'And you were marked for death, too,' said Grover.
'Trouble is, a mistake was made. Some poor bloke named Mark Ryder happened to look like you at the precise time and date when you were supposed to be leaving your building. They bought him instead Thomas sat reflectively in silence for several moments. It was all so neat and uncomplicated once the pieces fit together. Thomas had the sense of having watched his father wear a mask for his entire lifetime, Thomas knowing the man yet not really knowing him. If these three people, confessed killers, could be believed.
Hunter was at the window, Glover fidgeted with his fingers, and Whiteside stared relentlessly at Thomas.
'Who'd want to kill me?' Thomas Daniels finally asked almost rhetorically. He could see Hunter smirk.
'I knew nothing about any of this ' 'You're blind' said Whiteside.
'Who'd want to kill you? You've been stalked for weeks now.' Whiteside's features twisted into a scowl.
'You mean you really don't see it?'
'Leslie,' Thomas said, half as a question, half knowing the answer.
'They'll have you under a microscope;' snorted Whiteside.
'They'll examine you from every angle. Find out what you know or whom you might have told. Then when you least expect it, wham!'
Whiteside slapped his palms together for emphasis. A resounding clap filled the room.
'Wham,' he said, 'you'll be at your own funeral! I don't believe that you can't see it for yourself.'
Thomas's ashen appearance indicated the answer to Whiteside.
No, Thomas didn't see it for himself.
'Women are lethal in games like this' said Whiteside hatefully.
'I suppose she's arranging for a nice hot bed for you at night. Keep you on her side,' he said.
'Keep you tired and busy at nights so you can't start thinking. As long as she's got you locked in between her legs, your brains will be on vacation' Thomas looked at the three men who surrounded him. He wanted to stand and attack them, rise up and strike out at them, just as they had struck out at his father and Leslie. But how could he disbelieve them?
'Cute little bird, too' grunted Grover.
'Probably a nice warm one on the mattress, all right. Seems a shame.
But we're going to have to wring that little bird's neck.'
Hunter plainly relished the thought.
'There's one other thing' said Thomas, directing his attention back to his tormentor, Whiteside.
'Do tell us.'
'The last time I saw you' said Thomas, 'in the churchyard in London, you left me with a suggestion.'
Remembering, Whiteside allowed a coy grin to cross his face.
'I told you to give some thought to-' '- to whoever was running Arthur Sandler. If Sandler was a spy, you said, he had to have had a superior.'
'That's right' said Whiteside. He let a moment pass as he gathered the proper words.
'I've always known who the superior was.
The question was,' he intoned slowly, 'whether you knew. Or whether you could find out.'
'My father,' said Thomas coldly Those two words hung in the air for what, to Thomas Daniels, seemed like an eternity. He felt the six other eyes on him, almost Xraying him. And he recognized now their attitude toward him all along. In their own way, they'd been as perplexed with him as he'd been with them. They'd had his father pegged as a spy, of which sort Thomas still didn't know. But what the men in this room had wondered all along-and probably still wondered, Thomas concluded -was how much the spy father had passed on to the attorney son.
Whiteside finally chipped the silence.
'What you lack in speed, Mr. Daniels' he said, 'you regain in diligence. Of course, the question we now' must ask is the question.'
'Sorry?'
'We know,' said Whiteside with feline smugness, 'that your father was a spy. A specialist in recruitment, at that. What we must know is, for whom?'
'For whom?' Thomas repeated in perplexed tones. And for whom?'
'Do you speak any Russian, Mr. Daniels?' asked Hunter flatly.
'What?'
'How about the Cyrillic alphabet?' asked Grover.
'Know it?'
'Where would I have learned it?' asked Thomas angrily.
All three men shrugged. Whiteside, his eyes fixed on Daniels, spoke bluntly.
'At your father's knee, perhaps?'
Daniels was shaking his head, failing to comprehend.
'What are you angling at?' he demanded.
'What the hell are you people after?'
Whiteside sighed.
'The extent to which we've been compromised he intoned.
'That's what we want to know. That's what you have to tell us.'
'You're not making sense 'Oh, no?' Whiteside shot back, the white eyebrows rising quickly.
'Here, then!'
He explained.
Many of the most enterprising intelligence networks of the Second World War, said Whiteside, had been joint Anglo-American endeavors. That was thirty years past, of course, and such past history would hardly have mattered were it not for one simple fact: 'A proven network is a proven network' Whiteside pontificated, and good, sound alliances aren't tossed away for the fun of it.
They're kept intact. Sometimes for twenty or thirty years. Even longer.'
Thomas listened, uncomfortable under the gaze of Hunter and Grover.
'Do you see the' problem inquired Whiteside.
'Your father was a recruiter. He headed a network. The network functioned through the war, into the postwar period, and was intact at the time of his death ' 'Intact?' asked Thomas, almost incredulous.
'Yes, intact,' said Whiteside intensely, his voice low and serious.
'Intact, but very, very rotten from within. Sandler was no friend of Great Britain, you know that by now. Ergo, he was no friend of the Anglo-American alliance',I follow.'
'He was a double, damn it!' Whiteside erupted.
'And we want to know who else was running him. Maybe the Huns themselves recruited him after the war. Maybe our friends the Bolsheviks to the East, or maybe he was a double cross by some moralistic cowboys in Washington. In any event, he wasn't on our side in any way. Yet he was in a network we took part in.' Whiteside nodded toward Grover, his own free-lancer. Whiteside drew a breath and concluded.
'We find out who Sandler's ultimate allegiance was to, and we find out how much our postwar networks have been compromised.'
'That simple?' asked Daniels, knowing it wasn't.
'Almost,' responded Whiteside with equal cynicism.
'Aren't you missing something?'
'What?'
'You're more concerned with finding Sandler's control than with finding Sandler. Why?'
'Last time we spoke,' Whiteside reminded him,
'I said there were things I couldn't tell you. Not yet. That answer is one of those things. At the proper time, you'll be informed.'
Daniels grimaced.
'And yet Sandler, if you found him, could answer your questions for you.'
Whiteside shrugged noncommittally. Thomas frowned.
'Perhaps ' Whiteside offered, his gaze squarely upon the younger man before him.
'But someone else, someone in this room, might also be able to answer a key question, something which
