The shadow war

by Glen Scott Allen

  Nestled in a natural bowl of small, rounded hills, the Foundation was separated-or perhaps protected was a better word-from the outside world by acres of woods. The nearest settlement was a good half-hour drive away; even the summer mansions Benjamin had passed seemed vulnerable and declasse by comparison.

  The Foundation was an expanse of manicured lawns, geometric flower gardens, strategically placed copses of oak and sycamore and maple trees, all with their leaves now glowing in the earthy tones of early fall, and a dozen buildings, most in a Colonial-style architecture of red brick, white trim, and copper-gabled eaves. It all looked more like an exclusive private school than a secret research institute.

  Until one noticed the ten-foot fence that stretched around the grounds. A fence Benjamin was sure was electrified.

  After passing through imposing wrought-iron gates and parking his car in a graveled driveway, Benjamin stood on the portico of the large, mansionlike edifice to which the gate guard had directed him. His briefcase clutched in one hand, he wondered again what on earth he was doing here. But then Jeremy would explain all that to him in a moment.

  He squared his shoulders and entered the building.

  ***

  Benjamin felt dizzy.

  The circular foyer of the building was enormous, open all the way up to the domed ceiling some fifty feet overhead. A grand spiral staircase wound around the wall of the foyer, up to the second floor.

  And then he noticed the mural.

  Beginning where the dome joined the foyer's walls and stretching all the way down to the floor, the mural covered every inch of the walls. It reminded him of the WPA Depression-era murals that adorned the lobbies of so many American post offices, but the scale of this one was tremendous, overwhelming. He could make out people and machines and landscapes, all interlocked in ways both intricate and yet heroically simple. He saw light bending along the curve of muscle and polished steel surfaces, faces fixed in transports of calm determination.

  He felt simultaneously proud and insignificant.

  He wrested his attention away from the mural and looked around the foyer. Just opposite him was an office door with ARTHUR TERRILL, A.D. on a brass plate in its center. That was the person the guard had directed him to see.

  He walked over to the door. Inside, he could hear voices, raised and apparently arguing. He hesitated, then knocked.

  The voices stopped, there was a pause, and then the door opened. A short, thin man with large-rimmed glasses and carefully styled silver hair stood looking at him quizzically.

  "Yes?" he said.

  "Excuse me," said Benjamin. "I'm Benjamin Wainwright. I'm here to see Dr. Jeremy Fletcher?"

  The man looked nonplussed for a moment, then shook his head.

  "Of course, of course," he said, backing up, "I forgot all about you. Come in, come in."

  Benjamin entered a large office with a great block of a desk to one side, armchairs here and there, a small couch, a Persian rug, walnut wainscoting, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves… He imagined now he was in the principal's office of this "private school."

  "Arthur Terrill," the man said, somewhat perfunctorily shaking Benjamin's hand. He motioned for Benjamin to sit in one of two unoccupied chairs before his desk, then returned to his seat behind it.

  "This will only take a moment, Mr. Wainmark," he said. "Please sit down."

  "It's Wain wright, " Benjamin corrected. "Benjamin-"

  "Excuse me, " said another voice behind Benjamin.

  Turning, he saw a man sitting on a small couch that had been hidden by the open door. He was dressed in a light gray suit and matching tie, and in one hand was a glass containing amber fluid and ice.

  "Benjamin Wainwright?" the man asked. Benjamin nodded. "Good." He took a sip from the drink. "I hoped we'd meet."

  The man rose, came over and stood beside Benjamin, looking down at him. He seemed amused. He also seemed slightly drunk.

  In all the time Benjamin was to spend with Samuel Wolfe, he never quite gained a single, fixed idea of his overall persona. Samuel was tall, and held himself so erect one's impression was that his manners came from another century. He could appear patrician and imposing one moment, relaxed and mischievous the next. His face had gone out of style in the thirties: a curving beak of a nose and large, intelligent eyes; eyes that encouraged an instinctual confidence. It suddenly came to Benjamin that Wolfe was a dead ringer for that actor he'd seen in an old black-and-white detective film… something about a "thin man"?

