Shadow of the Condor (4 page)

The American intelligence community underwent a reorganization in the early days of the Nixon Administration, with the CIA's divisions being renamed and reshuffled. Basically everything remained the same. One of the changes, a change fought by the staff director of the Forty Committee, was that the special staff received a name: Liaison Group, often abbreviated as L or L Group. The staff director, who relished the many benefits of being a minister with an ambiguous portfolio, lost his struggle with the bullheaded and powerful White House aide who told him, "I can't get a handle on you people if you don't have a name."

The Liaison Group director decided not to try to revert to the old days of anonymity after the White House aide vacated his seat of power. Us "quasi-formal" status did not greatly hinder the director. The reversion might also call too much attention to L Group and was not worth the trouble.

The old man whom General Roth visited that morning directs L Group.

Kevin Powell sat in the same chair the general had occupied four hours earlier. Kevin didn't share the general's paranoia. He looked forward to visiting the old man again. Kevin thought he liked the old man, as much as you could like anybody in the business. To really like someone, to feel unequivocal affection, you have to trust the other person, to think that the person you perceive is the person who really exists, not a deliberately -adopted character. 146, matter how much Kevin’s emotions told him that the kindly old man was his friend, was trustworthy, was basically what he seemed, Kevin's mind told him to be careful. But Kevin thought he liked the old man.

Kevin knew he didn't like Carl. He also knew it was foolish to trust Carl outside of the limits the old man established. Carl's pervasive asexuality caused much of Kevin's antipathy, but Carl's asexuality was only a symptom of even more disgusting attributes Kevin couldn’t label. There was just something innately repulsive about Carl. Kevin was glad when the secretary closed the door after admitting him to the old man's presence.

"Kevin, so good of you to come." The old man rose and shook Kevin’s hand.

"I'm glad to be here, sir."

"Sit down, Kevin, sit down'."

The two men exchanged pleasantries for several minutes before the old man inquired, "And what do you have lined up for the near future, Kevin my boy?"

Kevin smiled. The old man knew that Kevin was between assignments, but Kevin allowed him the opening. "Oh, nothing much, sir."

"Would you mind helping me out with a little project?"

As if I have any choice, thought Kevin, even though it probably would be interesting to work for the old man again. He said, "No, sir, not at all. What do we do?"

The old man smiled. "Do you know General Arnold Roth?"

“No sir” replied Kevin, “although the name rings a bell.”

"General Arnold Roth is a large pain in the Air Forces ass," explained the old man. "As you know, Air Force

Intelligence is massive. With its National Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence is the largest intelligence agency we have. But most of its efforts and manpower are devoted to aerial and technical intelligence. Computer and camera spying, I like to call it. Compared to the CIA, AF1 has few actual intelligence operatives in the field. They rightly don't consider classic espionage part of their primary function. About half of the field agents they do have are commanded by General Roth.

"The general has a very influential Congressman for a brother-in-law. The general thinks he commands a crack intelligence team, and so does his brother-in-law. Rather than offend a vote on the
House Ways
and Means Committee, the Air Force lets General Roth play spy master, within limits, of course.

"Most of the general's men are bunglers, romantics looking for Mata Hari. They flit through Europe and
Central Asia
, hanging out in bars, monitoring meetings, running minor security errands, making innocuous contacts. The agency keeps tabs on them to make sure they don't get in over their heads. The general thinks he's another Gehlen, the Congressman is pleased, the funds keep coming in, and everybody's happy.

"Every once in a while one of the general's men stumbles into something too big for him to handle, too-big for the general's Air Force amateurs. Usually the general's superiors let the agency take over right away, but every now and then something snafus and there is one hell of a mess. One of his men got blown in
France
in 1965 while trying to destroy the French Communist Party singlehandedly. It took a quarter of a million to buy him out, and his stupid plot wrecked a promising network. Three years later one of the general's men got blown while under arrest for murdering a native over a girl in
Iran
. That matter still hasn't been completely cleared up. There have been other cases, most of them less spectacular. Now we have a doozy.

"About two days ago one of his better agents--one whom your agency had thought of pirating, by the way turned up dead in
Montana
after disappearing in
Europe
two weeks earlier. The agent, one Donald Parkins, was stationed out of
London
, where he was last heard from when he filed a rather strange report. We have no idea how or why he ended up where he did. The details, what we know of them, are in that first file folder in the pile on my desk. You can get them later if you decide you want to work on it."

