was more difficult than one thinks. Besides countless obligations, his life was always in danger, always.
‘What did you say this agent calls himself?’
‘Nestor, Your Holiness.’
‘Nestor, yes.’
‘Have you heard his name, Your Holiness?’
‘No, no.’
The pope walked slowly to the red sofa and looked at Marcinkus.
‘A month. We’ll talk again.’
‘Naturally, Your Holiness.’
Marcinkus got up, kissed the ring of the Fisherman, and left the office.
The pope let him leave in silence and remained silent for some time. Later, he got on his knees in the middle of the office and kissed the rosary he always carried with him.
‘Help me, Mary.’
15
Geoffrey Barnes was the CIA man in Europe. This was the simple way of explaining countless responsibilities and tasks. The specific name for the imposing position is the Director of Operations and Manager of Intelligence for Continental Europe. The principal headquarters was in the city of London in a perfectly normal building, very central, and for which we cannot give an address for reasons of national security. Thus, we designate it the Center of Operations only.
Geoffrey Barnes had hundreds of people in his charge spread over the continent, from subdirectors to department chiefs, agents, technicians, and collaborators, all on Uncle Sam’s salary. Their pockets were filled with money to keep them dancing to his tune. He who can, does, and he who cannot, quits. Like it or not, the best secret information always came from this side of the Atlantic, to be sent later to be expurgated in Langley, a place that can be publicized without fear of reprisals since it is of public, and even historic, knowledge. Barnes had only two superiors in the chain of command, the director general in Langley and the president of the United States. There was also intelligence-sharing among other agencies, in particular Mossad or other secret entities generously patronized by them.
Today the problem was the agency’s alone, the death of a longtime agent in the central station of Amsterdam in doubtful circumstances. The trip to the Dutch capital had been quick, without incident. The distance from London to Amsterdam was negligible. Accompanying Barnes was Jerome Staughton, promoted to Geoffrey Barnes’s personal assistant a year ago, who found his old position of data analyst in real time more to his liking. Being towed in Barnes’s wake was like carrying a tunneling machine on your back, subject to his caprice and mood swings, his deep guttural voice full of contemptuous reproach, and his desire to feed his gigantic body at all hours. Beyond the evident differences between being an analyst and an assistant, working on the ground was always more dangerous than being seated at a desk. It was career progress that wasn’t always welcomed, except for the pay at the end of each week. In any case, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, Barnes had been calm, in no way truculent, even convivial, not a very natural trait in a man who has to protect great secrets.
On landing at Schiphol, they found the cars waiting for them. Everything was planned to the minute. The cars were middle-range models to avoid raising suspicions, and they would obviously not appear to be CIA but rather FBI agents trying to learn more about what had happened and offer their service to every extent possible. One of the disadvantages of the disguise was their having to drive in the middle of traffic instead of opening a free lane. If they had been in the States or even the UK, they would have swept everything out of the way, but here they had to preserve appearances and good conduct, since the Dutch were known not just for tulips but also for hospitality. So the trip took them an hour. As soon as the station was in sight they noticed the presence of Agent Thompson, who had come ahead of time to survey the situation.
As soon as they got out of the cars, Barnes put his hands on the small of his back, stretching as if to make some discomfort or cramp go away.
‘This screws me up,’ was all he said. ‘This job is going to kill me.’
‘You’re going to bury us all, Chief,’ Thompson said, holding out his hand to Barnes and then to Staughton. Chain of command trumped good manners. ‘How was the flight?’
‘It’s taken us longer from the airport here than from London to Schiphol.’
‘It’s the time of day.’
‘Let’s get to business,’ Barnes ordered abruptly. ‘I want to get home in time for dinner.’
‘Over here.’ Thompson motioned to go inside the station.
‘What have you found so far?’ Barnes wanted to know.
Staughton was known to speak little, so his silence wasn’t a surprise. He was assimilating everything he heard and saw in order to process it later. He was good at this, in summarizing the parts, always trying to restrain the director’s impulsiveness.
The station wasn’t closed. Only parts were cordoned off by police tape, so civilians were constantly moving about.
‘They didn’t close the station?’ Barnes inquired.
‘They didn’t consider it necessary. The bathroom is in a corner away from the center of the station, so they decided to close access to that area and not affect normal functions,’ Thompson explained. ‘The trains weren’t even late.’
‘Efficiency.’
‘Our man was named Solomon Keys,’ Thompson began. ‘Born in 1920.’
‘Solomon Keys?’ Barnes marveled. ‘He’s a legend at the agency. I remember seeing him once or twice. He was part of the establishment since the beginning. He came from OSS, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Affirmative,’ Thompson continued, checking a note he had written in a small notebook with a hard black cover. ‘Member of the OSS from 1943 until the end of the war, recruited by the agency when it was founded.’
‘One of the founders,’ Barnes remembered, speaking more to himself than the others, remembering his own career up to now, to director of the CIA, here at Amsterdam Centraal. A lot of sweat and blood spilled, life in danger many times, and the loss. The loss of everything, family, women, normal life… The company demands exclusive commitment. It was what he was in the habit of thinking on lonely nights to justify what he had lost. The truth was he wouldn’t know how to live any other way. When a man had a level of information as elevated as Geoffrey Barnes, with the power and responsibilities inherent in the position, he no longer had a life of his own. It’s a cross to bear. His cross, the cross everyone carries each in his own way, some heavier than others. No one had any notion of what it was like to be a Geoffrey Barnes, what it was to have his work, what it was to know what he knew. No wife, dedicated as she might be, would have the temperament to wait endless nights, trying not to think about whether she would see her husband alive again. It was hard to work for the agency, but just as hard being the wife of an agency employee. As Jerome Staughton could attest, with his two failed marriages, thirty crappy years. You had to be a son of a bitch, as mean as a cobra, a bastard until the day you said ‘Enough.’
‘Right,’ Thompson noted. ‘He studied law at Yale at the same time he turned into a valuable resource for the CIA. He left the service in ’ninety-two and traveled around the world. Ah, and do you want to know something interesting?’
‘That’s what we’re here for. For tragic events I could have stayed home.’
‘He was a member of Skull and Bones. Initiated the same year as Bush the father.’
‘What an SOB.’
‘Who?’ Thompson asked curiously.
‘Neither. It’s just an expression,’ Staughton explained, always prepared to save Barnes from his own mouth. ‘If I say you’re an SOB, I’m not insulting you really. Understand? It’s just an expression.’
‘Okay.’
‘A member of Skull and Bones,’ Barnes repeated thoughtfully.
‘What is Skull and Bones?’ Staughton asked. ‘Some club? A fraternity?’
‘What do you mean, what is Skull and Bones?’ Barnes was scandalized by such ignorance.
