Canning understood that when McAlister spoke of investigators, he meant lawyers, men who approached this kind of problem in terms of subpoenas, grand juries, indictments, prosecutions, and eventual convictions. But for the most part Canning was a field op, a man who liked to take direct action the instant he saw what the trouble was; he was not a paper shuffler. Although he respected the mass of laws upon which civilization was built, he was trained to solve problems quickly by circumventing all authorities and legal channels. He knew McAlister was fully aware of this. Nevertheless, he said, “And you want me on this staff?”
“Perhaps later.” Which meant never. “Right now I need you for something more urgent.” He sipped his coffee: a dramatic pause. “This is so important and secret that no one must know you've been brought into it. That's why I came to see you instead of sending for you. And that's why I came alone. I was especially careful not to be followed.”
That was Canning's cue to ask what this was all about. Instead of that, he said, “What makes you think I'm trustworthy?”
“You're too much of a realist to be a brown shirt. I know you.”
“And you are too much of a realist to choose a man for an important assignment because you happen to like him. So what's the rest of the story?”
Leaning back in his chair, McAlister said, “Did you ever wonder why you were taken off the top job in the Asian bureau?”
“I shouldn't have been.”
“Agreed.”
“You know why I was?”
McAlister nodded. “I've read the entire agency file on you. It contains a number of unsigned memos from field ops stationed in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand during your tenure there. They complain that you put them under too much restraint.”
Canning said, “Too damned many of them were ready to settle any problem with a gun or a knife.” He sighed softly. “They didn't even like to stop and think if there might be a better, easier way.” He ran one hand over his face. “You mean that's all it took for the director to pull me out of Asia? Unsigned memos?” “Well, there was also Duncan, Tyler, and Bixby.”
They were three men who had served under Canning. Karl Duncan and Mason Tyler, who had once operated in Thailand, had tortured to death an American expatriate whom they “suspected” of being involved in illegal arms sales to guerilla leaders. Derek Bixby did his dirty work in Cambodia. He tortured the wife and eleven-year-old daughter of a Cambodian merchant, in front of the merchant's eyes, until he had obtained a hidden set of papers that were en route from Hanoi to a guerilla general who was a close friend of the merchant. Once the documents were in his hands, Bixby murdered the man, wife, and child. In both cases neither torture nor murder was warranted. Infuriated, Canning had seen to it that Duncan, Tyler, and Bixby were not only taken out of Asia but were also dismissed from the agency when they returned Stateside.
“They were animals,” Canning said.
“You did the right thing. But Duncan, Tyler, and Bixby had friends in high places. Those friends engineered your withdrawal from Asia and saw you were given a harmless domestic assignment at the White House.”
Sharp lines of anger webbed Canning's skin at eyes and mouth.
“Furthermore,” McAlister said, “Duncan, Tyler, and Bixby are all quite close to the two men we know are Committeemen. We've reason to believe that Duncan, Tyler, and Bixby are working in a civilian capacity with The Committee and are being paid with misappropriated agency funds. No proof — yet. Anyway, it seems unlikely that you have ever been one of them. Otherwise, why would you have fired those three?” He leaned forward again. “As I said, I'm half sure of you. There's a chance I'll be stabbed in the back. But the odds of that happening are lower with you than with anyone else I know.”
Canning rose, took his cup and saucer to the sink and rinsed them thoroughly. He came back and stood at the window, watching the rain that slanted icily across the courtyard and pooled on the bricks. “What is this urgent assignment you have for me?”
Taking a pipe from one jacket pocket and a pouch of tobacco from another, McAlister said, “During the last six months we've been building a new file from dribs and drabs of information — a name here, a rendezvous point there, a dozen rumors; you know how it works in this business — concerning a very special project the Committeemen have going for them.”
Canning got a ten-inch circular white-glass ashtray from a cupboard and put it in front of McAlister.
“Five days ago an agent named Berlinson came to me and said he was a Committeeman. He was about to be indicted for his role in several domestic operations that were aimed at destroying the political careers of three potential liberal Presidential candidates. He didn't want to stand trial because he knew he would end up in jail. So he and I reached an agreement. He was quite willing to talk. But as it happens, lower-echelon agents of The Committee know only one or two others in the organization. Berlinson couldn't give me a complete roster. He couldn't tell me who stands at the head of the group. That was quite a disappointment.”
“I can imagine.”
“But it wasn't a total loss,” McAlister said as he tamped the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. “Berlinson was able to give me a general outline of this special project I'd been hearing about. It centers on an as yet unknown Chinese citizen who has been made, quite literally, into a walking bomb casing for a chemical-biological weapon that could kill tens of thousands of his people. The Committeemen have a code name for him — Dragonfly.”
Canning sat down at the table again. “These reactionaries — these idiots intend to wage their own private war against China?”
“Something like that.” McAlister struck a match, held the flame to the tobacco, and got his pipe fired up. He carefully put the burnt match in the center of the ashtray.
“Berlinson has no idea who the carrier is?”
“All he knew was that Dragonfly is a Chinese citizen who was in the United States or Canada sometime between New Year's Day and February fifteenth of this year. That doesn't really narrow it down much. Canada has had friendly relations with China considerably longer than we have; she does a great deal of business with them. At any given moment there are at least two hundred Chinese citizens in Canada: government representatives, officials of various Chinese industries, and artists who are involved in cultural exchange programs. In the United Stares, of course, there's the Chinese delegation to the United Nations. And at one time or another during the forty-six days in question, we also played host to a contingent of trade negotiators, a touring group of forty officials from the Central Office of Publications who were here to study American publishing processes and printing methods, and finally, a symphony orchestra from Peking.”
“How many suspects are there in both the U.S. and Canada?” Canning asked.
“Five hundred and nine.”
“And I take it that Dragonfly, whoever he is, doesn't know anything about what's been done to him.”
“That's right. He's an innocent.”
“But how could he be? How was it done?”
“It's a long story.”
“I'll listen.”
McAlister poured himself another cup of coffee.
While he picked up crumbs from his placemat and put them, one at a time, in the center of his paper napkin, Canning listened to McAlister's story and took the facts from it and placed them, one at a time, in the neatly ordered file drawers of his mind. No matter with whom he was talking, no matter where or when, Canning was a good listener. He interrupted only to ask essential questions and to keep the conversation from digressing.