36

Harvey Littel entered the crisis office room with the confidence of a sovereign handing down laws to his people. Certainly Littel didn’t make laws or carry out regulations. His world was a world apart, a world of intelligence, counterintelligence, military, civilian, industrial, and political espionage. There was only one rule on this battlefield: conquer at any price. Imbued with this spirit, Harvey Littel took his place at the table as the windows of the door automatically darkened to block the view from outside.

“Good evening, once again, gentlemen. Any news?” he asked, taking his seat in a comfortable leather easy chair.

“We have the Russian contacts on permanent alert,” Colonel Garrison informed him. He took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.

“Perfect. Excellent.” Littel raised his hand. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t smoke in my presence. Thank you.” It was obviously an order, not a courteous request.

Stuart Garrison looked at him with the Cuban cigar unlit. He put it back in his jacket pocket for a better time.

“And Barnes? Has he given us any information?”

“He’s on the phone at this moment, Dr. Littel,” Priscilla hastened to inform him with her notebook at the ready.

“Wonderful,” Littel responded. “Let’s not make him wait any longer,” he decided. “Cil, put him on the speakerphone.”

“Geoffrey Barnes?” said Priscilla, whose affectionate diminutive was only for her boss’s use and no one else’s.

“Yes?” They heard Barnes’s guttural voice filling the room from the speakers placed in the ceiling. The phone, as in the previous room, was near Littel on the table.

“Barnes, how are you?” Littel greeted him with audible friendliness.

“Littel, good, thanks. You? Shut up in the second basement without seeing the full moon?” His voice expressed confidence, which in itself calmed everyone who was listening.

“You know how things are. We just get by. I bet you’re sitting at your desk on the sixth floor watching the lights of the city, knife and fork in hand, ready to devour some roast pheasant.”

“You’re mistaken about the food, but it’s a good idea.”

“Well, all right. How does it happen that one of our own has been killed in Amsterdam?” He suddenly took a serious tone of voice.

“My people have been there. I was, too, last night, and I can affirm that the victim, Solomon Keys, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Solomon Keys. It’s confirmed.” Littel corroborated the information Barnes gave him with what he already had.

Some sighs were heard in the room in recognition of the name. Most had heard him spoken about. Others knew him personally. Peace to his noble soul.

“Yes. Well, he died because he was in the Amsterdam Centraal station, in one of the restrooms, specifically when a British couple came in to satisfy their carnal desire.”

Some listeners began to laugh nervously. It was humorous to hear Barnes tell a story like this with complete professionalism.

“Someone came in to eliminate the couple, and Keys paid the price,” Barnes concluded.

“Okay, in any case we’re going to ask for his service order to confirm whether the motive of his trip was tourism or an operation,” Littel said, while gesturing for Priscilla to carry out that task. She agreed and wrote it in her notebook.

“He was over eighty years old,” Barnes commented in the sense of excusing the old agent of the company of any blame.

“It wouldn’t be the first time, Barnes,” Littel clarified. “Sometimes they return to activity for a mission or two.”

Although separated by thousands of miles, both of them imagined the same thing. Little old men with canes, arthritic and breathing with difficulty, but, if the agency needed them… That was their life, the best marriage they ever made, until death do them part.

“I agree,” Barnes said. “But you probably won’t find anything. The subjects of this operation were two English journalists, Natalie Golden and Greg Saunders.”

“Who are they?”

“Prestigious journalists.”

“Is the motive known?” Littel asked.

“We’re tracking that down. We’ll know something soon.”

“Natalie Golden and Greg Saunders,” Littel said to the room. “I want you to find out everything about them, from where they were born to who they hung out with. The smallest detail is important. Get working on it.”

A group left the room to follow up on the order.

“Barnes, what else do you have for me?”

“There’s been an explosion this afternoon here in London.”

“In…” Littel consulted his notes on the table. “Redcliff Gardens. We’re current on that.”

“Okay. The explosion was of criminal origin and resulted in a death and an injury.”

A certain uneasiness filled the room.

“We’re already trying to question the injured party.”

“And the death?”

“An agent of the RSS, a certain Nestov.”

“Nestov?” Colonel Stuart Garrison exclaimed. “This was why he wasn’t answering his phone.” The colonel looked pale.

“Whose house was it? What was he doing there?”

Barnes didn’t answer. A murmur rose in the room.

“Silence,” Littel said. “Barnes, are you there?”

“I am.”

“Then do me the favor of answering. What was he doing in the house?”

Barnes again showed no sign of answering. When that happened, it could only mean one thing. Littel understood and picked up the receiver of the phone while disconnecting the loudspeaker.

“Okay, Barnes, now it’s just you and me.”

It was clear the other listeners didn’t like the idea of being excluded from the conversation. It meant greater secrecy, increasing their curiosity.

Littel listened attentively to what Barnes was telling him. His face began to change from perturbed and dark to an expression of irritation and unease.

The others noticed this change of mood and felt even more frustrated.

“Is this the president’s position?”

Hearing Washington mentioned, everyone perked up his ears in vain. They continued hearing the same thing: nothing.

Seconds later Littel put down the receiver and disconnected the call. They could see a couple of drops of sweat running down his face. And it wasn’t the fault of the air-conditioning. Something was bothering Littel, and if something worried him, it would soon worry everyone.

He drummed his fingers on the table for a few minutes, making the others, who kept silent in frustration, very nervous.

“Wake up the subdirector,” he ordered at last. “And get a plane ready.”

37

This isn’t very clear,” Staughton protested from the passenger seat as Thompson got to the end of Montpelier Street and turned left toward Brompton Road.

“That’s how the services function. If everything were clear, we wouldn’t have a job.”

“That’s for sure,” Staughton admitted. Uncomfortable, he took a deep breath. “But someone could be wrong.”

“No, they couldn’t.”

“No?”

“No,” Thompson repeated. “They’re working with us. We work with them as long as it’s in our mutual interest. We understand that, and they do, too.”

“Yes, but according to the president.”

“The president acts according to the interests of the United States of America. That’s all he has to be concerned about. And according to those interests he swore to defend, he helps whoever can give him the most.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Staughton confessed.

“You’re still a beginner in operational work in the field, so let me give you some advice. There are Americans, that’s us, and the others. Don’t ever get too friendly with the others because the day will come when they’re our enemies. Do you understand?”

“It’s still not right.”

“Forget about being right. The world is not fair. Take my advice, and you’ll never have a problem when the pieces change sides. Precisely because they’re the ‘others’ ”-he made quotation marks with his fingers-“they’re mere accessories and the first to go when things change.”