SAMMY was sore. He was hopping mad, and the only reason that he wasn't actually hopping up and down was that he didn't want to give our Agency visitors the satisfaction of seeing how upset he was. There were five visitors, and only two were acceptable on the premises. One was Roger Delaney, the Deputy Director for Science and Technology. Bluff, hearty, and not too bright, he was our liaison, and the only Agency official with unrestricted access to the Center. With him was Alex Jessup, the new DDO, who was there with Sammy's reluctant permission. Jessup had asked for it, and Sammy had granted it. It isn't easy to say no to the number three man in the outfit that owns you. So Delaney and Jessup were welcome in the Center, but the other three definitely were not. They stood against the wall of Sammy's office, and stared at us with cold eyes. They were young, and they were cold. Everything about them was cold, and everything about them screamed security. They had good tailors, their clothes did not bulge, but they had the look that goes with being armed. They had no business on our side of the wire, and Sammy so told Delaney.
"Can't be helped," Delaney replied. "Necessary evil, I'm afraid."
"Bullshit, you can't march into my office with a bunch of thugs and…"
"Sammy, we're carrying something rather sensitive, you see."
"That?" Sammy pointed to a large metal box that Jessup had set on a table.
"Exactly. Now, if you'll just give me a chance to…"
"Is that what the guards are for? You think we're going to pinch it?"
"No, of course not."
"Then get them out of here. They make me nervous."
"Afraid I can't do that." He turned to Jessup for help. "Alex, perhaps if you explained."
Jessup cleared his throat. "As Roger said, the material we have here is highly sensitive. It would have been impossible for us to bring it from Langley without some form of security."
Sammy said, "Then you should have held this meeting at your office, not mine."
"Your presence at Langley would have been noticed. For reasons of security, I wanted to avoid that."
"So you brought along your storm troopers. What kind of security is that with them standing here listening? What kind of clearance do they have?"
"Their clearance is my business, not yours." Jessup turned angrily to Delaney. "What kind of a ship are you running here? I thought these people were under your control."
Delaney smiled nervously. "Control isn't quite the word to use. The Center is an independent organization."
"We own it, don't we? We run it, don't we?"
"We own it, Alex. We don't run it."
"Then maybe it's time that we did. Who the hell do these people think they are?"
I said to Sammy, head-to-head, This jackass is beginning to irritate me. Do you mind if I tap him?
Be my guest, Sammy said disgustedly. He doesn't deserve any courtesy. We might as well all go in.
The five of us went into Jessup's head, and rummaged around. He had a disorderly mind, but at the very front of it was the name of David Ogden. Something about the lockbox on the table. And some files. And some code names: Gemstone… Sextant… Madrigal…Domino. And binding it all together was a solid block of ice-cold fear.
We came out of Jessup's head, and Vince said, This is one unhappy dude. He's so scared he's shitting peach pits.
Martha, who looked for good in everyone, asked, Do you think that's why he's acting this way? Because he's frightened?
Don't give him any points, said Snake. He's acting this way because he's a prick.
Delaney was trying to calm Jessup down. "You have to understand that you can't deal with these people the way you can with Agency personnel. They are very highly strung, emotional, artistic…"
"Artistic." Jessup spat the word.
"… sensitive people. That's what they're called, and that's what they are. They're sensitives. Because of what they can do."
"I've heard about what they can do, and I don't believe half of it. God damn witch doctors. Remember, this was your idea, not mine."
Delaney shrugged. "If you can think of a better way to handle the situation…"He let the sentence hang.
"No, I can't. You know damn well I can't. That's why I'm sitting here dealing with these… these…"
He never got the word out. Snake stretched lazily, and said, "You're not dealing with me, chum. Sammy, if those goons against the wall are staying, I'm leaving. I want to get in some racquetball, anyway. How about it, Vince?"
"Sounds good," Vince told her. "You ready to get your ass whipped?"
"In your dreams," she said.
Martha stood up. "I have a ton of papers to grade."
I yawned widely. "And I've got some sleep to catch up on."
Jessup looked around wildly. "What is this? What's going on?"
