idea what it means. Hell, lady, you even know what the “cellars” are when I always thought they were the basements in a suburban development which, thank God, I never had to build. Please, you said in Bahrain that you wanted to help me. Help me now! Help yourself.'
Adrienne Rashad replied, her dark eyes searching his coldly. 'I could help, but there might be times when you'd have to do as I tell you. Could you do that?'
'I'm not wild about jumping off bridges or tall buildings—’
'It would be in the area of what you'd say, and to whom I'd want you to say it. There might also be times when I wouldn't be able to explain things to you. Could you accept that?'
'Yes. Because I've watched you, listened to you, and I trust you.'
'Thank you.' She squeezed his hand and released it. 'I'd have to bring someone with me.'
'Why?'
'First of all, it's necessary. I'd need a temporary transfer and he can get it for me without giving an explanation—forget the White House, it's too dangerous, too unstable. Second, he could be helpful in areas way beyond my reach.'
'Who is he?'
'Mitchell Payton. He's director of Special Projects—that's a euphemism for “Don't ask”.'
'Can you trust him? I mean totally, no doubts at all.'
'No doubts at all. He processed me into the Agency.'
'That's not exactly a reason.'
'The fact that I've called him “Uncle Mitch” since I was six years old in Cairo is, however. He was a young operations officer posing as an instructor at the university. He became a friend of my parents—my father was a professor there and my mother's an American from California; so was Mitch.'
'Will he give you a transfer?'
'Yes, of course.'
'You're sure of that?'
'He has no choice. I just told you, someone's giving away a part of our soul that's not for sale. It's you this time. Who's it going to be next?'
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 25
Mitchell Jarvis Payton was a trim sixty-three-year-old academic who had been sucked into the Central Intelligence Agency thirty-four years before because he fitted a description someone had given to the personnel procurement division at the time. That someone had disappeared into other endeavours and no job had been listed for Payton, only the requirements—marked urgent. However, by the time his prospective employers realized that they had no specific employment for the prospect it was too late. He had been signed up by the Agency's aggressive recruiters in Los Angeles and sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for indoctrination. It was an embarrassing situation as Dr Payton, in a rush of personal and patriotic fervour, had submitted his resignation, effective immediately, to the State education authorities. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man whose career would develop so auspiciously.
MJ, as he had been called for as long as he could remember, had been a twenty-nine-year-old associate professor with a doctorate in Arabian Studies from the University of California where he subsequently taught. One bright morning he was visited by two gentlemen from the government who convinced him that his country urgently needed his talents. What the specifics entailed they were not at liberty, of course, to disclose, but insofar as they represented the most exciting sphere of government service, they assumed that the position was overseas, in the area of his expertise. The young bachelor had leaped at the opportunity, and when faced with perplexed superiors in Langley, who wondered what to do with him, he adamantly suggested that he had cut his ties in LA because he had at least assumed that he would be sent to Egypt. So he had been sent to Cairo—we can't get enough observers in Egypt who understand the goddamned language. As an undergraduate he had studied American Literature, chosen because Payton did not think there was a hell of a lot of it. It was for
