Mexico Way, page 9
Bill Wagoner, indeed, did not look happy. The Director gave Kreeger the briefest of handshakes and retreated behind the rampart of his desk. Seated, he could confront Kreeger at eye level. The Director was a small man, and to compensate, he had the seat of his swivel chair screwed up so high that his toes barely touched the ground. He favored assistants and security guards who were under five-eight.
"Where were you Friday?" he demanded in his Power Voice.
Kreeger said, "Montezuma's revenge."
Director Wagoner trained his excessively blue eyes on the Station Chief in an unblinking stare. There was an ugly rumor that Bill Wagoner had taken a course in executive hypnotism. The Director was a career man, but his life had been spent among form-fillers and paper-pushers. He had risen by punching the right tickets in Washington, and by keeping his copybook clean. Kreeger harbored profound suspicions about men who handled everything with such neatness. It suggested that they had never had the imagination or daring to do things otherwise.
"You know what's wrong with you, Kreeger?" the Director said after a weighty pause. "You're not a team player."
"I used to be a linebacker. Linebackers are team players."
The Director's lips formed a straight line. His game was tennis, and he was unsure whether to take Kreeger's riposte as a personal affront.
"Anyway," he pursued, "it's just as well you're here. I've been asked to brief President Butler on Mexico."
"I'm happy for you."
"The President has made Mexico a top priority. He's very concerned about the state of affairs down there. He thinks it's a disgrace that we've won the cold war and kicked ass in the Persian Gulf and are losing in our own backyard, and he wants to know what we propose to do about it. I must say, I can't disagree with him."
"Losing?" Kreeger picked up. "What is that supposed to mean? Mexico isn't ours to win or lose."
"Don't get smart with me, Jim. It's all in your own reports. In ten days, the Mexicans vote themselves a new President. The government candidate, whatsisname—"
"Paz Gallardo."
"Thank you. Paz Gallardo will lose, but they'll rig the count so he'll scrape in. In the real vote, the leftist candidate will win by a landslide, and everyone will know it, I and his supporters will start blowing things up. Especially U.S. property. Have I got it about right?”
"Near enough. It's what happened last time, and the', time before. But it will be more serious this time around, because a lot of people in Mexico are hurting, and the; government's more unpopular than it's ever been, and , the opposition can't understand why it's okay in world opinion to change the regime in East Germany or Chile, but not in Mexico.”
"We don't like it,” the Director said flatly.
"I don't like it,” Kreeger countered. "But we can* live with it.”
"Maybe you've been down there too long.”
"For Chrissake, I've been in Mexico eighteen months!”
"There's always a danger of fieldmen going native. Remember what happened in Iran? All we got from the* Station was warmed-over piss from the Shah's secret po--lice. Until we woke up and found the Embassy in the hands of a bunch of crazies who thought they heard Allah talking into their left earholes. And what about Iraq?’ Our guys in Baghdad were out to lunch.”
What the hell would you know about it? Kreeger. thought. You've never been anywhere that didn't have; working air conditioning. He refrained, however, from,' expressing these sentiments out loud.
"There is a certain concern in this Administration—” the Director assumed his tutorial voice, "—that the government candidate in Mexico is overly close to the Japanese.”
"He's been to Japan a couple of times,” Kreeger 1 commented.
"He's on the take, isn't he? I saw a figure of five-hundred thousand dollars.” ,
"I believe it was two hundred thousand, and it was lecture honoraria.”
Director Wagoner snorted.
"I seem to remember a former U.S. President collected ten times as much." Kreeger observed.
"That was an ex-President. This is a gonnabe. Besides, this is a Mexican. Mexicans come cheap."
"If you want to build a scare about the number of sushi bars in Mexico, be my guest. But it's a red herring. The Japanese will find out what we already know. You can't buy a Mexican President; you can only rent him."
