Ride a Pale Horse by Helen MacInnes Page A

nodded, pocketed his small recorder, and rose.
    As they all began to move towards the door, Kirby was saying, “I don’t think Castro would be flattered by the KGB’s intentions.”
    “Why Castro?” Coulton asked. “That’s the most ridiculous part in this whole set-up.”
    Kirby cut down that argument. “Castro’s assassination could be a calculated failure. Castro unharmed, but the apparent attempt on his life would ignite a giant fuse.”
    “Or,” Drayton suggested, “one martyr for the revolution. We’d be sure losers in Central and South America. Can you hear the Mexicans on our perfidy?”
    Schlott said, “Perhaps the Soviets are tired of paying him three million dollars a day.” That raised a brief smile. They began to drift into the hall, one by one.
    Abel Fletcher was slow in leaving. He halted before he reached the door to look over at Bristow, who was packing cassettes into his briefcase. He said, “I understood there were four cassettes, Mr. Bristow. We heard only two of them.”
    “The others did not deal with the letters.” Bristow glanced at Coulton, who was still at the door.
    “They didn’t concern the young lady’s meeting with this Farrago fellow?”
    Carefully, Bristow said, “Everything he told her was in the Prague cassettes.” And thank heaven that Coulton was now entering the hall. “The others recorded later incidents in Vienna.”
    Satisfied, Abel Fletcher took a few steps and then halted again. “Your section doesn’t try any disinformation on its own?” He was simply curious, all judgment suspended until he heard Bristow’s reply.
    “We track down disinformation; we don’t invent it.”
    “Track?” Fletcher prompted.
    The old boy was definitely interested. Disinformation was something he hadn’t known in his younger days—at least not as it had been perfected and brought to a fine art in recent years. Bristow responded as fully as he could. “We try to spot it as it appears in foreign newspapers and makes its way across the Atlantic. Arab radio stations are another source—they seem to specialise in rumours that are broadcast as facts. Then we analyse, try to forestall any lies, disprove them as quickly as possible. Any delay and we have myth accepted as truth.”
    “Your Farrago file suggests that you must also trace the inventors of these lies and keep a watch on their activities.”
    “We try.”
    Abel Fletcher gave Bristow one last searching look. “Good hunting!” he said, and smiled, and reached the door. Another pause. “Who invented that hideous word ‘disinformation’? Not any of you, I hope.”
    “Not guilty. Blame the men who could think up the phrase ‘Active Measures.’ Or a phrase such as ‘Wet Affairs’ to describe the blood spilled by their death squads.”
    Fletcher shook his head, pursed his thin lips, and went out to join his escort of Secret Service men.
    Bristow checked the cassettes again. Only the ones dealing with the Prague incidents had been necessary. They were vital to the committee’s final decision; the two Vienna tapes were not. Of interest to Menlo, yes, and other selected officers of Central Intelligence, but not to the deliberations that had gone on—and on—in this room. He could imagine Coulton’s amusement over a woman’s imaginary fears, an amusement that neither Bristow nor the men upstairs shared. But Coulton had never been part of any intelligence gathering. His career had begun in the Treasury, then developed into being their expert witness in forgery cases; after that, he was attached to the Bureau of Public Affairs, but not as a regular State Department official. Drayton, the career diplomat, had once confided that Coulton was neither fish nor fowl, which probably contributed to his carping and pecking.
    Bristow locked the briefcase, his thoughts now branching off to his suggestion for dealing with the letters. He found no pleasure in its acceptance by the committee, only anxiety that he had or had not