DAVID Ogden took a long time to die, and he did not die unnoticed. The course of his illness was followed in the nation's press and on the six o'clock news. David Ogden had tumors sprouting in his brain like mushrooms on a dewy morning. David Ogden was brain damaged. David Ogden was doomed. David Ogden, after four long months, was finally dead.
The attention called to Ogden 's illness was less because of what he was than what he once had been. He was, at the time he was stricken, Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA, and as such he was accustomed to maintaining the lowest of profiles. He was also, however, one of the last of the original OSS boys, one of Wild Bill Donovan's daredevil band, which, with casual gallantry, had set occupied Europe ablaze during World War II; and as such he was fair game for exploitation. During his long illness, as he lay in a coma at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, his wartime exploits were chewed and rechewed in both the print and the electronic news media. Young David Ogden, who had made seventeen jumps into occupied France. Young David Ogden with Tito's guerrillas in the mountains of Yugoslavia. Young David Ogden, the terror of Trafalgar Square.
There was a life after the war, of course, a marriage and a family, and a steady rise through the ranks of the CIA, the successor to the OSS, but it was his wartime adventures that kept Ogden's name in the public eye while he lay in that darkened hospital room, mushrooms sprouting in his brain, for there was nothing about the activities of the Deputy Director for Operations that could have been printed. In truth, all of what David Ogden did during World War II was not one one-hundredth as fascinating, and as vital to the interests of his country, as what he accomplished in the last years of his life; but these latter-day actions were, by necessity, shrouded in silence. A few people knew, people who lived in that same silent world, and those were the ones who grieved during Ogden 's illness. Grieved not for the death that was sure to come, for these people lived in a daily acceptance of mortality, but for the fine, incisive mind that was slowly being destroyed. It was a mind made for analysis, for meticulous attention to detail, and for the sudden impulse of a gambling thrust that could bring home a winner. It was the mind of an intelligence genius, and when Ogden finally died it was time for the grieving to end, not begin.
One of those who grieved for David Ogden was his successor, Alex Jessup. Ogden 's protégé and second-in-command, Jessup lived through the four months of his mentor's illness in that grey arena where loyalty battles ambition. Jessup's war had been the Vietnam of the pacification programs run by the Agency, the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, the Strategic Hamlets, and the counterterror teams. During those Vietnam years he had worked under Ogden, and had come first to respect the man, then to admire him, and finally to enshrine him in something short of sainthood. He had risen with Ogden, tied to his star, and now he stood only a breath away from his ultimate ambition. The trouble was that the breath belonged to David Ogden. Jessup dreamed of being DDO the way other men dream of wealth and women, but at the same time he truly idolized the man he would replace, and if, during those months, he functioned as the de facto DDO, he did so with the daily hope that in some unfathomable fashion those mushrooms sprouting in Ogden's brain might be plucked out stem and spore. He was not a man for miracles; he knew that his hopes were fantasies, but while Ogden still lived he refused to relinquish them, and with that same sense of loyalty prompting him, he refused to assume the position and promotion that were properly his. He was DDO in everything but name, but while Ogden still breathed he could not get himself to take on the actual title, nor could he make the move into the suite of rooms on the executive floor that looked out through double layers of tinted glass onto the gentle Virginia countryside. He played the game by the only rules he knew, and then Ogden died, and with him died the restraints of loyalty. On the morning after the funeral, February bright and cold, Alex Jessup officially moved into the job and the office of the man he had admired most.
There was little ritual involved in the changing of the guard. The DCI, himself, along with the other deputy directors, stopped by that morning at eleven. Small glasses of good wine were lifted, and toasts were murmured, some wishing well for the future, others looking back at the past. That was all there was to it. There was no breaking of the papal seals, no salutes from plumed horsemen. Only one final task remained to make the assumption of office complete, and that was the emptying of David Ogden's private lockbox.