"What's going on is this," said Sammy in his mildest voice. "You're apparently afraid of something. In fact, you're filled with fear."
Jessup stared at him.
"Now fear is a reasonable excuse for bad manners, but if you want to talk to us about the files that David Ogden left behind, you'll have to get rid of your security people. If not, then this meeting is over."
Jessup looked as if he had been slapped in the face. He stared at Sammy helplessly. He had heard about sensitives, but he had never actually seen one in action. More than that, he had never fully believed that we existed. When he had thought about us at all, he had thought of us as carnival tricksters. Now he was face-to-face with the reality. Either there had been a massive breach of security, or he was sitting in a room with five people who could pick his brains at their leisure. I almost felt sorry for him.
He recovered nicely. It took him a moment to regain control, a moment of slow breathing and concentration, and then he went back in the saddle. He turned to the cold young men, and said, "Out. Wait for us at the gate."
"On the other side of the gate," Sammy added. Once they had filed out of the room he put on that meek and mild voice of his again, the one he used around appropriations time each year. That was why he was running the show. He could do things like that. "Mr. Jessup, we started off on the wrong foot here, and I don't want the situation to get any worse. With all respect, you have something to tell us, and we're ready to listen. Please go ahead."
Jessup nodded. He recognized the oil. It was a commodity he dealt in every day. "How much do you know already?"
"Only what you've been thinking about during the past few minutes. No details."
Jessup frowned as another thought struck him. "What's happening now? What sort of privacy do I have?"
"Total privacy," Sammy assured him, lying casually. "What I did before, I did as a demonstration, and to save us all some time. No one is working on you now."
"You can count on that," Delaney rushed to say. "These people have their own code of conduct, and they stick to it." He realized how lame that sounded. "Most of the time."
Most of the time, echoed Vince, and we laughed silently.
"So," said Sammy, prodding. "Tell us about David Ogden."
He told us. He started slowly, but picked up speed as he went along. He told us much that we already knew: about Ogden 's illness, the inoperable tumors in his brain, the weeks in the hospital when he lay in a coma, and the final release. Then he told us about the lockbox that had just been opened.
"Frankly, a mistake in judgment was made," he said, staring at his hands. "The box should have been opened earlier, but we assumed that it contained only personal papers. There seemed to be no need for an indecent haste. As I said, that was a mistake, and we're paying for it now. In addition to several highly personal items, the box contained four file folders that…" He broke off for a moment. "You say that I'm frightened, and I admit that I am. The contents of those folders could seriously compromise the credibility of the Agency. They might even threaten the composition of the Agency as we know it today."
He looked around to see if we were properly impressed. I wasn't. It sounded like a case of the keys to the Men's Room, an internal Agency flap. Someone, probably Ogden, had dropped the ball somewhere, and the Agency image would suffer if the story got out. I felt like yawning again, and not only because I had missed a night's sleep.
"These files," said Sammy. "What do they contain?"
"Four blank case folders. In each one is an assignment to an agent who is identified only by a code name. The assignments apparently were made just before Ogden entered the hospital. The assignments are… bizarre, to say the least."
"Do you intend showing them to us?"
"I do, yes, but before we get to that I'd like to explain my position here. Ever since this situation came to light, after the lockbox was opened, an executive committee has sat in almost continuous session to consider what action should be taken. Several plans were developed, and all of them were discarded for reasons that will become apparent. It was Roger Delaney here, who suggested that we bring you people in on the problem, and, frankly, I must tell you that I was against the idea. I don't really understand what it is that you people do, or how you do it, and I have to admit that you make me uncomfortable. But as Roger has pointed out, we've run out of options. You'll understand that better after you've seen the files. For the moment, you're the best bet we have."