  And then Benjamin realized Wolfe was extending a hand toward him, still with a drink in the other. He took it and felt the firmness of Wolfe's grip. Wolfe sat down in the other chair before Terrill's desk.

  "This is Mr. Samuel Wolfe, a… security analyst," Terrill said, tapping a pencil on his desk and looking down at a fan of papers spread across the desktop's green blotter, "here to help us with an… unfortunate incident." He sighed. "And it's because of that incident that your services will not be required."

  Now Benjamin was the one nonplussed. "Not required?"

  "I'm afraid there's been a significant change of plans-"

  "Significant!" Wolfe snorted, shaking his head.

  "And unfortunate," Terrill continued. "I'm terribly sorry, but in any case the Foundation will cover your expenses for the trip and, let's say, two weeks?"

  "Christ on a crutch, Arthur." Wolfe frowned at Terrill, as if scolding him. "This young man hasn't the foggiest idea what's happened here. Toss him a line, for godssake." And for emphasis he recrossed his legs, rather elegantly.

  "Yes, of course, I'm sorry." Again Terrill tapped and rifled. "If only Jeremy had spoken to me sooner. You see, I didn't know he'd contacted you until this very morning, well after the…"

  "The incident?" Benjamin offered.

  "A hit," said Wolfe, raising his glass in a toast. "Give the lad a drink."

  "Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Would you care for a drink?" Terrill asked.

  "No," Benjamin said. "Well, perhaps some water-"

  "And the whiskey you don't give him," Wolfe said, handing his empty glass across the desk to Terrill, "put in this."

  Terrill took the glass and went to a small bar by the fireplace, and as he made another drink and poured a glass of water for Benjamin, he continued.

  "Anyway, as I said, there's been a terrible… event. Jeremy Fletcher-the man who requested your services, a resident fellow here at the Foundation, in fact a very accomplished scholar in his own right-Well…" Terrill returned and handed both of the men their glasses, then sat back down. "Well, he's dead."

  "There," sighed Wolfe, "you said it." He saluted Terrill and took a sip of his refreshed drink.

  "Dead?" Benjamin exclaimed. "But he called me at the Library of Congress. Just yesterday. He asked me to come out and help with some work he was doing." They both looked at him in silence. "He…" Benjamin realized he'd run out of things to say. "Dead?" he repeated.

  "Decidedly," said Wolfe. Then he looked sharply at Terrill. "You say this 'incident' occurred sometime yesterday afternoon?"

  "Well, it must have happened after Dr. Fletcher's afternoon meeting with Edith, certainly," Terrill said nervously. Then he glanced at Benjamin. "But there's no reason to go into all that now, taking up Mr. Wainwright's time, when we've wasted so much of it as it is."

  Benjamin turned to Wolfe. "You're a policeman?"

  Wolfe shifted those lidded eyes as if Benjamin had insulted him.

  "A miss," Wolfe said. And then he smiled-and again Benjamin felt both charmed and irritated by his expression.

  "In any case," Terrill continued with some effort, "as Mr. Fletcher was the only member of the Foundation doing that sort of research, we simply don't need-"

  "What sort of research?" Wolfe interrupted.

  "What? I told you-"

  "No," said Wolfe, turning to face Benjamin. "I'm asking Mr. Benjamin Wainwright. Why do you think Dr. Fletcher requested your illustrious presence?"

  "You mean, what sort of w
ork was Jeremy… was Dr. Fletcher doing?" Benjamin shook his head. "I know almost nothing about it. I hadn't spoken to him in years, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, yesterday-"

  "You knew Dr. Fletcher?" Wolfe asked sharply.

  "Well, yes, back in college. But-"

  "And then, after a long interval without any contact, he called you yesterday, asked you to come out here?"

  Benjamin felt like he was being interrogated. "He said something about working with the Colonial period, and, as that's my field-"

  "Then," Wolfe interrupted him again, "you do know of Dr. Fletcher's research."

  "No, not really. I mean, I know his degree was in statistics-"

  " Inferential statistics," corrected Wolfe. "You know, to draw inferences."

  "Samuel, really," Terrill protested, exasperated. "I feel I must put my foot down here. This is the very sort of thing that we wish to remain confidential. And confidentiality, need I remind you, determined our course of action in bringing you here."

