Джанет Моррис - The 40-Minute War

In front of Beck, he paused: “I hope they’re right, Marc. I hope this is a simple overreaction, a misjudgment—on all our parts. You’re just the sort of person we desperately need right now. We can’t spare you, Marc. So we’re willing to be generous. Give us a half-decent explanation and you’ll be back in Jerusalem before you know it, full privileges restored. Otherwise…” The Ambassador squeezed his eyes shut as if the alternative were too distasteful to contemplate. Then, with a fatherly pat on Beck’s shoulder, he left them alone, promising brunch in “two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“Phew,” said Protector Number One: “Glad that’s over with. Okay, gentlemen, let’s get to it.” File folders in hand, he took the chair behind the desk and opened them, pulled tortoiseshell glasses from his pocket, scanned the files quickly, and then peered up over the rims at Beck, “You went to ground for a week?” he said incredulously. “In a crisis like this? With all that money and after consorting openly with Israeli Intelligence? No wonder they’re nervous.”

Protector Two ambled over to the chair by the desk, a folder open in his hand, and put it down where his superior could see it, finger running along a relevant passage, before he sat beside the desk: “Nervous? They’re scared to death. Why in damnation did you bring a colonel of Israeli Intelligence in on something you didn’t share with your own Bureau Chief?”

Beck said numbly, “Mind if I sit down now?”

“Sure thing. We’re trying to help you. We’re—”

“On my side, I know. Look, do you really think this is going to work with me, fellows? We went to the same damn schools. I know this drill as well as you do.”

The one with the graying temples leaned forward: “Good enough. We’re here to play golf, not fuck around. Run it down to us from the top and save everybody a lot of grief.”

He sat back and both agents looked at Beck expectantly.

Beck said: “Mind if I see your credentials first?” Even those could be faked but Beck had to put them on the defensive if he could; like Slick, Ashmead’s prima donna agent, he wanted to get information, not give it: how much they knew, how much they only suspected, how much they wanted to know. Telling too much was always the danger; usually, interrogators knew next to nothing when they started; sometimes, they knew everything. He didn’t dare lie but he wasn’t going to give them any more than he had to. Most crucially—damn Dickson for not finding some way to prepare him for this—he needed to find out if they knew about the serum: if they did, he might have a bargaining chip; if they didn’t, he’d be a fool to play it.

“If it makes you feel better,” said Protector Number One, fishing out a plastic badge which he tossed across the desk.

Beck took it and sat in the chair before the desk: on one side of the ID was a number printed on paper patterned with the profiled eagle’s head and shield of Central Intelligence; on the other side was a picture of the man he was looking at and the advisory that the person pictured above was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, but no name.

Protector Number Two’s badge was more forthcoming: it announced that the person pictured on the obverse was a senior analyst named Watkins.

Beck fingered the badges with evident disgust: “How am I supposed to talk to you two guys? Couldn’t they come up with someone from my own department—or don’t my own people know I’m here?”

“We’re the best they could scrape up,” said the one who wasn’t Watkins, the one from the CIA’s black-sheep Covert Action Staff whose badge said no such thing because you don’t advertise your grade when it’s an operational one. “On such short notice. Here and now. We’ll have to do and you’ll have to cooperate, sooner or later. Do us all a favor and make it sooner.”

Watkins, the good cop in this little charade, might actually have been a senior analyst: he had the spare tire around his middle and was now displaying an analyst’s sensibilities: “Ease up, Dow. Look here, Marc, I can guess what you’ve been up to; none of us wants to be here any longer than necessary. Just lay it out for us in your own words and, believe it or not, you’re free to go—to continue what you’ve started, if you like.”

“You guess, then, and I’ll nod if you guess right.”

The last place he wanted to be was in the middle of a private CIA squabble. Perversely, his mind kept throwing up grisly pictures of Muffy and the kids in various stages of living decomposition, so he tried to envision Chris Patrick’s ass; this time, when he imagined her, she was hugging herself in his apartment while the wind blew in off the sea.

“You know that’s not the way it’s done, Marc,” said Dow. “And you think that, being an intelligence liaison and all, you can outfox us—that it’s just a matter of time until your people take a hand and you’re out of here.” Dow pursed his lips as if what he was about to say wasn’t pleasant: “Now, I’ll level with you, to set the tone. Watkins, here, really is an anaylst and he likes to do things the civilized way. But you know what I am, and they’ve never been able to convince us that interrogations work best when no physical means are employed. So, if you’re thinking about heroics, forget it. Watkins may have to leave the room while I teach you some things they never did at State, but I’ll get what I want from you.”

Watkins took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead: “I wish the food would come, don’t you?”

“I told you,” Dow said patiently, “he can’t have anything to eat or drink until I’ve determined whether or not I’m going to use drugs.”

“Will you two cut out this fucking psychwar and tell me what it is you want to know?”

Dow scratched one graying temple, took off his glasses and meticulously returned them to his breast pocket. “Normally, I wouldn’t. But since you’re a… distant relative, let’s say… I’ll give you an easy out: tell me where Ashmead is and what you’ve got on with him, as well as what you and Netanayhu are collaborating on, and we’ll shelve the rest of it.”

“Ashmead? I haven’t seen him since my orienta—”

Dow’s flat hand hit the desk with a resounding thump. “We know you went toodling off to the Persian Gulf, Beck. We know he’s out there, too. What were you doing, visiting your maiden aunt for a week?”

“If you know so much, you tell me.”

“Beck, I’m going to leave this surveillance file open on the desk, here, and walk out of the room with Watkins. When I get back, you and I are going to talk about Ashmead—either the easy way, or the hard way. It’s up to you.”

“Do you think that’s wise, Dow?” said Watkins as he followed Dow to the door.

The surveillance file detailed a number of Beck’s movements, but not all, during the time he’d been looking for Ashmead. In Bahrain, the bird dogs had lost his scent, then picked it up again when he reclaimed his plane. If this was truly all they had, they couldn’t prove he’d met with Ashmead; they were grasping at straws, backtracking from the aborted hit on an Abu Dhabi street, fitting his face to an unidentified figure that had intervened, just guessing because they’d been caught with their pants down, because they needed Ashmead for something and couldn’t find him, and because Beck had left himself wide open.

Armed with that information, he prepared to defend himself.

When they came back, bearing a tray of sandwiches and coffee, he ate heartily, casually, daring them to risk killing him by giving him pentathol on a full stomach.

They seemed relaxed; even Dow had lost his glower, and they talked of the general world situation ruefully, like the professionals they were, until they’d done eating.