The Language Of Cannibals Part 13

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

The fact of the matter was that, for the moment at least, I didn't really care where we were going; I was simply happy that Garth and I were alive, that the pain in my head and the double vision had eased somewhat, and that I could rest. Leaning forward on the paddle, I kept nodding off.

When I lifted my head and looked around after yet another brief nap, I was surprised to find that we had cut back out of the pack of anch.o.r.ed boats and were almost ash.o.r.e. Above us, soaring into the sky, was the scarred, gouged, naked stone face of the abandoned rock quarry.

Suddenly the bow of the canoe sc.r.a.ped against the fine gravel that formed a narrow beach at the base of the mountain. I tried to get out, intending to pull the canoe up on the beach and steady it, but wobbled and sat down hard on the damp gravel. I gripped the gunwales with both hands and tried to pull myself to my feet, but couldn't. Finally I just leaned back on my elbows and supervised as Garth and Acton unloaded the now semiconscious Gregory Trex. With Garth holding his arms and Acton his feet, they sloshed the helpless would-be hunter of communist men, women, and children in the river in an attempt to get some of the stink out of his clothes, then unceremoniously set him down hard on a rock a few yards away from me. His milky green eyes, filled now with shock and terror, kept darting around, as if he were looking for someone to come to his rescue. He kept clutching at his wounded shoulder, but otherwise remained still.

Mary came up, knelt down beside me, and put her arm around me as Garth and Jay Acton waded both canoes back out to chest-deep water, then used sharp-edged rocks to punch holes in their bottoms. As the canoes slowly sank out of sight, I slowly sank my head onto Mary Tree's left breast and promptly fell asleep again.

CHAPTER NINE.

A little sleep did wonders. I awoke to the tantalizing aroma of coffee with a merely dull headache and only slightly blurred vision. My right eye was beginning to open. With the help of a little bouncing around on a hardwood floor while being shot at, followed by a scenic canoe ride, my condition just kept improving. Talk about physical therapy. My sprained wrist, sore knee, and bruised arm seemed healed. I was a medical marvel.

I touched my head, found it covered with a fresh bandage, as was the gash over my right eye. I threw back the lightweight wool blanket covering me, sat up, and looked around. I'd been laid to rest on an inflated air mattress in a corner of a large cave. A naked light bulb hung on its cord from a steel cleat driven into a crevice in the rock ceiling; the cord snaked down a wall and then around a corner into another, smaller cave where I thought I heard the hum of a gasoline-driven electric generator. Another wire, which appeared to be an aerial, snaked along the ceiling and out of the entrance; it was connected to a large shortwave radio console set up on a plain wooden table directly under the light bulb. Also on the table were a cardboard carton and the new cellular telephone that had been in it. Toward the front of the cave, to one side of the entrance, was a large foot locker, with its lid open. There was also a camp stove, and a pot of coffee was being kept warm over a flaming Sterno can. There was an ample supply of bottled water, pots and pans, kerosene s.p.a.ce heaters for colder weather, and even a chemical toilet toward the rear. It looked like the perfect spy's pied-a-terre, with virtually all the comforts of home.

And more. When I rose, walked to the front of the cave, and looked in the foot locker, I found an a.s.sortment of weapons inside, including a Kalashnikov a.s.sault rifle. Also ammunition, electronic eavesdropping equipment that appeared to be state-of-the-art, code pads, a well-stocked medical kit, Styrofoam cups, and a half carton of Campbell's chicken soup.

I took one of the Styrofoam cups, filled it to the brim with steaming black coffee, sipped at it as I made my way out of the cave in search of my spymaster host and his other guests. I found Gregory Trex, his wrists and ankles tied with nylon rope, in a wide rock channel just outside the cave where he had been put to air out. His s.h.i.+rt around his bullet-damaged shoulder had been torn away, and the wound bandaged. He appeared to be in a state of shock; his eyes were dull and unfocused as he looked in my direction, and he didn't speak. His breathing was rapid and shallow; his mouth was half open, and dried saliva flecked his lips and chin. He still stank.

