The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,69

from the CIA Athens station. He worked in a small office on the third floor of the U.S. embassy, which was on 91 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, near the Byzantine Museum.

Nelson Agger was a familiar sort. A careerist with a nervous stomach and little by way of larger convictions. He'd graduated from Northwestern with a master's in comparative politics; though his grades and recommendations were good enough to get him into a handful of doctoral programs, they were not good enough to earn him the scholarship or tuition abatement he needed. The support would have to come from an outside source - a State Department-run foundation, in his case.

Once his paper credentials were secure, he became a desk analyst, displaying complete mastery of the unwritten rules of producing analytic reports. The reports - a number of which Janson had seen - were invariably unexceptionable, safe, and authoritative-sounding, their essential vacuity camouflaged by their sonorous cadence. They were festooned with such phrases as present trends are likely to continue and made cunning use of adverbs like increasingly. Trends were thus identified with no assessments hazarded as to outcome. King Fahd will find it increasingly difficult to maintain control, he had predicted each month of the Saudi leader. The fact that the potentate hung on to power year after year until incapacitated by a stroke - a nearly two-decade reign - was only a minor embarrassment; after all, he never said that King Fahd would lose control within any given time frame. Of Somalia, Agger once wrote, "The situation and circumstances have not yet unfolded to the point that the nature of the successor government or the policies that will eventually be implemented can be described with confidence." The analysis was indeed sound - pure sound, unencumbered by meaning.

Thin, balding, gangly, Nelson Agger was the kind of man whom field operatives were prone to underestimate; what he may have lacked in physical courage he made up for by his adroitness at office politics. Whatever else the bureaucrat might be, he was a survivor.

He was also an oddly likable soul. It was hard, in the abstract, to explain why Janson got along with him so well. Part of it surely had to do with the fact that Agger had no illusions about himself. He was a cynic, yes, but unlike the sententious opportunists who populated Foggy Bottom, he never made any bones about it, at least not when he was around Janson. The dangerous ones, in Janson's experience, were those with grand plans and cold eyes. Agger, though no tribute to his profession, probably did more good than harm.

But if Janson was honest with himself, he had to admit that another reason they got along was the simple fact that Agger liked and looked up to him. Desk jockeys, defensive about their role in the system, usually affected a measure of condescension toward the operatives. By contrast, Agger, who once laughingly referred to himself as "the gutless wonder," never bothered to hide his admiration.

Or, for that matter, his gratitude. In years past, Janson had occasionally seen to it that Agger was the first person to receive a particular piece of intelligence; in a few instances, Agger was able to tailor his analytic reports to make them seem prescient by the time the intelligence cables reached their channels. The baseline of mediocrity in intelligence analysis was such that an officer needed only a few such assists to acquire a reputation for excellence.

Nelson Agger was precisely the sort of person who could help him. Whatever Agger's shortcomings in the world of international intelligence, he had extremely sharp ears for intelligence internal to his division - who was in favor, who was not, who was thought to be losing his edge, who was believed to be on the rise. A tribute to his political skills was that he had become a clearinghouse for gossip without ever being known as a gossip himself. Nelson Agger could shed light on what was going on if anybody could. Nothing could take place in Athens sector without the knowledge of the small, tightly knit CIA station.

Now Janson sat in the back of a cafe on Vassilissis Sofias, just opposite the American embassy, sipping a mug of the strong, sweet coffee the Athenians favored, and phoned the station switchboard on his dual-mode Ericsson.

"Trade protocols," the voice answered.

"Agger, please."

A few seconds, during which three clicks could be heard; the call would be taped and logged.

"May I say who's calling?"

"Alexander," Janson said. "Richard Alexander."

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