Fellowship of Fear

“Ha! You see what scientific ratiocination can do? Who was he?”

“Come on, I can’t tell you that. You want me to compromise—”

“I know, the need-to-know principle. I didn’t mean who is he, I meant what is he?… Where is he from?”

“From where Marks told you. He’s an American, an NSD intelligence agent, and his assignment was to watch out for you.”

“Well, I wish he’d watched out a little earlier.”

The policeman showed a sudden flash of temper. “You’re lucky he got there when he did. And that he was brave enough to risk his life for you.”

Gideon accepted the rebuke. “You’re right. He saved my life. He wasn’t hurt, was he?”

“Yes, he was hurt,” said John, still angry.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Not seriously, I hope.”

“Bad enough,” John muttered into the nearly empty stein. “About like you. Lacerations, contusions, broken collarbone.” He was showing the concern, universal and understandable, of the policeman for his brother. Gideon kept forgetting he was very much a cop.

“Look, John, I’m sorry for what I said about him getting there earlier. I meant it to be funny and it wasn’t. If our positions had been reversed, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to stop and shoot it out with those guys. I owe him my life. I’d like to thank him for it some time.” It was easy for Gideon to put conviction into his words; he meant every one.

John seemed mollified. “Not much chance of that. I only know his code name myself. What happened was that the searchlight got shot out and the bad guys managed to get to their car. Our guy chased them for a while, but finally wound up going off the road outside of Catania. That’s where he got hurt.”

“Did you know this when we were in Sicily?”

“No, I just found out. I’m breaking all kinds of rules to get the information I’m getting, let alone telling you. But I think NSD has put you in hot water, and I’m not so sure Marks knows what he’s doing. And you sure as hell don’t.”

“Thanks a lot. I appreciate your confidence.”

John smiled. “You know about bones and about languages; I give you that. But you’re operating in a different world—with different rules and very nasty people.”

“I know it, John. Believe me, I’ll take all the help I can get.”

“Are you going to have another beer?” John said.

Gideon shook his head. “I’ve already had two.”

John signaled for a beer and then waited for the waiter to deliver it and leave before he began. “You know the questions you keep asking? If we don’t know what it is that the Russians are trying to find out, and we don’t know why they want to know it, what makes us think they’re looking for anything?”

Gideon nodded. “And why,” he said, “do we think they’d look for it at Sigonella and Torrejon, as opposed to a hundred other bases?”

“Right,” John said. “The answers are pretty simple, it turns out. NSD has been intercepting KGB messages for months that say just that.”

“That they don’t know what they’re looking for, either?”

“No, that they need ‘X’ information from certain bases like Torrejon and Sigonella. It’s the ‘X’ that’s the problem. The messages are in cipher, and the ciphers change all the time. We—that is, our Intelligence cryptographers—have been able to get the gist of most of the messages—where the information is; when it’s needed by. But not the most crucial parts, not the ‘X.”

The Russians seem to be using some sort of special codes for those. It could be they don’t want their own field personnel to know what they’re looking for.“

“Wait a minute, John. That doesn’t make sense. How can you look for something if you don’t know what it is? How would you know when you’ve found it?”

“You’d know when some person you were waiting for—your source, I think they call it—handed you an envelope or a package, or maybe even just gave you some code word or number that you had to transmit back. You wouldn’t have to know what it meant.”

“I’m not following you.”

“That’s because I haven’t given you the kicker yet. Doc, you sure you don’t want another beer?”

“Am I going to need one?”

John’s eyes twinkled momentarily in his familiar smile, then turned sober. “No, you can handle it. The kicker is that there’s somebody from USOC involved.”

“On their side?”

“Yup. The source—the guy that gets the information from the base and passes it on to the Russians—he’s a USOC’r.”

“Holy moley,” said Gideon. “This is beginning to sound like a movie. Maybe I will have that beer.”

Again they waited for the waiter to leave before they continued.