The Debriefing Read Online Free PDF Page B

next to items on a yellow pad .
     
Recall three embassy security men assigned as escorts (dereliction of duty, 15 years)
Recall second secretary (go through motions)
Fire general in charge of courier service, order revision of procedures for clearing couriers for foreign assignments
Issue general alert to military intelligence agents in Middle East, Europe, United States (use code Americans known to have broken)
Get copies of all documents in pouch, advise senders that documents may have fallen into American hands, invite reports on consequences and suggestions for cutting losses
Put our team in Geneva on 24-hour alert status
Invite minister of defense to order us, and not KGB, to backtrack on defector (family, friends, etc.) to uncover motive
    “You’ve left off the duty officer,” points out the lieutenant colonel, looking over his shoulder. “You’ve forgotten about Gamov .”
    The officer in charge writes in longhand:
    “Duty Officer Gamov to disappear. No trial.”
    He studies the item for a moment, then puts a small check mark before it .

CHAPTER
    3
    The image that leaps to Stone’s mind is that of a lap dog in heat—a combat between instinct and decorum. With decorum coming out second best. He spots it first in the taut faces of the Marine guards at the entrance, in their hands making edgy passes over the undone flaps of their Navy-issue holsters. He sees it in the maniacal gleam in the eyes of the ambassador’s woman Friday, a near-sighted career officer who speaks seven languages, none of them really well. Muttering under her breath in ancient Greek, she plucks Stone out of a gaggle of journalists being held at bay by the Marines, plows through corridors full of milling staffers as if she is the prow of an icebreaker, barges past the civilian security contingent into the oak-paneled inner sanctum, with the limp American flag at one end, hissing hysterically, “He’s come, he’s here, I have him in tow.”
    Stone sees it—shoots of panic breaking through what appears to be an ordered surface—in the person of his holiness the ambassador, a tall, heavy-handed, very rich political appointee whose name appears regularly on someone or other’s ten-worst-dressed list. “Welcome aboard—yes, indeed—welcome aboard,” gushes the ambassador, wringing Stone’s hand as if he is trying to pump up water from a reluctant well, smiling all the while with his facial muscles but not his eyes. “Mighty glad,” he mutters, and he repeats it several times without specifying precisely what he is mightily glad about. He takes Stone by the elbow andsteers him toward an enormous suede couch, out of earshot of the half dozen or so first and second and third secretaries, clipboards at the ready, parked around the vast room. Stone, worn out from the trip, sinks gratefully into the soft cushions, catches a glimpse of several framed photographs over the couch. One shows the ambassador chatting amiably with a woman Stone takes to be his government-issue wife; others show him chatting amiably with various Presidents or Heads of State or Film Stars. In every photograph his expression is precisely the same: his shoulders are hunched, his head is thoughtfully inclined, frozen in a nod of agreement, his lips are pursed, his eyes are squinting as if he is hard of hearing.
    “Let me put you in the picture,” the ambassador begins. In keeping with the atmosphere, which has more in common with a library reading room than an ambassador’s inner sanctum, his voice is a hoarse whisper. “What I’ve got is trouble with a capital T .” He impatiently waves off one of the young second secretaries, who tiptoes over with an outstretched clipboard marked “Incoming—Eyes Only.” “I’ve got this Russki courier, name of Kulakov, holed in upstairs with a diplomatic pouch chained to his wrist which he says will blow up if anybody tries to take it away from him by force. I’ve got State breathing down my neck to open the pouch and