‘So? Even in our business, suspicions are a long way from proof.’
‘This is more serious than you seem to think, my friend. By any count you and your agents are consorting with known cr
iminals and of the filthiest hue. Against the rules, flat against all the rules.’
‘So. Some foolish rules have been breached. Ours is not a business for the squeamish. Even the bureau must have a comprehension of the smaller evil to obtain the greater good.’
‘Don’t patronize me,’ snapped Colin Fleming.
‘I’ll try not,’ drawled the Bostonian. ‘All right, you’re upset. What are you going to do about it?’
There was no need to be polite any more. The gloves were off and lying on the floor.
‘I don’t think I can let this ride,’ said Fleming. ‘This man Zilic is obscene. You must have read what he did to that boy from Georgetown. But you’re consorting. By proxy, but consorting for all that. You know what Zilic can do, what he’s already done. All on file and I know you must have read it. There’s testimony that as a gangster he hung a non-paying shopkeeper from his heels six inches above a two-bar electric fire until his brains boiled. He’s a raving sadist. What the hell are you using him for?’
‘If indeed I am, then it’s classified. Even from an assistant director of the bureau.’
‘Give the swine up. Tell us where we can find them.’
‘Even if I knew, which I do not admit, no.’
Colin trembled with rage and disgust.
‘How can you be so bloody complacent?’ he shouted. ‘Back in 1945 the CIC in occupied Germany cut deals with Nazis who were supposed to help in the fight against communism. We should never have done that. We should not have touched those swine with a bargepole. It was wrong then, it’s wrong now.’
Devereaux sighed. This was becoming tiresome and had long been pointless.
‘Spare me the history lesson,’ he said. ‘I repeat, what are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m taking what I know to your director,’ said Fleming.
Paul Devereaux rose. It was time to go.
‘Let me tell you something. Last December I’d have been toast. Today, I’m asbestos. Times change.’
What he meant was that in December 2000 the President had been Bill Clinton.
After a tiresome imbroglio in the vote-counting booths of Florida, the president sworn in January 2001 was one George W. Bush, whose most enthusiastic cheerleader was none other than CIA Director George Tenet.
And the brass-noses around George Dubya were not going to see Project Peregrine fail because someone just trashed the Clintonian rulebook. They were doing the same themselves anyway.
‘This is not the end of it,’ Fleming called at the departing back. ‘He’ll be found and brought back, if I have anything to do with it.’
Devereaux thought over the remark in his car on the way back to Langley. He had not survived the snake-pit of the company for thirty years without developing formidable antennae. He had just made an enemy, maybe a bad one.
‘He’ll be found.’ By whom? How? And what could the Hoover Building moralist ‘have to do with it’? He sighed. An extra care in a stress-filled planet. He would have to watch Colin Fleming like a hawk . . . at any rate, like a peregrine falcon. The joke made him smile, but not for long.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Jet
When he saw the house, Cal Dexter had to appreciate the occasional irony of life. Instead of the GI-turned-lawyer getting the fine house in Westchester County, it was the skinny kid from Bedford Stuyvesant. In thirteen years, Washington Lee had evidently done well.
When he opened the door that Sunday morning in late July, Dexter noted he had had the buck teeth fixed, the beaky nose sculpted back a bit and the wild mop of Afro hair was down to a neat trim. This was a thirty-two-year-old businessman with a wife and two small children, a nice house and a modest but prosperous computer consultancy.
All that Dexter once had he had lost; all that Washington Lee never hoped for he had earned. After tracing him, Dexter had called to announce his coming.
‘Come on in, counsellor,’ said the ex-hacker.