Metzger's Dog

already in place, the arrangements are made.”

“Fine,” Porterfield said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Then you won’t need us.”

“I’m afraid we will, Ben,” said the Director. “It’s a good, solid move, but it’s not by any means a sure thing. Every time we deal with the Russians there’s a possibility of things getting out of hand—that they’ll make the irrational move, the inappropriate response.”

“Then I think we should take our business elsewhere,” said Porterfield.

The Director’s smile disappeared. “You haven’t heard the plan.”

Porterfield folded his arms and waited.

“It’s actually very subtle. The Aeroflot airplane from Moscow arrives at four-fifteen in San Francisco. It is met by the team we had originally planned to have. The Russians have had the names and faces for months. The team leads the Russians to the VIP lounge, buys them drinks, dinner, more drinks, whatever makes them happy.”

“And?”

“That’s it. The Russian consulate wonders where they are, their contacts at the hotel wonder. After a few hours, Moscow begins to wonder. Nobody knows because nobody saw them arrive and nobody saw them leave. When Moscow finally comes up with Donahue’s papers, the delegation is driven to their hotel and turned loose. Even they don’t know they’ve been detained. Moscow knows, of course, but they can’t make any claims because it would sound ludicrous.”

“What if Moscow doesn’t come up with the papers?”

“There are several contingency plans. There will be a LearJet all fueled up and ready to take them away if we need to hold them for any length of time. There will be four cars waiting if we need to split them up. Have I forgotten anything, Pines?”

“I don’t believe so. We should have the papers by midnight.”

“What’s to stop them from using other copies?”

“That’s the beauty of it. This is better than getting the papers and the men who stole them. The problem isn’t the papers themselves, it’s that the Russians might use them. What we’re doing is letting the Russians know that they can’t keep doing this kind of thing because we’ll respond. They have the papers, so they know the names of a few agents, a few foreign nationals we’ve turned. It’s too late to keep that from happening. What we’re doing is showing them that we know a few agents of theirs, and maybe a few foreign nationals that they’ve turned. If they don’t do anything, we won’t do anything. After a decent interval both sides will have replaced the people who are known, and everything will be back to normal.” The Director waited. “Well?”

Porterfield said, “Well—”

“No,” Goldschmidt snapped. “Let me say it. The plan is stupid. Its only redeeming aspect is that it is unlikely the Russians will be able to understand the deranged message you’re sending them. It’s unprofessional. Who besides you was involved in this?”

Porterfield stared down the long table, watching the messengers arriving with an air of urgency, then leaving, usually with a single piece of paper that now contained a set of initials or a few words in a margin. As he watched, one of them handed a sheet to Maria Hurtado, Kearns’s assistant from the Latin America desk.

Pines had handed Goldschmidt a list of names, and he was running a finger down it quickly. “Ben,” he said, smiling, “you should see this.” He jabbed it in front of Porterfield, who glanced down at it.

“Molnar?”

“That’s the one.”

“The one who was pushing the Exploding President?”

“Exploding President? What the hell are you talking about?” Pines was breathing hard through the corners of his mouth.

“It was before your time,” said Goldschmidt. “Molnar was sponsoring a plan to make a dummy that looked just like the President but filled with two hundred pounds of tritonol and a layer of flechettes.”

“What the hell for?”

“To assassinate assassins. You know, at parades and ceremonies.”

“But that would kill everybody around it for a hundred yards.”

“Right. Well-done hamburger. If we’d gone for that one, we might have gotten the Nuclear President. I guess it’s our loss. Glad to see you’ve found something else for Molnar to do.”

The Director said quietly, “It’s not fair to mark a man for life just for one bad idea. He’s been very helpful on this one.”

Porterfield was staring down the table at Maria Hurtado, whose face had suddenly changed. Her brows were knitted and she was frowning, but her eyes were wide with excitement as she read. Then she was standing, walking toward Kearns, her eyes still on the sheet in her hand. She reached over Kearns’s right shoulder, placed the paper on the table in front of him, and waited.

The Director was saying, “We’d like to use the next few hours to develop ways of taking advantage of this situation. Actual interrogation may not be wise, but it is an option. There is a range of other options to be explored and—”

“Excuse me,” said Kearns.

“One moment.” The Director held his hand up majestically. “What I want is a little brainstorming. Bring in your best people. If one of you hears something that might be worth pursuing, pass it immediately to the other groups. Now, Kearns, what is it?”

“There’s new information. This article appeared in the Vox Populi of Ixtapa, Mexico, this morning. Let me translate the important parts.”

The Ministry of Education released the following figures today. There are over fifteen million students enrolled in the nation’s primary and secondary schools this year. The number is the highest ever, according to Ministry sources. An especially encouraging part of the report is that while the number of students is expected to continue to grow, the number of qualified teachers has grown much faster during the past five years. There are now 619,352 full-time licensed teachers.

“How much checking has been done, Maria?” Porterfield asked.

“The Ixtapa Vox Populi seems to be the only paper in Mexico that carried the story. That’s the biggest sign. It’s a small paper with maybe thirty thousand subscribers.”

“What about the report?” said Goldschmidt. “Is it real?”

“We don’t know yet. The figures are reasonable at first glance. There are about fifteen million children in Mexican schools and about six hundred thousand teachers. People downstairs haven’t been able to get the Ministry of Education to confirm or deny, but they’re working on it.”

Other messengers were arriving now, and the young man at the door was frowning as his earpiece squawked its scrambled traffic into his brain. The messengers began to form a line beside Maria Hurtado’s empty chair until Kearns waved them to the head of the table.

“This one says the report definitely came from somewhere in the Ministry of Education but was released as an exclusive to the Vox Populi.” Maria Hurtado placed it on the table and looked at the next one, then at the next. “The figure for teachers is inaccurate. The real figure is almost six hundred thirty thousand.”

“Thank you, Maria,” Kearns said. She returned to her seat at the foot of the table. Kearns shrugged. “It’s a definite government press release, not an ad somebody bought in the paper.”

“I’m not sure I’m following all of this,” the Director said. “Can somebody please sort it out?”

“Sure.” Porterfield studied his fingernails, then looked up. “What it means is that you’d better get somebody busy calling off the ambush at San Francisco airport.”

“Right,” Goldschmidt nodded. “It was a bad idea in the first place, but now we know it would just get them mad as hell for nothing. They haven’t got the papers. Nobody has.”

“Nobody?” said the Director.

“Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet,” Porterfield agreed. “Otherwise the Mexican government wouldn’t be bidding fifteen million dollars for them.”

THE DIRECTOR LOOKED AROUND HIMSELF glumly. “For this morning’s session I’ve decided we need to