The rent was more than he could reasonably afford and, during those fleeting moments of uncertainty, Anderson wondered whether it was all worth it because, in the eyes of some of his guests, he could discern the patronising appraisal of those who had inherited rather than learned impeccable taste.
To hell with them, Anderson thought, as he took off his raincoat and tossed his hat onto a glass-topped table. But now, as he waited for the telephone to ring, the self-doubt was persistent. It even extended to his clothes – brown Gucci shoes, immaculate fawn suit with vest, across which was looped a gold chain linking a gold watch with a gold cigar-cutter tucked in the pockets. A black dude! The sort of gear affected by a prize-fighter who had punched his way out of Harlem.
Anderson consulted the gold watch, 11 a.m. It would be at least half an hour before Miller called. Anderson decided to take a hot shower to force the cold from his bones – and the questions from his mind.
The water sluiced down over his ebony frame, machine-gunned his powerful shoulders. He turned the handle another degree so that the water ran hotter and steam enveloped him. Ah … the doubts dispersed. The man with the briefcase was a Russian; any minute now Miller would call and confirm his suspicions; confirm the decision of the hierarchy of the CIA – decision taken after considerable debate – to give Owen Anderson one of the key jobs assigned by the Company. Bilderberg.
The telephone shrilled in the living-room.
Anderson stepped out of the bath and padded swiftly across the carpet, shedding droplets of water as he went.
‘Hallo, is that you, Owen?’
‘Sure it’s me.’ The anticipation subsided as he heard the girl’s voice; adrenalin stopped flowing in his veins.
‘Are you free tonight?’
Standing naked and dripping, Anderson shook his head at the cream receiver in his hand. ‘’Fraid not, honey.’ She was a black model, tall, fine-boned and small-breasted.
A sigh at the other end of the line. ‘Are you going cold on me, Owen?’
‘I’ve got work to do, honey.’ She knew he was some kind of policeman; probably thought that, with his life style, he was a corrupt one. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet. There’s a party in the Village ….’
‘Some other time,’ Anderson said. Maybe Miller was trying to reach him now.
‘What sort of work, Owen?’
‘The usual sort.’
‘I won’t be going to that party alone.’
‘Have a ball,’ Anderson said. ‘I’ll call you.’ He replaced the receiver in its cradle.
He put on a white towelling robe and stood at the window watching the sleet pass by on its way to the street, straddling Lexington and Park, fifteen storeys below.
He prowled the apartment. Waiting, waiting. The silent telephone dominated the room. He picked up the New York Times and scanned the front page. Spaceshots, political jockeying for the presidential election next year; Nixon on Vietnam, Senator George McGovern on Vietnam.
Anderson threw aside the newspaper, stripped off his robe and went into his daily work-out routine. Fifty press-ups, fifty sit-ups.
The phone rang when he was half way up to the forty-ninth press-up. He collapsed on the carpet and reached for the receiver.
The head porter said: ‘Is that you, Mr Anderson?’
Anderson said it was him and, with eyes closed, listened to a complaint that water had been leaking from his bathroom into the apartment below. He told the porter to fix it, that was his job.
He abandoned the sit-ups and considered having a drink. 11.23. Too early. The road to ruin. He sat down on an easy chair, legs stretched uncomfortably in front of him, and stared at the telephone, malevolently cold and impersonal.
Where the hell was Miller? Give him time, for Chrissake. The man carrying the briefcase wouldn’t stride straight into the United Nations and hand it to the Soviet Ambassador. Perhaps Miller had lost him; perhaps the briefcase contained girlie magazines ….
He switched on the television. An old black and white spy movie, the original Thirty-Nine Steps. Anderson had watched every spy film ever made during his training in Virginia; they seemed to think that you could still learn a trick or two from James Bond. Anderson enjoyed the movies, in particular John Buchan’s masterpiece with Robert Donat because it had style and he admired style. But not today; leave Richard Hannay to his own devices ….
He switched off the television and went into the steel-bright kitchen to make coffee.
Holding a steaming mug in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other, he returned to the living-room. It looked unlived-in, which it was because Anderson was rarely there. A show-piece, an extravagance.
He sat down beside the telephone. Ring damn you! And it did, just as he bit into the chocolate biscuit.
He picked up the receiver, swallowed the mouthful of biscuit and said; ‘Hallo.’
‘Is that you, Anderson?’
‘Speaking. Who’s that?’
It was Miller.
Two hours later Anderson took a cab to La Guardia and caught the shuttle to Washington.
William Danby picked up a white plastic cup of coffee; it was his fourth that morning. Danby who rarely drank liquor – an infrequent beer, the occasional weak whisky at cocktail parties – was fuelled by coffee. This morning he barely tasted it: he was too pre-occupied with the three dossiers and the typewritten report lying on the top of his mahogany desk. They worried him.
Not that Danby ever looked worried. He was a man of medium height, fifty-eight years-old; his greying hair with a suspicion of a quiff, a relic from his youth, was neatly barbered; his pale blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses were calm, and his features were barely lined.
Imperturbable, was how his staff described Danby. An automaton with a computer for a brain. A man who, when he removed his spectacles and stared at you with those pale eyes, withered the lies on your tongue.
Nevertheless Danby worried. If you were the head of the largest – or, arguably the second largest intelligence organisation in the world then you lived with worry. The trick was to discipline the worry, regard it merely as an occupational hazard, and never, never show it.
William Danby, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, subordinated his worry and for the first time savoured his coffee. It tasted like cardboard. He put the plastic cup to rest between the intercom and two telephones, swung round in his swivel chair and gazed over the countryside surrounding his $46 million castle close to the highway encircling Washington.
He observed the thin sunlight rekindling spring among the trees. He stared beyond the limits of his vision. From coast to coast, from north to south. The vision awed him as it always did, because he was responsible for the security of the land and the 203 million people inhabiting it.
Which was why the dossiers, two blue and one green, and the report lying on the desk worried him. He was investigating the very people responsible for the prosperity of the United States.
In a way he was guilty of the same suicidal introspection that was racking the CIA (He had just prepared a report on accusations of CIA involvement in the 1970 Chilean elections – despite the fact that the Marxist Salvador Allende had won them.)
But whereas