“He’s all in favor of it, yes.”
He beamed at me. “Couldn’t ask for better than that. He’ll be happy, the public will be sold, and we’ll be sure of getting just the right sort of, uh, translation.”
They’d get just the right sort of, uh, translation, all right. They’d get an exact and faithful rendering of Butec’s book, word for lovely word. Whether they liked it or not.
“But what I can’t understand,” he went on, “is how on earth you got that plane out in the bargain. Only one of its kind in the world, you know. I understand Air Force Intelligence has been trying to smuggle a man into the Tallinn base for months just to get a look at the damned thing, maybe a stray bit of blueprint or something. Instead we wind up with the whole plane. And the one man who’s been flying it. Understand he’s a little bit of a madman. Is that right?”
“He’s a bit odd,” I admitted.
“Which of course gave you your opening. It must have taken weeks of preparation to con him into defecting. You’re quite the expert at getting people to do what you want them to do, aren’t you, Tanner?”
“Well, he wants to play trombone in an American jazz band, actually.”
“And you hooked onto that and turned him from a malcontent into a defector. Good piece of work.”
I paid attention to my drink.
“Something I heard, Tanner. You were pursued by the sister plane of the MIXK-One, is that right? The MIXK-Two, the fighter, that would be.”
“Yes.”
“Our military intelligence must be wrong, then. According to what we have, the fighter’s the faster of the two and a bit more maneuverable.”
“It’s faster,” I said. “Igor, uh, the pilot, shot down the pursuit plane.”
“Shot down the MIXK-Two?”
“With rockets. It, uh, disintegrated.”
“So we stole one plane from them and blew the other one to hell and gone. And their pilot with it, of course.”
Alexei, I thought. That cogstocker.
“Stole one plane and blew up the other one,” he said. He got to his feet, glass in hand, and walked over to where a window might have been had the little building been equipped with windows. He tapped his glass idly against the wood paneling that was hiding the fact that we were in a sort of above-the-ground bomb shelter. He sipped his drink, shook his head, and went on speaking to the wood-paneled wall.
“Stole one plane, blew up another plane. Helped a top Yugoslav to defect, got translation rights to his book. Slipped an even dozen Latvian gymnasts into the States.” He turned to me. “You wouldn’t have any extra surprises for me, would you, Tanner?”
I lowered my eyes. I looked at my shoes, their heels fitted with rolls of microfilm from Kracow. I thought of the various packets taped to my skin, Milan’s book, the Chinese documents that Lajos had smuggled to me from Budapest. I looked at one of the other plush leather chairs and smiled at the sleeping form of Minna, direct descendant of Mindaugas, first and last reigning monarch of a free and independent Lithuania.
“Nothing else, I’m afraid,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad of that. Any more, and I’d have trouble believing it myself,” He laughed. “Another drink?”
“Please.”
“Just Butec alone would have been ample justification for your trip,” he said, pouring. “The rest are delightful dividends. And they reinforce my conviction that the best thing to do with a good agent is to give him his head and stay out of his way. I was desperate to send you to Colombia, but thank the Lord I had the good sense to leave you alone when you turned the job down. I felt you must know what you were doing, and you damn well did.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering. “Colombia.”
“Would have liked to see you have a shot at it, Tanner, but I doubt that you could have done much to change the outcome. The Colombian Agrarian Revolutionary Movement evidently had a much broader base of support than anyone suspected. You might have given them a run for their money, but I think they’d have come out on top at the end.”
“They won, then?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, they did.” He dropped into his chair again and put his feet up onto the table. “When you opted out, I didn’t have anyone else I wanted to send. Passed the ball back to the quarterback, and it wound up going to the CIA. I was fairly certain the Agency would wind up with it and I wasn’t very happy at the thought. They can make a mess of things, you know.”
“I know.”
“You wouldn’t believe what a job they did of this, though. Seems CIA security isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. I always had the feeling that any broadly based organization like that one had to have a few big leaks in it. Well, this time they leaked all over the floor and then stepped in it. The CARM people had advance word that the Agency was taking over. You may not know it, but the CIA hasn’t got the best possible public image in South America.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, Cuba and all that. Seems they went in there quietly with a batch of top Washington men and some good counterrevolutionary types who haven’t had much work since Batista left Cuba. CARM knew they were coming and spread the word all over Colombia. Most astonishing thing. Minute the Agency came in, popular opinion swung completely to the side of the rebels. Not just the peasantry and the workers, either. We expected that much. But the military went over to CARM as well, and that hardly ever happens. When there’s a military uprising, it’s almost always right wing.”
“I know.”
“So what they had was hardly what you’d call a revolution at all. A bloodless coup, really. When you’ve got the army and the peasantry and the workers all on one side, and nothing but foreign business interests and the CIA on the other side, well, the result is a foregone conclusion. Wasn’t completely bloodless, of course. The top government officials got it in the neck. They hanged the dictator, uh, the president, right out in front of the palace. All that money in his Swiss bank account, and he never got to spend it. And then they did put a batch of CIA personnel in front of a firing squad. Mostly the Cubans, the ones from the old Batista regime. Most of the Washington types got back home again.” He chuckled. “Though I’ll bet some of them would just as soon be dead. I don’t think they can hold their heads high right now.”
“I can imagine. Then Colombia’s gone Communist?”
He thought about this. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “You remember when we discussed the situation, and you said they weren’t exactly Commie? Looks as though you were right. They might do a Fidel sooner or later, but right now they seem pretty middle-of-the-road, if you follow me. Of course they’re nationalizing the big oil and land interests right and left, and some of our petroleum people aren’t exactly thrilled, but they haven’t gotten on their knees to Moscow or Peking either. Of course it’s too early to tell what’ll happen later on.”
So CARM had won, I thought. In a way that was the best news of all.
He passed me a fat envelope. “For your expenses,” he said. “Don’t argue, take it. Your plane’s refueled by now. You’ll be flown to a private airport on Staten Island and from there you can get back to your home base easily enough.” He nodded toward Minna. “She’ll be going with you?”
“For the time being.”
“Mmmm. Pretty little thing. You’ll find a good home for her, of course.” He got to his feet. “This Colombia thing didn’t turn out all that badly, I don’t suppose. The only really rocky thing about it is the security leak at the Agency. Gives them one hell of a black eye. A lot of men are burning to get hold of the bastard who tipped it.”
“I don’t blame them.”
“That’s one damned good thing about our own operation, Tanner,” he told me. “You’ll never find a security leak in our bunch.”
“Thank God for that,” I said.
Chapter 18