Kreeger was bemused by the Director's sustained, if erratic, attack. The Director was obviously looking for a Threat. If the Russians were perceived as less scary than they used to be, and the Agency had missed out on the war medals from Desert Storm, then pick on someone new—and do it fast, before the budget-cutters got out their choppers. Druglords were a perennial threat. So were the Japanese. Mexico had both, and it was close enough for U.S. voters to care. Was the Director trying to manufacture a Mexican crisis, or merely echoing opinions from higher up?
"It seems to me," Kreeger said, "that a lot of people are trying to stir the pot in Mexico. That's the reason I asked for this consultation."
"Ah, yes."
"I need to know if the Agency is involved in any secret operations in Mexico that I have not been informed about."
"Do you want to be more specific?"
"Are you aware of an operation called Safari?"
"Never heard of it."
"How about a case officer—or former case officer— called Cantwell?"
"There is no one by that name in the Agency."
The Director had excellent control of his facial muscles and they betrayed no hint of anything amiss, but he had responded too quickly to the query about Cantwell, and Kreeger noticed it. How could he know? Had he memorized the name of everyone on the CIA payroll?
Director Wagoner said, "I think you'd better tell me where you're coming from, Jim."
The lapse into colloquialism was another warning, Kreeger thought. "I picked up a few things from my sources. There's talk the Agency is mixed up in some half-assed plot to change the government in Mexico after the elections."
"Horseshit."
"That's what I figured. I just wanted to make sure, so I can check this out without getting any wires crossed."
"I may have missed something, Jim. Tell me again. Where's this coming from?" The Director leaned forward, the picture of cordiality.
"Just a few threads I stitched together."
"In Mexico City?"
Kreeger met his gaze. He had promised Hugh Ren-wick that he would not use his name. Even without the promise, an instinct for survival would have made him withhold vital details from the Director. For one thing, he had no intention of revealing his unauthorized role in the hostage trade. The Director had endeared himself to congressmen of both stripes—if not to his own fieldmen —by his insistence on doing things by the book.
"Here and there," said Kreeger. "I heard this Safari group held a get-together in south Texas. Mexicans and Americans. And this Cantwell guy."
"In Texas?"
"Yeah. Up at the YO Ranch."
"That's your neck of the woods, isn't it?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Well, not any longer, Jim. I want you to listen very carefully. You're telling me about something that happened on U.S. territory. Right?"
Kreeger nodded.
"Fine. Then it's off-limits. Off-bounds. Do you read me? It's outside our domain. And it's sure as hell off yours."
"End of story?"
“Let me handle this. I'll ask around. If there's anything that needs a follow-up, I'll consult with the appropriate agencies."
The Director looked at his battery of telephones the instant before one of them rang on cue. He lifted the receiver and listened for a moment before he announced to Kreeger, "I'm needed over at the White House."
He stood up and gave Kreeger his hand. His nails were beautifully manicured. "Keep in touch, Jim. I'm here to help."
2
As soon as Kreeger had left his office, Director Wagoner scrabbled in the top drawer of his desk for his bottle of Novocain. He shook a couple of pills into the palm of his hand and gulped them down without water. He waited for relief from the shooting pains between his jaw and his cheekbone that had come from gritting his teeth, in the hollow of the night, these many weeks past. Relief had still not come when he felt impelled to pick up one of the phones and call Admiral Enright, the National Security Adviser, on his direct line.
"Bill?"
"Who's this?" the admiral's clipped, midlantic accent came back.
"It's me. Bill." Washington insiders called them the Two Bills.
"Are you on a secure line?"
"Jeez! I'm in my own fucking office!"
Admiral Enright was known as a stickler for security.
"We're meeting in twenty minutes. What's up?"
"COS Mexico was just in my office. A guy called Kreeger."
"Yes?"
"He's onto Safari. Did you hear me? I told you we couldn't bypass Mexico Station." Alone in his office, Director Wagoner forgot appearances. His sweat glands opened up. He mopped his forehead with a Kleenex as he spoke into the phone.
