“In 1964 Maronick was employed by the Generalissimo on Taiwan. Ostensibly he was used for actions against mainland China, but at the time the General was having trouble with the native Taiwanese and some dissidents among his own immigrant group. Maronick was employed to help preserve order. Washington wasn’t pleased with some of the Nationalist government’s internal policies. They were afraid the General’s methods might be a little too heavy-handed for our good. The General refused to agree, and began to go his own merry way. At the same time, we began to worry about Maronick. He was just too good and too available. He had never been employed against us, but it was just a matter of time. The Agency decided to terminate Maronick, as both a preventive measure and as a subtle hint to the General. Now, who do you suppose was station agent out of Taiwan when the Maronick termination order came through?”
Powell was 90 percent sure, so he ventured, “Weatherby?”
“Right you are. Weatherby was in charge of the termination operation. He reported it successful, but with a hitch. The method was a bomb in Maronick’s billet. Both the Chinese agent who planted the bomb and Maronick were killed. Naturally, the explosion obliterated both bodies. Weatherby verified the hit as an eyewitness.
“Now let’s back up a little. Whom do you suppose Maronick employed as an aide on at least five different missions?”
It wasn’t a guess. Powell said, “Our dead mailman, Sergeant Calvin Lloyd.”
“Right again. Now here’s yet another clincher. We never had much on Maronick, but we did have a few foggy pictures, sketchy descriptions, whatnot. Guess whose file is missing?” The old man didn’t even give Powell a chance to speak before he answered his own question. “Maronick’s. Also, we have no records of Sergeant Lloyd. Neat, yes?”
“Yes indeed.” Powell was still puzzled. “What makes you think Maronick is involved?”
The old man smiled. “Just playing an inductive hunch. I racked my brain for a man who could and would pull a hit like the one on the Society. When, out of a dozen men, Maronick’s file turned up missing, my curiosity rose. Navy Intelligence sent over the identification of Lloyd, and his file noted he had worked with Maronick. Wheels began to turn. When they both linked up with Weatherby, lights flashed and a band played. I spent a very productive morning making my poor old brain work when I should have been feeding pigeons and smelling cherry blossoms.”
The room was silent while the old man rested and Powell thought. Powell said, “So you figure Maronick is running some kind of action against us and Weatherby was doubling for him, probably for some time.”
“No,” said the old man softly, “I don’t think so.”
The old man’s reply surprised Powell. He could only stare and wait for the soft voice to continue.
“The first and most obvious question is why. Given all that has happened and the way in which it has happened, I don’t think the question can practically and logically be approached. If it can’t be approached logically, then we are starting from an erroneous assumption, the assumption that the CIA is the central object of an action. Then there’s the next question of who. Who would pay — and I imagine pay dearly — for Maronick with Weatherby’s duplicity and at least Lloyd’s help to have us hit in the way we have been hit? Even given that phony Czech revenge note, I can think of no one. That, of course, brings us back to the why question, and we’re spinning our wheels in a circle going nowhere. No, I think the proper and necessary question to ask and answer is not who or why, but what. What is going on? If we can answer that, then the other questions and their answers will flow. Right now, there is only one key to that what, our boy Malcolm.”
Powell sighed wearily. “So we’re back to where we started from, looking for our lost Condor.”
“Not exactly where we started from. I have some of my men digging rather extensively in Asia, looking for whatever it is that ties Weatherby, Maronick, and Lloyd together. They may find nothing, but no one can tell. We also have a better idea of the opposition, and I have some men looking for Maronick.”
“With all the machinery you have at your disposal we should be able to flush one of the two, Malcolm or Maronick — sounds like a vaudeville team, doesn’t it?”
“We’re not using the machinery, Kevin. We’re using us, plus what we can scrounge from the D.C. police.”
Powell choked. “What the hell! You control maybe fifty men, and the cops can’t give you much. The Agency has hundreds of people working on this thing now, not counting the Bureau and the NSA and the others. If you give them what you have given me, they could…”
Quietly but firmly the old man interrupted. “Kevin, think a moment. Weatherby was the double in the Agency, possibly with some lower-echelon footmen. He, we assume, acquired the false credentials, passed along the needed information, and even went into the field himself. But if he was the double, then who arranged for his execution, who knew the closely guarded secret of where he was and enough about the security setup to get the executioner (probably the competent Maronick) in and out again?” He paused for the flicker of understanding on Powell’s face. “That’s right, another double. If my hunch is correct, a very highly placed double. We can’t risk any more leaks. Since we can’t trust anyone, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
Powell frowned and hesitated before he spoke. “May I make a suggestion, sir?”
The old man deliberately registered surprise. “Why, of course you may, my dear boy! You are supposed to use your fine mind, even if you are afraid of offending your superior.”
Powell smiled slightly. “We know, or at least we are assuming, there is a leak, a fairly highly placed leak. Why don’t we keep after Malcolm but concentrate on stopping the leak from the top? We can figure out what group of people the leak could be in and work on them. Our surveillance should catch them even if so far they haven’t left a trail. The pressure of this thing will force them to do something. At the very least, they must keep in touch with Maronick.”
“Kevin,” the old man replied quietly, “your logic is sound, but the conditions for your assumptions invalidate your plan. You assume we can identify the group of people who could be the source of the leak. One of the troubles with our intelligence community — indeed, one of the reasons for my own section — is that things are so big and so complicated such a group easily numbers over fifty, probably numbers over a hundred, and may run as high as two hundred persons. That’s if the leak is conscious on their part. Our leak may be sloppy around his secretary, or his communications man may be a double.
“Even if the leak is not of a secondary nature, through a secretary or a technician, such surveillance would be massive, though not impossible. You’ve already pointed out my logistical limitations. In order to carry out your suggestion, we would need the permission and assistance of some of the people in the suspect group. That would never do.
“We also have a problem inherent in the group of people with whom we would be dealing. They are professionals in the intelligence business. Don’t you think they might tumble to our surveillance? And even if they didn’t, each one of their departments has its own security system we would have to avoid. For example, officers in Air Force Intelligence are subject to unscheduled spot checks, including surveillance and phone taps. It’s done both to see if the officers are honest and to see if someone else is watching them. We would have to avoid security teams and a wary, experienced suspect.
“What we have,” the old man said, placing the tips of his fingers together, “is a classic intelligence problem. We have possibly the world’s largest security and intelligence organization, an entity ironically dedicated to both stopping the flow of information from and increasing the flow to this country. At a moment’s notice we can assign a hundred trained men to dissect a fact as minuscule as a misplaced luggage sticker. We can turn the same horde loose on any given small group and within a few days we would know everything the group did. We can bring tremendous pressure to bear on any point we can find. There lies the problem: on this case we can’t find the point. We know there’s a leak in our machine, but until we can isolate the area it’s in, we can’t dissect the machine to try to pinpoint the leak. Such activity would be almost certainly futile, and possibly dangerous, to say nothing of awkward. Besides, the moment we start looking, the opposition will know we know there’s a leak.