there have geen times when I've steamed open the sealed envelopes, but only when they've been marked "Caribbean Basin." Why have I done this? Let me explain. I was a sixteen year-old soldier at the Bay of Pigs and spent five years in Castro's filthy prisons until I was exchanged for medicine. This great Estados Unidos talks and talks but does nothing to liberate my Cuba!"
"How did you get into the Agency?"
"The easiest way possible, amigo. It took six years, but I became a scholar, with three degrees, way overqualified for what you offered me, but I accepted what you offered me, truly believing you would see my qualifications and put me into a position where I could make a difference. You never did, for I was the spic and, you gravitated to the white boys and the blacks-oh, "were unqualified blacks chosen over me! You had to clean your racist slate, and they were the answer."
"I think you're being unfair."
"Think what you like. I'll be out of this house in twenty seconds and you'll never find me!"
"Please, don't do that! You're not what or whom I'm after. I'm after Nazis, not you!"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It's too complicated," said Sorenson calmly.
"Stay on your job and do what you're doing. You'll get no grief from me, and I'll make sure your superior qualifications are brought to the attention of those who should know about them."
"How can I count on that?"
"Because I'm a fake, I'm not with the Company. I'm the director of an outside agency that frequently coordinates with the CIA at the highest levels."
"Circles within circles," said Vasquez-Ramirez.
"Where will it ever end?"
"Probably never," replied Sorenson.
"Certainly not until people trust one another-which will be never."
Candidate Possible
uddenly it occurred to the director of Consular Operations that he should follow his immediate instincts. S Peter Mason Payne was out, Roland VasquezRamirez barely a possible, but the craw in his throat was Bruce Withers, the man with a quick tongue and an all too-believable saga of a destitute widow or divorcee with three children who had latched on to an overage general of the army, with all the retirement benefits that implied. It would be easy for Withers to reach the general's wife by car telephone, if she really had spent the evening with him, or at her home.. .. It'll take her twenty twenty-five minutes. More than enough time for the lonely general's wife to be given instructions. The answer might be found somewhere else. On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, perhaps, with the former wife of Bruce N.M.I. Withers.
Again Sorenson picked up his phone, hoping that Withers's name would be listed because of his teenage daughter. It was, with an alternate name, McGraw. McGraw-Withers.
"Yes .. . hello," whispered the sleepy voice on the line.
"Forgive me, Miss McGraw, for calling you at this hour, but there is an emergency."
"Who are you?"
"Deputy Director Kearns of the Central Intelligence Agency. It concerns your former husband, Bruce Withers."
"Whom did he shaft now?" asked the barely awake ex Mrs
Withers.
"Perhaps the United States government, Miss McGraw."
"Thanks for the Miss-I earned it. Of course, he shafted the government, why should it be any different? He'd flash his CIA badge around, not saying much, but implying he was Mr. Super Spook himself, all the while fleecing somebody."
"He used the Agency to gain favors?"
"Please, Mr. Whoever-you-are, my family has connections all over Washington. When we found out he was sleeping @vlth every secretary and bimbo tramp who worked for a defense contractor, my father said we should get rid of him, and we did."
"He still has visitation rights to your child."
"Under the closest supervision, I can assure you."
"Because you fear violation?"
"Good God, no. Kimberly is probably the only person in this world that bastard can relate to."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because children don't threaten him. Her hugs erase the terrible thing inside of him."
"What is that terrible thing, Miss McGraw?"
"He's the bigot of the world! He hates so many people, I can't begin to tell you. Blacks, or as he says, those lousy niggers, and "Wops," and "Slopes,"-that's Asians-the Spanish-speaking, the Jew bastards, anyone who isn't pure white and Christian, and he's definitely not Christian. He wants them all eliminated. That's his credo."
Candidate Accepted
It was four o'clock in the afternoon Paris time, the hour noted by the low, echoing chimes of a mantel clock in Ambassador Daniel Courtland's living quarters at the American Embassy. The ambassador, coat less the bandages across his chest and left shoulder visible beneath