The Company: A Novel of the CIA Read Online Free PDF Page B

arguments sake that Vishnevsky is a disinformation operation. When we walked him through his legend, he'd have it down pat, he'd be able to give you chapter and verse without sounding as if he made it up as he went along."
    "How do you know the Russians aren't one jump ahead of you? How do you know they haven't programmed their plants to hem and haw their way through the legend?"
    "The Russians are street-smart, sport, but they're not sidewalk-smart, which happens to be an expression I invented that means sophisticated. Besides which, my nose didn't twitch. My nose always twitches when it gets a whiff of a phony."
    "Did you swallow the story about the rezident making a play for his wife?"
    "Hey, on both sides of the Iron Curtain rank has its privileges. I mean, what's the point of being the head honcho at Karlshorst if you can't make a pass at the wife of one of your minions, especially one who's already in hot water for hiding the fact that he's part-Jewish? Listen up, sport, most of the defectors who come over try to tell us what they think we want to hear— how they've become disenchanted with Communism, how they're being suffocated by the lack of freedom, how they've come to understand that old Joe Stalin is a tyrant, that sort of bullshit."
    "So what are you telling Washington, Harvey? That your nose didn't twitch?"
    "I'm saying there is a seventy percent chance the fucker is who he says he is, so we should exfiltrate him. I'm saying I'll have the infrastructure ready in forty-eight hours. I'm saying the serial about the mole in MI6 needs to be explored because, if it's true, we're in a pretty fucking pickle; we've been sharing all our shit with the cousins forever, which means our secrets may be winding up, via the Brits, on some joker's desk in Moscow. And I'm reminding Washington, in case they get cold feet, that even if the defector is a black agent, it's still worth while bringing him across."
    "I don't follow you there, Harvey."
    The Sorcerer's fist hit a buzzer on the telephone console. His Night Owl, Miss Sipp, a thirtyish brunette with somnolent eyes that blinked very occasionally and very slowly, stuck her head into the office; she was something of a legend at Berlin Base for having fallen into a dead faint the day Torriti peeled off his shirt to show her the shrapnel wound that had decapitated the naked lady tattooed on his arm. Since then she had treated him as if he suffered from a communicable sexual disease, which is to say she held her breath in his presence and spent as little time as possible in his office. The Sorcerer pushed the message board across the desk. "Happy 1951, Miss Sipp. Have you made any New Year's resolutions?"
    "I've promised myself I won't be working for you this time next year," she retorted.
    Torriti nodded happily; he appreciated the female of the species who came equipped with a sharp tongue. "Do me a favor, honey, take this up to the radio shack. Tell Meech I want it enciphered on a one-time pad and sent priority. I want the cipher text filed in a bum bag and the original back on my desk in half an hour." As the Night Owl scurried from the office, Torriti splashed more whiskey into his glass, melted back into the leather chair he'd bought for a song on the black market and propped his pointed cowboy boots up on the desk. "So now I'll walk you through the delicate business of dealing with a defection, sport. Because you have a degree from Yale I'll talk real slow. Let's take the worst case scenario: let's say our Russian friend is a black agent come across to make us nibble at some bad information. If you want to make him seem like the real McCoy you send him over with a wife and kid but we're smart-assed Central Intelligence officers, right? We're not impressed by window dressing. When all is said and done there is only one way for a defector to establish his bona fides— he has to bring with him a certain amount of true information."
    "So far so good. Once he delivers true