'How's your bullshit?' whispered Billie as the crowd applauded the speaker as he left the microphone.
'From the way he came on, I thought he was your type,' said Adam.
'Yuch. Definitely not my type.'
'Where's Tucker?'
'Reporting back to Washington. I can't see Trimmler's German friend.'
'Probably ducked out on the reception.'
'Wouldn't it be something if Trimmler turned out to be on their side?'
Adam shook his head. ‘If only everything worked out that simple.'
Tucker made his way through the guests and Billie waved in his direction to catch his attention.
'Happy party,' he said. 'Where's our boy?'
'Over there,' indicated Billie, pointing to the other side of the room where Trimmler was deep in conversation with a group of American and Russian scientists. 'Did you speak to Washington?'
'I did. They want us to increase our awareness.'
'What does that mean?' asked Adam.
'What it says.'
'Increase our awareness? Do we move in to his hotel suite? Go to the loo with him?'
'The loo?'
'The men's room,' interpreted Billie.
'Look…' snapped Adam, irritated by the interruption. '…I just want to know what they mean. How far are we allowed to go.' Adam had a soldier’s instinct, orders were his staple, even if they were to be broken.
'Okay, okay,' replied Tucker, taken aback by Adam's sudden intensity. 'I guess we've got to make sure we're covering everything.'
'The only way we can do that is by gluing ourselves to him.'
'They also said we weren't to make it too obvious.'
'That's ludicrous.'
'I'm just telling you what they said.' Tucker was exasperated with the Englishman. 'Let's just be more watchful, okay?'
Adam shook his head. If someone was after the scientist, they could hit him at their leisure. The whole thing needed more resources.
'Can we get some more support?' he asked.
'People?'
'Yes.'
'I'll put it to them. When I ring later. In the meantime, we just continue as we are. Take turns and keep close to him. There's an welcome dinner tonight, here in the hotel. I'll attend that with him.'
'What if he leaves again?'
'Washington have asked him not to go out alone, unless it's an official trip. You two take the afternoon off. I'll see you back here at about ten thirty, eleven.'
Tucker left them to join Trimmler.
'Wow, a free evening,' said Billie.
'Yes. Very secret service.'
'What's that mean?'
'It's like a bloody holiday outing. I'm sorry. When you've been in some of the places I have… We're either guarding this chap's life, or we're not. There's no in between.'
'So do you want to see New Orleans, or not?'
'Hell, why not?' Adam laughed. 'I'm not paying for this jaunt, am I? Where do you suggest?'
'Let's become tourists. Let's go to the French Quarter and see the sights.'
'Zis eez good,' he mimicked in Franglais. 'Zis is vot ve vill do. To ze French Quartair. To ze naughty place, eh?'
He made her laugh. Then she remembered why they were here. It was a shit life. Some way to earn a pension.
Ch. 35
'Who the hell's Albert?' asked the DDI.
'One of their scientists,' replied the DDA.
'Did Tucker say anything else?'
'No. They're running shifts on Trimmler.'
The Exec Director watched the two of them across his desk. Each one of them on their best behaviour so as to impress him. In truth, neither was a natural successor. The DDA was an exceptional administrator, the DDI an aggressive field leader. But both had their limitations, neither had that extra dimension that you needed to fill the top slot. What was it Confucius had said? "The Master must teach the pupil everything, except how to be the Master.". An apt saying, an exact hypothesis, thought the Exec Director.
'And Grob Mitzer? I never heard of him. Not until he popped up in Cannes,' continued the DDI.
'Big German industrialist.' The DDA, scored a quick point. 'Big in electronics. Heavily involved in the European space programme. And in ours.'
'Is that right?' stalled the DDI, not wanting to lay bare his ignorance of Herr Mitzer. 'God-damn funny. Him sitting next to Trimmler when that black boy took a shot at them. There were four possible targets. Trimmler and the Russian agent who got killed. Kushmann. And Mitzer.'
'New doors opening all the time,' commented the Exec Director. He turned to the DDA. 'I think we should also explain your ideas on the work we're doing with the Russians.' He watched the DDI's face, there was no flicker of surprise. That came from years out at the sharp end of intelligence. At least by highlighting the DDA as the prime mover in contacting the KGB, the Exec Director had shifted the onus of responsibility away from himself. 'There have been some interesting developments on both sides. Intriguing and similar.'
He sat back and watched the DDA explain the recent events that had taken place between the CIA and the KGB. The DDI gave nothing away as he listened, apart from a reaction from the left eyebrow when he was told that the two sides had exchanged information regarding their most secret files.
'Well?' asked the Exec Director when the DDA had finished.
'We should protect my people in the field,' came the reply, the DDI's drawl more pronounced and deliberate than before. 'We could be putting their lives in danger.'
'No individuals' names were given out. We only showed them an index of what was on the computer,' snapped the DDA. 'The secrecy of the asset base, and its protection, is still a major priority.'
'Can we trust them?' The DDI's instincts were to trust no-one, especially those who had been his direct enemies as long as he'd been in the Agency. 'It all sounds a bit too slick. We lose an agent, so do they. We have a computer glitch, they get a fire in their filing room. We both lose the same data, dealing with the same period in time. It smells.'
'We can't ignore it,' said the Exec Director, turning to the DDA. 'Have we come up with anything since we got their list?'
'Yes, sir. We listed their headings and ours onto a data base, then ran the whole thing through to find any common denominators.'
'What sort of stuff did you feed in?' asked the DDI.
'The locations of the killings, ours and the Russians'. The dates and times they happened. The methods used to see if they cross linked in any way. Any outside organisations which could have tied up with our agents as double agents. Foreign secret services, both friendly and otherwise, that could have run doubles. Any war time operations that were trying to hide their past records. Computer companies that had links into our computer, assassinations from the past that had a similar modus operandi. Hell, we fed in over four thousand different clues. My people are still coming up with ideas where there might be some connection.'
'And you've still drawn a blank?'
'We've still got a long way to go. I've got thirty programmers working on this and over fifty operatives coming up with ideas. The only connection we've got, and this doesn't involve the asset base, is the one between Trimmler, the computer that stored the 1945 to 1958 data which has been affected by the virus, Grob Mitzer and the Paperclip Conspiracy. In addition to that, the Russians have determined that Albert is one Albert Goodenache, a German scientist they captured at the end of the war. He's been heavily involved in their rocket and space programme.'