The Once and Future Spy (22 page)

W
aiting his turn in line, the Weeder couldn’t help overhearing two teenage girls giggling away behind him. “I know a better
one,” the girl with the nasal voice informed her friend. “My botany teacher told us about this insect, see, that’s got no
vagina.”

“Like how does it do it, then?” her friend asked in awe.

“Well, the male of the species punches a hole in the female of the species with his, you know, thing, is how. He punches the
hole and then he screws it. You’re supposed to be able to tell how many times she’s done it by the number of holes she’s got
in her.”

The second teenage girl said seriously, “Wow! I guess we’re lucky we come equipped. That way the parents can’t keep track
of our sex lives.”

Both girls burst into peals of laughter.

Snow’s great-aunt Esther, whom the Weeder had talked into coming with him so he would be less conspicuous, observed his expression
out of the corner of her eye. A sly smile played on her lips as she said in an undertone, “When I was their age we talked
clean but thought dirty. It seems to me what they’re doing is a lot more wholesome, not to mention more fun.” She snapped
a bridge back into her gums for emphasis.

The Weeder said, “I’m beginning to wonder if there is anything that can shock you.”

“I’ve seen it all,” Esther agreed, “and imagined the rest.”

“Me too,” the Weeder remarked, “I’ve imagined the rest.”

When their turn came the Weeder bought two tickets and ushered Esther past the guard into the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum.
Built to resemble a Venetian palace, it had been commissioned by the rich and seductive Mrs. Gardner, who had wanted to transplant
a piece of Venice to Boston. “Beats where I live by a mile,” Esther observed, squeezing the Weeder’s arm as they surveyed
the central patio overrun with plants and trees, and the delicate Gothic facades rising off it. “There’s a Sargent portrait
of Mrs. G. somewhere. Let’s find it.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” the Weeder said, gently detaching his arm from hers.

“Where are you off to?”

“The men’s room, if you must know.”

“Why don’t you come right out and say you need to pee instead of beating around the bush. It’s a natural bodily function and
nothing to be ashamed of.” Snapping her bridges, Esther tottered off to find the Sargent portrait.

The Weeder drifted around the patio toward the toilets, lingered to study the vines coiling up the columns as he tried to
spot the FBI stakeout team that would surely be posted near Savinkov’s dead drop. The likeliest candidate he could find was
a clean-cut young man in blue jeans and basketball sneakers taking pictures with a telephoto lens directly across the patio
from him. What gave him away were his lightly tinted aviator sunglasses. Behind the Weeder a middle-aged man reading the museum’s
guidebook emerged from the men’s room and started up the steps toward the first floor. The Weeder glanced across the patio
in time to see the FBI agent aim his camera and take a photograph of the man with the guidebook. It occurred to the Weeder
that he had witnessed another in an endless series of invasions of privacy. Maybe Snow was on to something after all, he thought.
Maybe invading each other’s privacy was the basic way people related to each other these days.

The Weeder pushed through the door into the men’s room. From behind the locked door of a stall came the sound of a hacking
cough. He took the envelope he had meticulously prepared the previous night out of his pocket and slipped it behind the radiator.
Then he washed his hands and dried them under the hot air blower and headed for the exit.

To make the letter to Savinkov more believable he had purposely left it unsigned. But the FBI would have his fingerprints
on the envelope and the photograph of him coming out of the men’s room. It wouldn’t take them long to put two and two together,
to sound the alarm. The computer printouts in the pawnshop would be retrieved. Wanamaker would be brought in to authenticate
them. Those whose job it was to leap to conclusions would announce that Stufftingle had been permanently compromised and must
be scrapped.

That was the up side. The down side was that the hunt for the Weeder’s scalp would begin in earnest.

S
now profited from the Weeder’s absence to use the phone. She had to call a friend in Providence to get the phone number of
Michael Fargo’s parents. Mrs. Fargo remembered Snow very well from her son’s wedding and gladly passed on Michael’s home phone
number in Georgetown. Snow pressed Mark’s wife, Sally, for Michael’s private number at the Justice Department.

Snow stared down at the slip of paper with the telephone number scrawled on it. She was sure Silas was dead wrong. There were
people in high places whose moral compass still pointed true north. And Michael Fargo was one of them. Snow had known him
since his law school days; Michael had been Jeb’s closest friend, and best man at their wedding. If there was one person in
the world she would trust with her life it was Michael. She would sound him out, feel her way. Silas would see she had been
right.

Snow reached for the phone and dialed the Washington number. A telephone rang. A man, all business, came on the line.

“Fargo.”

“Michael?”

There was a crisp “Who’s this?”

“It’s me, Snow.”

“Snow! My God. A voice from the grave!” Michael Fargo faltered. “I’m sorry I said that. I wasn’t thinking. It’s been three
years, hasn’t it? Since we buried Jeb. I’m glad you called.”

“Michael—”

Snow hesitated. Fargo heard the hesitation. “Is something the matter, Snow?”

Tears flowed. Between them Snow managed to get out, “I need help, Michael.”

F
argo pushed the menu across the table to Snow. “Order something,” he said.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Snow said.

