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the moment. No serious attempt had ever been made on a senior Agency executive, but history was not their institutional concern. The future was, and even CIA didn’t have a particularly bright record for predicting that.
Ryan found his desk neatly piled with material too sensitive for the car’s dispatch case, and prepped himself for the morning department-head meeting, which he co-chaired with the DCI. There was a drip-coffee machine in his office. Next to it was a clean but never-used mug that had once belonged to the man who’d brought him into the Agency, Vice Admiral James Greer. Nancy took care of that, and Ryan never began a day at Langley without thinking of his dead boss. So. He rubbed his hands across his face and eyes, and went to work. What new and interesting things did the world hold in store this day?
The logger, like most of his trade, was a big, powerful man. Six-four, and two hundred twenty pounds of former all-state defensive end, he’d joined the Marines instead of going to college – could have, he thought, could have taken the scholarship to Oklahoma or Pitt, but he’d decided against it. And he knew that he would never have wanted to leave Oregon for good. A college degree would have meant that. Maybe play pro ball, and then -turn into a ‘suit’? No. Since childhood he’d loved the outdoor life. He made a good living, raised his family in a friendly small town, lived a rough, healthy life, and was the best damned man in the company for dropping a tree straight and soft. He drew the special ones.
He yanked the string on the big, two-man chainsaw. On a silent command, his helper took his end off the ground as the logger did the same. The tree had already been notched with a double-headed axe. They worked the saw in slowly and carefully. The logger kept one eye on the chainsaw while the other watched the tree. There was an art to doing this just right. It was a point of honor with him that he didn’t waste an inch of wood he didn’t have to. Not like the guys down at the mill, though
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they’d told him that the mill wouldn’t touch this baby. They pulled the saw after completing the first cut, and started the second without pausing for breath. This time it took four minutes. The logger was tensely alert now. He felt a puff of wind on his face and paused to make sure it was blowing the way he wanted. A tree, no matter how large, was a plaything for a stiff wind – especially when nearly cut in half. . .
It was swaying at the top now . . . almost time. He backed the saw off and waved to his helper. Watch my eyes, watch my hands! The kid nodded seriously. About another foot would do it, the logger knew. They completed it very slowly. It abused the chain, but this was the dangerous part. Safety guys were monitoring the wind, and . . . now!
The logger brought the saw out and dropped it. The helper took the cue and backed off ten yards as his boss did the same. Both watched the base of the tree. If it kicked, that would tell them of the danger.
But it didn’t. As always, it seemed so agonizingly slow. This was the part the Sierra Club liked to film, and the logger understood why. So slow, so agonizing, like the tree knew it was dying, and was trying not to, and losing, and the groan of the wood was a moan of despair. Well, yes, he thought, it did seem like that, but it was only a goddamned tree. The cut widened as he watched and the tree fell. The top was moving very fast now, but the danger was at the bottom, and that’s what he continued to watch. As the trunk passed through the forty-five-degree mark, the wood parted completely. The body of the tree kicked then, moving over the stump about four feet, like the death rattle of a man. Then the noise. The immense swish of the top branches ripping through the air. He wondered quickly how fast the top was moving. Speed of sound, maybe? No, not that fast. . . and then -whump! the tree actually bounced, but softly, when it hit the wet ground. Then it lay still. It was lumber now. That was always a little sad. It had been a pretty tree.
The Japanese official came over next, the logger was surprised to see. He touched the tree and murmured
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something that must have been a prayer. That amazed him, it seemed like something an Indian would do -interesting, the logger thought. He didn’t know that Shinto was an animistic religion with many similarities to those of Native Americans. Talking to the spirit of the tree? Hmph. Next he came to the logger.
‘You have great skill,’ the little Japanese said with an exquisitely polite bow.
Thank you, sir.’ The logger nodded his head. It was the first Japanese he’d ever met. Seemed like a nice enough guy. And saying a prayer to the tree .. . that had class, the logger thought on reflection.
‘A great pity to kill something so magnificent.’
‘Yeah, I guess it is. Is it true that you will put this in a church, like?’
‘Oh, yes. We no longer have trees like this, and we need four huge beams. Twenty meters each. This one tree will do all of them, I hope,’ the man said, looking back at the fallen giant. ‘They must all come from a single tree. It is the tradition of the temple, you see.’
‘Ought to,’ the logger judged. ‘How old’s the temple?’
‘One thousand two hundred years. The old beams — they were damaged in the earthquake two years ago, and must be replaced very soon. With luck, these should last as long. I hope they will. It is a fine tree.’
Under the supervision of the Japanese official, the fallen tree was cut into manageable segments – they weren’t all that manageable. Quite a bit of special equipment had to be assembled to get this monster out, and Georgia-Pacific was charging a huge amount of money for the job. But that was not a problem. The Japanese, having selected the tree, paid without blinking. The representative even apologized for the fact that he didn’t want the GP mill to work the tree. It was a religious thing, he explained slowly and clearly, and no insult to the American workers was intended. The senior GP executive nodded. That was okay with him. It was their tree now. They’d let it season for a little while before loading it on an American-flag timber carrier for the trip across the Pacific, where the log would be worked with
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skill and due religious ceremony – by hand, the GP man was amazed to hear – for its new and special purpose. That it would never reach Japan was something that, none of them knew.
The term trouble-shooter was particularly awkward for a law-enforcement official, Murray thought. Of course, as he leaned back in the leather chair, he could feel the lomm Smith & Wesson automatic clipped to his waistband. He ought to have left it in his desk drawer, but he liked the feel of the beast. A revolver man for most of his career, he’d quickly come to love the compact power of the Smith. And Bill understood. For the first time in recent memory, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was a career cop who’d started his career on the street, busting bad guys. In fact, Murray and Shaw had started off in the same field division. Bill was slightly more skilled at the administrative side, but no one mistook him for a headquarters weenie. Shaw had first gotten high-level attention by staring down two armed bank robbers before the cavalry’d had time to arrive. He’d never fired his weapon in anger, of course – only a tiny percentage of FBI agents ever did – but he’d convinced those two hoods that he could drop both of them. There was steel under the gentlemanly velvet, and one hell of a brain. Which was why Dan Murray, a deputy assistant director, didn’t mind working as Shaw’s personal problem-solver.
‘What the hell do we do with this guy?’ Shaw asked, with quiet disgust.
Murray had just finished his report on the Warrior Case. Dan sipped at his coffee and shrugged.
‘Bill, the man is a genius with corruption cases – best we’ve ever had. He just doesn’t know dick about the muscle end of the business. He got out of his depth with this one. Luckily enough, no permanent damage was done.’ And Murray was right. The newsies had treated the Bureau surprisingly well for saving the life of their reporter. What was truly amazing was the fact that the newsies had never quite understood that the reporter had