everything for her. Not just yet. Other things being equal, Adams was
the one to focus on. And they had a communication link to him by
virtue of knowing where he lived. If they needed to get a discreet
message to him, they could.
Now Thornhill’s thoughts turned to Buchanan. He was currently in
Philadelphia meeting with a prominent senator on how best to further
the agenda of one of Buchanan’s clients. They had this particular
fellow on enough felonious activity to make the man literally break
down and plead for his miserable life. He had been a special pain in
the ass to the CIA, nickle-and-diming them to death from the high perch
of his Appropriations Committee seat. The payback would be so
gratifying.
Thornhill envisioned walking into all these mighty politicians’ offices
and showing them the videos, the audiotapes, the paper trails. Of them
and Buchanan plotting their little conspiracies, all the details of the
future payoffs; they so eager to do Buchanan’s bidding in return for
all that money. How greedy they looked!
Good Senator, would you mind very much licking my boots, you whiny,
squealing excuse for a human being. And then you will do exactly as I
say, no more, no less, or I will crush you underfoot faster than you
can say “vote for me.”
Of course, Thornhill would never say that. These men demanded your
respect even if they didn’t deserve it. He would tell them that Danny
Buchanan had disappeared and left these tapes with them. They weren’t
quite sure what to do with the evidence, but it appeared that the tapes
should be turned over to the FBI. It seemed an awful thing to do;
these fine men couldn’t possibly be guilty of these sorts of things,
but once the FBI started its feeding frenzy, they all knew where that
would end:
prison. And how could that possibly help the country? The world would
laugh at us. Terrorists would be emboldened in the face of a
supposedly weakened foe. And resources were so tight. Why, the CIA
itself was understaffed and underfunded, its responsibility unfairly
curtailed. And could you fine people perhaps do something to change
that? And would you please do so at the expense of the FBI, the very
bastards who would love to get their hands on these tapes so they could
destroy you? Starting with getting them the hell off our backs? And we
thank you very much, you fine public leaders. We knew you’d
understand.
The first move in Thornhill’s grand plan would be to have his new
allies find a way to completely remove the FBI presence from the
Agency. Next, the operations budget for the CIA would be increased by
fifty percent. To start. In the next fiscal year he would get serious
about the dollars. In the future, the CIA would only report to a joint
intelligence committee instead of the separate House and Senate
committees it was confronted with now. It was far easier to co-opt one
committee. Then the hierarchy of the U.S. intelligence-gathering
agencies needed to be straightened Out once and for all. And the
director of Central Intelligence would be at the very top of that
pyramid. The FBI would be as far down the totem pole as Thornhill
could bury it. And the tools of the CIA would be considerably
strengthened. Domestic surveillance, the covert funding and arming of
insurgency groups to overthrow enemies of the United States, even
selective assassination, all would come back as weapons of choice for
him and his colleagues. Right that minute Thornhill could think of
five heads of state whose immediate deaths would leave the world a
better, safer, more humane place. It was time to take the shackles off
the best and brightest and let them do their jobs again. God, he was
so close.
“Keep up the good work, Danny,” Thornhill said out loud. “Pour it on
until the end. That’s a good man. Let them almost taste victory right
before I take their lives away.”
Grim-faced, he looked at his watch and rose from behind his desk.
Thornhill was a man who hated the press. He had, of course, never