by James Grady
"I had both Sparrow IV's and Weatherby's bodies examined by our Ballistics man. Whoever shot Weatherby almost amputated his leg with the bullet. According to our man it was at least a .357 magnum with soft lead slugs. But Sparrow IV had only a neat round hole in his throat. Our Ballistics man doesn't think they were shot with the same gun. That, plus the fact Weatherby wasn't killed, makes the whole thing look fishy. I think our boy Malcolm, for some reason or other, shot Weatherby and then ran. Weatherby was hurt, but not hurt so bad he couldn't eliminate witness Sparrow IV. But that's not the interesting piece of news.
"From 1958 until late 1969, Weatherby was stationed in Asia, primarily out of Hong Kong, but with stints in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. He worked his way up the structure from special field agent to station head. You'll note he was there during the same period as our dead mailman. Now for a slight but very interesting digression. What do you know about the man called Maronick?"
Powell furrowed his brow. "I think he was some sort of special agent. A freelancer, as I recall."
The old man smiled, pleased. "Very good, though I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by 'special.' If you mean extremely competent, thorough, careful, and highly successful, then you're correct. If you mean dedicated and loyal to one side, then you are very wrong. Vincent Maronick was— or is, if I'm not mistaken— the best freelance agent in years, maybe the best of this century for his specialty. For a short-term operation requiring cunning, ruthlessness, and a good deal of caution, he was the best money could buy. The man was tremendously skiled. We're not sure where he received his training, though it's clear he was American. His individual abilities were not so outstanding that they couldn't be matched. There were and are better planners, better shots, better pilots, better saboteurs, better everything in particular. But the man had a persevering drive, a toughness that pushed his capabilities far beyond those of his competitors. He's a very dangerous man, one of the men I could fear.
"In the early sixties he surfaced working for the French, mainly in Algeria, but, please note, also taking care of some of their remaining interests in Southeast Asia. Starting in 1963, he came to the attention of those in our business. At various times he worked for Britain, Communist China, Italy, South Africa, the Congo, Canada, and he even did two stints for the Agency. He also did a type of consulting service for the IRA and the OAS (against his former French employers). He always gave satisfaction, and there are no reports of any failures. He was very expensive. Rumor has it he was looking for a big score. Exactly why he was in the business isn't clear, but my guess is it was the one field that allowed him to use his talents to the fullest and reap rewards quasi-legally. Now here's the interesting part.
"In 1964 Maronick was employed by the Generalissimo on Taiwan. Ostensibly he was used for actions against mainland China, but at the time the General was having trouble with the native Taiwanese and some dissidents among his own immigrant group. Maronick was employed to help preserve order. Washington wasn't pleased with some of the Nationalist government's internal policies. They were afraid the General's methods might be a little too heavy-handed for our good. The General refused to agree, and began to go his own merry way. At the same time, we began to worry about Maronick. He was just too good and too available. He had never been employed against us, but it was just a matter of time. The Agency decided to terminate Maronick, as both a preventive measure and as a subtle hint to the General. Now, who do you suppose was station agent out of Taiwan when the Maronick termination order came through?"
Powell was 90 percent sure, so he ventured, "Weatherby?"
"Right you are. Weatherby was in charge of the termination operation. He reported it successful, but with a hitch. The method was a bomb in Maronick's billet. Both the Chinese agent who planted the bomb and Maronick were killed. Naturally, the explosion obliterated both bodies. Weatherby verified the hit as an eyewitness.
"Now let's back up a little. Whom do you suppose Maronick employed as an aide on at least five different missions?"
It wasn't a guess. Powell said, "Our dead mailman, Sergeant Calvin Lloyd."
"Right again. Now here's yet another clincher. We never had much on Maronick, but we did have a few foggy pictures, sketchy descriptions, whatnot. Guess whose file is missing?" The old man didn't even give Powell a chance to speak before he answered his own question. "Maronick's. Also, we have no records of Sergeant Lloyd. Neat, yes?"
"Yes indeed." Powell was still puzzled. "What makes you think Maronick is involved?"
The old man smiled. "Just playing an inductive hunch. I racked my brain for a man who could and would pull a hit like the one on the Society. When, out of a dozen men, Maronick's file turned up missing, my curiosity rose. Navy Intelligence sent over the identification of Lloyd, and his file noted he had worked with Maronick. Wheels began to turn. When they both linked up with Weatherby, lights flashed and a band played. I spent a very productive morning making my poor old brain work when I should have been feeding pigeons and smelling cherry blossoms."
The room was silent while the old man rested and Powell thought. Powell said, "So you figure Maronick is running some kind of action against us and Weatherby was doubling for him, probably for some time."
"No," said the old man softly, "I don't think so."
The old man's reply surprised Powell. He could only stare and wait for the soft voice to continue.