"How much does he know?" Enright's voice was freshly ironed.
"Just a name. Cantwell."
"Okay. Tell me about Kreeger."
"What's to tell? He's a wild man."
"I heard that."
"A Texan."
"A Texan? Maybe the top man can talk to him, if there's really any problem. They're both Texans."
"Bill—you know, I was never happy about this ) whole deal. Maybe we should think about cutting our losses."
"I'll forget that you said that. I wouldn't want to have to report it to the rest of the team. We get rid of the SOB. Do you hear me, Bill?"
"I hear you."
3
Kreeger took Dorothy for dinner in the grill room at the Bethesda Hyatt, a two-minute drive from her apartment in a high-rise along the East-West Highway. He asked his big question between the oysters and the rack of lamb. "Does the name Cantwell ring a bell?"
Her memory worked like a card index. She was famed for it. He watched her as she tracked methodically, back and forth. Dorothy's retrieval system might be slow but—unlike the computer terminals at the Mausoleum— it was never down.
When the waiter came with their salads, she was still sifting.
"Maybe you could check for me with Registry," Kreeger suggested.
Dorothy extracted an endive leaf from her plate and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. Then her pupils shot up into her head. For an instant, only the whites of her eyes were showing. It was a mannerism that alarmed strangers.
Dorothy blinked and said, "Clorox."
"Excuse me?"
"The salad made me remember. It was in Lima. Remember? We used a Clorox solution to disinfect fresh vegetables."
"Okay." Kreeger wasn't sure where she was leading, but he was content to follow.
"You had a bottle of Clorox solution in the refrigerator. It wasn't labeled, or the label had slipped off, or something. You were giving a party for some visitors. There was this gray man down from headquarters. You hated each other's guts. He wanted scotch and water, and you let him fix it himself. He got the wrong bottle out of the fridge, and after he took a swig he was gargling and puking in the bathroom for about half an hour. He was fit to be tied." She chuckled over the image she had summoned. "He swore you'd tried to poison him. He left in a tizzy, swearing to kick your ass out in the street."
Kreeger remembered the gray man with the clean, razor-cut neck, the tight muscles around the mouth. A bureaucrat who never used a positive if he could find a double negative.
"Jeez, I do remember," Kreeger laughed, "Paul Milnekoff sent me a copy of the memo that guy sent in.
Paul wrote on it, "Nice try." Kreeger's laughter died in his throat. "Do you know who that was? That was Art Colgate."
"That was Cantwell." Dorothy skewered a piece of red cabbage and plopped it into her mouth.
"Are you sure?"
"Am I ever wrong?" Dorothy grinned at him.
"Would I dare to tell you if you were? But—shit!— Art Colgate! Didn't he have a different work-name on Company paper?"
"Kingsland. He was Kingsland in the correspondence. And there was always plenty of that."
"So how did you get the fix on Cantwell?"
Dorothy sipped her wine and put on an expression that was pure Mollycoddler. She looked at Kreeger like a schoolmistress contemplating a slow, or oversensitive, pupil, a boy who needed to have his hand held.
She said, "I think you're blocking something out. There was a time when you were living this stuff night and day. It was the last time we worked in the same office, at the shop. You asked me to pull Colgate's file, and all that stuff from Saigon. You didn't sleep, you didn't eat. Night and day, you were living with the ghosts. of Vietnam. There were people who said you were cracking up. There were times I thought you were gone. You: can't have forgotten everything."
"I haven't forgotten," Kreeger said quietly. How could he? There had been only one woman in his life, besides Karla, whom he had truly loved. And Art Colgate * had killed her—or arranged to have her killed—when he was Station Chief in Saigon, a city that Kreeger had never seen, and which had lost even its name. This, at least, was what Kreeger believed. He had never been able to prove it, not even when he had commanded all the resources of the counterintelligence division. He had been able to establish only that, of all the fabricators and frauds and brown-nosers the Agency had spawned in the Vietnam era, Art Colgate was the very worst.
