“May I commend you, sir, on being the first honest man sent over from the Hill. The fact that you are not overwhelmed by the rarefied atmosphere of these highly classified surroundings is not lost on any of us. It’s refreshing.”
“I don’t think the congressman fully grasps the sensitivity of--“
“Oh, shut up, Peter,” said the Monk. “I think the congressman wants to say something.”
“Just for a bit,” said Walters. “I thought you were all over twenty-one; I mean, you look over twenty-one, and by then you’re supposed to know better. You’re supposed to be able to hold intelligent conversations, exchange information while respecting confidentiality, and look for common solutions. Instead, you sound like a bunch of kids jumping on a goddamn carousel, squabbling over who’s going to get the cheap brass ring. It’s a hell of a way to spend taxpayers’ money.”
“You’re oversimplifying, Congressman,” broke in Gillette. “You’re talking about a utopian fact-finding apparatus. There’s no such thing.”
“I’m talking about reasonable men, sir. I’m a lawyer, and before I came up to this godforsaken circus, I dealt with ascending levels of confidentiality every day of my life. What’s so damn new about them?”
“And what’s your point?” asked the Monk.
“I want an explanation. For over eighteen months I’ve sat on the House Assassination Subcommittee. I’ve plowed through thousands of pages, filled with hundreds of names and twice as many theories. I don’t think there’s a suggested conspiracy or a suspected assassin I’m not aware of.
I’ve lived with those names and those theories for damn near two years, until I didn’t think there was anything left to learn.”
“I’d say your credentials were very impressive,” interrupted Abbott.
“I thought they might be; it’s why I accepted the Oversight chair. I thought I could make a realistic contribution, but now I’m not so sure. I’m suddenly beginning to wonder what I do know.”
“Why?” asked Manning apprehensively.
“Because I’ve been sitting here listening to the four of you describe an operation that’s been going on for three years, involving networks of personnel and informants and major intelligence posts throughout Europe--all centered on an assassin whose ‘list of accomplishments’ is staggering.
Am I substantively correct?”
“Go on,” replied Abbott quietly, holding his pipe, his expression rapt. “What’s your question?”
“Who is he? Who the hell is this Cain?”
The silence lasted precisely five seconds, during which time eyes roamed other eyes, several throats were cleared, and no one moved in his chair. It was as if a decision were being reached without discussion: evasion was to be avoided. Congressman Efrem Walters, out of the hills of Tennessee by way of the Yale Law Review, was not to be dismissed with facile circumlocution that dealt with the esoterica of clandestine manipulations. Bullshit was out.
David Abbott put his pipe down on the table, the quiet clatter his overture. “The less public exposure a man like Cain receives the better it is for everyone.”
“That’s no answer,” said Walters. “But I assume it’s the beginning of one.”
“It is. He’s a professional assassin--that is, a trained expert in wide-ranging methods of taking life. That expertise is for sale, neither politics nor personal motivation any concern to him whatsoever. He’s in business solely to make a profit--and his profits escalate in direct ratio to his reputation.”
The congressman nodded. “So by keeping as tight a lid as you can on that reputation you’re holding back free advertising.”
“Exactly. There are a lot of maniacs in this world with too many real or imagined enemies who might easily gravitate to Cain if they knew of him. Unfortunately, more than we care to think about already have; to date thirty-eight killings can be directly attributed to Cain, and some twelve to fifteen are probables.”
“That’s his list of ‘accomplishments’?”
“Yes. And we’re losing the battle. With each new killing his reputation spreads.”
“He was dormant for a while,” said Knowlton of the CIA. “For a number of months recently we thought he might have been taken himself. There were several probables in which the killers themselves were eliminated; we thought he might have been one of them.”
“Such as?” asked Walters.
“A banker in Madrid who funneled bribes for the Europolitan Corporation for government purchases in Africa. He was shot from a speeding car on the Paseo de la Castellana. A chauffeur-bodyguard gunned down both driver and killer, for a time we believed the killer was Cain.”
“I remember the incident. Who might have paid for it?”
“Any number of companies,” answered Gillette, “who wanted to sell gold-plated cars and indoor plumbing to instant dictators.”
“What else? Who else?”
“Sheik Mustafa Kalig in Oman,” said Colonel Manning.
“He was reported killed in an abortive coup.”
“Not so,” continued the officer. “There was no attempted coup; G-Two informants confirmed that. Kalig was unpopular, but the other sheiks aren’t fools. The coup story was a cover for an assassination that could tempt other professional killers. Three troublesome nonentities from the Officer Corps were executed to lend credence to the lie. For a while, we thought one of them was Cain; the timing corresponds to Cain’s dormancy.”
“Who would pay Cain for assassinating Kalig?”
“We asked ourselves that over and over again,” said Manning. “The only possible answer came from a source who claimed to know, but there was no way to verify it. He said Cain did it to prove it could be done. By him. Oil sheiks travel with the tightest security in the world.”
“There are several dozen other incidents,” added Knowlton. “Probables that fall into the same pattern where highly protected figures were killed, and sources came forward to implicate Cain.”
“I see.” The congressman picked up the summary page for Zurich. “But from what I gather you don’t know who he is.”
“No two descriptions have been alike,” interjected Abbott. “Cain’s apparently a virtuoso at disguise.”
“Yet people have seen him, talked to him. Your sources, the informants, this man in Zurich; none of them may come out in the open and testify, but surely you’ve interrogated them. You’ve got to have come up with a composite, with something.”
“We’ve come up with a great deal,” replied Abbott, “but a consistent description isn’t part of it.
For openers, Cain never lets himself be seen in daylight. He holds meetings at night, in dark rooms or alleyways. If he’s ever met more than one person at a time--as Cain--we don’t know about it.
We’ve been told he never stands, he’s always seated--in a dimly lit restaurant, or a corner chair, or parked car. Sometimes he wears heavy glasses, sometimes none at all; at one rendezvous he may have dark hair, on another white or red or covered by a hat.”
“Language?”
“We’re closer here,” said the CIA director, anxious to put the Company’s research on the table.
“Fluent English and French, and several Oriental dialects.”
“Dialects? What dialects? Doesn’t a language come first?”
“Of course. It’s root-Vietnamese.”
“Viet--“ Walters leaned forward. “Why do I get the idea that I’m coming to something you’d rather not tell me?”
“Because you’re probably quite astute at cross-examination, counselor.” Abbott struck a match and lit his pipe.