"I don't need time to think about my decision, sir. I'm very interested. Very interested."

"I thought you would be," the old man said gleefully. "I thought you would be! There is a good deal to do, and we have to move as quickly as possible before this thing gets cold. You have a lot to study before I set you loose, but first you have a trip to make, a very important trip. To
Cincinnati
."

"
Cincinnati
? Why?"

The old man smiled and leaned back in his chair. It had taken him ten minutes to find an adequate metaphor. The old man liked to play with words. Weaving concepts through words made thinking so much more interesting. He cocked his head as he spoke to Kevin. "You’re going to
Cincinnati
for something special, something very special: a little fledgling we are going to turn into a fine hunting bird. It's time our Condor left his roost."

Alice
was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversation in it, 'and what is the use of a book/ thought
Alice
, 'without pictures or conversation?'

Ronald Malcolm sighed as he pushed the broom halfway under the bed. He knew he should move the bed away from the wall to do a thorough cleaning job, but he salved his conscience with a minimal amount of sweeping. The sunlight filtering through, the venetian blinds highlighted tiny flying dust particles disturbed by Malcolm's cleaning efforts. The flecks spun wildly through the air with the first shock waves of motion, then floated aimlessly away, disappearing until the next cleaning session. Malcolm inhaled deeply. The faint smell of pollen mingled with the musky pungent odor of household dirt. He wondered briefly if the allergy shots would work this year.

Malcolm propped the broom against his bedroom wall and shuffled into the living room. A cup of almost cool coffee sat on the coffee table. Malcolm slouched on the couch next to the table, put his tennis-shoe-clad feet on the artificial wood surface and let his eyes roam around the room for the hundredth plus time that day.

It was a fairly large living room for a living room in a modern apartment complex." The couch and two end tables didn't take up all the space along the wall. The door and short hallway were to Malcolm's immediate right. On the wall to his left were tables supporting his stereo, his records and the broken television set. The set died three months before, freeing Malcolm from the hated, addicting presence of the uncontrolled world in his living room. Bookshelves covered the wall opposite Malcolm. Most of the shelves were filled. The books included a spattering of philosophy, some elementary psychology textbooks, several historical volumes, a shelf of biography, two shelves of classical literature and an almost unused accounting book he had been unable to return to the bookstore after he dropped out of the business class on the second day. A Picasso pen-and-ink print hung from the middle of the bookshelves. Behind the print were copies of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Ed McBain's Hail to the Chief: An 87th Precinct Mystery, Rex Stout’s The Silent Speaker and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, all garnered with nervous guilt from a secondhand paperback bookstore. The teapot in the small kitchen ("complete with serving bar") to Malcolm's right whistled as the water boiled. No sound came from Malcolm's small bedroom behind the wall with the bookshelves or from the bathroom behind the wall with the kitchen stove. Even the shower's normally incessant drip was still that morning.

The teakettle whistled for almost a minute before Malcolm swung his legs to the floor and slowly walked to the kitchen with his coffee cup. He threw the tepid liquid from his cup into the sink before he turned the burner off. When he carefully tried to level the teaspoon of instant coffee with his finger, he accidentally jiggled the spoon, spilling brown particles to the sticky counter.

"Fuck it," he said, plunging the spoon back into the jar. He shook the spoon until it held what looked like a level teaspoon of grounds, dumped the coffee into his cup and poured the bubbling water.

On his way back to the couch Malcolm stopped at the stereo table long enough to raise the discs on the spindle and turn the unit on. He watched the first black circle plop to the slowly rotating turntable. The stylus jerked from its resting point like a Queen's guard snapping to attention, then moved stiffly to its appointed position before lowering to its objective. A couple of scratches, then strains from Carmen came through the speakers. Malcolm listened to a few notes before he unconsciously shook his head and hit the reject lever. The machine -repeated its process, but this time the worn, familiar sounds of an undergraduate college days Righteous Brothers album came through the speaker. Malcolm returned to the couch.