  Wolfe stood and crossed to Terrill's desk as if to confront him; but instead he merely smiled tolerantly at Terrill, then turned and addressed Benjamin.

  "Doesn't it strike you as odd, Mr. Wainwright," Wolfe said, "that a statistician, inferential or otherwise, would need the services of a Colonial historian?"

  Benjamin entirely agreed with Wolfe, but for some reason he didn't want to say so.

  "Well… not necessarily. Jeremy and I used to discuss Colonial history back in college, and-"

  "Fletcher's current work was all on nuclear war theory," Wolfe said heavily. "Hardly the stuff of Puritan religious dogma, wouldn't you say?"

  Benjamin looked to Terrill, who was now jotting notes furiously, resorting to the pretense that neither of them existed. And then an answer seemed perfectly obvious to him.

  "Jeremy knew my dissertation was on the Native-Settler wars. Perhaps his work on war game theory had something to do with those wars and… well, modern guerilla warfare?"

  Wolfe looked at him silently for a moment, turned to Terrill.

  "How much were you going to pay him, Arthur?"

  Terrill looked up from his papers. "What? Him?" He glanced at Benjamin. "Well, I don't see how that's really relevant, given the circumstances."

  "As much as my assistant?" Wolfe said.

  "Your assistant?"

  "If I'm to explore this incident thoroughly in no more than three days, I'm going to need some help, Arthur. And there's the not inconsequential issue of who's to be trusted. Wasn't that your point in dragging me away from my cozy little loft in Boston this morning? To guarantee a little discreet nosing about before the big-footed detectives arrive?"

  Terrill roused himself. "And confidentiality, Samuel. At least you were once already employed by the Foundation, thus the proper security checks-"

  Wolfe leaned over and patted Benjamin's shoulder. "And our congressional librarian here works for the government, too, don't you?" He turned back to Terrill. "The government that writes your checks, Arthur. The same government that's not going to write you that very fat check, unless-"

  Terrill held up his hand. "Samuel, please!"

  Wolfe smiled. "My point is that you can spare no one, I need someone, and someone has just very propitiously arrived. Someone whom poor Jeremy thought could help him. Well, perhaps he was right, Arthur. Perhaps Mr. Wainwright can help us."

  "Really, now, Samuel…," began Terrill.

  But Wolfe suddenly cursed as his glass slipped from his hand and fell with a crash to Terrill's desk. Ice and liquid spread everywhere across the papers there. Terrill first looked stunned, then horrified, then began grasping willy-nilly at folders and papers.

  "Oh dear," Wolfe said-and began dabbing at the expanding rivulets of scotch with the end of his tie.

  Terrill sat back, exasperated.

  "I think," he said, speaking slowly and carefully, "this discussion's usefulness is concluded for the evening. Mr. Wainwright, we'll decide in the morning what, if any, your continuing role with the Foundation will be. And Mr. Wolfe…"

  Wolfe looked up, grinning ruefully, and handed Terrill the one folder he'd managed to snatch from the deluge, a shard of glass perched in its concavity. And then without another word he turned and, nodding to Benjamin, walked out of the room.

  When Wolfe was gone, Arthur looked at Benjamin. "I have to apologize for Mr. Wolfe," he said. "He's been through a… well, a recent shock. You haven't seen him at his best."

  Benjamin realized that Terrill's schoolmaster tone of earlier was tempered with the concern of an elder colleague for a promising friend-someone whose promise was vanishing before his eyes. "Go upstairs, Mr. Wainwright," Terrill continued, "and there you'll find an empty guest room. You can use that for the night. We'll sort all this out in the morning."

  "Thank you," Benjamin said. "Then… good night." He gathered his briefcase from the floor and crossed what seemed an immense distance to the office's doorway.

  "Close the door, if you please," said Terrill behind him, and Benjamin did as he requested.

  When he entered the foyer, he looked around for Wolfe, and decided he must have gone upstairs already. Then he realized that if he were to stay overnight he would need his suitcase from the car.

  The night sky outside was perfectly clear, the stars bright and undimmed by city lights or smog. It had been a very long time since Benjamin had seen them so brilliant, so ideal. The only sound was that of his footsteps on the gravel.

