Westfall shook his head. “Nothing except the china doll heads,” he said.
“What in God’s name is that?” said Forsyth.
“The admiral is a major collector. She’s even mentioned on some websites.”
“Marvelous,” said Benford, “but what are they? Tell me they’re from Russia perhaps?”
“No,” said Westfall. “You know those antique porcelain dolls from Victorian Britain or nineteenth-century Germany with those creepy stares and Cupid’s bow mouths, and rouged fever cheeks? Not the whole dolls, not the antique dresses, the admiral just collects the heads. She’s got hundreds of them, all on some shelf, staring.”
“At this point Marty Gable would make a crack about inflatable love dolls,” said Benford.
They were all quiet for a second. “Frigging dolls. Ask the shrinks what it means,” said Nate. “Maybe the admiral’s got a secret life.”
“With that hair?” said Benford. “She looks like Martha Washington.”
“That comment is mildly unpatriotic,” said Nate. Benford swiped the air as if batting gnats.
“It doesn’t matter how clean the admiral seems. Don’t underestimate military culture,” said Forsyth. “Advancement is everything, especially for women in the services. Bringing military discipline to a civilian agency might appeal to her scientific mind. For flag-rank officers, finding a job with influence after retirement is important. It could be a lot of factors.”
“I still think the admiral comes in as the cleanest of the bunch. I can’t see her meeting with the Russians and hiding blood diamonds under the floorboards.”
“What about the third guy?” snapped Benford.
“The ambassador. Sort of a lightweight, but during his four years in Embassy Rome he was reading plenty of classified cables. Now he’s on the Intelligence Working Group, which gives him moderate access the Russians would want. Lots of business travel overseas for years, including commodities deals in Belarus, so that’s a red flag. He was in Hollywood once, and likes money. He’s worth around one hundred million dollars, so maybe becoming Director is just an ego thing.”
“But no access to the railgun, right? We can cross him off,” said Forsyth. Westfall handed him a sheet of paper.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “But it happens that he worked on a five-year navy railgun contract because his precious-metals company manufactured beryllium oxide ceramic heat diffusers for the magnetic rails—they get hot with all that juice running through them, and Ambassador Tommy Vano knows railgun design intimately. He made another bundle on the contract, donated to the right campaign—he’s moderately liberal but he looks out for himself—and became an ambassador.”
“Who thinks he can run CIA. Christ. So any of the three could be MAGNIT,” said Forsyth. “The admiral is least likely, for reasons of motive and ideology, are we agreed? And there’s another briefing tomorrow. The Acting Director wants Russia cases to be briefed this time.”
“We’re not opening our restricted cases to these fuckers,” Benford said.
“Not smart, Simon,” said Forsyth. “The Director would love to take you down as he walks out the door.”
“I will not brief any of the three on DIVA. She would be dead in a week.” There was silence at the table, until Benford raised his head.
“I need to speak to Nash. May we reconvene in two hours? Thank you.”
* * *
* * *
The conference room cleared quickly. Benford stared at Nash for a full minute. “Please do not utter a word until I finish speaking.” Benford was always telling people not to speak, but the tone in his voice this time told Nash he was waltzing on the rim of the volcano. Benford handed him a cable from Moscow, a translation of a note Dominika had passed to Ricky Walters during a dangerous personal meeting. She had written that the death of Gable had affected her deeply and that she would curtail personal meetings until such time as she could be resupplied with SRAC. She would, of course, inform colleagues whenever she was in the West to arrange meetings then, but no more inside contact.
“I advised you to keep Marty’s death from her, given her attachment to him. I have consulted the Gregorian, Julian, and Coptic calendars and conclude there is not enough time before the next solstice for me to enumerate the ways you have been stupid,” said Benford, baring his teeth and wearing his Fall of Ancient Rome Face, the one the emperor used while watching Christians in the Coliseum being fed to lions. His unblinking eyes held Nate’s, something rarely seen with Benford, and it signaled real danger. “That I acquiesced in letting you develop a romantic attachment to a sensitive asset was an abrogation of my personal and professional standards and a failure on my part as an operational manager.”
This was bad. He had not only fucked up personally, but also, Nate now realized, caused Benford professional vexation. He wondered if the day would end with his being walked out of the Headquarters building, escorted by two crew cut linebackers from the Office of Security in blue blazers who would yank his ID badge off his lapel as the automatic doors slid open to welcome him to a sunny civilian world without spies, and secrets, and without Dominika.
“So now we must contemplate the scale of your fuckup,” continued Benford. “Not only have you resolutely shagged this Agency’s premier penetration of the Kremlin, with all that portends, but you could not, or would not, keep devastating news from her, with the result you now hold in your hands: a cessation of timely reporting from her while a Russian mole is possibly to be named Director of this Agency.” Nate held his breath; he didn’t dare offer an explanation.
“It is an axiom of our profession that this work is experiential; one is not born to it, one only becomes more skillful with time. In the arc of your semen-roiled career, you can boast of notable accomplishments and now, of an elephantine failure. The question I am asking myself is whether redemption is possible.
“Redemption is not automatic; a second chance is given only if merited. God knows we have suffered abject, irredeemable fellows in our service: Gondorf, Angevine, the self-congratulatory directors who only read of operations but never manage them.” Benford scowled in thought. Behind him was a photograph of a snow-blasted wall with an inverted V marked in chalk on the masonry—a Moscow signal site from the 1960s.
“Are you redeemable, Nash?” said Benford. “Or more to the point, are you worth redeeming?” Benford stared at Nate for twenty seconds, testing him, assessing his nerves. “Speak,” he said.
Okay, dickhead, the most important sentence of the rest of your life, thought Nate.
“Simon, Marty Gable once told me an officer in the Service can never achieve greatness unless he or she failed big, at least once. I’m not going to explain my mistakes to you, because you know what the situation is between me and DIVA. I’m committed to her and to this job. You know what I’ve done, and what I can still do, if you give me a chance. You asked whether I’m worth redeeming. Well, Simon, you fucking tell me. But with all respect, if you give up on me, you’re a bigger asshole than everyone thinks you are. I’m ready to go to work and do any job, so you decide. Do I stay or are you kicking me out?” Nate meant what he said, but would the ever-profane Simon swallow the insubordination? Nate thought it probably would come down to what Benford had for lunch that day. Nate waited for the hammer to drop.
Benford ran fingers through already-tousled hair. “You have balls talking to me like that. Jesus, you sound like Al Gore,” he said. “All right, now get out of here and get to work.”