their logistics support extremely helpful. They are very well organised, you know. Quite impressive. Not even the Timekeepers operated on such a scale. There is, in addition, a certain delightful irony to being subsidised by what is essentially a branch of my father's own organisation. And in that, regard, we have certain mutual goals in mind, don't we, Mr. Savino'?'
She glanced at Savino with contempt. 'Steiger said you were a section chief in the 20th Century, but I never made the connection. From the way be talked about you, I never would have believed you were a traitor.'
'A traitor?' said Savmo, in that same, curiously unemo tional tone. 'That's interesting. To what or to whom am I a traitor? To the country? How? I haven't sold the country out. To the agency?' He shook his head. 'I haven't sold the agency out, either. In fact, I've been instrumental in bringing a considerable amount of revenue into the agency. True, I'm not exactly playing by the rules, but the idea of a clandestine intelligence organisation playing by any set of rules is patently absurd. '
'Oh, I see,' said Andre. 'I guess I just didn't understand. And taking part in a plot to assassinate the director of the T. IA., that's nothing more than interdepartmental politics, right?'
'Forrester brought it on himself,' Savino said. 'I'm sure he never paused to consider the complexities that gave rise to an entity such as the Network or the conditions that make its existence necessary. I doubt he ever gave any thought to the consequences involved in dismantling the Network.'
Andre snorted derisively. ''Are you seriously trying to tell me that the Network is a necessary organisation?'
'Absolutely,' said Savino. ''That's something your friend and mine, Creed Steiger, will probably never understand. You probably can't understand it, either. You both seem to share the same delusion. You believe in absolutes. You think there's such a thing as right and wrong. '
''How foolish of us,' Andre said, sarcastically.
Savino shook his head with resignation. 'You people in the First Division always had it easy compared to what we had to do. By the time you got involved, your objectives were clearly delineated. You weren't sent in unless there was a specific situation to be dealt with and you always knew what the parameters of your missions were, thanks to us and the Observers. We did the scout work. We pinpointed the temporal anomalies. We gathered the intelligence that made it possible for you to do your job. '
'And you feel you didn't get enough credit or compensation, is that it?' Andre said.
Savino shook his head. 'No, not me. Maybe some people in the Network feel that way, I can't speak for everybody, but I've never felt like that. In the old days, when Steiger and I were starting out as field agents, we weren't after glory or compensation. Doing our duty was enough. Besides, we were young. We got off on the adventure. But as time went on, the thrill
wore off. And I began to realise something. That what we were doing was like trying to stop a horde of locusts with a fly swatter.
'It was impossible to do the job that we were being asked to do and still play by the rules,' Savino continued. 'The thing was, nobody really cared when it came right down to it. The legislators gave a lot of lip service to 'working for the cause of peace' and 'bringing the Time Wars to a halt,' but when it came time for appropriations for funding temporal defence plants in their districts, guess which way they voted? When it came time to make spending cuts so they could say they were trying to balance but the budget, did they cut appropriations that funded jobs in their own districts? Did they maybe refuse to vote themselves their annual salary increase? No, they cut services everywhere they could, instead. And they kept chipping away at our budget every year. But they still wanted us to keep doing the same job, a job that kept on getting more and more impossible to do. And they wanted us to do it by the book. Even that was so much lip service. Most of them didn't care one way or another, so long as the job got done and nobody got caught.'
'Steiger cares,' she said.
'Yeah, well, he would,' Savino said. 'He wound up working with a man named Carnehan after a few years. Name mean anything to you?'
'Col. Jack Carnehan,' she said. 'Codename: agent Mongoose. '
Savino nodded. 'Yeah. He was the best. A goddamned legend. But crazy. A real danger junkie. And there was one other thing that made him different. He really believed that the good guys always win. '
Savino's lips twisted into a wry, sad little half smile.
'It was amazing, really. In some ways, Carnehan was like a kid who never grew up. He kept on playing the same games, only at some point, the games started to be played for keeps and he just never noticed. Steiger bought into the whole trip all the way. I suppose I can even understand it. Old Jack had a lot of style. Charisma with a capital C. And Creed was young. He fell under the man's spell. '
Savino was staring straight ahead, his eyes slightly unfocused, as he recalled the past. His face and voice were touched with melancholy. It was the first real emotion Andre had seen in him.
'The thing was,' Savino went on, 'Carnehan didn't really play by the rules, either.
He didn't exactly break them, but he sure bent a lot of them all to hell. The same as you commandos do. You call it 'throwing away the book.' Improvising in the field.
Well, hell, that's all we ever did. We threw away the book and improvised.'
'You did a lot more than that,' said Andre. 'You crossed over the line.' She glanced at Drakov and saw him listening with an amused expression on his face.
'Crossed over the line,' Savino repeated, mockingly. 'Where is the line? And who decides where it should be drawn? You? Me? Forrester? Some legislator who's never been on the minus side and hasn't got the faintest idea of what we're up against? Don't you understand? It's all arbitrary.'
'Well, if you believe that, then I guess anything you do becomes justifiable,' said Andre. 'And obviously, you've worked very hard at believing it. You really sold yourself a bill of goods, Savino. I just hope it didn't cost you too much.'
They made a right on West Eleventh Street and pulled up in front of the black double doors of Il Paradiso. Savino draped his jacket over Andre's shoulders, covering the handcuffs, then helped her out of the car. As he took her arm and drew her close, she felt the sharp point of a stiletto digging into her side.
'A nightclub?' said Andre. 'What's this, another Network front?'
'No, actually, this club is operated by the Mafia,' Drakov said.
'The Mafia?' Andre said, with disbelief.
'Sort of a sideline for the local capo,' Drakov explained. 'It allows him to rub elbows with the artsy set and feel sophisticated.' He held the door for them. 'Oh, by the way, most of the employees of this establishment are perfectly ordinary citizens with little or no knowledge of the proprietor's criminal activities.
Attempting to give alarm or otherwise involve any of them would only endanger them needlessly. And you wouldn't want to do that, would you, Miss Cross?'
Savino pricked her slightly with the knife and she winced.
'All right, you've made your point.'
They went inside.
The club wasn't open yet, but the young employees were all bustling about, getting everything ready. There were several bartenders behind the garish, guitar-shaped bar, peeling lemons, slicing limes, setting bottles into the wells and turning on their beer taps. Waitresses were setting up tables and a crew of roadies were up on the elevated stage, stacking amplifiers, assembling a giant drum kit and making sound checks with the mikes. A gorgeous young woman in a black lycra skirt, high heels, a T-shirt with the club's name and logo on it, and moussed and silver-streaked blond hair approached them.
'Excuse me, sir, we won't be open for another.. oh, it's you Mr. Savino.'
'Is. the boss in?' Savino said.
'Yes, sir, Mr. Manelli's upstairs.'
They went up a carpeted flight of steps, past a massive bouncer whose biceps strained the seams of his pink silk tiger print shirt. The bouncer greeted Savino politely, calling him sir. It was clear that while Drakov wasn't known here, Savino was definitely part of the hierarchy.
Upstairs at n Paradiso was where the “in group' congregated. A second bar catered to the celebrities and the beautiful people, who descended to the dance floor now and then to give a thrill to the rabble down below. The private upstairs lounge extended over the tables down below, ending in a railed balcony that overlooked the dance floor and provided an unrestricted view of the stage. Manelli was seated at a table in the corner, surrounded by his