The office of each of the deputy directors contained such a box, a place to keep private, nonoperational papers. Official files were forbidden to the box, which was the ideal repository for the memorabilia of men who led such private lives. Something more than a safe, something less than a vault, it was a three-ply steel container the size of a small oven, set into the office wall and secured there by angle pins lodged in concrete. The box was virtually impregnable. It could be opened only by the voiceprint of the owner, and any attempt to force it would have reduced its contents to ashes. Under normal circumstances, when an office changed hands the occupant was on the spot to empty the box and leave it ready for the next user. David Ogden had not been on the spot. For the past four months he had been on his back and unable to communicate either in speech or in writing. During all that time the box had been untouched.
"It should have been opened before this," the DCI observed as he finished his wine and prepared to leave.
"Yes, I know," said Jessup, feeling the rebuke. The box should have been opened as soon as it had become apparent that Ogden was dying, but he had shied away from the act as being too final. "As you know, Director, it's for personal papers only."
"Still, you'd better get it open right away. Technical Services will do it for you. They're the only ones who can get the damn things open without blowing up the building." The DCI hesitated. "You'll send his things on to Amelia?"
"Of course."
"Go through everything carefully." "Yes."
"Personally."
"Yes." The two men looked at each other in understanding. David Ogden, in a quiet way, had been a noted romancer of women. He had not been indiscriminate, but within his silent world his name had been linked in whispers: a senator's wife, a socialite, a television personality. His personal papers would have to be sifted before being sent to his wife.
"Amelia," said the DCI in a faraway voice. "Lovely woman."
"Indeed."
"I knew her as a girl, you know." "No, I didn't know that."
"Oh, yes. Baltimore family, one of the Sutcliffe sisters. I never could understand why David felt the need for all that screwing around…" His voice trailed off, and then he said firmly, "I'll leave it in your hands."
It took the man from Technical Services, working from plans, almost an hour to bypass the voiceprint circuits on the lockbox, and another thirty minutes to cut the box open with a thermal lance. Inside the box was another container, this one unlocked. Jessup set it on what was now his desk.
The man from Technical Services looked unhappily at the mess he had made. "I'll call Maintenance. They'll clean it up." "Later," said Jessup, ready to get at the box. "Shouldn't take long."
"Later."
When the man was gone, Jessup opened the box. There were two compartments inside. He opened the right-hand compartment. In it were five large Manila envelopes, each with a woman's name written in pencil on the front. He felt a touch of queasiness in his stomach.
I don't want to do this, he thought. I really don't.
The name on the top envelope was Sarah. He opened the envelope, and emptied it onto the desk. The contents consisted of several Polaroid photographs, a packet of handwritten letters, and a sheaf of typewritten correspondence. Jessup grunted when he saw the photographs.
"Jesus," he muttered. "Sarah Brine."
There were three pictures of the movie actress, and in all of them she was nude and erotically posed. Jessup shook his head, and pushed the photos aside. The handwritten letters were bound by a thick rubber band. The paper on which they were written was cracked, and the ink had faded. Jessup went through them, skimming. As he expected, they were love letters from Sarah Brine to David Ogden. More than tender notes, they were explicit, descriptive, and highly complimentary. Jessup bound them up again, and turned to the sheaf of typewritten pages. They comprised a file of correspondence between Ogden and Gregory Lancer, head of Lancer Publications in Los Angeles. The dates on the letters were over ten years old. Again, Jessup skimmed. Ogden saying,… spoken to several of my friends who are interested in investing in Temptation. And,… my check enclosed for my share of the Temptation project. And,… I can't think of anyone who could do a better job in Temptation than Sarah Brine. And,… must thank you for the consideration shown to Miss Brine. It won't be forgotten.
Sarah Brine in Temptation, thought Jessup. Her first big break, the movie that made her a star, and David did it.
He turned to the next envelope marked Jenny. Again there were photographs of a nude and beautiful woman, but this time there was no instant recognition, and it took Jessup a moment to realize that the woman was Jenny Cookson, television anchorwoman and companion of the celebrated. As noted for her good looks as for her bulldog approach to journalism, Jenny Cookson had, over the past five years, made herself into the ultimate television interviewer, and in many ways had become almost as famous as the people who appeared on her program. Ogden, apparently, had been interviewed off camera. Again there was a packet of affectionate letters, and again a record of the payoff, copies of memorandum from Ogden arranging for Ms. Cookson to interview the Secretary of State, the First Lady, and a string of only slightly lesser notables.