Prolonged exposure to the rapidly deteriorating young man was almost, if not quite, enough to make me feel like a bully for what I'd done to him. It was the kind of thinking, I mused, that could lead to my application for members.h.i.+p in the Community of Conciliation. I gave him a wide berth as I headed toward the mouth of the channel.

I recalled my conversation with Elysius Culhane on Friday evening at the art exhibition. Now I realized that he'd had a lot more on his mind than the desire to pump me for potentially damaging information on President Kevin Shannon; he'd been concerned that my visit to Cairn might somehow be connected to his death squad. As things were turning out, his concern had not been totally unfounded.

At the end of the channel I emerged onto a relatively narrow rock ledge high above the Hudson, close to the top of the mountain. Below, off to the south, I could see the plateau and picnic area where Dan Mosely took me for our chat two days before. To my immediate left was the beginning of a rough, brush-covered trail that appeared to go nowhere, but that I suspected led to other parts of the quarry, and perhaps to the top of the mountain as well.

Still sipping my coffee, I moved off to my right on the ledge, and before long came to a rather deep and wide plateau that had been gouged out of the side of the mountain. Garth and Mary stood across the way, and they seemed to be involved in a heavy conversation. Mary was standing very close to my brother, both of her hands resting on one of his heavily muscled forearms. They definitely looked like an item to me. I sipped some more coffee, loudly cleared my throat; the two of them started, turned, and looked at me.

"The coffee in this establishment is okay," I said, "but I have to tell you that the nursing care sucks."

"You don't need a nurse, Mongo," Garth said, concern in his voice and face as he and Mary quickly walked across the stone to me, put their hands on my shoulders, "you need a G.o.dd.a.m.n keeper. We thought you'd sleep around the clock. What the h.e.l.l are you doing walking around?"

"Mongo?" Mary said, frowning in obvious disapproval. "You shouldn't be up. You could have gotten dizzy and fallen off the ledge."

"I'm all right. Where's our KGB friend?"

Garth stepped back, pointed above my head. I turned around, looked up. Jay Acton, his chestnut-brown hair blowing in the breeze coming down off the mountain, was sitting on a ledge about ten feet above my head, staring out over the river. His Uzi was resting across his knees. It was impossible to tell from his impa.s.sive features what he was thinking, but from this angle he bore an even more striking resemblance to his father.

"I filled him in on what's been going down, Mongo," Garth said quietly.

"All of it?"

"What you've told me, and what I know."

"Then he knows about Harry Peal?"

"Sure. I told him that's how you got on to him."

"Did he kill him?"

"I don't know."

"What was his reaction when you told him Harry Peal was his father?"

"You're looking at it," Garth said, gesturing toward the man sitting on the ledge above us. "He just turned around and climbed up there. He's been sitting there for about an hour."

Acton looked down, saw me. He abruptly rose and, carrying the Uzi in his left: hand, nimbly climbed down through a fissure in the rock connecting the ledge to the plateau on which we stood. He walked up to me, fixed me with the jet-black eyes that were obviously an inheritance from his mother.

"Pm sorry about your friend, Frederickson," he said to me, his voice low, even.

"Yeah," I said, and drained off my coffee. I crumpled the Styrofoam cup, dropped it to my feet. "Did you kill him, Acton? And did you kill your father?"

If the Russian-American was shocked or hurt by my bluntness, he didn't show it. It occurred to me that, whatever he was guilty of, in the hour he had spent alone on the ledge he had somehow made peace with, and perhaps paid homage to, the father he had never known. He stared into my face for a few moments, his features still impa.s.sive, then sat down on the stone, setting the Uzi down at his side.