  Back on the portico, suitcase retrieved, he stood for a moment letting the silence surround him. He could make out black lumps of trees, behind them darkened hulks of other buildings, and the lighter blackness of the sky overhead. And then, perhaps a hundred yards away, on one of the footpaths, he saw someone walking. Someone with a dog. A dog that was straining at its leash.

  Benjamin hurried back into the building.

  CHAPTER 2

  "Ya uverna," Natalya said. "I am certain. He's lying."

  "Pravda?" The man in the small booth next to her smiled. "And how do we know this, oh great seer Natashka?"

  Of all the men at the Russian embassy who had a crush on Natalya-and there were several-she liked Yuri the best. Not only was he the most handsome, he was also the most… useful. So, she tried to keep him interested.

  Natalya returned the smile, somewhat wryly, then pointed through the one-way mirror.

  "Look at his eyes. Up and to the center is thinking. Up and to the left or right is fabricating. And he's touched his nose twice and pulled on his ear three times. He's lying through his teeth." She turned her back to the window, leaned against the console, folded her arms, and looked down at Yuri. "Da?"

  "Harasho," Yuri said, adjusting the dials of the console before him. "One course in psychology, you are now an academician?"

  "Isn't that what your little blips tell you about him?" She nodded toward the one-way mirror in front of Yuri.

  Two men sat in a small room on the other side of the mirror, across a table from each other. One held a clipboard upon which he was writing notes; the other was leaning back in his chair, apparently at ease. And as the two men continued to talk, the computer screen in front of Yuri displayed traces that jumped abruptly, expanding and contracting. There was a superimposed grid on the screen, and when the traces labeled Interviewiruyemiy jumped above or below those lines, they turned red. They were red now.

  Yuri laughed. " Da, da. So, all this expensive equipment is completely useless, and all we need is Natalya Orlova, Cultural Attache and Eye Movement Master."

  Now Natalya laughed. She knew Yuri was teasing her; she accepted it as part of the price of being where she wasn't supposed to be, witnessing interrogations-no, interviews-she wasn't supposed to witness. It was a delicate balancing act, keeping Yuri's interest active but harmless. And she needed that interest. Occasionally she required Yuri's assistance in obtaining fast access to the restricted archives, where the documents all had numbers instead of titles, and were all written by
the same author: Otdel, for "official department." Hanging out with Yuri was a small taste of that world of secret, anonymous documents.

  She leaned over and planted a kiss on top of Yuri's thick, closely cropped brown hair.

  "You will have to continue without Madame Natashka," she said. "I have real work to do."

  Yuri took her hand for a moment. "And you owe me one drink," he said.

  "Da." Natalya pulled her hand free. "Soon, Yuri Alexandrovich, very soon."

  Once in the hall, she turned right and walked past the interview room, glancing once more at the man inside. He was applying for a license to do business in Russia. Smuggler, she thought. But of what? Cigarettes, music CDs, computer software, drug formulas? But not military secrets. Not these days. Now the enemies of Russia were most often the same as the enemies of the United States: money launderers, drug dealers, software thieves. And in these days of the global market, the difference between the American Mafia dons and the Russian vor v zakone was gray and indistinct. And of course there were the terrorists, people once trained and supplied by her former government, but now embarrassments to be hunted down and eliminated. Cooperation was the watchword, detente on a scale unimaginable only a decade ago. In the New World Order, this only made sense.

  Then why didn't it make her feel more secure?

  As she headed for her small desk on the third floor and the pile of paperwork she'd been avoiding by playing spy with Yuri, she wondered once again about her career choice.

  She might, like Yuri, have joined the Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti, the FSB-the theoretically licit and more civilized successor to the notorious Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB). She'd even been interviewed by them when she'd graduated from the Moskovsky gosudarstvennyi institut mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

  Had she so desired, her credentials certainly could have earned her entrance into the ranks of the FSB: both of her grandfathers had been clever and nondescript enough to survive in the secret service while nearly everyone around them was consumed by the homicidal paranoia of the thirties and forties; and her own father had been a political officer in one of the first divisions of the Raketnye voyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya, the Strategic Rocket Forces, the most elite corps of all the Red Army.