"Well, well. Vassily Karbenko," Stantington said, as he rose, leaned across the desk, and extended his hand. The Russian was as tall as Stantington and his handshake was bony and firm. He kept on his carefully blocked cowboy hat.
"Admiral," he said. Even his voice had a slight western coloration.
"And how are things on the cultural attache front?" Stantington asked.
The admiral smiled at his visitor as they stood, facing each other across the broad desk.
"I haven't come to discuss culture, Admiral. Perhaps the lack of it instead." Karbenko had a small smile around his lips, but his eyes were cold and narrow, and his voice was frosty.
"What do you mean, Colonel?" Stantington asked.
"Have you been briefed this morning?" Karbenko asked.
Stantington shook his head. "No. I just got here. You want to use my bathroom? I've got a key."
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"No, I don't want to use your goddamn bathroom. I want to know why one of your spies assassinated our man in Rome today." He glared across the desk at Stantington, a look so intense it seemed to exert a physical pressure on the CIA director, who slowly sank back into his leather chair.
"What? I don't understand."
"Then I'll make it very clear. The Russian ambassador to Rome was assassinated this morning by an Italian doctor who was one of your men."
"Our men?" Stantington shook his head. "It couldn't be. It can't be. I would know about it."
"His name was Rocco Giovanni. Does that ring a bell?"
"No. Is he in custody?"
"No. He killed himself before we could get to him," Karbenko said.
"Rocco Giovanni, you say?"
Karbenko nodded.
"Wait here a minute," Stantington said. He put his new brass key on the desk. "Use the bathroom if you want." He passed through his secretary's office and into the office of his chief of operations.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked.
The operations chief looked up, startled.
"What, Admiral?"
"This Russian ambassador killed in Rome. Is that ours?"
The operations chief shook his head. "No. Not ours. Some doctor, looks like he went crazy, shot the ambassador and himself. But he wasn't one of ours."
"His name was Rocco Giovanni," Stantington
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said. "Check that name out right away and call me inside. The goddamn top Russian spy in the United States is in my office and I'm catching hell."
When Stantington returned to his office, Karbenko was sprawled in a chair in front of his desk, his legs extended before him, his hat pulled down over his face.
"I'll have something in a moment," Stantington said.
The two men sat in silence until the buzzer flashed. Stantington picked up the telephone and listened.
After a few moments, he replaced the telephone and looked up with a smile. "Your information is wrong, Comrade. Rocco Giovanni was not one of ours. There is no record in our personnel listings of a Rocco Giovanni."
"Well, you can take your personnel listings and shove them," Karbenko said, sitting erect in the chair and dropping his tan hat on the thickly carpeted floor. "CIA money sent Giovanni to medical school. CIA money helped him open a clinic in Rome. For twenty years, he's been subsidized by CIA money."
"Impossible," said Stantington. "But true," said Karbenko. "We've got the proof. We even know what code he was working under."
"What was that?" asked Stantington. "Project Omega," Karbenko said. "Never heard of it," said Stantington. Then he paused. Project Omega. He had heard of it. When? Where? It came back to him. Yesterday.
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He had heard of it and ordered it disbanded because no one knew what it was.
"Project Omega, you say?"
"That's right," said Karbenko.
"And you know about it?"
"All we know is its name. It's in our files from Khrushchev days. We know it was fronted by some foundation that spreads CIA money around."
"You're not going to believe this," Stantington said.
"Probably not."
"But you know more about Project Omega than we do."
"You're right, Admiral. I'm not going to believe that."
"I'm serious. I cancelled Project Omega yesterday because nobody knew what it was."
"Then you better find out quickly what it is," Karbenko said. "I think it goes without saying that my government responds a little more actively to this kind of provocation than yours does."
"Now don't get upset, Vassily," Stantington said.
"Don't get upset? One of our most important diplomats is murdered by one of your agents and you tell me not to get upset. This is, I take it, the new morality you have all brought to Washington."
"Please."
"My government will likely respond .in kind," Karbenko said.
"Show some faith in us."
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"Oh, yes. Faith. As in the Bible you are all so fond of quoting these days. Well, some of us can quote your Bible too."
"I hope you're going to say 'love thy neighbor.'"
"I was about to say 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'"
Stantington stood up. "Vassily," he said, "there's only one way I can convince you I'm telling the truth. I want you to come with me."
Karbenko grabbed his cowboy hat and followed Stantington out of the room. They took an elevator to the basement of the building, transferred to another elevator which took them to a sub-basement and then into another elevator which took them even further into the ground.
"America is a marvelous country," Karbenko said.
"How so?" asked Stantington. "You people can never leave well enough alone. For years it was sufficient for an elevator to go up and down, from the bottom to the top. Not any longer. I have been in hotels in this country and if you want to ride from one floor to the next floor, you have to ride elevators up and down for fifty floors. Do you know, in the World Trade Center in New York you have to ride four elevators to get from the top to the lobby? I suppose this is taught in your engineering schools. Creative and Imaginative Elevator Design."
Stantington saw nothing funny about this. He led Karbenko out into a hallway.
"You are the first Russian ever to be here," the CIA director said.
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"That you know of," the Russian agent said drily.
"Yes. That's quite true."
Stantington led Russia's top agent in the United States down a long maze of corridors, lined regularly and with steel reinforced doors. There were no names on the doors, only numbers.
Behind door 136, they found a balding man sitting behind a desk, his head buried in his hands. He looked up as Admiral Stantington came in. His face wrinkled in disgust and he put his head back into his hands.
"I'm Admiral Stantington," the director said.
"I know," said the man, without looking up.
"You're Norton, the head librarian?"
"Yes."
"I'm looking for a file."
"Good luck," Norton said. He waved toward another door on the far side of the office.
Stantington looked at the man whose eyes were still cast down toward the desk top, then he looked at Karbenko and shrugged.
They walked to the far door. Stantington pulled it open. It led into a room almost a city-block square and twelve feet high. All the walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with file cabinets and there was an island of cabinets in the center of the room.
But this room looked as if a gang of particularly mischievous elves had been at work in it for a hundred years. All the file drawers were open. Papers were strewn about, in some places piled into five-foot-high mounds. Manila folders were
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tossed everywhere. Papers had been crumpled, others ripped and torn.
Stantington stepped into the room. He kicked aside papers that stacked up around his feet and ankles like autumn leaves after a windstorm.