"My mother is still alive," he said in a voice so low that Garth, Mary, and I had to squat down in order to hear him. "She lives in a special residence for retired KGB personnel on the Black Sea. She told me that my father died in the siege of Stalingrad. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, but I learned later that I was actually born in Kiev, and that my mother and I were smuggled back into the United States when I was still an infant; false ident.i.ties, papers, and false histories were meticulously prepared, and a home was even provided for us. From the time I could talk it was instilled in me that, although we lived in the United States, I was very different from other American children; I was special, with a very special mission that would gradually be explained to me as I grew older. From a very early age I learned to be secretive. I was bilingual, of course, because my mother was bilingual, and she taught me both languages; but Russian was spoken only in the home, when we were alone, and in Russia. I learned the American version of history in the schools here, and my mother taught me the Russian version a" the truth about the cla.s.s struggle, as she put it. And, of course, there were the indoctrination sessions when I was taken back to the Soviet Union. My mother worked as a professor of music at a community college near Dayton, and part of our cover, or 'legend,' was that we had received a sizeable inheritance from my dead father. There was always money for travel, and when we traveled we almost always ended up in the Soviet Union for variable periods of time. In Russia my mother would meet and plan strategy with her controller while I would attend intensive indoctrination sessions. I was given a great deal of attention from an early age and received special favors. I was given my first 'medal' at the age of eleven. Arrangements were always made to get us in and out of Russia on special travel doc.u.ments, so that our visits were never recorded in our U.S. pa.s.sports.

"By the time I graduated from high school in this country I had already had virtually complete training as a KGB operative, if not an officer. I was a committed communist, completely dedicated to my mission, which was to infiltrate the American ultraconservative political movement and eventually move up to a position where I would have power and influence over key figures in that movement, without attracting too much attention to myself. That was my sole a.s.signment. I attended Dartmouth in the late fifties, joined the Young Republicans there, and, years later, helped start up the Dartmouth Review with money I'd supposedly made publis.h.i.+ng a small, ultraconservative newsletter in New Hamps.h.i.+re. Of course, it was actually Communist party money. I had a lot of what you might describe as editorial input with the Review a" suggesting pieces and writing a lot of letters to the editor. Articles I'd suggested were responsible for inciting the attacks on the anti-apartheid shanties on campus, and I had a lot of input into the magazine's cruder attacks on black and Jewish professors. Op-ed articles I wrote for various newspapers and newsletters, including my own, on the supposed communist infiltration of the Democratic party and leftist organizations brought me to the attention of a number of important archconservatives at the national level. I turned down offers of editorial positions at the National Review and Was.h.i.+ngton Times; again, too public. When PACs got big, I sold my newsletter and took a job with the fund-raisers. Within six months, Elysius Culhane had hired me as a senior staff a.s.sistant and speech-writer." Acton paused, laughed drily. "I could have joined the CIA or FBI if I'd wanted to; I was heavily recruited by both agencies while I was at Dartmouth."

I asked, "Why didn't you?"

"Because that wasn't my a.s.signment, and I hadn't been trained for that kind of intelligence work. I had excellent cover for what I was doing, but my legend might not have survived close vetting by an intelligence or counterintelligence agency. Besides, the KGB gets all the information it wants about the CIA from other sources. Infiltrating the right-wing political infrastructure in this country was considered of much greater importance."

Mary, who had been listening to Jay Acton with an increasingly puzzled expression on her face, shook her head. "Why would you want to waste time with a bunch of right-wing loonies and chickenhawks like Elysius Culhane? That seems like very odd company for a communist. I don't understand."

My brother and I had had more than our share of experiences with said right-wing loonies, chickenhawks, and a battalion of religious zealots to boot. I thought I understood perfectly, and I was sure Garth did too.

"It's the perfect cover for a communist agent," Garth said evenly. "The groups would be relatively easy to penetrate, and once you were accepted in your role, no questions would likely ever be asked. The greatest danger would be discovery by an outsider, which is what happened in this case."

"Correct," Acton said in a flat voice, glancing at me.

