“Can’t we convince them he’s a crazy?” Ross insisted.
“Desrosiers knows Kendig,” Myerson said. “They’ve known each other for thirty years. Kendig brought him Medvedev’s first manuscript.”
Ross slapped the typed pages in his lap. “But this stuff-it’s so wild. Who’d believe it?” He turned a page and read aloud, a sarcastic tone: “‘What was Richard Nixon doing in Dallas on the day John Kennedy was assassinated there?’ I mean that’s the cheapest kind of gossip-rag innuendo. It’s nothing but an empty teaser. ‘How many tons of counterfeit North Vietnamese currency has Air America dropped on North Vietnam since the truce was signed?’ And the bit-I can’t find it now-the bit about the assassination of Duvalier.”
“Page eight,” Cutter murmured.
It flustered Ross but he went on indignantly: “Or this thing about the Soviets assassinating Nasser with a spray of prussic acid. I mean how wild can you get? And it’s all unsupported, he’s given no details. All we’ve got to do is lean on them, show them how irresponsible it would be to publish unconfirmed rubbish like this. Make Kendig out to be a paranoid idiot who’s gone around the bend. I mean that’s what he is, isn’t it? It’s got to be that.”
Myerson said, “He’s a little crazy. But not that way. You’re right about one thing-it’s a teaser, nothing more.”
“But he’s got the goods to pay it off,” Cutter said.
Myerson nodded. “That’s the thing. It’s all true, you know. And Kendig will cite chapter and verse.”
It was hard to absorb. Ross said, “It’s true?”
“Of course it is,” Cutter said. “He’s not an absolute fool.”
“But he was a field agent. He’d never have had access to anything like this.”
“After his convalescent leave he spent eight months working two doors down the hall from this office,” Myerson said. “He didn’t fit in, he couldn’t stick it out-he never had the patience to sit at a desk. We offered to move him to NSA but he gave it the back of his hand. We had no choice but to retire him.”
“And in those eight months he came across all this stuff?”
Cutter said, “He must have made a point of looking for it. To give him an arsenal against us in case he ever had to use it.”
“That’s a little fanciful.”
“He was never a man to trust anybody. He always had to have an edge. That was what made him so good at the job. He never let anybody get him into a corner. He always had the escape route staked out in advance.”
Ross stacked the pages neatly in his lap, evening up the corners. “I’ve never come across any of this stuff and I’ve worked here six years now.”
“Not on the fourth floor you haven’t,” Cutter said. “This outfit’s like the Waffen SS, it’s got a compulsion to keep records of all its crimes in quintuplicate.” He was talking to Myerson now: “I’ve bitched about that for years. Haven’t I.”
“When they move you to the fifth floor you can start making policy,” Myerson replied, unruffled. “We’ll get along faster if you stop dredging up I-told-you-so’s. Right now we’ve got a problem and I expect you to provide the solution.”
Cuter only nodded; he was deep in thought. Ross said, “What am I doing here?”
Myerson blinked. “You’ll have to ask Cutter.”
Cutter said, “I asked for you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because you’ve got a reputation for doing what you’re told without stopping to make waves.”
Myerson said, “We can’t assume anything; but we can hope he hasn’t written the rest of the book yet. If that’s the case your job is easy-just prevent him from finishing it.”
“With extreme prejudice,” Cutter said, very wry. “Personally I prefer the word ‘kill.’ It’s the goddamned euphemisms that’ll do us all in.” He snaked out his long brown hand to glance at his watch; shot his cuff and asked, “When did Desrosiers receive that?”
“Four days ago.”
“Shit. Hand delivered?”
“In the mail. It had a Paris postmark.”
“How did we get it?”
“We’ve got an editor in our pocket. Naturally Kendig knew that-that’s why he picked that publisher to send it to first. I suspect the Russians have someone there too, in view of the sort of thing Desrosiers publishes. Maybe it’s even the same editor, who knows. In any event you can be sure there’s a copy of this in Moscow by now-and I think you can be sure Kendig knows that too.”
“And they won’t like the thing any more than we do. So we’ll be tripping over the Comrades.”
Ross sat silent as if forgotten; the dialogue went on-Myerson said, “There’ll be copies surfacing in Whitehall and Bonn and the Arab capitals and God knows where else. The way he’s gone about it guarantees that. He’s trying to make the biggest noise he can.”
Ross said, “I don’t understand that. Why?”
Myerson pointed at Cutter. “You know the man. What’s your judgment?”
Cutter’s index finger flicked toward the pages he’d tossed on Myerson’s desk. “‘If the peoples of the nations concerned find out what has been done, and is being done, in their name…’” He was quoting it verbatim after the cursory reading he’d given it; Ross looked it up to make sure and Cutter had got it letter perfect.
Cutter said, “It’s got a phony ring to it. Kendig’s never suffered from the obvious brands of moral rationalizing. He never went in for sterile liberal dogmas. The only time I ever heard him get near the subject was once when Nixon was running in ’sixty-eight. He said he figured people got the kind of government they deserved. Nothing surprises him. He’s not the type to get indignant or bleat about injustice.”
“And?”
“The last I heard he was having fits of Gothic melancholia. Severe depressions. Bored to death.”
“So?”
Again Cutter pointed at the pages. “Maybe that’s his suicide note. He’s not the sleeping-pill type. He’d want to go down in flames. So he wants us to come and kill him.”
“Then you’d better do it,” Myerson said.
“He won’t sit and wait for it. He won’t make it easy.”
“I have every confidence in you.” Myerson turned a wholly fictitious smile toward Ross. “Cutter can find a man the way a dog can smell out a bitch in heat.”
Cutter raised one hand a few inches to acknowledge the tribute. “Kendig’s a professional. A professional is somebody who doesn’t make stupid mistakes. He had this planned ten moves ahead before he put that thing in the mail.”
“Don’t be defeatist.”
“I think we ought to ignore him,” Cutter said. “Why play his silly game? I doubt he’s got the patience to sit down and write the whole book. If he sees we’re not going to play with him he’ll give it up-he’ll stand in a highway somewhere and wait for a truck to run him down.”
Myerson said, “We’re not the only ones involved. If we don’t get to him somebody will. Most likely the Comrades. They’ll realize when they read this that he knows a lot more than they ever thought he knew. They’ll want him alive-at first. We don’t really want them to have him, do we.”
It was obvious Cutter didn’t like it but he had to concede the point. “Then we’ll get the son of a bitch. It’s a grisly waste, though.”
“Granted. Can’t be helped.”
“All right. The tedious details. Last known location?”
“He checked out of a hotel in Paris a week ago today. It’s all in the file. Hasn’t been seen since.”
“Anything on the type face?”
“We ran it through analysis. It’s a Smith-Corona portable. The type is called Presidential Pica. There must be a hundred thousand like it. He bought the paper and the manila mailing envelope-envelopes, actually-at a stationer in the boulevard Raspail. Three weeks ago.”
“Most recent known associates?”
“It’s all in the file. One interesting item-about a month ago Kendig had a meeting with Mikhail Yaskov in Paris. We keep tabs on Yaskov when we can.”
“A month ago. That’s before he bought the typing paper.”
“Yes.”
“Christ. There’s a connection then.”
“Maybe. Who knows. Follett interviewed him but he couldn’t get anything out of him. At any rate he hasn’t defected-we’d have known.” Myerson picked up the papers Cutter had tossed on his desk; he straightened them and put them into the file folder along with the thick sheafs that were already in it. Then he proffered it and Cutter got up to take it. It was evident the interview had ended; Ross got to his feet.