"The first and most obvious question is why. Given all that has happened and the way in which it has happened, I don't think the question can practically and logically be approached. If it can't be approached logically, then we are starting from an erroneous assumption, the assumption that the CIA is the central object of an action. Then there's the next question of who. Who would pay— and I imagine pay dearly— for Maronick with Weatherby's duplicity and at least Lloyd's help to have us hit in the way we have been hit? Even given that phony Czech revenge note, I can think of no one. That, of course, brings us back to the why question, and we're spinning our wheels in a circle going nowhere. No, I think the proper and necessary question to ask and answer is not who or why, but what. What is going on? If we can answer that, then the other questions and their answers will flow. Right now, there is only one key to that what, our boy Malcolm."
Powell sighed wearily. "So we're back to where we started from, looking for our lost Condor."
"Not exactly where we started from. I have some of my men digging rather extensively in Asia, looking for whatever it is that ties Weatherby, Maronick, and Lloyd together. They may find nothing, but no one can tell. We also have a better idea of the opposition, and I have some men looking for Maronick."
"With all the machinery you have at your disposal we should be able to flush one of the two, Malcolm or Maronick— sounds like a vaudeville team, doesn't it?"
"We're not using the machinery, Kevin. We're using us, plus what we can scrounge from the D.C. police."
Powell choked. "What the hell! You control maybe fifty men, and the cops can't give you much. The Agency has hundreds of people working on this thing now, not counting the Bureau and the NSA and the others. If you give them what you have given me, they could…"
Quietly but firmly the old man interrupted. "Kevin, think a moment. Weatherby was the double in the Agency, possibly with some lower-echelon footmen. He, we assume, acquired the false credentials, passed along the needed information, and even went into the field himself. But if he was the double, then who arranged for his execution, who knew the closely guarded secret of where he was and enough about the security setup to get the executioner (probably the competent Maronick) in and out again?" He paused for the flicker of understanding on Powell's face. "That's right another double. If my hunch is correct, a very highly placed double. We can;t risk any more leaks. Since we can't trust anyone, we'll have to do it ourselves."
Powell frowned and hesitated before he spoke. "May I make a suggestion, sir?"
The old man deliberately registere
d surprise. "Why, of course you may, my dear boy! You are supposed to use your fine mind, even if you are afraid of offending your superior."
Powell smiled slightly. "We know, or at least we are assuming, there is a leak, a fairly highly placed leak. Why don't we keep after Malcolm but concentrate on stopping the leak from the top? We can figure out what group of people the leak could be in and work on them. Our surveillance should catch them even if so far they haven't left a trail. The pressure of this thing will force them to do something. At the very least, they must keep in touch with Maronick."
"Kevin," the old man replied quietly, "your logic is sound, but the conditions for your assumptions invalidate your plan. You assume we can identify the group of people who could be the source of the leak. One of the troubles with our intelligence community— indeed, one of the reasons for my own section— is that things are so big and so complicated such a group easily numbers over fifty, probably numbers over a hundred, and may run as high as two hundred persons. That's if the leak is conscious on their part. Our leak may be sloppy around his secretary, or his communications man may be a double.
"Even if the leak is not of a secondary nature, through a secretary or a technician, such surveillance would be massive, though not impossible. You've already pointed out my logistical limitations. In order to carry out your suggestion, we would need the permission and assistance of some of the people in the suspect group. That would never do.
"We also have a problem inherent in the group of people with whom we would be dealing. They are professionals in the intelligence business. Don't you think they might tumble to our surveillance? And even if they didn't, each one of their departments has its own security system we would have to avoid. For example, officers in Air Force Intelligence are subject to unscheduled spot checks, including surveillance and phone taps. It's done both to see if the officers are honest and to see if someone else is watching them. We would have to avoid security teams and a wary, experienced suspect.
"What we have," the old man said, placing the tips of his fingers together, "is a classic intelligence problem. We have possibly the world's largest security and intelligence organization, an entity ironically dedicated to both stopping the flow of information from and increasing the flow to this country. At a moment's notice we can assign a hundred trained men to dissect a fact as minuscule as a misplaced luggage sticker. We can turn the same horde loose on any given small group and within a few days we would know everything the group did. We can bring tremendous pressure to bear on any point we can find. There lies the problem: on this case we can't find the point. We know there's a leak in our machine, but until we can isolate the area it's in, we can't dissect the machine to try to pinpoint the leak. Such activity would be almost certainly futile, and possibly dangerous, to say nothing of awkward. Besides, the moment we start looking, the opposition will know we know there's a leak.
"The key to this whole problem is Malcolm. He might be able to pinpoint the leak for us, or at least steer us in a particular direction. If he does, or if we turn up any links between Maronick's operation and someone in the intelligence community, we will, of course, latch on to the suspect. But until we have a firm link, such an operation would be sloppy, hit-and-miss work. I don't like that kind of job. It's inefficient and usually not productive."
Powell covered his embarrassment with a formal tone. "Sorry, sir. I guess I wasn't thinking."
The old man shook his head. "On the contrary, my boy," he exclaimed, "you were thinking, and that's very good. It's the one thing we've never been able to train our people to do, and it's one thing these massive organizations tend to discourage. It's far better to have you thinking and proposing schemes which, shall we say, are hastily considered and poorly conceived, here in the office, than it is for you to be a robot in the street reacting blindly. That gets everyone into trouble, and it's a good way to wind up dead. Keep thinking, Kevin, but be a little more thorough."