He said, "I still can't find Cantwell."
Dorothy sighed. "Too many manhattans. It incinerates the brain cells."
"I don't notice that booze has done any harm to your memory."
"I have the advantage of sex. Women weather better than men. We have to."
"I'm happy for you."
"Cantwell—" Dorothy gestured with her fork, "— was one of Art Colgate's cover names in Vietnam. When he came home, he reported that he had lost his pocket litter in the scramble to get on a chopper out of Saigon, ahead of the commie tanks. I thought it was worth another look, but you weren't too interested. I guess you had your mind on something else."
She gave him a wistful look, and for a moment she might have been thirty years younger. She did not speak the name of the woman Kreeger had lost, but it hung between them, no less present because unacknowledged. Val. Lover, teacher, friend. The woman whose last words to Kreeger before she had vanished into the jungles of Vietnam, had lived with him down the years. "Whatever happens, Jim, you have to stay in the Agency. If the good people leave, the bastards inherit everything."
Dorothy knew. Of course she did. Was there anything she ever forgot?
Kreeger, deeply disturbed, tried to haul himself back to the business at hand. The lamb was served nicely pink, garnished with rosemary and garlic. He ate out of habit, without savoring the taste.
"Why would Art Colgate—assuming he is Mr. Cantwell—be interested in Mexico?" he asked Dorothy, who was eating with her customary gusto.
"Let's see—" she spoke between mouthfuls, "—he's been out on the street for four, maybe five years. He has a consultancy outfit over in Arlington. He calls it Global Assistance Services. Something like that. GAS for short."
'That sounds about right for Art. He's always dealt in wind and piss."
"You haven't forgotten him, have you?"
"I don't harbor grudges, Dot."
"No. You do something that may be worse. You forget easily enough—you just demonstrated that. But you forget without forgiving. If something happens that reminds you of what made you mad before, you're as mad as ever. Maybe more so."
"Thank you, doctor."
"You're welcome. If it's any consolation, I feel about Art Colgate about the same way you do. I can't say the same for my boss. Colgate has the Director's private line."
Kreeger's head was pounding. Had Director Wagoner told him a direct lie? Or was "Mr. Cantwell"—aka Art Colgate—merely trading on high-level contacts to milk gullible clients? Colgate was a salesman, and the key to that trade is to convince the client you have something he needs. Access to the top, hard-to-get items, unusual expertise. Had Colgate, the entrepreneur, simply managed to flog his dubious assets to some good ol' boys and a bunch of Mexicans who—in the way of all Latin Americans—would never believe that a CIA man can be put out to grass? Or was Colgate back in harness?
Kreeger, the professional, reminded himself that he could not afford to indulge his personal feelings. He had to keep the lenses clean. He could not allow himself to be influenced by the fact that, of all the enemies he had encountered, there was no one he wanted to nail as. badly as Art Colgate. He had to work this through, step by step, retaining his objectivity.
But he was going to need friends, especially since the Director had read him an explicit warning to Keep Off the Grass.
He inspected Dorothy, who was getting ready for dessert.
"Dot, I may need a back channel."
"That sounds sort of kinky."
"You handle Bill Wagoner's mail, don't you?"
"Only the sexy stuff."
"That's what I'm talking about. The ANTARCTICA channel."
She folded her arms, putting a barrier between them. To senior Agency people, the ANTARCTICA channel was especially sensitive. It referred to private communications from Station Chiefs to the Director. They were not supposed to be read—or even opened—by anyone except the Director of Central Intelligence in person. But Kreeger was quite confident that a senior secretary as savvy and as trusted as Dorothy was allowed to brandish a paper knife before the Director took a look at his secret mail.
"If I need to get a message through, I'll slip a note for you inside the outer envelope."
"Are you in trouble again, Jim?"
"Look, I played football. The most important thing I learned is there's a difference between pain and injury. I'm feeling a little pain. Just a little. If I'm injured, you may know it before I do."
