“Well, there’s that,” Kelly agreed with a sigh. He sat down again on a corner of the bed. “How many recruits are we talking about? Kurds, I mean.” He was studying the backs of his hands with a frowning interest that would have been justified for a fat envelope with a Dublin postmark.
“About twenty that we’re pretty sure of,” Elaine said, genuinely relaxing again. She gestured toward the files with red-bordered cover sheets, which she had spread on the desk. “It’s here, what we have. Certainly we’ve got only the tip of the iceberg – but at worst we’re not talking about – ” She smiled; it made a different person of her, emphasizing the pleasant fullness of her cheeks and adding a touch of naughtiness to features which otherwise suggested wickedness of a thoroughly professional kind.
” – a land war in Asia,” she concluded.
“I’m not subtle, you know,” Kelly said. “If I go in, I’ll make a lotta waves. If I think it’s the best way to learn what’s going on, I’ll tell people every goddam thing I know. And if it gets rough, it’s likely to get real rough.”
“Slash and burn data collection,” the woman said with a grimace, though not a particularly angry one. She shrugged. “The more waves you make,” she went on, “the more likely it is that the wheels come off before you – or we – learn anything useful. But there isn’t a lot of time, and the people who picked you for this operation had seen your profiles too.”
“Goddam, goddam, goddam,” the veteran said without heat as he lay back on the white bedspread and began to knuckle his eyes. His feet were still flat on the floor. “It’s going to take me a while to get my own stuff on track. Maybe a week. Couple three days at least.”
“You won’t need a cover identity,” Elaine said. Because Kelly’s eyes were closed, it was only in his mind that he saw her face blank into an expression of professional neutrality. “Your job with Congressman Bianci has taken you out of the country in the past, and – ”
“No,” Kelly said. He neither snapped nor raised his voice, but there was nothing in the way he spoke that admitted of argument. “Carlo doesn’t get involved in this.”
“The congressman will agree without question, Tom,” Elaine said in a reasonable tone. “I don’t mean we’d put pressure on him – you can clear it with him yourself. He’s a, well, a patriot, and if you tell him you’re convinced yourself that it’s a matter of national security then – ”
“Stop,” said Kelly. He had taken his hands away from his eyes, but he continued to look at the ceiling, and it was toward the ceiling that he spoke in a voice as cold and flat as the work-face of a broadax: “Carlo hired me to keep him out of shit. He doesn’t get into this bucket if he swears on a stack a’ Bibles he wants to.”
Kelly paused, for breath rather than for rhetorical effect. “I’ll go in as a civilian tech advisor, Boeing or RCA, that sorta thing. There must be a couple thousand Amcits like that. Pick one with the right build who’s rotating home and make me up a passport. God knows you can square it with Boeing. I may be carrying some electronics, so make that reasonable enough for Customs.”
Elaine did not even consider arguing the Bianci matter again. “Check,” she said. “Though there’s no need for you to carry things in country yourself.”
“There’s no need for me to carry a lucky charm,” said Kelly, shifting his weight a little, though the mattress was too soft to make more than a mild discomfort of the weapon in the hollow of his spine, “but if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.”
“Besides …” As he spoke the planes of his face changed, tiny muscles reacting to mental tension. “I want to keep clear of whatever you’ve got on the ground already. I for damn sure don’t want to be showing up at the US Mission to collect my mail.”
“If you need something in a hurry and it isn’t pre-positioned,” the woman warned, “the chances are it’ll have to come in by pouch.”