We all nodded understandingly, but that doesn't mean that we were giving Jessup our undivided attention. While he was making his statement, Vince and Snake were silently arguing the relative merits of racquetball and squash, Martha was considering the possibility that Jessup's ill temper was the result of a high-fat diet, Sammy was wondering if he might be able to maneuver a budget extension in return for the favor that was about to be asked of us, and I was thinking about security. Like everyone else in his line of work, Jessup was obsessed with the concept, yet he had mentioned an executive committee, which meant that between seven and ten people already knew about the Ogden files. Then there were the three heavyweights that he had brought with him, and now he was about to entrust the deep dark secret to five of the most irresponsible people I knew. Between fifteen and twenty, by my count. I once had to deal with Carlo Marcello, the Cosa Nostra boss in New Orleans. Carlo had a sign on the wall of his office, that read: THREE PEOPLE CAN KEEP A SECRET IF TWO OF THEM ARE DEAD. Old Carlo knew what he was talking about, and he was only two-thirds right.
Jessup opened the lockbox. There were two compartments in it. He opened the left compartment, and took out four thin folders. He looked at the folders, and read off the names. "Domino, Madrigal, Sextant, and Gemstone. To begin with, we have no records of these names, no idea who these agents are. From the contents of the files, it appears that these are people with whom Ogden worked in the past, people he could trust, and who owed him a high degree of loyalty." He hesitated. "It is not unknown for someone in Ogden 's position to maintain such outside connections. It is contrary to accepted procedure, but it is not unknown."
Which meant that he had a few of his own.
"But we know nothing more than that, not even if these are males or females. I'm going to ask you to read the files now. Pass them among you and read all four of them. To save time, please note that each assignment sheet contains the same opening paragraphs, an introduction of sorts. The individual assignments follow the opening."
He passed out the folders, and we read. On each assignment sheet, the opening paragraphs were:
Dear old friend, I have a task for you, one which I am sure you will approach with the same unquestioning devotion and fierce dedication that you have displayed to me so often in the past. I must tell you, however, that this is likely to be the last assignment you will ever receive from me. Tomorrow I enter Bethesda Naval Hospital for an exploratory operation. The good doctors will open up my head and peer at my brain, and although I know not what they will find, I have my strong suspicions. There have been signs: blackouts, severe headaches, hallucinations, flashes of vivid color, and the odor of freshly sharpened pencils in my nostrils. Yes, I have a good idea what they will find. They will look inside my skull, shake their heads sadly, and close me up again with nothing to be done. Perhaps not. Perhaps my pessimism is misplaced, but I rather think that I am right, and so I have a task for you.
You know me as an arrogant man, and I do not deny it. More than that, I revel in it, for I have accomplished much in my life, and my arrogance is well earned. Even my enemies grant me that. I have lived my life at a level far above that of the ordinary man. I have shaken nations. I have changed the lives of hundreds of thousands. I have dammed up the rivers of history, and have set them on new courses. And having done all that, I find myself reluctant to leave this world in the way of the ordinary mortal…facing the unknown alone. There was a time, long ago, when a man such as I am went into the darkness accompanied by a slaughter of jesters and slaves, with the body of his faithful dog at his feet, with a sacrifice of virgins all around, and with a ceremonial fire that roared on the altar. In my well-earned arrogance I see myself as the direct descendent of such men, entitled to the same ceremonials, and the same companions on my voyage. I am willing to make concessions in numbers, but I insist on the symbols. I must have my sacrifices, my jester and my virgin, my bulldog and my sacred blaze. I wish them, I demand them, and I am calling on you, who have served me so well in the past, to make one of them possible.
Those were the opening paragraphs on each sheet. Then, individually, these followed.
Gemstone, your job is the fire, and even as I write these words I am visited by nostalgia, by the odor of rose bushes burning. Do you remember the aroma? Gasoline and roses in the villa in Quon Trac, the garden burning in the night. Do you remember how the odor blocked the smell of roasting flesh? You were good at it, Gemstone, as good as they come. I remember how you loved it all. I remember the look in your eye and the smile on your lips when you smelled the rose bushes burning, and now I have another blaze for you to set.
I want you to burn down a house. Not much of a job for your talents, I know, but it is the ceremony I have chosen and it will serve as a symbol for my pyre. The Southern Manor is a rather tacky little rooming house in the town of Glen Grove, Florida. It is a typical haven for the retired and the elderly, and I want it destroyed. I want it burned to the ground and made uninhabitable sometime between the dates of 28 February and 4 March. This is the blaze that I want for my altar, and I ask it of you. Should the opportunity present itself, you may throw a rose on the embers.