The fifth cup this morning, he thought. I'll kill my kidneys. Why not, he answered himself, what else do I have to do? There are no more classes to cut, assignments to delay or conferences to miss this morning. Maybe the speedy sensation the caffeine is building will help me make my executive decision of the day: What shall it be, a walk in the park, an afternoon spent ogling young quasi-innocent coeds whose hips have barely spread for childbearing or an exciting trip to the neighborhood rip-off grocery store? Decisions, decisions, decisions. He smiled as he raised the cup to his lips.

Malcolm looked at the print. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, black-ink figures on white paper. In the, background stood a black-ink windmill, minuscule in perspective compared to the two figures. Malcolm shook his head. A few simple ink lines on plain paper and complex characters lived. Complexity in a black-and-white world.

The picture was the only tangible memory Malcolm kept (besides his clothes, a few books, records and some furniture) of his tour as a CIA "agent." Actually, Malcolm had never been a CIA agent, even though, like all CIA employees, he had a code name: Condor. Malcolm had been a researcher, a mundane, nine-to-five, two-week paid vacation researcher for Section 9, Department 17, of the CIA's Intelligence Division. The Picasso print had hung on Malcolm's office wall.

Until the previous year Section 9 had been an almost forgotten offshoot of the CIA's massive research team, a small group which spent its time "analyzing nonfactual data," i.e., reading spy thrillers and murder mysteries, for any items of use to the agency. The section operated out of a lovely white stucco town house on
Southeast A Street
in
Washington
,
D.C.
, just behind, the Library of Congress, working under the innocuous pseudonym of the American Literary Historical Society. No one in the agency cared about the society, no one cared about Malcolm. No one paid much attention to the society until the section's bookkeeper accidentally uncovered traces of a private smuggling operation which had used the society as a cover. The bookkeeper, in his zeal to protect himself and explain the strange things he had found, made the mistake of reporting his discovery. The report got into the hands of the smugglers, several of whom worked in
America
's intelligence community. Malcolm came back from-lunch one day and found his co-workers murdered.

For six days Malcolm dodged pursuers, trying -to stay alive. For six days the killers and the American intelligence, community tore
Washington
apart looking for Malcolm and a girl he managed to convince to. help him. On the fifth day the girl was gunned down, almost killed. Malcolm, sure she was dead, abandoned the plan given him when the -old man and Kevin Powell had managed to contact him. Malcolm went after the opposition by himself. He finished the operation on the sixth day by capturing the opposition's betrayed leader and coldly killing the opposition's main agent when the man was helpless. Now Malcolm was on "extended leave, with pay and certain allowances," his reward for excellence in survival.

And in San Francisco, attending law school on a special government scholarship and only slightly impaired with a barely noticeable limp and blurred vision in one eye (for which she received special medical and pension privileges), was a girl who had risked her life for Malcolm, a girl who now wouldn't respond to letters, telephone calls or communications sent through third parties.

Oh, well, thought Malcolm, what is there to say? That was over, the whole thing, finished. He would never see Wendy again, or the agency, the old man, Kevin Powell, or any of them. He would coast through graduate school to his doctorate, find a nice small college and bury himself. No one would ever know, no one would ever care, and that suited him just fine. He took another sip of coffee.

The doorbell rang just as the Righteous Brothers started "Ebb Tide." Malcolm frowned. It wasn't the first of the month, and anyway, the landlord was aware he always paid by mail. It was the wrong time of year for door-todoor salesmen, none of the people he knew slightly at the university would ever call on him at home, and Malcolm had long since given up hoping for a beautiful, lonely neighbor looking for a cup of sugar. He shrugged his shoulders as be went to open the door.

"Hello, Malcolm," Kevin Powell said, "how are you?'

Malcolm stood looking at the neatly dressed, pleasant, middle-aged man in front of him. Malcolm's mind blanked. No vivid pictures flashed through his brain, no painful memories upset his heart. He looked at the man in silence for a long time before he quite calmly said, "No," then firmly shut the door.

The pictures and the memories came after the lock clicked shut. Malcolm leaned heavily against the doorjamb, his eyes pressed tightly shut. Ifs finally happened, he thought, they've finally come. Malcolm felt, but he wasn't sure exactly what he felt, except that the dominating emotion was relief. The waiting was finally over. He took several deep breaths before he opened the door again. Kevin was still there, smiling.

"I don't suppose shutting the door will do much good. I don1 think it could keep you out. You might as well come in this way."

Kevin didn't reply as he walked into the living room. He glanced briefly around. It looked like the photographs. He sat in the worn armchair next to the stereo.

