Connors was black-Irish, a stubborn, bulldog of a man, hard-drinking and fearless. This was his last year with the CIA. He faced compulsory retirement in June. Connors was Chief of the Counterintelligence staff, the most secret, highly compartmentalized branch of the CIA. He had worked his way up through the various intelligence divisions, and had been around in the good old days when CIA agents were the golden boys. Pete Connors had been a golden boy himself. He had taken part in the coup that restored the Shah to the Peacock Throne in Iran, and he had been involved in Operation Mongoose, the attempt to topple Castro’s government, in 1961.
‘After the Bay of Pigs, everything changed,’ Pete mourned. The length of his diatribe usually depended upon how drunk he was. ‘The bleeding hearts attacked us on the front pages of every newspaper in the world. They called us a bunch of lying, sneaking clowns who couldn’t get out of our own way. Some anti-CIA bastard published the names of our agents, and Dick Welch, our Chief of Station in Athens, was murdered.’
Pete Connors had gone through three miserable marriages because of the pressures and secrecy of his work, but as far as he was concerned, no sacrifice was too great to make for his country.
Now, in the middle of the meeting, his face was red with anger. ‘If we let the President get away with his fucking people-to-people programme, he’s going to give the country away. It has to be stopped. We can’t allow –’
Floyd Baker interrupted. ‘The President has been in office less than a week. We’re all here to carry out his policies and –’
‘I’m not here to hand over my country to the damned commies, Mister. The President never even mentioned his plan before his speech. He sprang it on all of us. We didn’t have a chance to get together a rebuttal.’
‘Perhaps that’s what he had in mind,’ Baker suggested.
Pete Connors stared at him. ‘By God, you agree with it!’
‘He’s my President,’ Floyd Baker said firmly. ‘Just as he’s yours.’
Ned Tillingast turned to Stanton Rogers. ‘Connors has a point. The President is actually planning to invite Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, and the other communist countries to send their spies here posing as cultural attachés and chauffeurs and secretaries and maids. We’re spending billions of dollars to guard the back door, and the President wants to throw open the front door.’
General Brooks nodded agreement. ‘I wasn’t consulted, either. In my opinion, the President’s plan could damn well destroy this country.’
Stanton Rogers said, ‘Gentlemen, some of us may disagree with the President, but let’s not forget that the people voted for Paul Ellison to run this country.’ His eyes flicked across the men seated around him. ‘We’re all part of the President’s team and we have to follow his lead and support him in every way we can.’ His words were followed by a reluctant silence. ‘All right, then. The President wants an immediate update on the current situation in Romania. Everything you have.’
‘Including our covert stuff?’ Pete Connors asked.
‘Everything. Give it to me straight. What’s the situation in Romania with Alexandros Ionescu?’
‘Ionescu’s riding high in the saddle,’ Ned Tillingast replied. ‘Once he got rid of the Ceausescu family, all of Ceausescu’s allies were assassinated, jailed, or exiled. Since he seized power, Ionescu’s been bleeding the country dry. The people hate his guts.’
‘What about the prospects for a revolution?’
Tillingast said, ‘Ah. That’s rather interesting. Remember a couple of years back when Marin Groza almost toppled the Ionescu government?’
‘Yes. Groza got out of the country by the skin of his butt.’
‘With our help. Our information is that there’s a popular groundswell to bring him back. Groza would be good for Romania and, if he got in, it would be good for us. We’re keeping a close watch on the situation.’
Stanton Rogers turned to the Secretary of State. ‘Do you have that list of candidates for the Romanian post?’
Floyd Baker opened a leather attaché case, took some papers from it, and handed a copy to Rogers. ‘These are our top prospects. They’re all qualified career diplomats. Each one of them has been cleared. No security problems, no financial problems, no embarrassing skeletons in the closet.’
As Stanton Rogers took the list, the Secretary of State added, ‘Naturally, the State Department favours a career diplomat, rather than a political appointee. Someone who’s been trained for this kind of job. In this situation, particularly. Romania is an extremely sensitive post. It has to be handled very carefully.’
‘I agree.’ Stanton Rogers rose to his feet. ‘I’ll discuss these names with the President and get back to you. He’s anxious to fill the appointment as quickly as possible.’
As the others got up to leave, Ned Tillingast said, ‘Stay here, Pete. I want to talk to you.’
When Tillingast and Connors were alone, Tillingast said, ‘You came on pretty strong, Pete.’
‘But I’m right,’ Pete Connors said stubbornly. ‘The President is trying to sell out the country. What are we supposed to do?’
‘Keep your mouth shut.’
‘Ned, we’re trained to find the enemy and kill him. What if the enemy is behind our lines – sitting in the Oval Office?’
‘Be careful. Be very careful.’
Tillingast had been around longer than Pete Connors. He had been a member of Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS before it became the CIA. He, too, hated what the bleeding hearts in Congress were doing to the organization he loved. In fact, there was a deep split within the ranks of the CIA between the hard-liners and those who believed the Russian bear could be tamed into a harmless pet. We have to fight for every single dollar, Tillingast thought. In Moscow, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti – the KGB – trains a thousand agents at a time.
Ned Tillingast had recruited Pete Connors out of college, and Connors had turned out to be one of the best. But in the last few years, Connors had become a cowboy – a little too independent, a little too quick on the trigger. Dangerous.
‘Pete – have you heard anything about an underground organization calling itself Patriots for Freedom?’ Tillingast asked.
Connors frowned. ‘No. Can’t say that I have. Who are they?’
‘So far they’re just a rumour. All I have is smoke. See if you can get a lead on them.’
‘Will do.’
An hour later, Pete Connors was making a phone call from a public booth at Hain’s Point.
‘I have a message for Odin.’
‘This is Odin,’ General Oliver Brooks said.
Riding back to the office in his limousine, Stanton Rogers opened the envelope containing the names of the candidates for the ambassadorship and studied them. It was an excellent