Quid pro quo, thought Jessup. The queasy feeling was back in his stomach.
The third envelope was marked Carla, and Jessup was not surprised to find inside it a nude photograph of the wife of John MacAlester, the senior senator from Florida, for the long-standing relationship between David Ogden and Carla MacAlester had been grist for the Washington gossip mills for years. He examined the photo critically, and decided that it must have been taken years before when Carla had still been the vibrant young beauty from Tallahassee. There was the usual packet of letters, and along with them the record of the business side of the relationship: a series of notes to heavyweight senators of both parties designed to secure a seat on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee for the ambitious Senator MacAlester.
So neat and orderly for a record of sexual conquests, thought Jessup. First a photo of the woman like a trophy to be mounted, then the proof of her affection, and finally the record of the value received. For one, a starring role, for another an entrance into high places, for another a boost to her husband's career. What next?
Next was the socially impeccable Vivian Livingstone of Chevy Chase and Newport. No photographs of Mrs. Livingstone, too aware of her place in society, or perhaps too timid, but there was the packet of creased and dog-eared envelopes, still with a touch of scent to the paper, and at the bottom of the pile a copy of the notification that Mrs. Livingstone's son, Bradford, had been appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Jessup opened the last envelope and drew out a photograph of Maria-Teresa Bonfiglia, a star of the Metropolitan Opera; but this was no nude. The eight-by-ten glossy showed the veteran soprano in the costume of Puccini's Madame Butterfly, a role for which she had been critically acclaimed ever since her debut twenty years ago. There was no packet of letters this time, no scent of sachet, but the business end of the arrangement was there in the form of letters between Ogden and Otto Hartz, producer and impresario. Madame Bonfiglia was fast approaching the end of a distinguished career, and it was Mr. Ogden's warmest desire that she leave the musical stage in triumph. Therefore, he told Mr. Hartz, he was willing to underwrite personally the costs of a farewell tour by this magnificent soprano, if only Hartz would handle the details of production. Hartz would, indeed, and the last sheet of paper in the envelope gave the tour's itinerary: Denver, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, and the final performance at New York 's Carnegie Hall on the sixth of March.
An expensive tab to pick up, thought Jessup, for something that must have happened so many years ago. But then, David Ogden always paid his bills, no matter when they were presented.
The queasy feeling was back again. Jessup was in no way a prude, and Ogden 's reputation as a sexual adventurer had been so well known that these confirmations of his adventures came as no surprise. What was surprising was the now apparent fact that over all those years Ogden had been trading favors for favors, using his influence as a way of wangling women into his bed.
And I thought he was doing it on charm. Well, I guess it wasn't pimping, but it was the next thing to it.
He stacked the envelopes, returned them to the right-hand section of the box, and sat staring at them. There would be nothing to send on to Amelia; this would all have to be destroyed. He shook his head sadly. Bedroom standards, he told himself. Don't ever measure people by bedroom standards. It was something that Ogden had taught him years ago.
He closed the compartment, and opened the other one. It contained only four thin Agency case folders. Jessup stiffened when he saw them. The covers of the folders were blank. No case numbers, no circulation slips, no registry stamps. There was only one proper place for a blank case folder, and that was in the Registry Office. Gingerly, reluctantly, he took out the topmost folder, and opened it. It contained a single sheet covered with a spidery handwriting that he recognized as Ogden 's own. He opened the other three folders. Each contained a single, similar sheet of paper.
Jessup sat back to read. He read through the four folders carefully, then read through them again. When he was finished with them for the second time, he sat for a long while with his eyes on the place in the broken wall where the lockbox had been. He did not know it, but his face was grey and his eyes were heavy-lidded. He reached for the telephone.