to fly to Washington and personally destroy the CIA complex in Langley, Virginia."
"Well, Stanley was G-Two, and never had much affection for the Company. What happened?"
"The two Blitzkrieger the colonel sent to Washington under the tightest circumstances were found dead in the safe house, bullets in their heads."
"Holy shit! In a safe house?"
"As Wesley said to me, "Where are you, James Jesus Angleton, when you might have done some good?" They're running photographs of every single man in every section of Central Intelligence under the eyes of everybody in that house in Virginia."
"It won't get them anywhere. I've got temporarily blond hair and glasses that nullify the approach. Tell them to look for someone in the lower to middle levels who once toyed with college or community theaters."
"Another Ames?"
"Certainly not a Jean-Pierre Villier. An amateur, a nerd with a big head and bigger payoffs. Someone who could have been privy to classified data."
"Youtell Wesley, I've got enough on my mind. Ambassador Courtland will be arriving in half an hour, and I have to keep his wife alive."
"What's the problem? She's in an armored embassy vehicle."
"So were you when you were nearly killed the other night. Au revoir." The line went dead.
"What is it?" asked Karin.
"The two ncos Stanley sent to D.C. were shot in a safe house-a safe house, for Christ's sake!"
"You said it last night," said De Vries quietly.
"They're everywhere but we can't see them.. .. What makes people do their bidding? The killings, the betrayals, it's all so insane. Why?"
"The experts say there are three types of motivation. The first is money, lots of it, way beyond their normal circumstances, and in this group are the gamblers, the luxu zzlovers and the psychotic showoffs. Then there are the ots who identify with a fanatical cause that makes them feel superior insofar as the cause is absolute and puts everyone else down-as in a master race. The third, oddly enough, are what the analysts call the most dangerous. They're the malcontents who are convinced they've been shafted by the system, their talents unrewarded."
"Why are they the most dangerous?"
"Because they become fixtures, sitting at their desks for years, doing their usually unimportant jobs just adequately enough not to be fired."
"If they're unimportant, why are they dangerous?"
"Because they learn the very system they despise. Where the secrets are, how to access them, or even how to intercept them on their way from one section to another. You see, nobody pays much attention to fixtures, they're simply there, reading dull bureaucratic reports or researching material about as classified as a telephone directory. If they applied themselves as assiduously to their jobs as they do to analyzing the system, some of them might go further legitimately, but not many. The psych men say they're generally lazy, like students who'd rather go into an exam with crib notes on their sleeves than study for it."
"Assiduously'? You're beginning to sound like Harry."
"Would you, believe I got through "See Jack run. See Jill run'?"
"I never doubted it. Any day now I expect you to extemporize on the terza rima of Dante's Divina Commedia."
"The pizza guy from Brooklyn, right?"
"You really can be adorable, do you know that?"
There was a knock on the hotel suite's door.
"Now, who the hell is that?" said Latham, walking across the room.
"Yes, what is it?"
"The Deuxieme," replied the voice of Monsieur Frack.
"Oh, sure." Drew opened the door, suddenly facing a gun leveled at his head. He whipped his hand up, simultaneously lashing his right foot out, crashing it into the agent's groin. The man fell back into the hallway; Drew pounced on him, wrenching the weapon from his grip as Monsieur Frick came running down the corridor, shouting.
"Stop, monsieur! Please stop! This was only an exercise."
"What?" screamed Latham, about to pistol-whip his would-be killer, who was holding his crotch in agony.. "If the monsieur will please listen," choked Frack on the floor.
"You are never to open the door until you are certain it is one of us!"
"You said you were the Deuxieme!" exclaimed Drew, getting up.
"How many Deuxi&me are there up here?"
"That is the point, sir," said Frick, looking painfully down at his writhing colleague.
"Monsieur le Directeur gave you a list of identifying codes that are changed every two hours. You were to ask for the one assigned to this time period."
"Codes? What codes?"
"You never looked at it, my dear," replied Karin, standing in the doorway and holding up a page of paper.
"You gave it to me and said you'd read it later."
"Oh