4
Before he flew back to Mexico City, Kreeger called Joe Cicero and asked him to lunch at the Thai restaurant near the old Soviet Embassy.
"Where were you Friday?" he demanded in his Power Voice.
Kreeger said, "Montezuma's revenge."
Director Wagoner trained his excessively blue eyes on the Station Chief in an unblinking stare. There was an ugly rumor that Bill Wagoner had taken a course in executive hypnotism. The Director was a career man, but his life had been spent among form-fillers and paper-pushers. He had risen by punching the right tickets in Washington, and by keeping his copybook clean. Kreeger harbored profound suspicions about men who handled everything with such neatness. It suggested that they had never had the imagination or daring to do things otherwise.
"You know what's wrong with you, Kreeger?" the Director said after a weighty pause. "You're not a team player."
"I used to be a linebacker. Linebackers are team players."
The Director's lips formed a straight line. His game was tennis, and he was unsure whether to take Kreeger's riposte as a personal affront.
"Anyway," he pursued, "it's just as well you're here. I've been asked to brief President Butler on Mexico."
"I'm happy for you."
"The President has made Mexico a top priority. He's very concerned about the state of affairs down there. He thinks it's a disgrace that we've won the cold war and kicked ass in the Persian Gulf and are losing in our own backyard, and he wants to know what we propose to do about it. I must say, I can't disagree with him."
"Losing?" Kreeger picked up. "What is that supposed to mean? Mexico isn't ours to win or lose."
"Don't get smart with me, Jim. It's all in your own reports. In ten days, the Mexicans vote themselves a new President. The government candidate, whatsisname—"
"Paz Gallardo."
"Thank you. Paz Gallardo will lose, but they'll rig the count so he'll scrape in. In the real vote, the leftist candidate will win by a landslide, and everyone will know it, I and his supporters will start blowing things up. Especially U.S. property. Have I got it about right?”
"Near enough. It's what happened last time, and the', time before. But it will be more serious this time around, because a lot of people in Mexico are hurting, and the; government's more unpopular than it's ever been, and , the opposition can't understand why it's okay in world opinion to change the regime in East Germany or Chile, but not in Mexico.”
"We don't like it,” the Director said flatly.
"I don't like it,” Kreeger countered. "But we can* live with it.”
"Maybe you've been down there too long.”
"For Chrissake, I've been in Mexico eighteen months!”
"There's always a danger of fieldmen going native. Remember what happened in Iran? All we got from the* Station was warmed-over piss from the Shah's secret po--lice. Until we woke up and found the Embassy in the hands of a bunch of crazies who thought they heard Allah talking into their left earholes. And what about Iraq?’ Our guys in Baghdad were out to lunch.”
What the hell would you know about it? Kreeger. thought. You've never been anywhere that didn't have; working air conditioning. He refrained, however, from,' expressing these sentiments out loud.
"There is a certain concern in this Administration—” the Director assumed his tutorial voice, "—that the government candidate in Mexico is overly close to the Japanese.”
"He's been to Japan a couple of times,” Kreeger 1 commented.
"He's on the take, isn't he? I saw a figure of five-hundred thousand dollars.” ,
"I believe it was two hundred thousand, and it was lecture honoraria.”
Director Wagoner snorted.
"I seem to remember a former U.S. President collected ten times as much." Kreeger observed.
"That was an ex-President. This is a gonnabe. Besides, this is a Mexican. Mexicans come cheap."
"If you want to build a scare about the number of sushi bars in Mexico, be my guest. But it's a red herring. The Japanese will find out what we already know. You can't buy a Mexican President; you can only rent him."
Kreeger was bemused by the Director's sustained, if erratic, attack. The Director was obviously looking for a Threat. If the Russians were perceived as less scary than they used to be, and the Agency had missed out on the war medals from Desert Storm, then pick on someone new—and do it fast, before the budget-cutters got out their choppers. Druglords were a perennial threat. So were the Japanese. Mexico had both, and it was close enough for U.S. voters to care. Was the Director trying to manufacture a Mexican crisis, or merely echoing opinions from higher up?
