Extraordinary Powers

by Joseph Finder

  Hal took the two of us out to lunch at Maison Robert, on School Street, in Old City Hall. (Molly and I have dined there exactly once since then, when I proposed to her; her reply was that she’d “think about it.”) There was a lot of booze, a lot of laughing. Hal told another off-color joke, and Molly blushed.

  “You two should get together,” he said sotto voce to Molly, but not sotto enough that I didn’t overhear. “He’s great.”

  She blushed redder still, almost scarlet.

  We were both obviously attracted to each other, but it wasn’t to be for several years.

  * * *

  “It’s good to see you again,” Alexander Truslow said. He, Bill Stearns, and I sat at a banquette at the Ritz-Carlton the next day. “But I must confess: I’m a bit surprised. When we met at Hal’s funeral, I distinctly sensed a lack of interest on your part.”

  Truslow was wearing another elegant bespoke suit, rumpled as usual. The only rakish element was his bow tie, which was small, neat, navy blue, and awkwardly tied. I was wearing my best suit, a muted olive-gray glen check from the Andover Shop in Harvard Square; I suppose I wanted to impress the old fellow.

  He fixed me with a mournful look as he buttered his fresh-baked roll.

  “I assume you know about my brief intelligence career,” I said.

  He nodded. “Bill has briefed me. I understand there was a tragedy. And that you were completely exonerated.”

  “So I’m told, yes,” I murmured.

  “But it was a scarring, terrible time.”

  “It was a time I don’t much talk about,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. It’s the reason you quit the Company, isn’t that right?”

  “It’s the reason,” I corrected him, “I quit that entire line of work. For good. I made a solemn vow to my wife.”

  He put down his buttered roll without taking a bite. “And to yourself.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then we must speak frankly. Are you at all familiar with what my firm does?”

  “Vaguely,” I said.

  “Well, we’re an international consulting firm. I guess that’s the best way to put it. One of our clients, as I’m sure you know, is—your former employer.”

  “Which badly needs consulting,” I said.

  Truslow shrugged, smiled. “No doubt. You understand I’m speaking now within the bounds of attorney-client privilege.”

  I nodded, and he continued. “For various reasons, they at times desire the help of an outside firm located well outside the Beltway. For whatever reason—maybe because I was with the Agency so long, I was almost part of the furniture—the powers that be at Langley trust me to do the odd job for them.”

  I took a roll, which was by now cold, and bit into it. I noticed he was carefully avoiding saying “CIA.”

  “Oh, really,” Stearns said, putting a hand on Truslow’s shoulder. “Such ridiculous modesty.” To me, he added: “You know Alex is on the short list to be named director.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “There must be a serious scarcity of qualified candidates,” Truslow said. “We’ll see what happens. As I was saying, Truslow Associates is engaged in a number of projects that Langley prefers, for one reason or another, not to be directly involved in,” he said.

  Stearns put in: “You know how congressional oversight and such can gum up the work of intelligence. Especially nowadays, with the Russian thing out of the picture.”

  I smiled politely. This was a particularly common strain of conversation within the Agency, usually among those who wanted CIA to be liberated to do whatever the hell it wanted, like use exploding cigars on Fidel and assassinate third-world dictators.

  “All right,” Truslow said, lowering his voice. “The ‘Russian thing,’ as Bill puts it—the collapse of the Soviet Union—created a number of unique problems for us.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Without an enemy, what’s CIA for? And then, who needs the Corporation?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “There are plenty of enemies, and unfortunately we’ll always need a CIA. A reformed CIA, a better CIA. Congress may not realize that now, but in time it will. And as you know, CIA is retooling, concentrating far more on economic and corporate espionage. Defending American companies from those foreign countries that seek to steal their industrial secrets. Which is where the real battles of the future lie. Are you aware that shortly before his death, Harrison Sinclair established contact with the last chairman of the former KGB?”

  “Through Sheila McAdams,” I said.

