fifty gunner out of a flaming Humvee.
“I’m aware. Not at all Semper Fi , was she?”
Did he know that Nikki and Hank Brocius had been lovers up until quite recently? Did he know that the AD of RA’s “leave” was being spent up in Garrison, New York, helping in ways Nikki did not care to contemplate a former lover named Briony Keating put her life back together after her son, a naval corpsman stationed in Crete, had been kidnapped and murdered by the KGB?
Of course he knows.
“No, sir. She sort of broke his heart, actually.”
A few more steps. Cather, in a heavy silence, stalking like a heron, clearly enjoying the leafy avenue, the green lawns, the row of red brick, federal-style town houses, the children playing in the shady street, the Rockwellian perfection of it.
An illusion, but how beautiful it was.
“I’m imposing my wearisome presence upon you, Miss Turrin, for a reason, I’m afraid. A matter of some subtlety.”
“Yes, sir. I’m here to do whatever I can for the service.”
“I know that, Miss Turrin. You’ve been an extraordinary help in a number of areas not usually addressed by an NSA officer. Your unofficial mission to Trieste, and, in the winter, that business in Santorini and Istanbul. That is why I am here, as you may have already inferred. I’ve given this matter some careful consideration. Before I present my case, allow me to lay before you a few preliminary observations in order to harmonize our viewpoints. As an initial predicate, you’re familiar, I’m sure, with the recent changes that have taken place at Clandestine Services?”
Nikki handled that one as if it were a Fabergé egg.
“Only what has been circulated, Mr. Cather. I know that a Commander Pearson has taken over as Deputy Director.”
Cather seemed to find her tact grimly amusing.
“And that I’ve been . . . marginalized? Rendered an operational nullity?”
“People who know your record, Mr. Cather, would never make the mistake of regarding you as ‘an operational nullity.’ ”
He looked down at her, his yellow face cracking into planes and deltas, his eyes hardening into chilly blue stones.
“But the intent is there, my child,” he said, squeezing her arm between his ribs and his forearm. “The doors are already closing as I come down the halls . . . Old friends and colleagues grow noncommittal. Communications go unanswered. The fog of irrelevance rises up around my barren desk. Well, let us not indulge in self-pity. None of this is unexpected, Miss Turrin . . . I have observed our great nation for many decades, from a position of power and influence. Change has come upon us again, as it must. America. I suppose all democracies are vulnerable in this way, although it seems to be a singularly American weakness. Our nation tends to lurch , to stagger drunkenly, from left to right, as if afflicted with an inner-ear problem. De Tocqueville predicted this, suggesting that it was a flaw woven into the very fabric of democracies. He appears to have been correct. We lunge at extreme positions of thought and ideology as if they were lampposts to lean on. We abandon the ancient Persian House of Pahlavi and blithely embrace the far greater evil of the Ayatollahs. We ignored the growing threat of Islamic terror in the early eighties, dreaming our isolationist dreams. In the late nineties, as the threat grew and grew, we indulged ourselves in the political persecution of a President for silly sexual follies that would have paled beside the saturnalian debaucheries of those Kennedy boys, creating as we did so a bitter divide in the House and Senate that continues to cripple us to this day. We slept on, until, in our folly—and, as a senior member of the intelligence services, I bear great responsibility for this disaster—we awoke to the horrors of September eleventh . . .”
He seemed to falter here, going inward, as if seeing that day in all its obscenity and horror playing once again in his memory. They
“I’m aware. Not at all Semper Fi , was she?”
Did he know that Nikki and Hank Brocius had been lovers up until quite recently? Did he know that the AD of RA’s “leave” was being spent up in Garrison, New York, helping in ways Nikki did not care to contemplate a former lover named Briony Keating put her life back together after her son, a naval corpsman stationed in Crete, had been kidnapped and murdered by the KGB?
Of course he knows.
“No, sir. She sort of broke his heart, actually.”
A few more steps. Cather, in a heavy silence, stalking like a heron, clearly enjoying the leafy avenue, the green lawns, the row of red brick, federal-style town houses, the children playing in the shady street, the Rockwellian perfection of it.
An illusion, but how beautiful it was.
“I’m imposing my wearisome presence upon you, Miss Turrin, for a reason, I’m afraid. A matter of some subtlety.”
“Yes, sir. I’m here to do whatever I can for the service.”
“I know that, Miss Turrin. You’ve been an extraordinary help in a number of areas not usually addressed by an NSA officer. Your unofficial mission to Trieste, and, in the winter, that business in Santorini and Istanbul. That is why I am here, as you may have already inferred. I’ve given this matter some careful consideration. Before I present my case, allow me to lay before you a few preliminary observations in order to harmonize our viewpoints. As an initial predicate, you’re familiar, I’m sure, with the recent changes that have taken place at Clandestine Services?”
Nikki handled that one as if it were a Fabergé egg.
“Only what has been circulated, Mr. Cather. I know that a Commander Pearson has taken over as Deputy Director.”
Cather seemed to find her tact grimly amusing.
“And that I’ve been . . . marginalized? Rendered an operational nullity?”
“People who know your record, Mr. Cather, would never make the mistake of regarding you as ‘an operational nullity.’ ”
He looked down at her, his yellow face cracking into planes and deltas, his eyes hardening into chilly blue stones.
“But the intent is there, my child,” he said, squeezing her arm between his ribs and his forearm. “The doors are already closing as I come down the halls . . . Old friends and colleagues grow noncommittal. Communications go unanswered. The fog of irrelevance rises up around my barren desk. Well, let us not indulge in self-pity. None of this is unexpected, Miss Turrin . . . I have observed our great nation for many decades, from a position of power and influence. Change has come upon us again, as it must. America. I suppose all democracies are vulnerable in this way, although it seems to be a singularly American weakness. Our nation tends to lurch , to stagger drunkenly, from left to right, as if afflicted with an inner-ear problem. De Tocqueville predicted this, suggesting that it was a flaw woven into the very fabric of democracies. He appears to have been correct. We lunge at extreme positions of thought and ideology as if they were lampposts to lean on. We abandon the ancient Persian House of Pahlavi and blithely embrace the far greater evil of the Ayatollahs. We ignored the growing threat of Islamic terror in the early eighties, dreaming our isolationist dreams. In the late nineties, as the threat grew and grew, we indulged ourselves in the political persecution of a President for silly sexual follies that would have paled beside the saturnalian debaucheries of those Kennedy boys, creating as we did so a bitter divide in the House and Senate that continues to cripple us to this day. We slept on, until, in our folly—and, as a senior member of the intelligence services, I bear great responsibility for this disaster—we awoke to the horrors of September eleventh . . .”
He seemed to falter here, going inward, as if seeing that day in all its obscenity and horror playing once again in his memory. They
Similar Books
