Dragonfly

in Thailand, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. He operated easily and well in Asia. His fastidious personal habits, his compulsive neatness, appealed to the middle-and upper-class Asians who were his contacts, for many of them still thought of Westerners as quasi-barbarians who bathed too seldom and carried their linen-wrapped snot in their hip pockets. Likewise, they appreciated Canning's Byzantine mind, which, while it was complex and rich and full of classic oriental cunning, was ordered like a vast file cabinet. Asia was, he felt, the perfect place for him to spend the next decade and a half in the completion of a solid, even admirable career.

However, in spite of his success, the agency took him off his Asian assignment when he was beginning his fifth year there. Back home he was attached to the Secret Service at the White House, where he acted as a special consultant for Presidential trips overseas. He helped to define the necessary security precautions in those countries that he knew all too well.

McAlister chaired these Secret Service strategy conferences, and it was here that Canning and he had met and become friends of a sort. They had kept in touch even after McAlister resigned from the White House staff — and now they were working together again. And again McAlister was the boss, even though his own experience in the espionage circus was far less impressive than Canning's background there. But then, McAlister would be boss wherever he worked; he was born to it. Canning could no more resent that than he could resent the fact that grass was green instead of purple. Besides, the director of the agency had to deal daily with politicians, a chore of which Canning wanted no part.

“Smells good,” McAlister said, stirring cream into his steaming coffee.

Canning had set the table as if he were serving a full meal, everything properly arranged, every item squared off from the nearest other item: placemats, paper napkins, silverware, cups and saucers, a platter of rolls, a butter dish, butter knives, a cream pitcher, sugar bowl, and sugar spoon. He poured his own coffee and set the percolator on a wrought-iron coaster. “The raisin-filled buns are pretty good.” He buttered a roll, took a few bites, washed it down with coffee, and waited to hear why McAlister had come to see him.

“I was afraid you might have gone away for your vacation and I'd have trouble locating you,” McAlister said.

“I've traveled enough over the last twenty-five years.”

McAlister buttered another piece of roll and said, “I was sorry to hear about you and Irene.”

Canning nodded.

“Divorce or separation?”

“Separation. For now. Later on — probably a divorce.”

“I'm sorry.”

Canning said nothing.

“I hope it was amicable.”

“It was.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Twenty-seven years.”

“Traumatic after all that time.”

“Not if there's no love involved on either side.”

McAlister's blue eyes looked through him as if they were X-ray devices. “I tried to reach you at your house in Falls Church, but Irene sent me here. How long has it been?”

“We split eight weeks ago. I've been renting this apartment since the middle of August.”

“The children?”

“Mike's twenty-six. Terri's twenty. So, no custody fight.”

“And there's no animosity between you and them?”

“They aren't taking sides.” Canning put down his half-eaten roll and wiped his fingers on his napkin. “Let's stop the psychoanalysis. You need me. You want to know if I'm emotionally stable enough to handle a new job. I am. The separation's for the best. And a new assignment, something more interesting than this White House post, would be a tonic.”

McAlister studied him for a moment. “All right.” He leaned forward, his arms on the table, and folded his hands around his coffee cup as if to warm his fingers. “You must know some of the things that I've uncovered since I came to the agency.”

“I read the papers.”

“Has any of it shocked you?”

“No. Anyone with a trace of common sense has known for years that the agency's a haven for crackpots. There's a lot of work the agency has to do. Most of it's dirty, ugly, and dangerous. But necessary. It isn't easy to find normal, sensible, decent men to do it.”

“But you're normal, sensible, and decent.”

“I like to think so. I wouldn't get involved in some of these crazy schemes you've unearthed lately. But there are agents who want to get involved, adolescents playing out the cheapest masturbatory fantasies. But they aren't just on the agency. They're everywhere these days.” A fierce, prolonged gust of wind drove rain against the window. The droplets burst and streamed like tears. Or like colorless blood, a psychic intimation of blood to come, Canning thought. “These lunatics got into the agency because they had the proper politics. Back when I joined up, loyalty mattered more than philosophy. But for the last fifteen years, until you came along, applicants who were solid middle-of-the-road independents, like me, were rejected out of hand. A moderate is the same as a leftist to these nuts. Hell, I know men who think Nixon was a Communist dupe. We've been employing neo-Nazis for years. So the newspaper stories don't shock or even surprise me. I just hope the agency can survive the housecleaning.”

“It will. Because, as you said, we need it.”

“I suppose,” Canning said.

“Did you know any of the agents who have been indicted?”

“I've heard some of the names. I never worked with them.”

“Well,” McAlister said, “what you've read in the newspapers isn't half as shocking as what you'll never read there.” He drank the last of his coffee. “I've always believed in the public's right to know…”

“But?”

Smiling ruefully, McAlister said, “But since I've learned what the agency's been doing, I've tempered that opinion somewhat. If the worst were made public during our lifetime, the country would be shaken to its roots, blasted apart. The Kennedy assassinations… The most hideous crimes… They'd riot in the streets.” He wasn't smiling any longer. “It wasn't the agency alone. There are other threads. Powerful politicians. Mafiosi. Some of the richest, most socially prominent men in the country. If the people knew how far off the rails this nation went for more than a decade, we'd be ripe for a demagogue of the worst kind.”

For the first time since he'd opened the front door and seen McAlister in the hall, Canning realized that the man had changed. At a glance he looked healthy, even robust. But he'd lost ten pounds. His face was more deeply lined than when he'd first assumed the directorship. Behind the aura of youthful energy, he was weary and drawn. His eyes, as blue and clear as they'd ever been, were filled with the sorrow of a man who has come home to find his wife happily gang-banging a group of strange men. In McAlister's case the wife was not a woman but a country.

“It's one of these other horrors, something besides the assassinations, that's brought you here.” Canning poured more coffee.

“You don't seem surprised by what I've told you.”

“Of course I'm not surprised. Anyone who reads the Warren Report has to be a fool to believe it.”

“I guess I was a fool for years,” McAlister said. “But now I need a first-rate agent I can trust. A dozen good men are available. But you're the only one I'm even half sure isn't a Committeeman.”

Frowning, Canning said, “A what?”

“We've discovered that within the CIA there's another organization, illegal and illicit, a tightly knit cell of men who call themselves The Committee. True Believers, fanatical anti-Communists.”

“Masturbating adolescents.”

“Yes, but they're dangerous. They have connections with extreme right-wing, paramilitary groups like the Minutemen. They're friendly with certain Mafiosi, and they're not short of patrons among men in New York banking