"It seems to me," Kreeger said, "that a lot of people are trying to stir the pot in Mexico. That's the reason I asked for this consultation."
"Ah, yes."
"I need to know if the Agency is involved in any secret operations in Mexico that I have not been informed about."
"Do you want to be more specific?"
"Are you aware of an operation called Safari?"
"Never heard of it."
"How about a case officer—or former case officer— called Cantwell?"
"There is no one by that name in the Agency."
The Director had excellent control of his facial muscles and they betrayed no hint of anything amiss, but he had responded too quickly to the query about Cantwell, and Kreeger noticed it. How could he know? Had he memorized the name of everyone on the CIA payroll?
Director Wagoner said, "I think you'd better tell me where you're coming from, Jim."
The lapse into colloquialism was another warning, Kreeger thought. "I picked up a few things from my sources. There's talk the Agency is mixed up in some half-assed plot to change the government in Mexico after the elections."
"Horseshit."
"That's what I figured. I just wanted to make sure, so I can check this out without getting any wires crossed."
"I may have missed something, Jim. Tell me again. Where's this coming from?" The Director leaned forward, the picture of cordiality.
"Just a few threads I stitched together."
"In Mexico City?"
Kreeger met his gaze. He had promised Hugh Ren-wick that he would not use his name. Even without the promise, an instinct for survival would have made him withhold vital details from the Director. For one thing, he had no intention of revealing his unauthorized role in the hostage trade. The Director had endeared himself to congressmen of both stripes—if not to his own fieldmen —by his insistence on doing things by the book.
"Here and there," said Kreeger. "I heard this Safari group held a get-together in south Texas. Mexicans and Americans. And this Cantwell guy."
"In Texas?"
"Yeah. Up at the YO Ranch."
"That's your neck of the woods, isn't it?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Well, not any longer, Jim. I want you to listen very carefully. You're telling me about something that happened on U.S. territory. Right?"
Kreeger nodded.
"Fine. Then it's off-limits. Off-bounds. Do you read me? It's outside our domain. And it's sure as hell off yours."
"End of story?"
“Let me handle this. I'll ask around. If there's anything that needs a follow-up, I'll consult with the appropriate agencies."
The Director looked at his battery of telephones the instant before one of them rang on cue. He lifted the receiver and listened for a moment before he announced to Kreeger, "I'm needed over at the White House."
He stood up and gave Kreeger his hand. His nails were beautifully manicured. "Keep in touch, Jim. I'm here to help."
2
As soon as Kreeger had left his office, Director Wagoner scrabbled in the top drawer of his desk for his bottle of Novocain. He shook a couple of pills into the palm of his hand and gulped them down without water. He waited for relief from the shooting pains between his jaw and his cheekbone that had come from gritting his teeth, in the hollow of the night, these many weeks past. Relief had still not come when he felt impelled to pick up one of the phones and call Admiral Enright, the National Security Adviser, on his direct line.
"Bill?"
"Who's this?" the admiral's clipped, midlantic accent came back.
"It's me. Bill." Washington insiders called them the Two Bills.
"Are you on a secure line?"
"Jeez! I'm in my own fucking office!"
Admiral Enright was known as a stickler for security.
"We're meeting in twenty minutes. What's up?"
"COS Mexico was just in my office. A guy called Kreeger."
"Yes?"
"He's onto Safari. Did you hear me? I told you we couldn't bypass Mexico Station." Alone in his office, Director Wagoner forgot appearances. His sweat glands opened up. He mopped his forehead with a Kleenex as he spoke into the phone.
"How much does he know?" Enright's voice was freshly ironed.
"Just a name. Cantwell."
"Okay. Tell me about Kreeger."
"What's to tell? He's a wild man."
"I heard that."
