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was packing it in, and the old man wanted his son to come down to talk over a replacement.
    Or perhaps Rines had finally recruited the Congressman in his campaign to force Trotter to move to Washington. That was a never-ending battle. Rines’s point was that it was inconvenient and time-consuming to send coded reports. Trotter pointed out that the Congressman, when he had been running things day-to-day, had routinely kept up-to-date by means of coded reports.
    Trotter, on the other hand, had several good reasons to stay where he was. If the big one came, and Washington got wiped out in a nuclear attack, the Agency wouldn’t have to lose a beat—the acting head had his operation set up several hundred miles away in an insignificant little town that was unlikely to be a major target.
    Also, it was more secure. The Congressman had designed the Agency in the wake of World War II because he had seen that the soon-to-be formed CIA, even in those relatively untrammeled days, was going to be too bureaucracy-bound to do some of the things that had to be done. He’d picked a small group of men and women and sent them out to do all the dirty little jobs that needed doing in a hurry.
    When Watergate and related scandals broke, and it became apparent that Congress was going to have a much bigger say in the running of the country’s intelligence operation, the General (as he had been) found an exploitable district in his home state and got himself elected to Congress. A little sophisticated wheeling and dealing, some pressure judiciously applied, and the Congressman now found himself in charge of the committee that was supposed to regulate all the government’s intelligence agencies. The Congressman made sure his own Agency remained a deep dark secret from everyone but himself and the President, whoever that happened to be. Over the years, a couple of Presidents, learning of the existence of the Agency on Inauguration Day, had been horrified, and had ordered the Agency disbanded. As General, and later as Congressman, the man in charge of the Agency had acquiesced gracefully, asking only for sixty days to wind things up. No President had been able to function in office for sixty days without finding a use for the Agency, and, Trotter was sure, none ever would.
    Maybe that’s what it was. Maybe the current President, to spare his successor the necessity of fighting with his conscience, was going to order the Agency out of existence now. Trotter wondered whether he would care. Strategically, it would be a catastrophic mistake—without the Agency, the Kremlin would be running the country, maybe not openly, within twenty years. Personally, Trotter decided he wouldn’t give a damn. He’d make an honest woman out of Regina, play at the news business for twenty years, and raise a couple of kids who knew how to survive with a certain degree of dignity in a police state. It could be done. It took a lot of self-control, and a lot of ruthlessness, but those traits can be instilled. A father can teach his child to be ruthless and self-controlled.
    After all, Trotter thought, my father taught me.
    Miles, names, and lives ago, Allan Trotter had been conceived as one of the General’s long-range plans. The General had planted him in the womb of a Soviet agent who thought she was using her sex to prey on the General’s weaknesses. Her mistake. The General didn’t have any weaknesses, at least not that kind. He had seen her, a dedicated, fearless, and successful spy (her capture had been a fluke), as ideal breeding stock with whom to create the perfect agent.
    Trotter often wondered how successful the old man thought his plan had been.
    Maybe the old man was dying, and he wanted to see his son before the end.
    Trotter laughed. No, it wouldn’t be that. No sentiment from that old man.
    To hell with it. Tomorrow would tell. Bash would be here soon. He dropped the shreds of the day’s reports in a stainless-steel tub, opened a medicine bottle,