No, he told the ground, thirty-seven thousand feet below.
And what did Kelly feel about it? He pondered that question for a while, leaning back and closing his eyes as though napping. A quiet voice, perhaps conscience, told him that he ought to feel something, and he searched for a genuine emotion. After several minutes of consideration, he could find none. There was no loss, no grief, no remorse. Lamarck had meant nothing to him and probably would be no loss to anyone else. Perhaps his girls – Kelly had counted five of them in the bar – would be without a pimp, but then maybe one of them would seize the opportunity to correct her life. Unlikely, perhaps, but possible. It was realism that told Kelly he couldn’t fix all the problems of the world; it was idealism that told him his inability to do so did not preclude him from addressing individual imperfections. But all that took him away from the initial question: What did he feel about the elimination of Pierre Lamarck? The only answer he could find was, Nothing. The professional elation of having done something difficult was different from satisfaction, from the nature of the task. In ending the life of Pierre Lamarck he had removed something harmful from the surface of the planet. It had enriched him not at all – taking the money had been a tactic, a camouflage measure, certainly not an objective. It had not avenged Pam’s life. It had not changed very much. It had been like stepping on an offensive insect – you did it and moved on. He would not try to tell himself different, but neither would his conscience trouble him, and that was sufficient to the moment. His little experiment had been a success. After all the mental and physical preparation, he had proven himself worthy of the task before him. Kelly’s mind focused behind closed eyes on the mission before him. Having killed many men better than Pierre Lamarck, he could now think with confidence about killing men worse than the New Orleans pimp.
This time they visited him, Greer saw with satisfaction. On the whole, ClA’s hospitality was better. James Greer had arranged parking in the VIP Visitors’ area – the equivalent at the Pentagon was always haphazard and difficult to use – and a secure conference room. Cas Podulski thoughtfully selected a seat at the far end, close to the air-conditioning vent, where his smoking wouldn’t bother anyone.
‘Dutch, you were right about this kid,’ Greer said, handing out typed copies of the handwritten notes which had arrived two days earlier.
‘Somebody ought to have put a gun to his head and walked him into OCS. He would have been the kind of junior officer we used to be.’
Podulski chuckled at his end of the table. ‘No wonder he got out,’ he said with lighthearted bitterness.
‘I’d be careful putting a gun to his head,’ Greer observed with a chuckle of his own. ‘I spent a whole night last week going through his package. This guy’s a wild one in the field.’
‘Wild?’ Maxwell asked with a hint of disapproval in his voice. ‘Spirited, you mean, James?’
Perhaps a compromise, Greer thought: ‘A self-starter. He had three commanders and they backed him on every play he made except one.’
‘PLASTIC FLOWER? The political-action major he killed?’
‘Correct. His lieutenant was furious about that, but if it’s true about what he had to watch, the only thing you can fault was his judgment, rushing in the way he did.’
‘I read through that, James. I doubt I could have held back,’ Cas said, looking up from the notes. Once a fighter pilot, always a fighter pilot. ‘Look at this, even his grammar is good!’ Despite his accent, Podulski had been assiduous in learning his adopted language.
‘Jesuit high school,’ Greer pointed out. ‘I’ve gone over our in-house assessment of KINGPIN. Kelly’s analysis tracks on every major point except where he calls a few spades.’
‘Who did the CIA assessment ?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Robert Ritter. He’s a European specialist they brought in. Good man, a little terse, knows how to work the field, though.’
‘Operations guy?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Right.’ Greer nodded. ‘Did some very nice work working Station Budapest.’
‘And why,’ Podulski asked, ‘did they bring in a guy from that side of the house to look over the KINGPIN operation?’
‘I think you know the answer, Cas,’ Maxwell pointed out.
‘If BOXWOOD GREEN goes, we need an Operations guy from this house. We have to have it. I don’t have the juice to do everything. Are we agreed on that?’ Greer looked around the table, seeing the reluctant nods. Podulski looked back down at his documents before saying what they all thought.