"A Texan."
"A Texan? Maybe the top man can talk to him, if there's really any problem. They're both Texans."
"Bill—you know, I was never happy about this ) whole deal. Maybe we should think about cutting our losses."
"I'll forget that you said that. I wouldn't want to have to report it to the rest of the team. We get rid of the SOB. Do you hear me, Bill?"
"I hear you."
3
Kreeger took Dorothy for dinner in the grill room at the Bethesda Hyatt, a two-minute drive from her apartment in a high-rise along the East-West Highway. He asked his big question between the oysters and the rack of lamb. "Does the name Cantwell ring a bell?"
Her memory worked like a card index. She was famed for it. He watched her as she tracked methodically, back and forth. Dorothy's retrieval system might be slow but—unlike the computer terminals at the Mausoleum— it was never down.
When the waiter came with their salads, she was still sifting.
"Maybe you could check for me with Registry," Kreeger suggested.
Dorothy extracted an endive leaf from her plate and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. Then her pupils shot up into her head. For an instant, only the whites of her eyes were showing. It was a mannerism that alarmed strangers.
Dorothy blinked and said, "Clorox."
"Excuse me?"
"The salad made me remember. It was in Lima. Remember? We used a Clorox solution to disinfect fresh vegetables."
"Okay." Kreeger wasn't sure where she was leading, but he was content to follow.
"You had a bottle of Clorox solution in the refrigerator. It wasn't labeled, or the label had slipped off, or something. You were giving a party for some visitors. There was this gray man down from headquarters. You hated each other's guts. He wanted scotch and water, and you let him fix it himself. He got the wrong bottle out of the fridge, and after he took a swig he was gargling and puking in the bathroom for about half an hour. He was fit to be tied." She chuckled over the image she had summoned. "He swore you'd tried to poison him. He left in a tizzy, swearing to kick your ass out in the street."
Kreeger remembered the gray man with the clean, razor-cut neck, the tight muscles around the mouth. A bureaucrat who never used a positive if he could find a double negative.
"Jeez, I do remember," Kreeger laughed, "Paul Milnekoff sent me a copy of the memo that guy sent in.
Paul wrote on it, "Nice try." Kreeger's laughter died in his throat. "Do you know who that was? That was Art Colgate."
"That was Cantwell." Dorothy skewered a piece of red cabbage and plopped it into her mouth.
"Are you sure?"
"Am I ever wrong?" Dorothy grinned at him.
"Would I dare to tell you if you were? But—shit!— Art Colgate! Didn't he have a different work-name on Company paper?"
"Kingsland. He was Kingsland in the correspondence. And there was always plenty of that."
"So how did you get the fix on Cantwell?"
Dorothy sipped her wine and put on an expression that was pure Mollycoddler. She looked at Kreeger like a schoolmistress contemplating a slow, or oversensitive, pupil, a boy who needed to have his hand held.
She said, "I think you're blocking something out. There was a time when you were living this stuff night and day. It was the last time we worked in the same office, at the shop. You asked me to pull Colgate's file, and all that stuff from Saigon. You didn't sleep, you didn't eat. Night and day, you were living with the ghosts. of Vietnam. There were people who said you were cracking up. There were times I thought you were gone. You: can't have forgotten everything."
"I haven't forgotten," Kreeger said quietly. How could he? There had been only one woman in his life, besides Karla, whom he had truly loved. And Art Colgate * had killed her—or arranged to have her killed—when he was Station Chief in Saigon, a city that Kreeger had never seen, and which had lost even its name. This, at least, was what Kreeger believed. He had never been able to prove it, not even when he had commanded all the resources of the counterintelligence division. He had been able to establish only that, of all the fabricators and frauds and brown-nosers the Agency had spawned in the Vietnam era, Art Colgate was the very worst.
He said, "I still can't find Cantwell."
Dorothy sighed. "Too many manhattans. It incinerates the brain cells."
"I don't notice that booze has done any harm to your memory."