Your usual fee has been deposited in the Zurich account. Gibraltar Rules apply.
Sextant, your job is the virgin. Yes, I know that in the age in which we live the term is likely to be figurative, but this is the one I have chosen. Her name is Lila Simms, and she is a sixteen-year-old high school junior who lives in the small town of Rockhill, New York, in the Hudson Valley. There is nothing distinctive about the girl; she is a normal, decent teenager. Her interests are prosaic: dancing, rock music, tennis in the summer, skiing in the winter. Her school grades are average, and although she dates frequently, she has no steady boyfriend. This is the sacrifice I require, and I want it performed within the time frame of 28 February to 4 March. These are your instructions.
I want her raped, Sextant. Not just raped, but gang-raped by many men. I do not want her life, in fact I forbid you to take it, but I want her brutalized and I want it done in a fashion that will insure the maximum public attention and notoriety. My aim is her humiliation and her degradation; that will be sacrifice enough. Do this, Sextant, to speed me on my way.
Your usual fee has been deposited in the Geneva account. Gibraltar Rules apply.
Domino, I want you to slay me a bulldog to lie at my feet, but here I must confess to a weakness. I have ordered the deaths of many men, and have borne silent witness to the deaths of many others, but I have never killed an innocent animal, not deliberately, and I cannot order you to do so. The action is beyond me. Strange, but there it is, a weakness I have had all my life, and so this killing must be symbolic.
If you search among the small colleges of the northeast part of our country, you will find that Polk College, in New Hampshire, and Van Buren College in upper New York State, are traditional rivals in the sport of basketball. Each year they play against each other in the final game of the season, and the winner of that game will goes on to play in the Easter Holiday Tournament of Champions at Madison Square Garden. Having said that, I must point out that Van Buren is given little chance of getting into the tournament this year. Polk is too strong for them, even though Van Buren may well have its first winning season since its glory days of twenty years ago. Even now, well in advance of the game, Polk is heavily favored by the bookmakers.
And so, your assignment. The Van Buren team is called the Cavaliers. The Polk team is known as the Bulldogs, and therein lies my symbol. Van Buren must win. Polk must lose. The Bulldog must die. It's as simple as that, and I don't care how you do it. Bribery suggests itself, but I leave the details in your hands. Those hands that have served me so well, and now this final task, faint echo of past triumphs. But do it for me, as you always have. Slay me my bulldog on the first of March.
Your usual fee has been deposited in the Bern account. Gibraltar Rules apply.
Madrigal, I would have a jester to ride by my side on this darkest and longest of journeys. How wise the old ones were to take along a fool who could whistle in graveyards and mock eternal night. A jester, mind you, not a source of true wit or humor. I credit myself with a sufficiency of satire, and a sense of the ironic; I need no help in those departments. What I must have is a clown, a low-down thigh-slapper, a baggy-pants comedian, a mouther of banalities. In short, a buffoon, and I have found just the man.
His name is Calvin Weiss, and he is the entertainment director of the cruise ship S.S. Carnival Queen, one of those pathetic vessels that call at ports throughout the Caribbean. Visualize him, Madrigal, alive with a feverish energy, his eyes popping and his face sweating as he strives every night to amuse still another boatload of the brainless. Imagine what the mind of such a man must be like, stuffed full of punch lines and stale gags, blackout skits and rimshot whammos. What a delight he will be on the journey, what a shield against the gloom. Slay him for me, Madrigal. I need him. March first is the date that I give you. Have him for me then.
Your usual fee has been deposited in the Zurich account. Gibraltar Rules apply.
Sammy collected the folders, and returned them to Jessup. There was silence in the room. Jessup said, "First, let me point out the obvious. These people must be stopped. Today is the sixteenth of February, and these assignments are due to go into effect on the last day of the month. So, a certain amount of urgency is involved. And having said that, I'd now like to hear your opinion of the mental condition of the man who wrote these files."
