place to get meaningful work done.
Thornhill had organized this select group, who were as upset as he
about the state of affairs at the CIA. It was he who had remembered
that this bloated underground time capsule existed. And it was
Thornhill who had found the money to secretly bring the chamber back to
working condition and upgrade its facilities. There were thousands of
little taxpayer-funded toys like that sprinkled around the country,
many of them gone to complete waste. Thornhill suppressed a smile.
Well if governments didn’t waste their citizens’ hard-earned money,
then what would be left for governments to do?
Even now, as he ran his hand over the stainless steel console with its
quaint built-in ashtrays, sniffed the filtered air and felt the
protective coolness of the earth all around, Thornhill’s mind wandered
back for a moment to the Cold War period. At least there was a measure
of certainty with the hammer and sickle. In truth, Thornhill would
take the lumbering Russian bull over the agile sand snake that you
never knew was out there until it flung its venom into you. There were
many who wanted nothing more in life than to topple the United States.
It was his job to ensure that never happened.
Gazing around the table, Thornhill gauged each man’s devotion to his
country and was satisfied it matched his own. He had wanted to serve
America for as long as he could remember. His father had been with the
OSS, the World War II-era predecessor to the CIA. He had known little
of what his father did at the time, but the man had instilled in his
son the philosophy that there was no greater thing to do with one’s
life than to serve one’s country. Thornhill had joined the Agency
right out of Yale. Right up until the day he died, his father had been
proud of his son. But no prouder than the son had been of the old
man.
Thornhill’s hair was a shining silver, which lent him a distinguished
air. His eyes were gray and active, the angle of his chin blunt. His
voice was deep, cultured; technical jargon and the poetry of Longfellow
flowed from his mouth with equal ease. The man still wore three-piece
suits and favored pipe smoking over cigarettes. The
fifty-eight-year-old Thornhill could have quietly finished out his time
at the CIA and led the pleasant life of a former public servant, well
traveled, erudite. He had no thought of going out quietly, and the
reason was very clear.
For the last ten years, the CIA’s responsibilities and budgets had been
decimated. It was a disastrous development, for the firestorms that
were popping up across the world now often involved fanatical minds
accountable to no political body and possessing the capability to
obtain weapons of mass destruction. And while just about everyone
thought high-tech was the answer for all the ills of the world, the
best satellites in the world couldn’t stroll down alleys in Baghdad,
Seoul or Belgrade and take the emotional temperature of the people
there. Computers in space could never capture what people were
thinking, what devilish urges were lurking in their hearts. Thornhill
would always choose a smart field operative willing to risk his or her
life over the best hardware money could buy.
Thornhill had just such a small group of skilled operatives within the
CIA, completely loyal to him and his private agenda. They had all
worked hard to regain for the Agency its former prominence. Now
Thornhill finally had the vehicle to do that. He would very soon have
under his thumb powerful congressmen, senators, even the vice president
himself, and enough high-ranking bureaucrats to choke an independent
counsel. Thornhill would see his budgets revive, his manpower
skyrocket, his agency’s scope of responsibility in the world return to
its rightful place.
The Strategy had worked for J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. It was no
coincidence, Thornhill believed, that the Bureau’s budget and influence
had flourished under the late director and his allegedly “secret” files
on powerful politicians. If there was one organization in the world
that Robert Thornhill hated with all his soul, it was the FBI. But he