"And there's somebody waiting to see you, Admiral."
"Oh? Who is it?"
"He wouldn't give his name."
"What's he look like?"
"Like Roy Rogers," the secretary said.
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"What?"
"He does, Admiral. He's got on a ten-gallon hat and tooled boots with the pants tucked in and he's got a gabardine shirt with white piping all over the chest. If he was a woman, he'd look like Dolly Parton."
"Send him in right away," Stantington said. "No, have him wait a minute. I want to test this bathroom key first."
Stantington was sitting behind his desk when his visitor came in, looking like everybody in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
"Well, well. Vassily Karbenko," Stantington said, as he rose, leaned across the desk, and extended his hand. The Russian was as tall as Stantington and his handshake was bony and firm. He kept on his carefully blocked cowboy hat.
"Admiral," he said. Even his voice had a slight western coloration.
"And how are things on the cultural attache front?" Stantington asked.
The admiral smiled at his visitor as they stood, facing each other across the broad desk.
"I haven't come to discuss culture, Admiral. Perhaps the lack of it instead." Karbenko had a small smile around his lips, but his eyes were cold and narrow, and his voice was frosty.
"What do you mean, Colonel?" Stantington asked.
"Have you been briefed this morning?" Karbenko asked.
Stantington shook his head. "No. I just got here. You want to use my bathroom? I've got a key."
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"No, I don't want to use your goddamn bathroom. I want to know why one of your spies assassinated our man in Rome today." He glared across the desk at Stantington, a look so intense it seemed to exert a physical pressure on the CIA director, who slowly sank back into his leather chair.
"What? I don't understand."
"Then I'll make it very clear. The Russian ambassador to Rome was assassinated this morning by an Italian doctor who was one of your men."
"Our men?" Stantington shook his head. "It couldn't be. It can't be. I would know about it."
"His name was Rocco Giovanni. Does that ring a bell?"
"No. Is he in custody?"
"No. He killed himself before we could get to him," Karbenko said.
"Rocco Giovanni, you say?"
Karbenko nodded.
"Wait here a minute," Stantington said. He put his new brass key on the desk. "Use the bathroom if you want." He passed through his secretary's office and into the office of his chief of operations.
"What the hell is going on here?" he asked.
The operations chief looked up, startled.
"What, Admiral?"
"This Russian ambassador killed in Rome. Is that ours?"
The operations chief shook his head. "No. Not ours. Some doctor, looks like he went crazy, shot the ambassador and himself. But he wasn't one of ours."
"His name was Rocco Giovanni," Stantington
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said. "Check that name out right away and call me inside. The goddamn top Russian spy in the United States is in my office and I'm catching hell."
When Stantington returned to his office, Karbenko was sprawled in a chair in front of his desk, his legs extended before him, his hat pulled down over his face.
"I'll have something in a moment," Stantington said.
The two men sat in silence until the buzzer flashed. Stantington picked up the telephone and listened.
After a few moments, he replaced the telephone and looked up with a smile. "Your information is wrong, Comrade. Rocco Giovanni was not one of ours. There is no record in our personnel listings of a Rocco Giovanni."
"Well, you can take your personnel listings and shove them," Karbenko said, sitting erect in the chair and dropping his tan hat on the thickly carpeted floor. "CIA money sent Giovanni to medical school. CIA money helped him open a clinic in Rome. For twenty years, he's been subsidized by CIA money."
"Impossible," said Stantington. "But true," said Karbenko. "We've got the proof. We even know what code he was working under."
"What was that?" asked Stantington. "Project Omega," Karbenko said. "Never heard of it," said Stantington. Then he paused. Project Omega. He had heard of it. When? Where? It came back to him. Yesterday.
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He had heard of it and ordered it disbanded because no one knew what it was.
"Project Omega, you say?"
"That's right," said Karbenko.
"And you know about it?"