Metzes were there? Or to reverse the question, how many other innocent Senator Rootes were there? Everything was spiraling out of control, or soon would be, as the investigations continued.
Two out of eight totally "white," completely cleared specialists in the most demanding of computer operations were moles. How was it possible? Or even was it? There was nothing in their personnel records that gave the slightest hint.. .. Then suddenly sections of Harry Latham's London debriefing came back to Talbot. He opened a drawer and pulled out the transcript. He found the page.
Q (MI-5): The rumor is that the Nazis, the new Nazis, may have known who you were from the beginning.
HL: That's not a rumor, that will be their credo. How often did we do the same thing when we found a mole who fled back to
Mother Russia after looting us. Of course we proclaimed bow smart we were, and bow useless was the information stolen from us-when it wasn't.
Q (DEUXIgME): Isn't it conceivable that you were fed disinformation?
HL: I was a trusted confidant until I escaped, a major contributor and a believer in their cause. Why would they feed me dirt? But to answer your question, yes, of course it's conceivable. Disinformation, misinformation, human or computer error, wishful thinking, fantasizing-anything's possible. It's your job to confirm or deny. I've brought you the material, "now it's your function to evaluate it.
Knox Talbot studied the agent's statements. It could be argued that Harry Latham himself left the door wide open. Everything was crazy, crazy with probable confirmations and possible contradictions, except the existence of a spreading Nazi virus in Germany. The CIA director put the transcript away and stared at the eight separated records spread in an arc over his desk. He reread the words but found no hints, nothing of substance. He would take each one and try with all his concentration to read between the lines until his eyes were bloodshot. Then, thankfully, his telephone buzzed. He touched the button on his console; his secretary spoke.
"Mr. Sorenson on line three, sir."
"Who's on one and two?"
"Two network producers. They want you to appear on programs discussing the Bureau's domestic interrogations."
"I'm out to lunch for a month."
"I understood that, sir. Line three, unless you want me to tell him the same."
"No, I'll take it.. .. Hello, Wcs, please don't add to my aggravation."
"Let's have lunch," said Wesley Sorenson.
"We have to talk. By ourselves."
"I'm kind of obvious, old boy, if you hadn't noticed. Unless you want to go to a restaurant in the darker part of town, where you'd be more obvious than me by a couple of nine yards."
"Then let's eliminate any yards. The zoo in Rock Creek Park.
The bird sanctuary; there's a hot dog stand I was introduced to by my grandchildren. Not 4ad; it has chili."
"When?"
"This is priority. Can you make it in twenty minutes?"
"I guess
I have to."
Oliver Mosedale, a fifty-year-old scholar attached to the Foreign Office and a prominent adviser to Britain's Foreign Secretary, poured himself a brandy as his young housekeeper filled his pipe, packed it down, and brought it to him.
"Thank you, my child," he said, crossing to a large leather armchair facing a television set.
The pipe securely in his mouth, he sat down with a sigh, placed his drink on a side table, reached into his pocket, and fired his pipe with a gold Dunhill lighter.
"The evening was nothing short of an exhausting bore," Mosedale continued.
"The chef was undoubtedly drunk-I'm sure the canard 4 Vorange was soaked in Gatorade-and those idiots from Treasury would cut our budgets to the point where we couldn't represent Liechtenstein, much less what's left of the British Empire. It's really all quite mad as well as most irritating."
"You poor ducks," said the buxom twentyish housekeeper, more than a trace of cockney in her voice.
"You work too' hard, that's what you do."
"Please don't mention ducks, my dear."
"Wot?
"It's what I presumably had for dinner."
"Sorry.. .. Here, let me massage your neck, that always relaxes you." The girl walked behind the chair and leaned over her employer, her generous breasts, made obvious by her decolletage, touching the back of his head, while her hands moved about his neck and shoulders.
"Marvelous," moaned the foreign service officer, drawing out the word as he reached for his brandy, taking sips between draws on his pipe.
"You do that so well, but then, you do everything well, don't you?"
"I try, Ollie darling. As I may have mentioned, I was brought up to respect men of quality, to