The Once and Future Spy Read Online Free PDF Page B

need.”
    Mildred reached up and lifted her veil. “I am a navy brat,” she announced breathlessly. “I was weaned on stories about you.
     Admiral Toothacher this. Admiral Toothacher that. For me, Eisenhower, Kennedy were minor figures in the Toothacher era. Frankly,
     it is a thrill just to be in the same room with you.”
    When it came to matters of seduction, the Admiral followed an old formula that in his experience seldom failed; he flattered
     the beautiful people for their brains, the intelligent ones for their looks. ‘The pleasure is entirely mine,” he solemnly
     informed Mildred. “I seldom get to work with someone who is as easy on the eyes as you.”
    Mildred, flustered, let the veil drift back across the upper half of her face. “You are not at all what I expected,” she admitted.
    “Dear lady,” the Admiral said, “dare I open that Pandora’s box and ask what you expected?”
    Under her veil Mildred blushed. “I was anticipating pie.” She lowered her eyes, her voice. “But you are all meringue.”
    Toothacher, absently shuffling service records, turned back to Wanamaker. “I will need to see the paper trail on the sensitive
     operation you referred to.”
    Once again a muscle over Wanamaker’s right eye twitched. He started torturing a paper clip. “The paper trail is thin.”
    “Thin? How can that be?”
    “As far as the sensitive operation is concerned, nothing in writing was ever circulated. The few scraps of paper dealing with
     the operation never left this office.”
    The Admiral studied his former man Friday through the middle lenses of his trifocals. “I will naturally need to know what
     you are up to.”
    Wanamaker’s face was utterly immobile. “That’s out of the realm of possibility.”
    “I must be missing something,” the Admiral said sarcastically. “You obviously trust me or you wouldn’t have asked me to walk
     back the cat for you.”
    “I would trust you with my life,” Wanamaker said with such fervor only a fool would have doubted him. “But our sensitive operation
     is another story.”
    “It will make my task infinitely more difficult,” the Admiral noted.
    Wanamaker shrugged a shoulder. Toothacher saw there was no point in insisting. “What about deadlines?” he asked. “I should
     know if there is a clock ticking.”
    “I suppose it won’t compromise the
what
if I tell you the
when
,” Wanamaker said. “For reasons I will not explain to you, we must execute the operation by mid-March or call it off.”
    “How very poetic—I mean to have the Ides of March as a deadline. That doesn’t leave me much time.”
    “One day short of four weeks,” said Mildred.
    The Admiral favored her with an ironic smile. “Thank you.” He turned back to Wanamaker. “Of the twelve people in your subgroup,
     how many are in on your little sensitive operation?” he asked.
    Wanamaker ticked them off on his fingers. “There’s me. There’s Mildred here. There’s Parker. There’s Webb. That makes four.”
    “The others don’t have an inkling of what’s going on?”
    Wanamaker shook his head. “The others keep track of terrorist groups.”
    Toothacher was a breath away from abandoning the whole thing. How could he be expected to plug a leak on an operation he didn’t
     know anything about? Let Bright Eyes get another sucker to walk back his cat. Suddenly the idea of returning to Guantánamo,
     to his wife of twenty-nine years who wheezed in her sleep, to the endless boredom of pinochle and happy hours, was too much
     for him. He batted both eyes in Wanamaker’s direction. “Shouldn’t I at least know what code name your operation goes by?”
    Wanamaker hesitated. He studied a hole a Schimmelpenninck had burned in the felt. He advanced an empty low-fat cottage cheese
     container across an imaginary chess board, then took back the move. He shrugged a shoulder. He arched an eyebrow and lowered
     it. He was obviously having a conversation with himself.