fact, the Agency had changed around him. During the sixties, when Ivy League campuses were torn by strikes and drugs, the Agency began to recruit from safer, midwestern schools of more fundamental values. Thus, as one Company friend put it, the “polyesterization” of the CIA. And here was this quaint Oklahoman who could have walked into a lecture room at Linsley-Chittenden Hall at Yale in the forties and no one would have batted an eye. “Gentility,” Moore once told me, “is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.” In fact, though, Moore had married into a lot of money — Elena’s grandfather had invented something essential having to do with the telephone.

“You don’t miss it at all, do you?” he asked with a mischievous smile. He was a small, almost pixielike man in his late seventies, with a small dome-shaped bald head and heavy black-framed glasses that magnified his eyes enormously. His brown tweed suit hung on him, making him seem even more diminutive. “The glamour, the travel, the first-class hotels...?”

“... The beautiful women,” I added helpfully, “and the Michelin three-star restaurants.”

“Ah, yes.”

Moore, who had been chief of the Europe Division of the Operations Directorate while I was stationed in Paris — my boss, to put it simply — knew full well that the life of a clandestine operative actually meant unending tedious “fitness reports,” cables, lousy restaurants, and cold, rainy parking lots. After Laura’s murder, Moore had all but shoved me out the door of Langley headquarters, arranging my interview with Bill Stearns in Boston. He felt strongly that it would be a serious mistake for me to remain in the Agency after what had happened. For a while I resented him for it, but I soon came to realize that he had my best interests at heart.

Moore was a shy, bookish man — an unlikely operations type, where the prevailing personality is boisterous, aggressive, canny. You would have pegged him for an analyst, an intelligence type, according to Agency nomenclature. Not at all a spymaster. He taught history at the University of Oklahoma at Norman before he was recruited to Army intelligence in the Second World War, and he was still an academic at heart.

Outside, the wind howled, driving torrents of rain against the tall French doors at one end of the library, rattling the glass. The doors gave onto a beautifully landscaped garden, at the center of which was a small duck pond.

The rainstorm had begun during dinner, which was a somewhat overdone pot roast served by Moore’s diminutive wife, Elena. We chatted about innocuous subjects — presidential politics, the Middle East, the upcoming German general elections, gossip about mutual acquaintances — and the painful one, the death of Hal Sinclair. Both Ed and Elena expressed their sincere condolences. After dinner Elena excused herself to go upstairs, leaving us to talk.

Her entire married life, I imagined, had been spent excusing herself to go upstairs, or out of the room, or out for a walk, leaving her husband to talk shop with whatever spook happened to have dropped by. But she was far from colorless and retiring; she wielded her strong opinions, laughed often, and, at once playful and feisty, she reminded me of the actress Ruth Gordon.

“I take it, then, that the sedentary life suits you well?”

“I like the sedateness of my life with Molly. I look forward to having a family. But being an attorney in Boston isn’t the most exciting way to earn a living.”

He smiled, took a sip of port, and said, “You’ve had enough excitement for several lifetimes.” Moore knew about my past, about what the Agency disciplinary board termed my “recklessness” in the field.

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “you were something of a hothead. But you were young. And you were a good agent, which is the main thing. God, you were fearless. We were afraid we’d have to rein you in. Is it true you put a Camp instructor out of commission?”

I shrugged. It was true: during my training at the CIA’s Camp Peary, a martial arts instructor had scissored me in a choke hold in front of my fellow students and proceeded to taunt me, goad me. And suddenly I was overcome by a slow, cold wave of anger. It was as if some corrosive fluid had seeped into my abdomen, then flooded the rest of my body, giving me a glacial composure. Some ancient portion of my hindbrain seemed to take over; I was a primitive, ferocious animal. I reached out with the heel of my right hand and slammed his face, breaking his jaw. The incident immediately passed into Camp lore, told and retold, embellished and embroidered over drinks late at night. From then on I was regarded warily, like a hand grenade with the pin out. It was a reputation that served me well in the field, and it caused me to be selected for assignments that were deemed too risky for the others. But it was at the same time a trait that sickened me; it warred with my sober, analytical side; it simply wasn’t who I was.

Moore crossed his legs and sat back. “So tell me why you’re here. I assume it’s nothing we could have discussed over the telephone.”

Not, certainly, without a secure phone, I thought; the Agency takes those privileges away from you upon retirement, even from such an institution as Edmund Moore.

“Tell me about Alexander Truslow,” I said.

“Ah,” he said, and arched his brows. “You’re doing some work for him, I take it.”

“Considering it. The truth is, Ed, I’m in a bit of financial trouble.”

“Ah.”

“You might have heard about a small firm in Boston called First Commonwealth.”

“I think so. Drug money or something?”

“It’s been shut down. Along with all my liquid assets.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“So suddenly Truslow Associates is looking quite a bit more appealing to me. Molly and I could use the money.”

“But isn’t your specialty intellectual property, or patents, or whatever it’s called?”

“That’s right.”

“I’d have thought Alex would require the services of someone—”

He paused for a moment to sip his port, and I put in, “Someone more adept at hiding money in international bolt-holes?”

Moore gave a faint smile, and nodded. “Yet perhaps you’re just what he needs. You did have a reputation as one of the finest, most highly skilled operatives in the field—”

“A loose cannon, Ed, and you know it.”

A “loose cannon” was, I imagine, just one of many labels given me by my colleagues and superiors in the Agency. I was regarded with fear, wonder, and a good deal of puzzlement. It was the fieldwork, the exposure to danger and the threat of violence, that would bring out my dark side. Some considered me fearless, which wasn’t true. Others considered me reckless, which was closer to the truth.

The fact was that at certain times, a ruthless and frightening Ben Ellison would take over. It was something that, once I was aware of it, deeply unsettled me, and eventually led to my leaving the Agency.