“There’s a shrimp curry most folks find tasty, dear,” the waitress suggested helpfully.

“She’ll take the shrimp curry,” Fargo told the waitress. “I’ll take number seventeen, with french fries and broccoli.”

The waitress, who wore a large button on her smock identifying her as Minnie, tore off a copy of the order, tucked it under
a salt cellar, smiled and left. Fargo raised his Bloody Mary to Snow and started sipping it.

Snow said, “It was real nice of you to come up so quickly.”

Fargo said, “Jeb was my best friend. Which makes you my best friend-in-law. Tell me how I can help you.”

“What exactly do you do at the Justice Department?” Snow asked.

“You want to know what I do at work?” Fargo repeated. He took another sip of his drink, studying Snow over the rim of the
glass. She had lost weight, grown gaunt even, since he had seen her at Jeb’s funeral. The scar over her eye had been livid
then; now it was a barely noticeable pencil line. “I’m the assistant head of the department’s Criminal Division, if that means
anything to you,” he finally said.

“I know this sounds dramatic, but could you get an appointment with the President?”

“Which president?” It dawned on him what she was asking. “You mean
the
President?”

Snow flashed a pained smile, nodded.

Fargo’s eyebrows arched. “I guess you do need help if you’re asking me about my access to the Oval Office.”

“Answer the question.”

Fargo shrugged. “I’ve been in the Oval Office half a dozen times but I’ve always been riding on the Attorney General’s coattails.
He brings me along to answer questions. It’s the kind of situation where I don’t speak unless I’m spoken to.”

Snow’s face screwed up in disappointment. “I was hoping you were senior enough to get in to see the President if you wanted
to.”

“Look, I’m not sure where this conversation is going, but if it would help move things along, I am senior enough to see the
Attorney General any time I need to. And the Attorney General has unlimited access to the Oval Office.”

Snow brought a cuticle up to her teeth and began gnawing on it. Fargo asked, “What’s this about, Snow?” And he added very
gently, “Jeb trusted me. You can too.”

Snow seemed to gather herself, like a runner before the start of a race. “Okay,” she blurted out. “Let’s see what happens.”
And in long run-on sentences that broke off only when she came up for air, she proceeded to tell him about the atrocity an
agent named Wanamaker was going to commit; how someone she knew had stumbled across details of the operation, which was code-named
Stufftingle, while running a top secret Agency eavesdropping program; how he had attempted to head off the atrocity by threatening
to leak evidence indicating the CIA was responsible if Wanamaker went through with it; how the Agency had attempted, on three
occasions, to eliminate him; how she was desperately afraid they would succeed the next time they tried.

“How are you using the word
eliminate
?” Fargo asked.

Snow said, “Eliminate as in murder.” And she described the three attempts on Sibley’s life.

“Your friend told you about the fire breather cornering him in the parking lot? About the air being pumped out of the library?”

Snow nodded miserably.

“He told you about the wrecking ball?”

Snow caught the note of doubt in Fargo’s voice. Looking squarely
into his eyes, she said with quiet intensity, “He didn’t have to tell me. I was there. It was my head the building came down
on.”

Fargo’s attitude changed instantly. “You were there with him? You saw it?”

Snow said, “Maybe now you’ll believe me.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I wanted to but my friend said it was out of the question. He said they would check his story with Washington. He said the
Agency would claim he was crazy and come and get him.”

“Tell me again about this atrocity he says the Agency is planning to commit. What proof does he have?”

“He’s hidden some computer printouts of conversations in which the atrocity is discussed.”

“Why doesn’t he take his printouts to the newspapers? Splash it across the front pages? The Agency couldn’t very well eliminate
him once he exposed the plot.”

“You don’t understand,” insisted Snow. She felt she was reaching the limits of her patience, of her strength. She decided
she would make one last effort to convince him. “My friend is a patriot. He wants to head off the atrocity without dragging
the Central Intelligence Agency through the mud, and the United States along with it.”

“Who else besides you and your friend know about this?”

“As far as I know, no one.”

The waitress turned up carrying a tray filled with food. She set the shrimp curry down in front of Fargo and the number seventeen
in front of Snow. “Enjoy,” she said.

Snow and Fargo didn’t bother exchanging plates; neither felt like eating now. Fargo pursed his lips, considering the problem
for a long while, finally asked, “Is your friend aware you phoned me?”

Snow closed her eyes for a moment. “When I suggested trying to go over the head of the Agency he got annoyed. He thinks …”

“What does he think?” Fargo encouraged her.

“He thinks the President may have authorized the whole thing.” She leaned forward. “Will you help us, Michael?”

Fargo nodded. “I’ll nose around the shop and see what I can come up with. How do I get in touch with you?”

Snow sat back. “I’ll get in touch with you,” she said quickly. She watched him carefully to see how he would take this.

Fargo just smiled faintly. “Do you think your friend would agree to meet me?”

“Depending on what you come up with, I could try and convince him.”

Fargo watched Snow raise a cuticle to her teeth. She badly needed reassuring, he saw. He reached for her hand. “You can count
on me,” he told her.

“That’s what I seem to be doing,” she noted uncertainly.