div width="1em">“I wouldn’t know about that,” the senator said. “And even if I did, senate cloakroom gossip is privileged.” “Only if we can’t pry it out of you,” Fair said.
Everybody laughed.
“He’s apparently right,” his wife said. “He won’t even tell me what’s said in that cloakroom.”
“I recall,” the columnist said, “that Warren G. Harding, when he was a senator, is alleged to have impregnated a young woman on a sofa in that cloakroom.”
“That the young woman was impregnated by Warren G. is not in doubt, though the geography in question is a little hazy. I think that information,” the senator said, “was traced to the young woman herself, though she may have embroidered her story for effect. It did not come from one of Senator Harding’s colleagues, though.”
Everyone moved back to the living room for coffee, and Stone asked Fair for the powder room.
“I believe it’s occupied,” Fair said, “but use my bathroom.” She pointed to a door.
Stone opened it and found himself in a very feminine bedroom. He crossed it and found the bath, and while he stood at the toilet, he could not keep himself from opening the medicine chest on the wall before his nose. He found prescription bottles for a painkiller, a sleeping pill, and a couple he did not recognize.
Also, he was intrigued to find a clear plastic case containing four lipsticks, the same brand that he had been told about by Shelley, apparently part of a promotion, none of which was Pagan Spring. There was, however, an empty space in the case. One lipstick had been removed.
He stopped by her dressing table on his way back to the living room, but found no Pagan Spring there, either. He was, he reflected, going to have to make a trip to a drugstore.
23
TEDDY FAY HAD FINISHED BRINGING HIS HANGAR APARTMENT up to his standard of living, and now he sat at his work table, putting the final touches on a peeler/slicer combination for his usual client. He prepared it for sending to a mail drop in Missouri that would, in turn, forward it to the addressee. In due course, if his client found it acceptable, and Teddy was certain he would, funds would be wired to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands, making Teddy awash in cash. Royalties from later sales would keep the stream flowing.
Bored with the fine work, he turned his thoughts elsewhere, and a whim struck him. He donned a fresh pair of latex gloves and opened a packet of very common stationery, sold in many drugstores, then uncapped his silver Montblanc pen.
My dear Miss Holly Barker: It has been some time since we last communicated, and longer still since we actually met, and I felt I should
express a few thoughts to you.
I am aware that you have risen quickly in the estimation of your colleagues at the Agency and that with the rather self-serving help of Lance Cabot, the ultimate careerist, and the approbation of Director Katharine Rule Lee, you have moved up in the Agency’s structure with considerable speed. I am aware, too, that you have been assigned, from time to time, to supervise operations. This, again, is self-serving on Lance’s part, since it is important to him to have an assistant deputy director with actual experience with running agents.di, y/div> However, there is beginning to appear a blot on your copybook, as it were, and you must take steps to correct that, if you do not wish your progress up the ladder to be impeded in committee. I refer, as you may have supposed, to the assignment of young Todd Bacon to his current task, and to his repeated failures to complete it successfully.
Young Todd is, in many respects, the ideal officer. He is a planner, meticulous and thorough, and can even be inventive. He lacks, however, the most important qualities of the best operatives: imagination and the ability to improvise on the move. Like a mediocre chess player, he thinks only of the next move and not the two or three down the road.
That having been said, the Agency has always needed people like Todd Bacon to do the planning and dogwork that every operation requires, without actually serving at the pointed end of the mission, where dash and quick thinking are required for success. It occurs to me that young Todd is very nearly at the point where it would be difficult if not impossible to move him sideways into a position where he could contribute on a consistent basis and earn himself some praise and, eventually, a pension.
I know, of course, that his current assignment is off the books and, thus, not subject to the usual committee scrutiny that accompanies most operations, but that very fact puts you, and to a lesser extent Lance, in the hot seat. Lance, to the lesser extent, because if there should be heat to be taken, he will arrange for you to take it.
So, it is time for one of two things to happen: either close the books on Todd’s mission and reassign him (it occurs to me that the boy might eventually do well in my old department, Technical Services—he is, after all, proficient with computers, weapons, and the like), or, the other thing: assign someone with both the professional and personal qualities to make a success of the mission.
However, there are thorns in those rosebushes, too. First, it would be difficult to transfer a successful officer from sanctioned missions to an off-the-books one without stunting his career or, perhaps, making a larger number of Agency people aware of what he is doing. And even should he be successful, no one will ever know about it but you, Lance, and the director, at least until that officer gets around to publishing his memoirs in Sweden or writing a roman à clef Nor will it do you much good with the director, since she will, along with her estimable husband, be on her way in eighteen months or so.
Lance, it is clear, longs to replace the director with himself, with the resulting elevation of yourself to the highest realms of the Agency and the government. He may well think it is not the time to indulge in off-the-books missions.
And as for you, there is only one person you could appoint to replace young Todd, someone with the wit and the moxie to pull it off, and that is your own sweet self. You have already had one very good shot at pulling it off, of course, but that was, at best, a near miss, and one does not build a career at the top on a structure of near misses.
I hope you are able to make or at least influence the right decision. I am living quietly, now, with no great wish to be a bother to anyone, but as you might imagine, if my nest is disturbed, I might be annoyed enough to sting again. I am fond of you, in my way, and I hope you will not be the one to receive the stinger.
Should you and Lance wish to put an end to all this, please insert a small display advertisement in the Arts section of the National Edition of tl Eor he New York Times on the last day of this month, to read: NANCY, ALL IS WELL, CALL HOME.
Should the ad not appear, I shall assume that peace is not possible, and shall resume making a nuisance of myself.
With kind
thoughts,
T.
HOLLY BARKER SLIT OPEN the plain white envelope with no return address. It would have already been subjected to X-ray and chemical analysis before reaching her desk, so she did not fear it. She read through the letter once, not stopping to analyze what was written, then she folded it, returned it to its envelope, and walked to the door that separated her office from Lance’s suite. She rapped on the door, sharply, twice.