  He paused, his chin up, surprised. “That’s right. But apparently Hal was in Switzerland too. Both he and Sheila met with Orlov. Think back to the death throes of the Soviet empire—the failed coup d’état attempt of August 1991. At that point the old guard knew the game was up. The Communist Party bureaucracy was already in a shambles, the Red Army had turned tail and was now supporting Yeltsin—then seen as the only hope for preserving Russia, at least. And the KGB—”

  “Which,” I interrupted, “engineered the coup.”

  “Yes. Engineered, masterminded the coup—though it’s nothing to be proud of, the way it was bungled. The KGB knew that in weeks, perhaps months, it was going to be shut down.

  “It was at that point that the Agency began to watch the Lubyanka especially closely. Watching to see whether it would accept its inevitable death sentence—”

  “Or rage against the dying of the light,” I said.

  “Well put,” Truslow said. “In any case, it was at that point that the Agency began to detect an unusually heavy shipment of diplomatic ‘bags’—truckloads of mail sacks and cartons, to be exact—moving from Moscow to the Soviet embassy in Geneva. The recipient, and requisitioner, was the KGB’s station chief.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Stearns said, and arose. “I’ve got to get back to the office.” He shook Truslow’s hand and departed. We were now, I realized, getting down to it.

  “Do we know what was in the shipments?”

  “Actually, no,” Truslow said. “Something quite valuable, I imagine.”

  “Which is why you want my help.”

  Truslow nodded. He finally took a bite of his roll.

  “How, exactly?”

  “Investigation.”

  I paused, considered. “Why me?”

  “Because—” He lowered his voice, and continued: “Because I can’t trust the boys at Langley. I need an outsider—someone who knows the ways of the Agency but is no longer connected.” He paused for a long time, as if wondering how frankly he could speak. Finally he shrugged. “I’m in a bind: I don’t know who in the Agency I can trust anymore.”

  “Meaning what?”

  He hesitated. “Corruption is rampant at Langley, Ben. You’ve heard stories, I’m sure—”

  “Some, yes.”

  “Well, it’s much worse than you can imagine. It’s at the point of criminality—of outright rogue action.”

  I recalled Ed Moore’s warning: “There’s turmoil in the Agency.… A dreadful power struggle … Enormous sums of money changing hands…” At the time, it seemed the overheated, irrational doomsayings of an old man who’d been in the business too long.

  “I need specifics,” I said.

  “And you’ll have specifics,” Truslow said. “More than you’ll care to know about. There’s an organization—a sub rosa group, a council of elders … But we mustn’t talk of these things here.”

  Truslow’s face had flushed. He shook his head.

  “And what,” I asked, “did Hal Sinclair have to do with these shipments?”

  “Well, that’s the mystery. No one knows why he met with Orlov, why he was so secretive about it. Or what was transacted, exactly. And then came word—rumors—that Hal embezzled a good deal of money—”

  “Embezzled? Hal? You believe these rumors?”

  “I’m not saying I believe them, Ben. I certainly don’t want to believe them. Knowing Hal, I’m sure that—whatever the reason was
that he met secretly with Orlov in Switzerland—it wasn’t out of criminal intent. But whatever he was up to, there’s good reason to believe that he was killed because of it.”

  Had he seen the photograph Moore had given me? I wondered. But before I could ask, he resumed: “The point is this: In a matter of days the United States Senate is about to commence hearings into the widespread corruption within CIA.”

  “Public?”

  “Yes. Some sessions will no doubt be closed to the press. But the Senate Select Subcommittee on Intelligence has heard enough of these rumors to look into it.”

  “And Hal is implicated, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Not publicly. Not yet. I don’t even think the Senate has heard these tales. They have heard only that a good deal of money is missing. And so Langley internal affairs has hired me to look into this. To see what Hal Sinclair was up to in the last days of his life. To find out why he was killed. To find the missing money, to find out where it went, who was involved. The investigation must not be done in-house—the corruption is too rampant. Thus, Truslow Associates.”

  “How much missing money are we talking about?”

