Brazil or Argentina Since he was not officially listed as a war criminal, no search was instituted, and considering the losses the Marchands sustained-"
"Yes," Lord Marchand interrupted softly, "my other two brothers and my sister-two pilots and a nurse." "Precisely. Our offices decided to bury the whole nasty business."
"That was kind of you, very kind. I'm sorry I treated you so shabbily."
"Not to be concerned. As you said, you couldn't know what you'd never been told."
"Yes, yes, of course.. .. But here, now, this afternoon, you damn near accused me-and by extension, the family-of being part of some Fascist movement in Germany. Why?"
"It's a rather clumsy technique few of us are comfortable with, but it's effective. I didn't specifically accuse you, sir; if you recall, I phrased my allusion in terms of 'how offended the Crown would be to learn' etcetera, etcetera. The immediate answer is always outrage, but there is false outrage and then there is true outrage. It's not difficult to discern which is which, not if you've been around for a while, and I have."
"What did I do right?"
"I believe, if you were younger, you would have physically assaulted me, thrown me bodily out of your house."
"Quite true, I would have."
"It was a genuine reaction on your part, not false at all."
"Again, I ask why?"
"The names of two of your sons are on a list, a highly confidential list of people who silently support the neo Nazi revolutionaries in Germany."
"Good God, how?"
"Marchands Limited is a textile complex, is that correct?"
"Yes, of course, everyone knows that. With our factories in Scotland, we're the second largest in the U.K. Two of my sons run it since I retired; the third, may- the Lord have mercy on his soul, is a musician. So what have they done to warrant such an accusation?"
I "They've dealt with a firm called Oberfeld, shipped thousands upon thousands of rolls of fabric for identical shirts, blouses, trousers, and slacks to their warehouses in Mannheim."
"Yes, I've studied the accounts, which I insist on doing.
Oberfeld pays its charges on due-date time and is a splendid customer. So?"
I "Oberfeld doesn't exist, it's a front for the neo-Nazi movement.
As of seven days ago, the name and the warehouse in Mannheim are gone, disappeared, as your brother disappeared fifty years ago."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I'll put this as gently as possible, Lord Marchand. Is it possible that the sons of your brother have come back, and with terrible irony have involved your own unwitting sons in a conspiracy to accelerate the Nazi resurgence by supplying uniforms?"
"Uniforms?"
"It's the next step, Lord Marchand. Historically, it's standard."
Knox Talbot disliked playing God, for too many had played God over his race for too long. He was uncomfortable assuming the position, feeling not a little hypocritical, but he had no choice. The Agency's all-powerful top-secret computers had been compromised, software containing the secrets of the globe invaded, including the most sensitive operations the CIA had mounted across the world, among them Harry Latham's torturous three-year odyssey. Harry Latham-Alexander Lassiter .. . code name, Sting.
Under the pretext of rotation assignments, he had requested over three dozen personnel records but only eight demanded his attention. The men and women responsible for the AA-Zero computers, for they alone had the keys, the codes, to learn the secrets that could end the lives of deep-cover agents and informers, or conversely render the operations useless. Someone had-no, more than someone, some two, for the locked disks required two people to punch in different codes, freeing the software and permitting screen transmission. But which two, and what had they really accomplished? Harry Latham had escaped, at the terrible price of his brother's life, but he was alive and in hiding in Paris.
Not only alive, but he had brought out an incriminating list of names that was already alarming the country, or at least the media, which did its damnedest to alarm the country whenever possible.
According to the murdered Drew Latham, the -Nazis knew about Sting, but when did they know? Before or after Harry had uncovered the names? If before, the entire list was suspect, but even that judgment did not wash with the disappearance of Rudolph Metz, a neo-fanatic if there ever was one. The Rockland laboratories had established that Metz had arrogantly used his own ciphers to extract and delete an entire year's research, and the FBI had traced Metz and his wife's escape to Stuttgart, using false passports, via Dulles International Airport and Lufthansa Flight 7000. How many other