Kennedy’s Ghost. Gordon Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ part of the black projects. Not the Inner Circle of the Inner Circle, not one of the Wise Men like Zev Bartolski, but there were few men like Zev Bartolski at any time and in any place. Which was why Zev was more than just CoS, Chief of Station in Bonn, why Zev was a cornerstone of Brettlaw’s plans for the future. Why his brief lay far wider than the standard operating orders. Why, in the best tradition of the best in the business, Bonn Chief of Station was little more than a cover.

      ‘Everything in order?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Costaine was tall, mid-forties, with a crewcut which gave him a fit appearance.

      They went into detail. Boxes in boxes, though; Costaine knowing only what he was allowed to know – not even Zev Bartolski was allowed to know everything. And Costaine knowing nothing of the financial arrangements which supported his operational activities.

      It was eleven-fifty.

      Myerscough was in his early forties and slightly overweight, with light wire-framed spectacles. Myerscough was good, one of the best. It had been Myerscough who had set up the financial network for the black projects, who had chosen the bank through which they would run the funds, then made the contact with the fixer in the bank and got him on side. Established with him the lacework of nominee companies through which the black funds were laundered. But not even Myerscough, especially not Myerscough, knew anything about how the funds were used.

      Myerscough was also careful, even had his own little intelligence set-up, people in places like the Federal Bank and Congress who reported on any interest shown in any of his accounts. Not that they realized who they were working for, of course; and not that they looked for specific accounts. More like the old Soviet and East German systems: report on everything. Then Myerscough and his people would pull those in which they were interested. Brettlaw didn’t necessarily like it: Myerscough never had been a field man and never would be, therefore didn’t have the instinct, didn’t know when to shut up shop and get the hell out. But if Myerscough was happy playing in DC then he wasn’t looking elsewhere.

      ‘Any problems?’ Brettlaw asked.

      ‘Couple of minor things,’ Myerscough told him. ‘Sorted out within hours.’

      ‘What about Nebulus?’

      One of the switch accounts in London.

      ‘Nebulus is fine.’

      ‘Anything else?’

      Myerscough shook his head.

      Brettlaw concluded the briefing, took his sixth coffee of the morning, lit another Gauloise, and began to prepare for his appearance before die House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that afternoon. Two, sometimes three days of every month were taken up with such appointments. For the DCI it was one day a week. When Brettlaw was a politics major at Harvard he would have called it democracy.

      It was twelve-thirty; he took a light lunch in the executive dining-room and was driven to the Hill. The committee began at two, jugs of iced water on the tables and die members in a semicircle facing him.

      ‘The payment of $50,000 to a Bolivian government minister was in line with Congressional Order 1765 …’

      ‘At present the Agency is running two operations in Angola …’

      Even though the session was closed there were always too many members wanting to score political points, too many wanting to make names for themselves.

      ‘With respect, Congressman, I have already explained that to the Senate sub-committee on terrorism …’

      You ever been a bag man in Moscow, he had wanted to ask one of them once. Your balls frozen and the KGB hoods sitting on you. Yet still you had to make the contact, still you had to bring it home.

      The hearing closed at four-thirty; he made a point of shaking hands with each of its members and was driven back to Langley. At six-thirty he held his penultimate meeting of the day, an hour later he arrived at his last.

      The Lincoln town car was parked opposite the University Club and the Secret Service car was half a block down, though he assumed there was another in the alleyway behind. It had been more fun in the old days, before the end of the Cold War, when the building next door had been the Soviet embassy. Now it housed merely the Russian Federation, so that even though the game was still running and the place was still staked out, the edge of driving up 16th had gone for ever.

      He walked through the reception area, went to the fitness area in the basement, collected a towel, locked his clothes in a locker, took an ice-cold ten seconds in the plunge bath, and went into the sauna. The wall of heat almost stopped him. He took the towel from his waist, laid it on the wood seat, and sat down.

      ‘How’s Mary and the family?’ Donaghue asked.

      ‘Fine. Cath and the girls?’

      ‘Doing well.’

      It was twenty-five years since they had been room mates together at Harvard, since they had studied together and worked their butts off to make the football squad together. A quarter of a century, give or take, since the long grim afternoon, still remembered, at the Yale Bowl. The annual game between the universities of Harvard and Yale, the Crimsons and the Elis. The last play of the last quarter. Yale leading, Brettlaw quarterback and Donaghue wide receiver, the ball in the air and the world holding its breath.

      A little over twenty years since their numbers had come up and they had gone to Vietnam, Brettlaw into Intelligence and Donaghue into the Navy. Fourteen months less than that since Brettlaw had heard about Donaghue and kicked ass – filing clerk up to four-star general – to get him out and on the first flight home, to get him the best doctor in the best hospital in town.

      A little less than twenty years since they had been best man at each other’s weddings, and, a couple of years after that, godfather to one another’s firstborn.

      ‘We ought to get together sometime. Have a barbecue.’

      ‘Let’s do it.’

      The sweat was forming in beads on their foreheads.

      ‘Good session with the committee this afternoon?’

      ‘No problems.’

      ‘But?’

      ‘The enemy’s still there, Jack. Others might forget it but we mustn’t.’

      The sweat was pouring in tiny rivulets down their bodies.

      ‘Hope you’re keeping your nose clean, Tom.’

      Because if I run for the nomination I’ll need all the help I can get. And if I make the White House and if there’s nothing you’re trying to hide from me, then you’re head of it all, you’re Top Gun, you’re my Director of Central Intelligence.

      ‘You know me, Jack.’

      The Potomac was silver in the evening sun. The six of them sat on the upper deck of the houseboat, sipping Rolling Rock and munching through the steaks, plus the crabs and lobsters Mitchell had bought from the fish market at the top end of the marina.

      None of the others present that evening were connected СКАЧАТЬ