A “loose cannon” was, I imagine, just one of many labels given me by my colleagues and superiors in the Agency. I was regarded with fear, wonder, and a good deal of puzzlement. It was the fieldwork, the exposure to danger and the threat of violence, that would bring out my dark side. Some considered me fearless, which wasn’t true. Others considered me reckless, which was closer to the truth.
The fact was that at certain times, a ruthless and frightening Ben Ellison would take over. It was something that, once I was aware of it, deeply unsettled me, and eventually led to my leaving the Agency.
Before Paris I was detailed to Leipzig to get my feet wet. My cover was as a trade official. One of my first assignments was to debrief and protect a rather nervous informant, a Red Army soldier stationed nearby. They’d chosen me because I had studied Russian at Harvard, and was almost fluent. And I carried out the mission flawlessly, and so I was rewarded-promoted, in a sense-with a far more dangerous task.
I was ordered to escort an East German defector, a physicist, from Leipzig to a border crossing a good distance away, at Herleshausen. The Mercedes I was driving had been fitted with a specially constructed compartment behind the seat, in which the physicist was concealed. At the checkpoint we went through the routine, the wheeled mirror apparatus shoved under the car to check for Germans trying to escape that miserable country, all that. A BND man had been sent up from headquarters in Pullach to meet us on the other side. As I went through the passport and immigration block, congratulating myself on a job well done, the BND man made the mistake of showing himself. Someone on the East German side recognized him, and suspicion instantly fell upon me.
Suddenly three, then seven Volkspolizei emerged from the booth and surrounded the car. One stood before me and indicated with an outstretched hand that I should halt.
According to Agency procedures, I should have acted innocent and perplexed, and stopped. Under no circumstances was a human life to be taken. That wasn’t how the game worked.
And as I sat there, I thought of the small, sweaty physicist curled up in the tiny airless compartment between the backseat and the trunk. My precious cargo. The man was brave. He was risking his life, when it would have been so much easier to do nothing.
I smiled, looked to my left and my right, and then straight ahead. The Vopo blocking my way-a Stasi Kommandant, I later learned-gave me a smug smile.
I was boxed in. It was a classic box technique; we had learned it at Camp Peary. The only thing to do was to surrender. You did not take a life; the consequences would be grave.
And then something came over me, that same glacial fury that had come over me when I broke the martial arts trainer’s jaw. It was as if I were in another world. My heartbeat did not accelerate; my face did not flush. I was calm-but overtaken by a desire to kill.
Break the box, I told myself. Break the box.
I floored the gas pedal.
Never will I be able to expunge from my memory the sight of the Kommandant’s face as it rose up to meet the windshield. A rictus of terror; disbelief in the eyes.
Tranquil, floating in a reptilian calm, I stared straight ahead. Everything was in slow motion. The Kommandant’s eyes locked on mine, pools of abject fear. He saw in my eyes the supreme indifference. Not fury, not desperation-but that icy calm.
With an awful thud the Kommandant’s body was thrown into the air. There was a shower of gunfire, and I was across the line, my cargo safe.
Later, of course, I was reprimanded by Langley for taking “unnecessary” and “reckless” measures. But off the record my superiors let me know in subtle ways that they were secretly pleased. After all, I had gotten the physicist out, hadn’t I?
But what remained with me was not pleasure in an assignment accomplished, not pride in an act of bravery or heroism, but a queasiness. For a minute or so at the border crossing I had become almost an automaton. I could have driven right into a brick wall. Nothing scared me.
And that scared me.
“No, Ben,” Moore continued. “You were hardly a loose cannon. You were possessed of a rare combination of prodigious intellect and… brass balls. What happened to Laura wasn’t your fault. You were one of the best. Moreover, with your photographic memory, or whatever that’s called, you’re quite an asset.”
“My… eidetic memory, as the neurologists call it, may have been a big deal in college and law school, but these days, with electronic databases all over the place, it’s nothing special.”
“You’ve met with Truslow?”
“I met him at Hal’s funeral. We talked for about five minutes. That’s it. I don’t even know what he wants me to do yet.”
Moore got to his feet and walked across the room to the French doors. One of them was rattling more than the others; he adjusted and locked it, quieting the noise. As he returned, he said: “Do you remember that famous civil rights case that was filed against CIA in the early 1970s? A black man applied for an analyst position there and was turned down for no good reason?”
“Sure.”
“Well, it was Alex Truslow who, in the end, resolved the case. And saw to it that the Agency’s personnel office never again discriminated on the basis of race or sex. It was extraordinary-he had a vision of a CIA that was a true meritocracy, that wouldn’t permit its old guard to trample the rights of minorities to enter its ranks. A lot of old-timers still bear a grudge against him for that-he let all those minorities into the lily-white old-boys’ club. And, as you might have heard, he’s probably going to be named to replace your father-in-law.”
I nodded.
“How much do you know of what he’s doing?” Moore asked.
“Virtually nothing. ‘Security work’ for the Agency, I understand. Procedures Langley can’t or won’t do.”
“Let me show you something,” Moore said, once again rising, this time beckoning me to follow. With a grunt he mounted the wooden spiral staircase to the library’s second level. “Someday soon I won’t be able to climb these stairs,” Moore said, short of breath. “At which point I’ll move all my Ruskins up here, where I need never see it again. Vile stuff-never liked the nasty old son of a bitch. That’s what happens when cousins marry. Here we go. My booty.”
We had advanced about ten feet along the catwalk, past drab-looking morocco-bound volumes, until Moore came to a stop at a wainscoted stretch of wall between shelves. He nudged a panel until it popped open, revealing a metal file drawer painted institutional gray.
“Nice,” I said. “Did you have the boys from Technical Services build that for you?” In truth, it was rather a poor hiding place to anyone who knew the first thing about breaking and entering, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
He pulled the drawer open. It gave a low, rusty moan. “No, actually it was here when I bought the house in 1952. The rich old manufacturer who built this place-some coot out of an Edith Wharton novel, I’ll bet-liked secret compartments. There’s a sliding panel in the fireplace mantel I never use. Little did he know his town house would eventually end up in the hands of a bona fide spook.”
The drawer seemed to contain intelligence files, at least from what I could tell by scanning the index tabs. “I didn’t know they let you take files with you when you retired,” I said.
He turned to me and adjusted his eyeglass frames. “Oh, they don’t.” He smiled. “I’m trusting your discretion.”
“Always.”
“Good. I haven’t violated any national security acts, really.”
“Did someone give these to you?”
“You remember Kent Atkins, from Paris station?”