to do, among those thoughts the secure communications equipment at the [email protected] Bureau. Too many things had become elliptical.
It was 7:42 A.M. Washington time when Wesley Sorenson walked into his office at Consular Operations; the only other person there was his secretary.
"All the overnight reports are on your desk, Sir," she said.
"Thanks, Ginny. As I've said repeatedly, I really hope you put in for overtime. No one else gets here before eight-thirty."
"You're very understanding when the kids are sick, so why push it, Mr. Director. Also, it's easier for me; I can collate everything before the troops come in."
They have come in, in more ways than you know, thought Sorenson. He had been at Andrews Air Force Base at four o'clock in the morning and personally escorted the two neo-Nazis off the jet from Paris, seeing them into a marine van to a safe house in Virginia. Despite his exhaustion, the Cons-Op director would be driven there shortly past noon to, again, personally interrogate the prisoners; it was a craft he knew well.
"Anything urgent?" he asked his secretary.
"Only everything."
"Nothing changes."
Sorenson walked into his inner office, crossed to his desk, and sat down. The file folders were labeled: THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC
OF CHINA, TAIWAN, THE PHILIPPINES, THE MIDDLE
EAST, GREECE, THE BALKANS .. . and finally, GERMANY and
FRANCE.
Shoving aside the rest, he opened the file from Paris. It was explosive. Using the police reports, it described the assault on Colonel Witkowski's apartment with no mention of the colonel's sending two captives on a military jet to Washington. It spoke of the burned-out headquarters of a neo-Nazi unit in the Avignon warehouse complex. They were reputed to be killers who had disappeared. The final news from Paris was a coded message from Witkowski, decoded in Consular Operations; this was the explosion.
Gerhardt Kroeger in Paris. He's bunting Harry Latham. The target has been alerted.
Gerhardt Kroeger, surgeon, mystery man, and the key to many things. No one outside of American intelligence knew about him.
In a way, thought Sorenson, it was wrong. The French and the British should be included, but the CIA-Knox Talbot agreeing--could not trust them.
And then at eight in the morning his telephone rang.
"Paris calling," said his secretary.
"A Mr. Moreau from the Deuxieme Bureau."
Sorenson quietly gasped, his face suddenly pale. Moreau had been cut off; he was suspect. The Cons-Op director breathed deeply, picked up the phone, then spoke, his words controlled.
"HeLLO, Claude, it's good to hear from you, old friend."
"Apparently, Wesley, it's not proper for me to hear from you, if I may speak plainly."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, come, within the last thirty-six hours a great many things have happened that concern us both, but not a word of them has been processed to my office. What kind of cooperation is that?"
"I .. . I don't know, Claude."
"Of course you do. I've been systematically excluded from the operation. Why?"
"I can't answer that. I don't control the operation, you know that.
I had no idea-"
"Please, Wesley. In the field you were an accomplished liar, but not with someone who told lies with you. We both know how these things work, don't we? Someone heard something from someone else and the diseased oyster grows, producing a false pearl. But there's time for that later. Assuming that you're still functioning, I may have a chess piece for you."
"What is it?"
"Who's Gerhardt Kroeger?"
"What?"
"You heard me, and it's obvious that you've heard the name before. He's a doctor."
Kroeger was off limits to the [email protected] Moreau was out of the loop! Was he fishing?
"I'm not sure I have heard it, Claude. Gerhardt .. . Kroeger, was it?"
"Now you're positively insulting. Again, I'll let it pass, for my information is too important. Kroeger followed me and stopped me during my evening stroll. In short words, he made it plain that I either directed him to Harry Latham or I was a dead man."
"I can't believe this! Why would he come to you?"
"I asked him the same question and his answer was one I might have expected. I have people in Germany, as I do in most countries. A year ago I negotiated for the life of one man being held by a skinhead crowd in Mannheim. I got him out for roughly six thousand dollars American, a bargain, I'd say. Still, they had the name of the Deuxieme, and knew the arrangement could not have been made without my approval."
"But you never heard of Gerhardt Kroeger before?"
"Not until last night, I just told you that. I went back to