My squatting position was beginning to hurt my knees, so I sat down on the stone and leaned back on my hands. "You don't understand because you're a liberal," I said to Mary, who still looked thoroughly bewildered. "You're a left-winger. Liberal types like you tend to be intellectual, straight-ahead rationalists. Symbols a" things like the flag, 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and pledges of allegiance a" are all vaguely embarra.s.sing to you; you don't think symbols should mean that much to truly thoughtful and patriotic citizens. You think political candidates visiting flag factories and spouting jingoistic rhetoric in halls filled with flags and nasty-looking bronze eagles is an insult to your intelligence, and you try your best to ignore such things.

"What liberals constantly underestimate is the power of those symbols and rhetoric over the minds of average people in this, or any other, country. The right wing never makes that mistake. They understand and are perfectly willing to exploit the fact that ma.s.ses of citizens, usually a majority, can be relatively easily swayed by the right combination of demagoguery, hot rhetoric, and the manipulation of national symbols. Ultraconservatives tend to be anti-intellectual, which is why public education is never one of their primary concerns; in any nation where the electorate is 'numb, dumb, and happy,' as it were, it's easier for demagogues to get elected and then to stay in office. But their weakness a" and the reason why it was so easy for Mr. Acton here to gain their trust a" is that they're vulnerable to the same weapons they use: language and the manipulation of symbols. The right wing loves pageantry a" look at the ma.s.sive rallies in n.a.z.i Germany a" and they love to believe that their lies and deceptions aren't really lies and deceptions. In short, they tend to actually start believing their own bulls.h.i.+t, and if you feed it to them, in return they'll easily accept you as one of them.

"Language mirrors the world we live in; if we use screwed-up language to define reality, if you're always looking to use language to put 'spin control' on something instead of trying to accurately describe it, then you actually end up with a screwed-up reality a" at least for you. Alices who misuse language end up eventually living in their own Wonderlands. Lousy language hurts the people who use it, as well as the society they live in; if you use sloppy language, then you end up with sloppy perceptions. So it's easy to fool these people simply by using their corrupted vocabulary; tell them what they want to hear. They'll not only believe what you say, but they'll believe in you."

"Precisely," Acton said, nodding his head as he stared at me intently. Now Mary eased herself down next to me. Only Garth remained in a squatting position, absently tracing invisible patterns on the stone in front of him with his index finger. "They use the language of cannibals, which eats up people's perceptions and sensibilities, and sometimes their lives. But the language of cannibals also consumes the people who use it; they become fools, as easily manipulable as their intended victims."

I said, "It's no wonder you were so taken by that painting of Jack Trex's. You knew exactly what he was talking about."

"Yes," Acton replied simply.

"Well, in the country you come from a" "

"This is my country too, Frederickson," Acton said in a strong, steady voice. "I felt that way even before I found out that my father was an American."

"I think you're full of s.h.i.+t, Acton; don't try to use cannibal language on us. And as far as that kind of language is concerned, the Russian communists make American right-wingers look like grammar school students. There you have a" or used to have a" an entire government and bureaucratic infrastructure totally committed to distorting reality with smoke and mirrors."

"Just like this country," Acton replied evenly.

"Except that we have a free press to counter it."

"You won't get an argument from me on that, Frederickson. You might be surprised to know how I really feel about a lot of things a" American and Russian."

"I'm sure I'd be astonished. In the meantime, you've been spying on this country since you were a teenager. I'll bet I'd also be astonished to learn how much cla.s.sified information is leaked by right-wingers inside the government to right-wingers outside it."

"I don't think you'd be astonished at all; obviously, you realize it."

"But your primary task wasn't to gather information, was it, Acton?" It was Garth, who was still squatting with his head down, tracing patterns on the stone with his finger. "Your primary task was to act as a provocateur."

"That's right, Garth," Acton said evenly, glancing at my brother. "I see you understand. Provoking extreme or bizarre behavior was a" is a" the primary task for all of us."

Now Garth looked up. "All of us?"

