The entire action took less than a second but it was so filled with details that Sparrow even had a moment to wonder about the complexities of life. So it would not be Ely after all, he thought slowly, as though he had all eternity to contemplate the matter.
He never heard the shot because his brain exploded as the bullet shattered his face and drove through his skull.
Antonio fired a second time before turning away from the door and the bloody scene. He even brushed past a man with a ginger mustache coming up the stairs but did not pause to beg pardon.
Which is why Ely discovered the bloody remains of Sparrow seven seconds after the murder.
21
Mrs. Neumann had been wrong after all.
Hanley sat at the conference table set up in the corner office inside the building in Langley, Virginia, which housed the Central Intelligence Agency. The building was quite ugly and functional and resembled a motel raised on spider legs of concrete supporting the main structure. Unlike the headquarters buildings of Auntie in London, which were themselves meant to be a disguise, the Central Intelligence Agency proclaimed its presence boldly in the great seal imbedded in the lobby floor and visible to all who came to the front door.
Hanley had never been inside the building.
He felt uncomfortable as the director of Central Intelligence smoked his sixth Camel of the hour and stared at him silently. Of course they had traced back the stolen data to R Section, as Mrs. Neumann had expected; but she had not expected confrontation on the matter because it would make the CIA look foolish.
The New Man at R Section was also there. He had replaced Rear Admiral Thomas Galloway (USN Ret.), who had been sacked following the debacle of the Mitterand assassination business nearly two years before. Hanley had served as director for a time, but because he was only a civil servant he was passed over for a permanent promotion.
The New Man, as everyone still called him in the Section to separate him in memory from the Old Man who had been Galloway, was David Yackley. Yackley was an intense, dark-browed man of thirty-five who had been the youngest director of a major intelligence agency in the United States. He was a protégé of an old friend of the president and he had come to the job with new enthusiasms and new ideas and new plans of organization. Unfortunately for R Section, he put all his ideas into operation within six months and within a year nearly all of them had proven totally unworkable. Shambles remained, not only in the Section but in the attitude the New Man brought to dealing with other intelligence agencies under the umbrella of the National Security Adviser. He said the mission of R Section, a much smaller agency beside the Central Intelligence Agency, was supportive; when Hanley had explained to him that the Section had been set up by President Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs fiasco when the CIA had botched the operation, the New Man had treated it like ancient history. Hanley had quoted Kennedy: “Who will watch the watchers? Who will spy upon the spies?” as the reason R Section existed — to provide an independent audit of intelligence so that no agency would ever again become so powerful and arrogant that it could mislead the politicians who were supposed to be in charge of the country.
Which now led to the meeting with the director of Central Intelligence.
Hanley was explaining again: “We had need-to-know in this, Mr. Director. We had an agent in place, he had to make a decision. We needed information about Tomas Crohan.”
“And so you took it with a cheap computer trick.”
Hanley said, “The cheap trick fooled Langley.”
The New Man winced. Among things he detested about R Section was the slang rampant in the place. He felt the jargon excluded him, particularly from the club of old-timers that existed in the establishment of the agency. He had begun, carefully, to weed out the old-timers, to separate them from their fiefdoms, to break down power. He had not even neglected the field, though he had learned from the lesson of Stansfield Turner when Turner had thrown the CIA into a tailspin with his wholesale retirements of agents in the field.
The New Man named Yackley did not move so dramatically. He moved slowly on the sources of his discontent. Slowest of all was his move on Hanley. He would hate to admit to anyone that he still needed Hanley; Hanley had the secrets, Hanley still had the power. But even that would change in time with careful chipping at the secrets; like now. Hanley had stubbed his toe.
“Who is the man in Helsinki?” the director said at last.
“We have no one there now,” Hanley said.
“It was one of our old-time hands,” the New Man interjected and Hanley was plainly shocked. This is the Langley Firm. They are not our friends. They cannot share our operations secrets.
But Hanley said nothing.
“Hanley put him there on ice, to cool him down for a long winter’s night in Finland,” the New Man said with pleasure. There was an essential streak of sadism in him which those who admired him called ruthless efficiency.
“There turned out to be more to the business—”
“Yes. Director Yackley informed me. So you’ve seen the file on Tomas Crohan. Now do you understand why it must be kept secret?” the director of Central Intelligence said.
“We are hardly the enemy,” Hanley said with dignity. “Under Section Three of our charter, we are to have free and open access to all records predating the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency under the act of 1947.”
The New Man turned to him. ”Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because you never asked me,” Hanley said with some petulance.
“Never mind,” the CIA director said. “This is not a law court. What I need to know is what is being done now with the information?”
“Nothing. I destroyed it in the shredder after I read it.”
“But what is your operative in Helsinki intending to do?”
“He has been recalled as of two days ago,” Hanley said.
“And where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It is difficult to get a safe message out of Finland. You know that.”
“But two days ago? Is he taking a ship home?”
“There was no need to hurry.”
“No need to hurry? What is his normal assignment?”
Hanley turned to the New Man and refused to answer. The New Man said, “He has been waiting for an assignment. He was on standby.”
“Is there any chance he might… well… not have received the order?”
“No,” said Hanley.
“Do you understand? This would be an embarrassment to us. If he came out of the Soviet Union.”
“It happened a long time ago.”
“Damn it, it’s important now,” the CIA director said.
“Why?”
The New Man had been looking at Hanley and now he turned to the CIA director. “Yes. Why now?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified information.”
“Is it?” For the first time at the meeting, an icy note was sounded in Yackley’s thin voice. “Then there is nothing more to discuss, is there?”
“This is a delicate matter,” the director of Central Intelligence continued. “It does not involve R Section.”
“But apparently the Section is intruding upon it. Is that correct?”
“In a simple way, yes.”
“Then let us cooperate.”
The director frowned at Yackley. Yackley was a fool, a puppy. The director felt comfortable with him because he felt certain he could always manipulate him. Not so Hanley. Hanley was an old hand in the Section; Hanley had dealt with the CIA before.
The director, who was short and fat and had white hair and mottled red skin, lit another Camel and gave his customary cough at the first puff.