Sammy looked at me, and said, "Ben, around the circle." Which meant that I was to speak first. We all had been born in the same year, but I was the youngest by a month, and it was a tradition with us that the youngest spoke first. So it was me, then Martha, then Vince, then Snake, and then Sammy, who was our eldest by a matter of weeks.
"I have to assume that the man was deranged," I said. "These assignments were made just before he went into the hospital, and the tumors had already taken root in his brain. I don't think that I need to comment on the nature of the assignments, since they were obviously written by a madman. He has ordered, in the name of the Agency, a murder, a rape, an act of arson, and a possible fraud. At the risk of sounding overly technical, David Ogden was a nut case."
Martha said, "Agreed. Totally bonkers."
Vince said, "No question about it."
Snake said, "Crazy weirdo."
Sammy said, "Make it unanimous. The man was brain damaged."
Jessup nodded his satisfaction. "I'm glad to hear that. Those of us who knew David Ogden well, and that includes everyone on the executive committee, knew him to be a decent and honorable man. The David Ogden we knew could never have made those assignments. A different man made them, a man with a damaged brain. And having said that, I will now ask if there are any questions."
"I have one," said Vince. He looked unhappy. "You say that Ogden was an honorable man, and in his right mind he never would have made those assignments. Are you also saying that the DDO, or anyone like him, never sanctioned a killing, or an arson, or a rape, in the name of military or political expediency?"
Jessup stared at him icily. "Do you expect me to consider that a serious question?"
Vince shrugged. "No, I guess not. We both know the answer. It's happened many times, too many to count, but this time it's a friend of yours who did it, a megalomaniac who was gratifying some pretty dark impulses. You may see a difference in terms of morality, but I don't."
"Vince, lay off," said Sammy. It was his turn to look unhappy, for Vince had said the m-word. You don't use a word like morality around people like Jessup and Delaney. For diversion, Sammy rushed into the breach. "Mr. Jessup, what intrigues me most about these assignments is the apparently random nature in which they were made-an unknown girl, an obscure comedian, a tiny college, a run-down rooming house. Do you have any idea how Ogden chose these targets?"
"Not at the moment. We're working on that."
"Any connection between them?"
"Apparently not, but we're working on that, too. Yes?"
Martha had several questions. "What we have here are a set of handwritten notes. Are they copies? Are they memory aids? Were they ever processed? Were the instructions issued orally? Do you know if they were ever actually issued at all?"
"Good questions, all of them, but I can only answer one of them with certainty. These assignments were never processed through any Agency machine, or by Agency personnel. As for the rest of it, we simply do not know, but when it comes to assumptions, we have no choice. We have to assume that the assignments were made, one way or the other. We have to assume that these projects are already in motion."
"What about the time frame?" asked Snake. "Everything goes down between the last day of February and the fourth day of March. Is there any reason for that?"
"Not that we know of." Jessup hesitated. "However, I have a theory of my own. I think that David miscalculated how long he was going to live. Conceding that he was out of his mind, still every madness contains its own interior logic. I think that David wanted his symbols, his sacrifices, waiting for him when he arrived to begin what he called his long, dark journey. He wanted everything to be in place by a certain time."
"But they weren't waiting. There are still two weeks to go."
"As I said, he miscalculated. At least, that's the way I see it. Any other questions?"
"Yeah, one," said Vince. "What's in the right-hand compartment of that box? All we've seen is the left side."
"Nothing important. Some of Ogden 's private papers."
"Could you be more explicit?"
"I'm afraid not. As I said, they're private, and they don't concern us here."
"By private, do you mean intimate?"
"Well… yes."
Vince sighed. "Sammy, do you want to do this, or should I?"
"Go ahead," said Sammy. "Just try to do it without insulting anybody. "
"Not so easy." Vince stood up. He towered. "Mr. Jessup, I don't know yet why you're here, but it's pretty clear that you're going to ask us to do something for you. Which means that sometime soon my ass is going to be on the line because of you. Now I'm not about to risk it without knowing what I'm walking into. You can't feed me half a loaf of information. I have to know everything. And if I haven't made myself clear enough, if you refuse to tell me what's in that compartment I can get the information out of your head in thirty seconds flat."