‘Can we trust him?’
‘He’s not the one who burned KINGPIN. Cas, we have Jim Angleton looking at that. It was his idea to bring Ritter onboard. I’m new here, people. Ritter knows the bureaucracy here better than I do. He’s an operator; I’m just an analyst-type. And his heart’s in the right place. He damned near lost his job protecting a guy – he had an agent working inside GRU, and it was time to get him out. The decision-weenies upstairs didn’t like the timing, with the arms talks going on, and they told him no. Ritter brought the guy out anyway. It turned out his man had something State needed, and that saved Ritter’s career.’ It hadn’t done much for the martini-mixer upstairs, Greer didn’t add, but that was a person CIA was doing rather well without.
‘Swashbuckler?’ Maxwell asked.
‘He was loyal to his agent. Sometimes people here forget about that,’ Greer said.
Admiral Podulski looked up the table. ‘Sounds like our kind of guy.’
‘Brief him in,’ Maxwell ordered. ‘But you tell him that if I ever find out some civilian in the building fucked up our chance to get these men out, I will personally drive down to Pax River, personally check out an A-4, and personally napalm his house.’
‘You should let me do that, Dutch,’ Cas added with a smile. ‘I’ve always had a better hand for dropping things. Besides, I have six hundred hours in the Scooter.’
Greer wondered how much of that was humor.
‘What about Kelly?’ Maxwell asked.
‘His CIA identity is “Clark” now. If we want him in, we can utilize him better as a civilian. He’d never get over being a chief, but a civilian doesn’t have to worry about rank.’
‘Make it so,’ Maxwell said. It was convenient, he thought, to have a naval officer seconded to CIA, wearing civilian clothes but still subject to military discipline.
‘Aye aye, sir. If we get to training, where will it be done?’
‘Quantico Marine Base,’ Maxwell replied. ‘General Young is a pal from the old days. Aviator. He understands.’
‘Marty and I went through test-pilot school together,’ Podulski explained. ‘From what Kelly says, we don’t need that many troops. I always figured KINGPIN was overmanned. You know, if we bring this off, we have to get Kelly his Medal.’
‘One thing at a time, Cas.’ Maxwell set that aside, looking back to Greer as he stood. ‘You will let us know if Angleton finds out anything?’
‘Depend on it,’ Greer promised. ‘If there’s a bad guy inside, we’ll get his ass. I’ve fished with the guy. He can pull a brook trout out of thin air.’ After they left he set an afternoon meeting with Robert Ritter. It meant putting Kelly off, but Ritter was more important now, and while there was a rush on the mission, it wasn’t all that great a rush.
Airports were useful places, with their bustling anonymity and telephones. Kelly placed his call, as he waited for his baggage to appear – he hoped – in the proper place.
‘Greer,’ the voice said.
‘Clark,’ Kelly replied, smiling at himself. It seemed so James Bond to have a cover name. ‘I’m at the airport, sir. Do you still want me in this afternoon?’
‘No. I’m tied up.’ Greer flipped through his daybook. ‘Tuesday… three-thirty. You can drive in. Give me your car type and license number.’
Kelly did that, surprised that he’d been bumped. ‘You get my notes, sir?’
‘Yes, and you did a fine job, Mr Clark. We’ll be going over them Tuesday. We are very pleased with your work.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Kelly said into the phone.
‘See you Tuesday.’ The line clicked off.
‘And thanks for that, too,’ Kelly said after he hung up. Twenty minutes later he had his bags and was walking off to his car. About an hour after that he was in his Baltimore apartment. It was lunchtime, and he fixed a couple of sandwiches, chasing both down with Coca-Cola. He hadn’t shaved today, and his heavy beard made a shadow on his face, he saw in the mirror. He’d leave it. Kelly headed into the bedroom for a lengthy nap.