Legends

“Being DDO of an intelligence entity that has recast itself as a risk-averse high-tech social club is not a cake walk,” she said. “There are people at Langley who do nothing but stare at satellite downloads from morning to night, as if a photograph could tell you what an adversary intends to do with what he has. Hell of a way to run an espionage agency. They’ve slashed our budget, the president doesn’t have the time or the curiosity to read the overnight briefing book we prepare for him, the liberal press climbs all over us for our occasional fumbles. It goes without saying we can’t gloat about our occasional successes—”

The Chinese waitress wearing a tight skirt slit up one thigh set the drinks on the table. Watching the girl slink away in the mirror reminded Dante of Martin’s late lamented Chinese girlfriend, Minh. “Do you have any?” he asked Quest.

Crunching on chips of ice, she’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Have any what?” she inquired.

“Successes.”

“One or two or three.”

“Like the Prigorodnaia business,” Dante murmured.

Quest’s eyes hardened. “What Prigorodnaia business are you talking about?”

“Christsake, Fred, don’t play the innocent,” Dante snapped. “We know what happened to Jozef Kafkor. We know the DDO provided seed money to the Armenian used-car dealer so he could corner the Russian aluminum market. We know how Ugor-Zhilov, a.k.a the Oligarkh, ingratiated himself with Yeltsin, arranging for the publication of his book, organizing his personal bodyguard, replenishing his bank account. Once installed in Yeltsin’s inner circle, the Oligarkh nudged him into freeing up prices and privatizing the industrial base of the defunct Soviet Union. We know he lured Yeltsin into attacking Chechnya just when the Red Army was recovering from the Afghanistan debacle. We know that for a period of years in the early nineties the individual running Russia from behind the scene was none other than … Fred Astaire. We know she was running it into the ground so that the new Russia rising from the ashes of the Soviet Union couldn’t compete with America.”

The blood seemed to seep from Quest’s cheeks until the only color remaining came from the smears of blush she’d applied during the shuttle flight from Washington. She spooned another chunk of ice into her mouth. “Who’s we?” she demanded.

“Why, I would have thought that was obvious. There’s Martin Odum, the one-time CIA field agent turned detective who specializes in collecting mahjongg debts. There’s Lincoln Dittmann, the Civil War buff who actually met the poet Whitman. And last but certainly not least, there’s yours truly, Dante Pippen, the Irish dynamiter from Castletownbere.”

Quest snickered bitterly. “That business of Lincoln claiming to have been at the battle of Fredericksburg—it was a brilliant piece of theater. It had us all fooled—the shrink, me, the committee that met from time to time to review the situation, to decide whether to terminate your contract or your life. We all assumed that Martin Odum was off his rocker. Teach me to give someone the benefit of the doubt.”

Nursing his whisky, Dante shrugged a shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, Lincoln was at the battle of Fredericksburg.”

Quest raised an eyebrow; she didn’t appreciate having her leg pulled. “Why’d you need to see me, Dante? What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until you had a chance to come down to Langley?”

“We’ve taken out life insurance, we’ve taped what you don’t want the world to know—the Prigorodnaia operation; how you provided the keys to Kastner’s safe house so the Oligarkh’s people could break in and murder him; how you told them about Martin’s beehives, which led to the death of the Chinese girl, Minh. Add to that the sniper who tried to kill Martin in Hebron. Not to mention the Czechs who gave Martin a car and a pistol in Prague and told him to run for it. These attempts on Martin’s life had your prints all over them.”

“That’s nonsense. Knowing what I know, the last thing I would have done is charge a pistol with dummy Parabellums.”

Dante said, “How did you know the handgun was loaded with dummy Parabellums?”

Quest smudged a fingertip dabbing at the mascara on an eyelid. Dante took her failure to answer for an answer. “Listen up, Fred, if any one of us dies of anything but old age, the tapes will be duplicated and distributed to every member of the Congressional Oversight Subcommittee, also to selected journalists in the liberal press who report on your occasional fumbles.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Dante raised his chin and looked Quest in the eye. “If you think that, all you need to do is call our bluff.”

“Listen, Dante, we all came of age in the cold war. We all fought the good fight. I’m sure we can work something out.”