Vince sat down. Sammy muttered, "Smooth, real smooth. Very diplomatic."
"Yeah, I got the touch."
Jessup's face was set into hard lines. "Very well, since you put it that way. The compartment contains five large envelopes, and each envelope contains… mementoes… of David's relationship with a particular woman. Five women in all." He went on to detail the contents of the envelopes, and he gave us the names of the women: Sarah Brine, Jenny Cookson, Carla MacAlester, Vivian Livingstone, and Maria-Teresa Bonfiglia. He was clearly uncomfortable. When he was finished, he said stiffly, "Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
"For the moment," said Vince. "One more point. Gibraltar Rules. What does that mean?"
Jessup looked surprised. "No contact, no recall, of course."
Delaney, who knew how little attention we paid to formal procedures, said, "Alex, perhaps you'd best explain."
Jessup said patiently, "Under Gibraltar Rules, there is no contact between Control and Field once the assignment is made, and there is no possibility of recall. None at all."
"Are you saying that even if you knew the names of these agents, you couldn't call them off the job?"
"Exactly. Under Gibraltar Rules, the Field is required to ignore any and all orders for recall. Once the project is rolling, it cannot be stopped."
"For how long?"
"For the period of the time frame. Once the time frame expires, the assignment expires as well."
"A five-day frame," Delaney pointed out. "Starting less than two weeks from now."
"Jesus."
I don't know who said it. Maybe we all did. There was silence in the room as the facts sank in. Somewhere out there were four unknown field agents, highly trained and supplied with funds, loyal to the memory of a madman, committed to a series of crimes in his name… and beyond recall.
I could see it coming, and so could the others. Not for the first time, we were going to be asked to pull some Agency chestnuts out of the fire, and what irritated me most was that there was no real need for us to be involved at all. There was a simple course of action for Jessup to follow. Take Lila Simms and Calvin Weiss out of circulation for the period of the time frame by stashing them each in a safe house. Warn the coaches of both college teams, and kill any chance of a fix on the game. As for the rooming house in Florida, request a round-the-clock watch on the property by the local fire department. It was as simple as that. It was, after all, for a period of only five days. The assignments would expire when the time frame expired, and everything would return to normal.
The trouble was, it was too simple. If he played it that way, Jessup would have to tell both Weiss and Simms why they were being protected. He would have to tell both of the coaches, and he would have to tell the people in Florida. Equally distasteful, he would have to bring in squads of Agency people, each of whom would have to know at least a piece of the picture. Cover stories could be concocted, good stories prepared by master deceivers, but the Agency lived in a goldfish bowl these days, and there was always the risk that the cover would fail.
It was a risk that Jessup was unwilling to take, and just the thought of it had frozen his guts with fear. When he and Delaney spoke to us about averting a tragedy, they weren't talking about murder, or arson, or rape. They were talking about public relations and image building. To them, the real tragedy would be if the word got out that the DDO, before he died, had ordered up a series of horrors on a mad caprice. In their worst-case scenario they could see it all laid out on the eleven o'clock news. That, to them, meant true tragedy.
So they were handing it over to us, and that in itself showed how little they knew about sensitives. Either, like Jessup, they thought of us as tricksters, or they jumped to the other extreme by investing us with powers that existed only in their imaginations. If you were to listen to some of the stories that they told around the water coolers up at Langley they'd have you believing that an ace could read minds in the Kremlin from a thousand miles away, lift a two-ton truck by sheer willpower, and think himself from Kansas City to San Diego in the blink of an eye. It was all nonsense, born out of ignorance. A sensitive, because of his neurological imbalance, is highly receptive to the thoughts and emotions of others. He can hear those thoughts as if they were spoken. That is all he can do, and he can do it at a range of two hundred feet at the most. All the rest of the talk is wishful thinking. Delaney knew that, but Jessup didn't. Jessup had started out thinking of us as tricksters, and now, in his desperation, he had decided that we were demigods, and the answer to his prayers. It would have done us no good at all to tell him that we were neither.
"Mr. Jessup," said Sammy, "it looks to me like you've got yourself one hell of a problem."
"Yes, I do," said Jessup. "And now you have it, too."