  He shrugged. “A fortune. Let me leave it at that for now.”

  “And you need me…”

  “I need you to find out what Hal was doing, meeting with Orlov.” He looked up at me, his brown eyes bloodshot, moist. “Ben, you still have the perfect right to say no. I’ll understand. Given, especially, what you’ve been through. But from everything I’m told, you were one of the best in the field.”

  I shrugged, flattered and appreciative, but not sure how to reply. Surely he’d heard tales of my “recklessness.”

  “You and I have a lot in common,” he said. “I could tell that about you from the start. You’re a straight shooter. You gave the Agency your all, but you always felt it could be better than it was. I’ll tell you something: in all the years I’ve been with the Agency, I’ve seen its fundamental purpose jeopardized by ideologues and zealots on the left and the right. Angleton once said something to me: he said, Alex, you’re one of the best we have—but the paradoxical thing is, what makes you so good at the work is the fact that on some level you disapprove of it.” Truslow laughed ruefully. “At the time I denied it till I was red in the face. But in the end I realized he was right. My gut tells me you’re a similar creature, Ben. We do what we think has to be done, but there’s a part of us that stands aloof in disapproval.” He took a deep sip from his water glass and smiled to himself, seemingly embarrassed that he’d gone on so.

  He slid the wine list across the tablecloth toward me, as if inviting me to make a selection. “Could you glance at this, Ben? Pick out something nice.”

  I opened the leather booklet and looked through it quickly. “I like the Grand-Puy-Ducasse Pauillac quite a bit,” I said.

  Truslow smiled and took the wine list back. “What was on the top of page three?”

  I thought for a second, brought the picture to memory. “A Stag’s Leap Merlot, ’82.”

  Truslow nodded.

  “But I’m not much into performing like a circus animal,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I apologize. That’s a very rare gift. How I envy you.”

  “It allowed me to coast through any class at Harvard in which memorization was crucial—which included English, history, the history of art…”

  “Well, you see, Ben, your … eidetic memory is a real advantage in work like this, an assignment that might well involve sequences of codes and the like. If, that is, you’re still willing to accept. Incidentally, I’m completely amenable to the terms you and Bill worked out.”

  The terms I extorted, he meant, but was too polite to say. “Uh, Alex, when Bill and I discussed those terms, I had no idea what you wanted me for.”

  “That’s quite all right—”

  “No, let me finish. If I understand you correctly—that what this comes down to is clearing Hal Sinclair’s name—then I certainly have no intention to be mercenary.”

  Truslow frowned, his expression stern. “Mercenary? For God’s sake, Ben, I know about your financial plight. At the very least, this assignment will give me the excuse to help you out. If you’d like, I can even put you on our payroll as well.”

  “Thanks, but not necessary.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “I’m glad you’re on board.”

  We shook hands, as if ritually consummating the deal. “Listen, Ben, my wife, Margaret, and I are going to our place in New Hampshire tonight. Opening it up for the spring. We’d love it if you and Molly could have supper with us—nothing fancy, barbecue or whatever. Meet the grandkids.”

  “Sounds nice,” I said.

  “Tomorrow possible?”

  Tomorrow was hectic, but I could clear some time. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  For the rest of the afternoon I could barely concentrate. Could Molly’s father seriously have been involved in some sort of conspiracy with the former head of the KGB? Was it possible that he had actually embezzled money—“a fortune,” as Truslow put it? It made no sense.

  Yet as an explanation for his murder … it did make a certain sense, did it not?

  A knot of tension had formed in my stomach and evidently had no plans to untie itself.

  The phone buzzed; Darlene announced that Molly was on the phone.

  “What time are we meeting Ike and Linda?” She was calling from some noisy corridor in the hospital.

  “Eight, but I’ll cancel if you like. Under the circumstances.”

  “No. I—I want to.”

  “They’ll understand, Mol.”

  “Don’t cancel. It’d be good to go out.”