"So the plan is still to find Malcolm and bring him home safe, right?"
The old man smiled. "Not exactly. I've done a lot of thinking about our boy Malcolm. He is our key. They, whoever they are, want our boy dead, and want him dead badly. If we can keep him alive, and if we can make him troublesome enough to them so that they center their activities on his demise, then we have turned Condor into a key. Maronick and company, by concentrating on Malcolm, make themselves into their own lock. If we are careful and just a shade lucky, we can use the key to open the lock. Oh, we still have to find our Condor, and quickly, before anyone else does. I'm making some additional arrangements to aid us along that line too. But when we find him, we prime him.
"After you've had some rest, my assistant will bring you instructions and any further information we receive."
As Powell got up to go, he said, "Can you give me anything on Maronick?"
The old man said, "I'm having a friend in the French secret service send over a copy of their file on the flight from Paris. It won't arrive until tomorrow. I could have had it quicker, but I didn't want to alert the opposition. Outside of what you already know, I can only tell you that physically Maronick is reportedly a very striking man."
* * *
Malcolm began to wake just as Powell left the old man's office. For a few seconds he lay still, remembering all that had happened. Then a soft voice whispered in his ear, "Are you awake?"
Malcolm rolled over. Wendy rested on one elbow, shyly looking at him. His throat felt better and he sounded almost normal when he said, "Good morning."
Wendy blushed. "I'm… I'm sorry about yesterday, I mean how mean I was. I just… I just have never seen or done anything like that and the shock…"
Malcolm shut her up with a kiss. "It's OK. It was pretty horrible."
"What are we going to do now?" she asked.
"I don't know for sure. I think we should hole up here for at least a day or two." He looked around the sparsely furnished room. "It may be a little dull."
Wendy looked up at him and grinned. "Well, not too dull." She kissed him lightly, then again. She pulled his mouth down to her small breast.
Half an hour later they still hadn't decided anything.
"We can't do that all the time," Malcolm said at last.
Wendy made a sour face and said, "Why not?" But she sighed acceptance. "I know what we can do!" She leaned half out of the bed and groped on the floor. Malcolm grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.
"What the hell are you doing?" he said.
"I'm looking for my purse. I brought some books we can read out loud. You said you liked Yeats." She rummaged under the bed. "Malcolm, I can't find them, they aren't here. Everything else is in my purse, but the books are missing. I must have… Owww!" Wendy jerked back on the bed and pried herself loose from Malcolm's suddenly tightened grip. "Malcolm, what are you doing? That hurt…"
"The books. The missing books." Malcolm turned and looked at her. "There is something about those missing books that's important! That has to be the reason!"
Wendy was puzzled. "But they're only poetry books. You can get them almost anywhere. I probably just forgot to bring them."
"Not those books, the Society's books, the ones Heidegger found missing!" He told her the story.
Malcolm felt the excitement growing. "If I can tell them about the missing books, it'll give them something to start on. The reason my section was hit must have been the books. They found out Heidegger was digging up old records. They had to hit everybody in case someone else knew. If I can give the Agency those pieces, maybe they can put the puzzle together. At least I'll have something more to give them than my story about how people get shot wherever I go. They frown on that."
"But how will you tell the Agency? Remember what happened the last time you called them?"
Malcolm frowned. "Yes, I see what you mean. But the last time they set up a meeting. Even if the opposition has penetrated the Agency, even if they know what goes over the Panic Line, I still think we're OK. With all that
has gone on, I imagine dozens of people must be involved. At least some of them will be clean. They'll pass on what I phone in. It should ring some right bells somewhere." He paused for a moment. "Come on, we have to go back to Washington."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Wendy's outstretched hand missed its grasp on Malcolm's arm as he bounded out of bed and into the bathroom. "Why are we going back there?"
The shower turned on. "Have to. A long-distance phone call can be traced in seconds, a local one takes longer." The tempo of falling water on metal walls increased.
"But we might get killed!"
"What?"
Wendy yelled, but she tried to be as quiet as possible. "I said we might get killed."
"Might get killed here too. You scrub my back and I'll scrub yours."
* * *
"I'm very disappointed, Maronick." The sharp words cut through the strained air between the two men. The distinguished-looking speaker knew he had made a mistake when he saw the look in his companion's eyes.
"My name is Levine. You will remember that. I suggest you do not make a slip like that again." The striking man's crisp words undercut the other man's confidence, but the distinguished-looking gentleman tried to hide his discomposure.
"My slip is minor compared to the others that have been happening," he said.
The man who wished to be called Levine showed no emotion to the average eye. An acute observer who had known him for some time might have detected the slight flush of frustrated anger and embrassment.
"The operation is not yet over. There have been setbacks, but there has been no failure. Had there been failure, neither of us would be here." As if to emphasize his point, he gestured toward the crowds milling around them. Sunday is a busy day for tourists at the Capitol building.