W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 Read Online Free PDF Page B

I’m not so sure. And neither, to judge by Mother Forbison’s question, is she.”
    “You want to discuss this privately?” Castillo asked.
    “That was the first thing that popped into my mind,” Delchamps said. “But I’ve sort of changed my mind about that, too. Let’s lay everything on the table.”
    “Go ahead,” Castillo said.
    “Giving the benefit of the doubt to the five of These People who were smart enough not to show up here today, I understand where they were coming from. They have been passing both money and information to people in the community for some time. The money was really needed and the information was more often than not useful, and the people who got it were grateful. Maybe pathetically grateful because it allowed them to do what they’re supposed to do. And then the Irishman got in the act and supplied These People with better communication than anybody else has. It wasn’t hard for the Evil Quintet to go from that to thinking they were really important, and thus knew what was best for the community . . . and from that to thinking they knew what was best for the country. And there’s a little of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ in that.”
    Castillo was surprised at Delchamps’s little speech. He often thought that the veteran CIA agent was as voluble as a clam.
    And Delchamps wasn’t through.
    “A good idea went wrong. That happens. What you do when that happens is make the necessary adjustments.”
    “Such as?” Castillo asked.
    “Remove temptation,” Delchamps said. “The information stream becomes one way. They tell us . . . only us . . . what they know, and we decide who, if anybody, also gets to know. And they don’t tell anybody what we’re doing unless we tell them they can. I don’t think the admiral here or the chopper pilot would have any problem with that.”
    He paused and looked at first Radio and TV Stations and then at Annapolis, and then asked, “Would you?”
    “No,” Radio and TV Stations said.
    “None at all,” Annapolis said.
    “You’re not going to ask me?” Investment Banker asked.
    “What you two, and especially the Evil Quintet, would have to fully understand is that whoever breaks the rules has to go.”
    “What do you mean, ‘has to go’?” Investment Banker asked.
    Delchamps shrugged. “I think you take my meaning,” he said.
    “My God!” Hotelier said. “Was that a threat?”
    “I have never threatened anybody in my life,” Delchamps said. “I’m just outlining the conditions under which we could have a continuing relationship.”
    Dmitri Berezovsky smiled.
    They all know, Castillo thought, that the CIA establishment refers to Delchamps and perhaps a dozen other old clandestine service officers like him as “dinosaurs.”
    They were thought to be as out of place in the modern intelligence community as dinosaurs because to a man their operational philosophy had been a paraphrase of what General Philip Sheridan said in January 1869 vis-à-vis Native Americans.
    The dinosaurs believed that the only good Communist was a dead Communist.
    They all also know that Delchamps is alleged to have recently applied this philosophy to the SVR rezident in Vienna and to a member of the CIA’s Clandestine Service who had sold out. The latter was found dead in his car in the CIA parking garage in Langley with an ice pick in his ear, and the former had been found strangled to death with a Hungarian garrote in a taxi outside the U.S. embassy in Vienna.
    Neither the FBI nor the Austrian Bundeskriminalamtgesetz was able to solve either murder.
    And maybe proving that I’m a young dinosaur, the truth is I wasn’t at all upset that they had been unsuccessful.
    The question then becomes how are These People going to react to Delchamps’s “outlining the conditions under which we can have a continuing relationship”?
    “Would you like a moment alone to discuss this?” Delchamps asked.
    “So far as I’m concerned, that won’t be