"How have you been, Malcolm?"

"Don't you know?"

Belligerence, thought Kevin, antagonistic, defensive, slightly paranoid, just as Dr. Lofts predicted. Kevin knew better than to reply to the insinuation. "Do you have any more coffee?"

"Help yourself," Malcolm said grudgingly as he sat on the couch.

Kevin didn't pay an undue amount of attention to the slouching figure in blue jeans and a "Motherball" sweat shirt. He walked to the kitchen, found a cup while the water heated and made himself some coffee. He carefully carried it back to the living room and again sat in the chair. The two men watched each other as the stereo told about the joys of love. Then the record rejected and the machine fell silent.

"I suppose you're wondering why I’m here," Kevin said matter-of-factly.

"I have a hundred and one answers for that, but I'll just say yes, I'm wondering, but I really don't care because I'm through with you, finished, I won’t do any more of your crap. "What's the matter," sneered Malcolm, "are you afraid the taxpayers aren't getting their money's worth? Well, fuck that, I paid my way here, you know that!"

Good, thought Kevin, feelings of obligation. "It's your life, Malcolm, your choices, you know that. The old man agreed to. give you leave and salary for three years, no obligations, no debt, no hassles, no commitments. He didn't have to do that. He could have had you charged for murder one, either through channels or through the agency. You weren't following orders when you blasted Maronick. That was your own baby. The old man could have landed on you like a ton of bricks. But instead he was more than nice."

"I'm grateful." The sarcastic slur almost made Malcolm's words unintelligible.

"But you're not grateful enough to give us a little help."

"I knew it!" shouted Malcolm. "I knew you came around here for something! You want me back, you want me to help you, right?"

Kevin shrugged. "We have something you might be able to give us a little help on, nothing really big."

Malcolm crossed the room until he stood leaning over Kevin. Malcolm trembled as be spoke. "What is it, you want me to kill some more people for you? Get some more people shot? Forget it, I won't do it."

Kevin shrugged again and stood up, carefully pushing Malcolm away. "Fine, no problem. It make no difference to us if you vegetate here instead of doing something useful." He walked to the door.

"Well, that's what I'm going to do, I'm going to grow my own roots, thanks very much, but no thanks to you. So you can just forget whatever it is you want."

Kevin walked slowly toward the door. "Good luck. Your check will continue to come to this address. If you have any problems or questions, you know how to get in touch with us. I'll be in town until this evening, then I'm flying back to D.C. I'll be at the Terrace Hilton, room 606, until five, if you feel more amiable and want to chat. I'm registered as Mr. Rogers. Drop by if you like. I'll buy you a drink or a decent cup of coffee."

"Don't do me any more favors," said Malcolm, opening the door. "I've had quite enough. And don't wait around for me. I won't come. I won't."

Kevin -smiled at him before he walked from the room "Don't worry, Malcolm, I won't wait. I'll be seeing you."

"I won't come!" Malcolm ducked back inside and slamrned the door. For several minutes he excitedly paced the room. He roughly jerked the Righteous Brothers record up and flipped the reject lever. He turned the volume control up two levels. "Soul and Inspiration" blared through the speakers. Malcolm paced furiously through the whole song, then, after
"Just Once in My Life
" began, he sat down quickly on the couch and froze. Before the song was finished, he had begun to shake.

At 3:24 Kevin checked his watch for the ninth time. What if Malcolm didn't come? What if, I made the wrong moves? Kevin thought. He shook his head and glanced out the window. At 3:26 someone knocked softly on his door.

Even though he wasn1 on a mission, even though he was stateside, even though there was no one to expect trouble from, Kevin carefully stood to one side of the door, his hand under his suit coat lightly resting on his gun butt. "Yes?" he inquired.

"It's me."

Kevin knew the voice, but he had to be sure. "Who's me?

"Malcolm. Hell, Condor."

Kevin smiled to himself, then opened the door with a serious expression. The figure outside still wore jeans, but had replaced the sweat shirt with a shirt and sweater. The wind had mussed Malcolm's medium-length brown hair. It almost covered his blue eyes as he stared at a point directly in front of Kevin's feet. "Would you like to talk? I mean, would you mind?"

Kevin smiled. "Not at all, Malcolm. Not at all. In fact I’d like to talk. Come in."