Acton, a faint smile on his face, glanced first at Mary, then me, then turned his attention back to Garth. "Lady and gentlemen," he said drily, "there are probably almost as many KGB operatives working inside the American right wing as there are n.a.z.i collaborators and sympathizers, and I can a.s.sure you there are plenty of them."

Mary, who was showing signs of immensely enjoying herself as the scope and impact of what Jay Acton was describing dawned on her, laughed loudly.

I said, "Jesus Christ."

Garth said, "Are they all like you, Acton? Do they all look and sound American?"

"Not all. Many came in with the n.a.z.is and n.a.z.i collaborators the CIA and State Department brought to this country to use against Russia in the cold war. I can't be sure, but I believe that there are others like me, also a" although there can't be many who are actually American-bred; I didn't even know that about myself until Garth told me about my . . . father. The Russians have what are called American Academies set up deep inside the Soviet Union; I know of two of them, because I've been inside them, but there may be more. These are large complexes constructed and designed to imitate small American towns, down to the minutest detail. They are, of course, elaborate schools for spies, and it's considered a great honor to be chosen to go to one. The government selects candidates when they're quite young, and the children literally grow up in these 'American' towns, seeing their parents only once or twice a year, and sometimes not at all. They learn to speak American English without an accent, are surrounded by American pop culture, and so on. The best of the students, as determined by psychological profiles and a vast battery of tests, are smuggled into America when they're in their midteens; legends have been created for them, and they go to live with KGB operatives who are already in place here."

I asked, "Do you know who any of these other people are?"

"No, Mongo a" if I may call you Mongo."

"I'd rather you didn't, and I still think you're full of s.h.i.+t."

Acton merely smiled, shrugged. "Nevertheless, what I'm telling you is true. All of us in this operation, at least those at my level, are kept totally insulated from one another for obvious reasons of security; when you have time to reflect on it, you'll see that the precaution is totally logical. However, at our indoctrination sessions in Russia, we are occasionally given progress reports and success stories involving other operatives like ourselves. Being the kind of operative that's called a 'solitary' can be hard on the spirit, and these little information-sharing sessions are designed to keep up our morale. At one session I heard a tape recording of a conservative spokesman calling Ronald Reagan a dupe of the communists because he'd signed an arms treaty with us. That tape was the source of a lot of jokes, because a" or so I was told a" it was sent to my controller by one of our own people, who is a third-term senator from a western state and who's considered a possibility for a seat on the Supreme Court whenever the conservatives in this country get into power again. If that happens, a KGB officer is going to be helping to interpret your Const.i.tution for you. No, I don't know which senator it is, and no, I don't know the names of the other KGB personnel who occupy high administration positions in various federal agencies. I was just told they're there."

Mary laughed again, even louder.

I said, "s.h.i.+t."

Garth said, "Who dreamed this thing up, Acton?"

"Three Russian patriots in the NKVD who were eventually murdered by Beria during one of Stalin's purges. Their names wouldn't mean anything to you. The plan came into being in the late forties and early fifties, after the infrastructure of the American Communist party collapsed with the revelations about Stalin's terror campaign and his earlier pact with Hitler. Russia, of course, was collapsing too; Stalin was murdering millions of our citizens, and the entire country was convulsed with terror and paranoia. The American Communist party had become a joke, with most of the members.h.i.+p leaving. There were people in Russia, such as these three NKVD men, who realized that the dream of communism would die unless something was done to tarnish the image of America and the dream it represented; ours was the better dream, but our own leaders were destroying it with their madness. Propaganda wasn't enough, because few people outside Russia believed it, and Stalin was giving the American propagandists a field day. You'd emerged from the war not only a military but an economic giant; as the saying went, most of the rest of the world believed that the streets of America were paved with gold. You had individual freedoms, and we had Stalin and Beria killing us in droves. Everyone who could was coming to America, and we could only keep our own citizens inside our borders by force and by bringing down the Iron Curtain around the captive nations. It looked as if you would bury the dream of Marxism before it had ever had a chance to flower a" unless a way could be found to dilute the ideological strength of the United States.

