Miss Dillworth understood that such dissatisfaction spread around the world.
A colleague—one Alexander B. Darby, who was the commercial attache of the United States embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina—had told her that a well-known American artist living in Buenos Aires was going about loudly saying to anyone who would listen that whenever he went to the embassy there, he was made to feel by the consular officials as welcome as a registered sex offender seeking overnight lodging at a Girl Scout camp.
Eleanor and Alex had exchanged horror stories for at least a half hour when they had run into each other in Washington. They had even come up with an explanation why the Foreign Service got away with its arrogance and, indeed, incompetence.
It was, they concluded, a question of congressional oversight . . . or wanton lack thereof.
A farmer, for example, who felt that he had been mistreated by a farm agent would immediately get on the phone to his congressman or senator and complain, whereupon the congressman or senator would call the secretary of Agriculture, expressing his displeasure and reminding the secretary that the function of his agency was to serve the public, not antagonize it.
Doctors—and maybe especially lawyers—thought nothing, when they felt they were being improperly serviced, of going directly to the surgeon general, or the attorney general, with their complaints. Similarly, bankers would raise hell with the secretary of the Treasury, businessmen with the secretary of Commerce,
And they got results.
The only people who took a close look at the Foreign Service were members of Congress. They performed this duty by visiting embassies around the world—usually in places like Paris, London, and Tokyo—traveling in either USAF VIP jets or in the first-class compartment of a commercial airliner, and accompanied by their wives. On their arrival, they were housed in the best hotels and lavishly entertained, the costs thereof coming from the ambassadors’ “representational allowance” provided by the U.S. taxpayer. Then they got back on the airplanes and went home, having become “Experts in International Affairs” and bubbling all over with praise for the charming people of the State Department, those nobly serving their country on foreign shores.
There were exceptions, of course. Alex Darby couldn’t say enough nice things about the ambassador in Buenos Aires, even though he didn’t seem able to do much about his consular staff enraging American citizens—not to mention the natives—living in Argentina.
But Alex and Eleanor were agreed that the Foreign Service could be greatly improved if every other diplomat arriving for work in his chauffeur-driven embassy car—with consular diplomatic tags, which permitted him to ignore speed limits and park wherever he wished—were canned, and those dips remaining were seriously counseled to get their act in gear or be canned themselves.
At first glance—or even second—it might appear that Counselor for Consular Affairs Eleanor Dillworth and Commercial Attache Alexander B. Darby were disgruntled employees and probably should never have been employed by the Foreign Service in the first place.
The truth here was that neither was a member of the Foreign Service, despite the good deal of effort expended to make that seem to be the case. In fact, Dillworth and Darby were the Central Intelligence Agency station chiefs in, respectively, Vienna and Buenos Aires, and the salary checks deposited once a month to their personal banking accounts came from the funds of the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia.
It was in this latter—which was to say real—role that Eleanor Dillworth sat in her consul general’s office on Parkring, waiting to have a word with a bona fide diplomat, Ronald J. Spearson, who was, as no one at the moment served as ambassador to Austria, the Charge d’Affaires, a.i. of the American embassy.
“In case this somehow slipped by you, Eleanor, it’s Christmas Eve,” Spearson said when he walked into the office. He was a tall, trim man in his early forties.
“Well, in that case, Merry Christmas, Ronnie.”
Spearson believed that embassy staff should address him as “Mister,” and he did not like to be called “Ronnie,” not even by his wife.
He gave her a dirty look.
“I’m in no mood for your sarcasm,” she said. “I know what day this is, and I wouldn’t have asked you to come here unless it was important.”
“I meant no offense, Eleanor,” he said after a moment. “If an apology is in order, consider that it has been offered.”
She did consider that a moment, then nodded.
“Kurt Kuhl and his wife have been murdered,” she said.
“Kurt Kuhl of Kuhlhaus? That Kuhl?”
She nodded.
“About half past six tonight,” she said. “The bodies were found behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark.”
She gestured in the direction of a window that overlooked Parkring and the Stadtpark.
“Well, I’m . . .”
“They were garroted,” she went on evenly, “with a metal garrote of the type the Hungarian secret police—the Allamvedelmi Hatosag
“Eleanor, what has this to do with me? With the embassy?”
“As a result of which,” she went on, ignoring the questions, “there will be a new star on that wall in Langley. Two, if I have anything to say. Gertrud Kuhl is entitled to one, too.”
Spearson looked at her for a long moment.
“You’re not suggesting, Eleanor, are you, that Kurt Kuhl was one of your—”
“I’m telling you that Kurt Kuhl has been in the clandestine service of the company longer than you’re old.”
“I find that very hard to believe,” Spearson said.
“I thought you might. Nevertheless, you have now been told.”
“My God, he’s an old man!”
“Seventy-five,” she said. “About as old as Billy Waugh.”
“Billy Waugh?”
“The fellow who bagged Carlos the Jackal. The last time I heard, Billy was running around Afghanistan looking for Osama bin Laden.”
Again he looked at her a long moment before replying.
“If what you say is true . . .”
“I just made this up to give you a little Christmas Eve excitement,” she said sarcastically.
“Then why wasn’t I told of this before?”
“You didn’t have the Need to Know. Now, in my judgment, you do.”
“And the ambassador? Did he know?”
“No. He didn’t have the Need to Know, either.”
“You made that decision, is that what you’re saying?”
“I was given the authority to tell him if I thought it was necessary. Or not to tell him.”
“That violates the Country Team principle.”
“The secretary of State signed on to what the DCI told me.”
“What was Kuhl doing for the CIA?”
“You want a thumbnail or the whole scenario?”
“I think I had better hear everything.”
“Okay. Kuhl was a Hungarian Jew. His family had been in the pastry shop business for a long time, way back before World War One. They saw what was happening and got out of Hungary to the States in 1939. Kurt was then ten years old, the youngest of their children.
“There was already a Kuhlhaus store in New York City and another in Chicago. The family went back to work in that business. When war came, his older brother, Gustav, went into the Army, was promptly recruited by the OSS, and was one of the original Jedburghs.”
“The original what?”
