“Go on,” Phelps repeated.

The Mercedes accelerated in the direction of London. The tension in the cab of the van had disappeared.

“You’ll know at the proper time why you’re with me. Only then will I tell you what you have to do. As far as the rest, it’s better you not know, for your own safety.”

“Why so much secrecy?”

“It’s not my part to explain all the ins and outs of the operation.”

“But what’s all this for? Are we following something or someone?”

Rafael left Phelps’s question hanging, a suspenseful pause to arouse his curiosity, common to all master manipulators.

A phone call broke the silence. It could only be Rafael’s cell phone, since Phelps’s lay on the bottom of the channel. Rafael looked at his watch, and, for the first time, Phelps saw him show doubt. Whoever it was had some effect on him.

“Yes.” He finally paid attention.

Sixty-one seconds passed in which he didn’t pronounce one word, but his indifferent attitude abandoned him. His frown revealed his tension. He’s human after all, Phelps thought.

“You don’t have more information?” Rafael asked over the phone. He listened to the reply. “I know who can help us. I’ll take care of it… if we’re still on time.” He disconnected the phone. Phone conversations between people like this are always as brief as possible.

Something had disturbed Rafael; his indifference seemed to have vanished. His mind was an engine working at high speed. Even Phelps could understand that.

“You didn’t finish telling me,” Phelps interrupted when he thought enough time had passed. “Are we following someone?”

“John Paul the Second,” Rafael answered dryly.

“What?”

29

This bedroom community on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., can influence everything that happens in the world. It’s like a vital organ of society that, if functioning badly, can cause great problems. We are speaking of Langley, Virginia, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Here is where intelligence information is gathered from all over the world and presented to the political powers of Washington, when justified.

Invented or trustworthy, fictional or real, the truth is that the confidential reports that go out from here have the power to start wars where they don’t yet exist, suppress any political movement, here or on foreign soil, or modify the routine of thousands of people at a specific point on the globe, only because, according to preliminary studies, it could benefit the American economy.

Nevertheless, after sixty years, the company was beginning a new era. Other institutions, in particular the NSA, the National Security Agency, for many years called the No Such Agency, uses technology that always reaches farther and faster than the human resources the CIA relies on, contributing to its decline and even discredit. Besides, machines are always more trustworthy. The age of spies has changed suddenly and without warning.

The night shift has just come on, and that irritated the assistant subdirector since it meant extra hours, the sacrifice of family time again, the third time that week. For Harvey Littel, country came before anything else, and perhaps this explained the elevated rate of divorce among those working in this branch, though not yet in his case.

He’d covered a lot of miles through these corridors. He punched in at seven in the morning. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and now he returned crossing them toward the elevator to the east wing. His thirty-minute run every morning before coming to work gave him an enviable physique that enabled him, at fifty-three, to endure the daily pressure to which he was subjected as assistant subdirector.

Harvey Littel’s function could be explained fairly simply. He carried out all the dirty work for the subdirector, who could present it to the director as his own work, or, if Harvey Littel, by some chance, screwed up, everything could go to hell, but only one head would roll… his.

He glanced at the windows that reflected the darkness of the night, noting how he’d spent one more day unable to take advantage of the sun. At five in the afternoon, he’d told his wife, Lindy, not to count on him for supper.

“Harvey, it’s the third time this week,” she complained as soon as she was able to get to the phone, out of breath. Harvey didn’t even need to tell her why he was calling. “See if your boss will let you off. This is what happens when your husband does more than everyone else.” She continued to complain, more with herself than with him, speaking faster. She was a lonely woman, now that the children had gone their own ways. She believed her husband was too busy with his work in the computer store where he was head of the sales department. Lindy couldn’t figure out why her husband thought he was saving the world every day. Nor did Harvey imagine that her protests over his not showing up for dinner were made from on top of the bed, his bed, where she’d been romping at five in the afternoon with her lover, Stephen Baldwin, who, by chance, happened to look like the famous one, and who, by another coincidence, also worked at the agency, in the commissary. Stephen Baldwin was at Harvey Littel’s house at five in the afternoon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, without realizing that Lindy’s husband was the assistant subdirector of the CIA.

Once in the elevator, Littel swiped his card with level-two clearance and punched in the code assigned to him. The elevator read the order and began to descend to the second basement floor, buried well underground, where they waited for him. These clearances went from the lowest grade, six, to one, and controlled the security and information each individual could access inside the building and in other branches around the territory. The security system was able to monitor in detail the work of everyone associated with the agency. So, if it was necessary, it would be possible to consult the dates and know that Harvey Littel descended in elevator number twelve to the second basement floor at twenty-three hours, forty-five minutes, and twelve seconds today. The cards assigned to the employees not only cut off access to classified information, but also the entrance of all whose card didn’t permit access. If anyone inattentively tried to enter where he shouldn’t, he’d see the door stay closed, the elevator immobile, and would be called soon to Internal Security to explain himself.

But these are the house rules, of little interest to most mortals, and only serve to entertain us while the elevator takes Harvey Littel to his floor.

A soft braking came before a male voice announced the obvious, “Door opening.” Harvey went down the dark hall, with hidden sensors that turned on fluorescent lights as he walked with a firm, energetic pace.

After turning once to the left and twice to the right, he came out into another hallway, narrower, with a bluish light and a door at the end. Harvey swiped his card through the scanner on the wall and entered the code. Once he was on the other side, the door closed behind him, separating one world from another.

The light created an eerie atmosphere, as if transporting the passersby to another dimension. Several doors ran along both sides, all closed. The one Harvey Littel wanted was the third on the right side. He passed his card through the scanner. It was surely one of the movements he performed most often during the day, facilitating access to places he wanted to go. The door opened as soon as he entered the code, and, taking a deep breath, he went in. There were seven people inside awaiting him.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he greeted them, his tone appropriate to his professional role.

Almost everyone got up from around the large rectangular table the participants barely filled. Only the old colonel, Stuart Garrison, didn’t. Not because of the born arrogance that made him insufferable but because of the wheelchair in which he sat. These were the wounds of war that remain for life, received, as he never tired of telling, in March of 2003, on the outskirts of Nasiriyah, during the second Gulf War, when the allied forces were marching at top speed through Iraqi territory on the way to Baghdad. A rocket launched by some Shiite fighter at the Humvee in which he was riding took away from him any capacity for movement from his waist down, affecting his sexual ability, as well, although nothing affected his strong character. That act of terrorism earned Colonel Stuart Garrison the Medal of Valor. In colorful terms the report said that Stuart Garrison, trapped in what remained of the frame of the twisted Humvee, was able to destroy the menacing fighter about to give the coup de grace with another rocket. A sure shot to the head of the insurgent saved the lives of the six occupants of the vehicle, although one didn’t survive his wounds and died on the way to the field hospital, after waiting five hours for a rescue team. What the report didn’t mention was that the shot killed a teenager less than fifteen years old whose action was revenge for the allies annihilating his innocent family. These were the atrocities of war, implacable for both sides. Once removed from the battlefield, Stuart Garrison was invited to join the agency because of his privileged contacts in the Middle East, making him the most imbecilic, arrogant, and deficient man in the CIA-words not spoken out loud by those who knew him.