George Chesbro: The Language Of Cannibals

When Acton finished, we were all silent for some time. The KGB operative studied us, looking from one face to another, apparently waiting for some response. I was the one who finally broke the silence.

"You've talked a lot, Acton, but you still haven't answered my question. Did you kill Michael Burana and Harry Peal-your father?"

"No," Acton replied in a flat voice. "I never laid eyes on Michael Burana, and I never knew that he'd discovered my secret. And I didn't kill my father."

I looked at Garth, who nodded to me. "He could be telling the truth about that, Mongo. He cried when I told him who his father was and what had happened." He paused, shifted his gaze to Acton. "Then again, he wouldn't have known who Harry Peal was when he killed him."

"I knew who he was," Acton said quietly. "I didn't know that he was my father, but Harry Peal was always one of my idols."

"Why are you being so hard on him?" Mary asked, looking back and forth between Garth and me. "If it hadn't been for Jay, the three of us wouldn't be alive now."

"The question becomes one of why he saved our lives," Garth replied evenly, gazing steadily at Acton. "If you didn't kill Burana and your father, then who did?"

"I have to assume it was the same man who tried to kill me-a KGB assassin."

"Why would the KGB want you dead?" I asked. "You have to be one of their most important assets."

"I would no longer be of any value at all if I was exposed as a KGB operative. Also, they may have feared that I'd become unreliable; that was always the fear with people like me and the reason we were never given high rank. And in my case, they feared me being caught and telling American intelligence what I'm telling you."

"How did this attack take place?"

"A poison gas grenade was lobbed through my bedroom window at around the same time Garth was driving up from New York to see you in the hospital. If I'd been in bed asleep, I would have died almost instantly, and all an autopsy would have shown was that I died of a heart attack; the grenade itself would have been retrieved. As it happened, I was in the bathroom, with the door closed. I heard the window break and the grenade hitting the floor, and I immediately knew what was happening. I managed to escape through the bathroom window before the gas got to me. I had a spare set of keys taped under my car's bumper. I drove here, got into these clothes. The machine I used to monitor all Culhane's calls is in my home, but there's an electronic hookup to my telephone that I can activate by remote control. I played back the tapes of his most recent conversations, heard what he'd said to Gregory Trex, and realized what had happened. Then I went to the Community of Conciliation mansion to try and head off the death squad."

"If you're not in the business of killing people, why would the KGB give you all the weapons you have up here?"

"The KGB never provided me with anything but communications and wiretapping equipment. I got my weapons from the same places Culhane got his-various arms dealers in the western states and Florida. I trained myself to use them. He supplied the death squad with their weapons."

Garth grunted, said, "What exactly do you want from us, Acton?"

"I want the two — of you to walk me in, to get all of us in the hands of people you trust, and who can guarantee our safety. Supposedly you have powerful friends in Washington and elsewhere; Culhane claimed you have a personal relationship with the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Is that true?"

"It might be," Garth replied evenly.

"Do you have other friends in the intelligence community, people you trust completely?"

"Maybe."

"We have all the communications equipment we need up here. I would like you to contact whoever can get us safely off this mountain and to Washington, where I'll talk to your counterintelligence people. They'll have to guarantee our safety for an indefinite period of time. Thousands-maybe tens of thousands-of people in federal and state governments, and in conservative political organizations, are going to have to be vetted; and others are going to have to vet the vetters. It won't be as formidable a task as it might sound to flush out the other KGB people like me, because the legends constructed for us aren't as complex as they'd be if we were engaged in ordinary espionage. It was never anticipated that anyone would delve too deeply into our birth records or other background. But it must be done. Only when my story has been accepted by your people, and the process of rooting out the other KGB plants has begun, will the four of us be safe from assassination; the KGB is more likely to leave us alone if there's nothing to be gained by killing us and if our murders could be logically blamed on them. I need the three of you to back up my story and then support me."

Garth and I exchanged glances, and I could see in his eyes that we were thinking the same things. We both looked back at Acton, waited.

"You don't seem too taken with my proposal, gentlemen," Acton continued at last in a slightly wry tone, turning to look at Mary. "Maybe you don't realize how much danger we're all in.

This is the most important and productive operation the KGB has ever mounted. You can be sure that a crack assassin-or maybe even a team of assassins-is searching for us right now. And if we're caught by the police, we die; the people who are after us would be perfectly willing to blow up a police station, or even the town of Cairn, to keep this operation secret and the KGB plants in place. I'm not sure you understand-"

"Okay, you've already played the tune for us, Acton," I interrupted, "and it's a real spooky one. We're all properly impressed with your story. What my brother and I are wondering is if it's true. You've had such success bullshitting Culhane and his friends, maybe you think you can bullshit us and our friends. Maybe there is no KGB assassin, no assassination team; maybe the story about the right wing and the government being infiltrated by a load of carbon-copy Americans manufactured by the KGB is just a fairy tale. Maybe there's just you. Maybe it was you, after all, who murdered Michael and Harry."

"Then why would I save your lives?"

"Because your cute game with Culhane and his lunatic friends and followers was over, no matter what happened to us. You'd listened to Culhane's telephone conversations, so you knew I'd already told Culhane about you, and I'd contacted the head of the FBI's counterintelligence unit, as well as Dan Mosely. While it's true that those people might have done nothing more than conspire to make you disappear back to Russia, that's probably the last thing you wanted, and want. Having lived most of your life in the United States, you didn't find the idea of a Kim Philby existence in Mother Russia all that appealing. You weren't ready to retire, and the only way you could stay on the job would be to find a new way to make yourself useful to your KGB masters. Not only could you cause massive disruption, erosion of morale, and loss of confidence in the government if you had FBI counterintelligence vetting everyone from congressmen to secretaries, but you'd top it off by graciously accepting a job with the CIA. The KGB would flip; they would not only have caused divisiveness and disruption in the United States government, but they'd have a new mole. You might have just a bit of difficulty getting anyone to believe you on your own, so you want Garth and me to help you, to vouch for you. Garth and I just aren't all that anxious to become KGB accomplices-without pay, no less."

Garth abruptly snatched the Uzi from where it lay beside Acton's thigh, then straightened up. "Mongo and I will be happy to walk you in, Acton," he said evenly, "and our friends will guarantee your safety. But we have only your word for all this other business, and we're not about to vouch for you on the basis of that. Quite the contrary; it should be clear to you by now that Mongo is serious about having the murderer of his friend brought to justice, along with Elysius Culhane for making it all possible and for trying to obstruct justice."