"And then Joseph McCarthy rose to power, and he was the answer to our planners' prayers. The KGB was astonished at the degree of paranoia, terror, and divisiveness this one man and his followers were able to generate as he searched for wicked communists in American government and the military. Our planners realized that the American right wing would happily decimate American cities, throw people out of work, and in short do just about anything, as long as they believed they were defending America against Russia. We didn't have to subvert or attack; the right wing was all too happy to subvert and attack the fiber of their own country for us. The planners realized that we could actually use this anticommunist atmosphere McCarthy was creating to vastly improve our operations here. McCarthy and the ultraconservative right wing were studied closely. And then our program was inst.i.tuted. My mother, of course, was one of the pioneers, the first to offer up herself and her son to exile in order to further the communist cause by weakening America. As Garth has correctly pointed out, our primary task was to act as provocateurs. We were to infiltrate organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, the American n.a.z.i party, and organizations like Elysius Culhane's would come to be, in order to provoke the organizations' members into the kinds of extreme behavior and rhetoric that would polarize America, divide her from her allies, and tarnish her image in the eyes of the rest of the world. The communists would hide in the last place that anticommunists, and even your counterintelligence people, would think to look: right in the heart of the fascist sector of America.

"Again, we were given success stories to boost our morale. One of our jobs was to make it seem like the Republican party wants to steal the country every time it gets into power. I don't know if this is true, but I was told that Watergate and the subsequent attempt by Nixon and his plumbers to cover it up were instigated a" inspired, perhaps, is a better word a" by operatives like me, as was the subsequent exposure; Deep Throat may have been a KGB operative, and one of the 'plumbers' may have been also. The same with Iran-Contra. Our people pushed the politicians for the. invasion of Grenada because it made Americans look like reckless fools to the rest of the world. Actually our job was a" is a" easy because it entails simply goading the extreme rightists to do what they want to do anyway. Thus, Elysius Culhane's death squad. He's always wanted to control a death squad to quickly and efficiently kill people he thought represented a danger to the country, and in effect I gave him permission to do so by subtly, but repeatedly, telling him what a good idea it was, and then suggesting ways it could be done. I'm not saying that the American government, like the Soviet government, can't do stupid and self-destructive things all on its own; what I'm saying is that some a" maybe most a" of the more spectacularly stupid and self-destructive behavior of the past few conservative administrations has been inspired in no small part by KGB operatives like myself. The KGB loves it when Americans keep electing conservatives to power; administrations like Kevin Shannon's present much more difficult problems of infiltration and manipulation."

When Acton finished, we were all silent for some time. The KGB operative studied us, looking from one face to another, apparently waiting for some response. I was the one who finally broke the silence.

"You've talked a lot, Acton, but you still haven't answered my question. Did you kill Michael Burana and Harry Peal a" your father?"

"No," Acton replied in a flat voice. "I never laid eyes on Michael Burana, and I never knew that he'd discovered my secret. And I didn't kill my father."

I looked at Garth, who nodded to me. "He could be telling the truth about that, Mongo. He cried when I told him who his father was and what had happened." He paused, s.h.i.+fted his gaze to Acton. "Then again, he wouldn't have known who Harry Peal was when he killed him."

"I knew who he was," Acton said quietly. "I didn't know that he was my father, but Harry Peal was always one of my idols."

"Why are you being so hard on him?" Mary asked, looking back and forth between Garth and me. "If it hadn't been for Jay, the three of us wouldn't be alive now."

"The question becomes one of why he saved our lives," Garth replied evenly, gazing steadily at Acton. "If you didn't kill Burana and your father, then who did?"

"I have to a.s.sume it was the same man who tried to kill me a" a KGB a.s.sa.s.sin."

"Why would the KGB want you dead?" I asked. "You have to be one of their most important a.s.sets."