"I have the advantage of sex. Women weather better than men. We have to."
"I'm happy for you."
"Cantwell—" Dorothy gestured with her fork, "— was one of Art Colgate's cover names in Vietnam. When he came home, he reported that he had lost his pocket litter in the scramble to get on a chopper out of Saigon, ahead of the commie tanks. I thought it was worth another look, but you weren't too interested. I guess you had your mind on something else."
She gave him a wistful look, and for a moment she might have been thirty years younger. She did not speak the name of the woman Kreeger had lost, but it hung between them, no less present because unacknowledged. Val. Lover, teacher, friend. The woman whose last words to Kreeger before she had vanished into the jungles of Vietnam, had lived with him down the years. "Whatever happens, Jim, you have to stay in the Agency. If the good people leave, the bastards inherit everything."
Dorothy knew. Of course she did. Was there anything she ever forgot?
Kreeger, deeply disturbed, tried to haul himself back to the business at hand. The lamb was served nicely pink, garnished with rosemary and garlic. He ate out of habit, without savoring the taste.
"Why would Art Colgate—assuming he is Mr. Cantwell—be interested in Mexico?" he asked Dorothy, who was eating with her customary gusto.
"Let's see—" she spoke between mouthfuls, "—he's been out on the street for four, maybe five years. He has a consultancy outfit over in Arlington. He calls it Global Assistance Services. Something like that. GAS for short."
'That sounds about right for Art. He's always dealt in wind and piss."
"You haven't forgotten him, have you?"
"I don't harbor grudges, Dot."
"No. You do something that may be worse. You forget easily enough—you just demonstrated that. But you forget without forgiving. If something happens that reminds you of what made you mad before, you're as mad as ever. Maybe more so."
"Thank you, doctor."
"You're welcome. If it's any consolation, I feel about Art Colgate about the same way you do. I can't say the same for my boss. Colgate has the Director's private line."
Kreeger's head was pounding. Had Director Wagoner told him a direct lie? Or was "Mr. Cantwell"—aka Art Colgate—merely trading on high-level contacts to milk gullible clients? Colgate was a salesman, and the key to that trade is to convince the client you have something he needs. Access to the top, hard-to-get items, unusual expertise. Had Colgate, the entrepreneur, simply managed to flog his dubious assets to some good ol' boys and a bunch of Mexicans who—in the way of all Latin Americans—would never believe that a CIA man can be put out to grass? Or was Colgate back in harness?
Kreeger, the professional, reminded himself that he could not afford to indulge his personal feelings. He had to keep the lenses clean. He could not allow himself to be influenced by the fact that, of all the enemies he had encountered, there was no one he wanted to nail as. badly as Art Colgate. He had to work this through, step by step, retaining his objectivity.
But he was going to need friends, especially since the Director had read him an explicit warning to Keep Off the Grass.
He inspected Dorothy, who was getting ready for dessert.
"Dot, I may need a back channel."
"That sounds sort of kinky."
"You handle Bill Wagoner's mail, don't you?"
"Only the sexy stuff."
"That's what I'm talking about. The ANTARCTICA channel."
She folded her arms, putting a barrier between them. To senior Agency people, the ANTARCTICA channel was especially sensitive. It referred to private communications from Station Chiefs to the Director. They were not supposed to be read—or even opened—by anyone except the Director of Central Intelligence in person. But Kreeger was quite confident that a senior secretary as savvy and as trusted as Dorothy was allowed to brandish a paper knife before the Director took a look at his secret mail.
"If I need to get a message through, I'll slip a note for you inside the outer envelope."
"Are you in trouble again, Jim?"
"Look, I played football. The most important thing I learned is there's a difference between pain and injury. I'm feeling a little pain. Just a little. If I'm injured, you may know it before I do."
4
Before he flew back to Mexico City, Kreeger called Joe Cicero and asked him to lunch at the Thai restaurant near the old Soviet Embassy.
