when we were really getting screwed." Her brown eyes roamed across the faces in the room. "Maybe we're missing something - let's review your man's records again," she said to the undersecretary. "Just the high points."
"Paul Elie Janson," Collins said, his eyes veiled behind his black plastic glasses. "Grew up in Norfolk, Connecticut, educated at the Kent School. His mother was born Anna Klima - an emigre from what was then Czechoslovakia. She'd been a literary translator in the old country, became too closely associated with dissident writers, paid a visit to a cousin in New Haven, and never returned. Wrote poems in Czech and English, published a couple of them in The New Yorker. Alec Janson was an insurance executive, a senior vice president at the Dalkey Group before he died. In 1969, hot-to-trot Paul leaves U-Michigan just before graduating and joins the navy. Turns out he's got this gift for tactics and combat, gets himself transferred to the SEALs, the youngest person ever to have received SEAL training. Assigned to a counterintelligence division. We're talking about a learning curve like a rocket."
"Wait a minute," the DIA man said. "A hothouse flower like that - what's he doing joining up with the Dirty Dozen? Profile mismatch."
"His whole life is a 'profile mismatch,' " Derek Collins replied, with a trace of asperity. "You really want to get the shrink reports? Maybe he's rebelling against his dad - the two weren't close. Maybe he'd heard too many stories about a Czech uncle who was a hero of the resistance, a partisan who picked off Nazis through the ravines and forests of Sumava. Dad wasn't exactly a wuss, either. During the Second World War, old Alec was in the marines himself, a Semper Fi leatherneck before he became a business executive. Let's just say Paul's got the bloodlines, preppy or no. Besides, you know what they say - the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Or was that a 'profile mismatch,' too, Doug?"
The DIA analyst colored slightly. "I'm just trying to get a handle on somebody who seems to have walked out of a full-force, all-hands CIA stakeout like the Invisible Man."
"We had very little warning - the whole operation was spur-of-the-moment, our boys had minutes to prepare and mobilize," said Clayton Ackerley, the man from the CIA's Directorate of Operations. He had wispy red hair, watery blue eyes, and a fading tan. "Under the circumstances, I'm sure they did the best they could."
"There's always time for recriminations," said Charlotte Ainsley with a severe, over-the-glasses pedagogic look. "Just not now. Go ahead, Derek. I'm still not getting the picture."
"Served in SEAL Team Four, picked up a goddamn Navy Cross in his first tour of duty," said the undersecretary of state. His eyes fell on a yellowing slip from the file, and he passed it around.
Officer Fitness Report Remarks 20 November 1970
Lieutenant Junior Grade Janson's performance in Joint SEAL/Special Force Detachment A-8 has been outstanding. His able judgment, tactical knowledge, creativity, and imagination has allowed him to plan Swift Strike operations against enemy units, guerrilla personnel, and hostile installations that were accomplished with minimal losses. Lt. j.g. Janson has demonstrated extraordinary ability to adapt and to respond to rapidly changing circumstances, and is unaffected by the hardships of living under the toughest field conditions. As an officer, he demonstrates natural leadership skills: he does not merely demand respect, he commands it.
Lieutenant Harold Brady, Rating Officer
Lt. j.g. Janson demonstrates potential of the highest caliber: his field skills and ability to improvise in conditions of adversity are nothing short of stellar. I will personally be keeping a close watch to see whether his potential is fully realized.
"There's dozens just like it. Guy serves one tour after another, continuous combat exposure, no breaks. Then a big gap. Hard to build your resume as a POW. Captured in the spring of 1971 by the Viet Cong. Held for eighteen months, in pretty abysmal conditions."
"Care to specify?" Charlotte Ainsley asked.
"Tortured, repeatedly. Starved. Part of the time, he was kept in a cage - not a cell, a cage, like a big birdcage, six feet high, maybe four feet around. When we found him, he weighed eighty-three pounds. He grew so skeletal that the manacles slid off his feet one day. Made about three escape attempts. The last one succeeded."
"Was treatment like that typical?"
"No," the undersecretary said. "But trying so relentlessly and resourcefully to escape wasn't typical, either. They knew