"I would no longer be of any value at all if I was exposed as a KGB operative. Also, they may have feared that I'd become unreliable; that was always the fear with people like me and the reason we were never given high rank. And in my case, they feared me being caught and telling American intelligence what I'm telling you."

"How did this attack take place?"

"A poison gas grenade was lobbed through my bedroom window at around the same time Garth was driving up from New York to see you in the hospital. If I'd been in bed asleep, I would have died almost instantly, and all an autopsy would have shown was that I died of a heart attack; the grenade itself would have been retrieved. As it happened, I was in the bathroom, with the door closed. I heard the window break and the grenade hitting the floor, and I immediately knew what was happening. I managed to escape through the bathroom window before the gas got to me. I had a spare set of keys taped under my car's b.u.mper. I drove here, got into these clothes. The machine I used to monitor all Culhane's calls is in my home, but there's an electronic hookup to my telephone that I can activate by remote control. I played back the tapes of his most recent conversations, heard what he'd said to Gregory Trex, and realized what had happened. Then I went to the Community of Conciliation mansion to try and head off the death squad."

"If you're not in the business of killing people, why would the KGB give you all the weapons you have up here?"

"The KGB never provided me with anything but communications and wiretapping equipment. I got my weapons from the same places Culhane got his a" various arms dealers in the western states and Florida. I trained myself to use them. He supplied the death squad with their weapons."

Garth grunted, said, "What exactly do you want from us, Acton?"

"I want the two -of you to walk me in, to get all of us in the hands of people you trust, and who can guarantee our safety. Supposedly you have powerful friends in Was.h.i.+ngton and elsewhere; Culhane claimed you have a personal relations.h.i.+p with the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Is that true?"

"It might be," Garth replied evenly.

"Do you have other friends in the intelligence community, people you trust completely?"

"Maybe."

"We have all the communications equipment we need up here. I would like you to contact whoever can get us safely off this mountain and to Was.h.i.+ngton, where I'll talk to your counterintelligence people. They'll have to guarantee our safety for an indefinite period of time. Thousands a" maybe tens of thousands a" of people in federal and state governments, and in conservative political organizations, are going to have to be vetted; and others are going to have to vet the vetters. It won't be as formidable a task as it might sound to flush out the other KGB people like me, because the legends constructed for us aren't as complex as they'd be if we were engaged in ordinary espionage. It was never antic.i.p.ated that anyone would delve too deeply into our birth records or other background. But it must be done. Only when my story has been accepted by your people, and the process of rooting out the other KGB plants has begun, will the four of us be safe from a.s.sa.s.sination; the KGB is more likely to leave us alone if there's nothing to be gained by killing us and if our murders could be logically blamed on them. I need the three of you to back up my story and then support me."

Garth and I exchanged glances, and I could see in his eyes that we were thinking the same things. We both looked back at Acton, waited.

"You don't seem too taken with my proposal, gentlemen," Acton continued at last in a slightly wry tone, turning to look at Mary. "Maybe you don't realize how much danger we're all in.

This is the most important and productive operation the KGB has ever mounted. You can be sure that a crack a.s.sa.s.sin a" or maybe even a team of a.s.sa.s.sins a" is searching for us right now. And if we're caught by the police, we die; the people who are after us would be perfectly willing to blow up a police station, or even the town of Cairn, to keep this operation secret and the KGB plants in place. I'm not sure you understand a" "

"Okay, you've already played the tune for us, Acton," I interrupted, "and it's a real spooky one. We're all properly impressed with your story. What my brother and I are wondering is if it's true. You've had such success bulls.h.i.+tting Culhane and his friends, maybe you think you can bulls.h.i.+t us and our friends. Maybe there is no KGB a.s.sa.s.sin, no a.s.sa.s.sination team; maybe the story about the right wing and the government being infiltrated by a load of carbon-copy Americans manufactured by the KGB is just a fairy tale. Maybe there's just you. Maybe it was you, after all, who murdered Michael and Harry."