  There was, thankfully, no time to brood that afternoon. My four o’clock arrived punctually: Mel Kornstein was a rotund man in his early fifties, who wore too-stylish, expensive Italian clothes and his tinted aviator-style glasses always slightly askew. He had the distracted, unfocused look of a genius, which I believe he was. Kornstein had made a tidy fortune from inventing a computer game called SpaceTron, which you’ve no doubt heard of. If you haven’t, basically it’s a chase game, in which you, the pilot of a small spacecraft, are supposed to elude the evil spacecraft intent on destroying you and then planet Earth. This may sound silly, but the game is a marvel of computer technology. It’s all done in 3-D so lifelike you’re really convinced you’re there—you really feel as if the comets and meteors and enemy spaceships and all that are coming right at you. This is accomplished by means of an ingenious software driver device Kornstein patented, a real breakthrough. Add that to his patented voice simulator that barks commands at you—“Too far to the left!” or “You’re getting too close!”—and you have an explosion of color and sound, all on your home computer. And Kornstein’s company had revenues of something like a hundred million dollars a year.

  But now another software company had released a product so similar to SpaceTron that Mel Kornstein’s revenues had plummeted. Needless to say, he wanted to do something about it.

  He sank into the leather chair at the side of my desk, radiating darkest despair. We chatted for a few moments, but he was not in an expansive mood. He handed over to me a box containing the rival game, which was called SpaceTime. I popped it into my desktop computer, booted it up, and was astonished to see how close a copy it was.

  “These guys didn’t even try to be original, did they?” I said.

  Kornstein removed his eyeglasses and polished them on a shirttail. “I want to shut the fucking bastards down,” he said.

  “Let’s slow down a minute here,” I said. “I’m going to have to make an independent determination as to how close the patent infringement is.”

  “I want to screw the bastards,” he said.

  “All in good time. Let’s go through each of the claims in the patent, one at a time.”

  “It’s identical,” Kornstein said, putting his eyeglasses back on, still askew. “Am
I going to have a case here, or what?”

  “Well, computer games are patentable on the same principles that govern, let’s say, board games. You’re really patenting the relationship between the physical elements and the concepts behind them, the way they interact.”

  “I just want to screw ’em.”

  I nodded. “We’ll do our best,” I said.

  * * *

  Focaccia was one of those fabulously hip, vaguely offensive, yuppie northern Italian restaurants in the Back Bay that serve a lot of arugula and radicchio, where all the patrons are young and beautiful and wear black and work in advertising. Between the clamor of voices and the thundering white man’s rap music, the place is deafeningly loud, too, which seems to be another requirement of pretentious northern Italian restaurants located in urban American settings.

  Molly was late, but my closest friend, Ike, and his wife, Linda, were already shouting at each other across the table in what looked like a vicious marital argument but was just an attempt to communicate. Isaac Cowan and I had gone to law school together, where he specialized in defeating me at tennis. He’s now got some corporate law job that’s so unspeakably dull, even he can’t bring himself to talk about it, but I know it has something to do with reinsurance. Linda, who was seven months pregnant at the time, is a shrink who mostly treats children. Both of them are tall, freckled, and redheaded—unnervingly similar in physical type—and I find them both easy to be with.

  They were saying something about his mother coming for a visit. Then Ike turned to me and mentioned a Celtics game we had gone to last week. We talked a bit about work, about Linda’s pregnancy (she wanted to ask Molly something about a test her ob-gyn was forcing upon her), about my backhand (virtually nonexistent), and eventually about Molly’s father.

  Ike and Linda had always seemed a little uncomfortable talking about Molly’s famous father, never sure when they were prying, not wanting to seem too curious about him. Ike knew a little about my work for CIA, though I had made it clear I preferred not to say much. He knew, too, that I had been married before, that my first wife had been killed in an accident, and not much else. Naturally, that limited our conversation at times. They expressed their condolences, asked how Molly was doing. I knew I couldn’t say anything about what had preoccupied me of late, certainly nothing about Hal Sinclair’s murder.