Chương 16: Chapter 14.3: The Men Who Trusted No One

Now I had to find people for intelligence, counterintelligence, and internal control. The most difficult and dangerous directions. Intelligence was the hardest. I needed a very particular kind of mind. Not just a former military intelligence officer or field operative, but someone with experience building entire systems. A man who understood how intelligence services worked from the inside, how agent networks were built, how scattered fragments of data were analyzed and assembled into a single picture.

And I needed a paranoid. A healthy paranoid, for whom distrust was not a disease but a professional instrument. Someone capable of seeing links and conspiracies where an ordinary person would see coincidences. Someone who would verify information three times before believing it, and still leave room for doubt. And I knew the perfect candidate. After all, my entire novel had practically rested on him. James Jesus Angleton. A legend of American counterintelligence.

Thirty years in the CIA, twenty of them as head of counterintelligence. The man who built the system for identifying Soviet agents in Western intelligence services. A mole hunter, whose name was spoken in whispers in the corridors of Langley. A paranoid, a genius, and a fanatic of his craft. And fired in disgrace a year earlier. The scandal had been loud. The congressional committee investigating intelligence activities was digging into the CIA's dirt after Watergate, and Angleton got caught in the sweep.

He was accused of overreach, illegal surveillance of American citizens, and a paranoid witch hunt inside the Agency itself. They said he had ruined the careers of dozens of innocent officers, suspecting everyone around him of working for the KGB. Angleton left, taking all his secrets, contacts, and grudges with him. Since then, he had lived in a Washington suburb, angry at the government, writing memoirs he would never publish, and trusting no one. The perfect candidate for my purposes. If I could shake him awake.

Stern found his address through a detective in Washington. His house was in Arlington, Virginia. A good neighborhood, quiet and respectable. But Angleton's place looked abandoned compared with the neat properties around it. Overgrown lawn, peeling paint on the fence, old newspapers on the porch, some of them soaked through by rain. Clearly, no one had bothered to pick them up in a long time. I arrived on Saturday morning, without warning and without calling ahead.

With people like him, it was better to act directly. If you called in advance, they would have time to invent a reason to refuse. I parked by the curb, walked through the rusty gate, and climbed onto the porch. I rang the bell and waited, but there was only silence behind the door. I had to ring again, longer this time. After a minute, I heard footsteps inside, heavy and slow, as if the man was still deciding whether it was worth coming to the door at all. The door opened as far as the chain allowed.

A man of about sixty stood before me in a wrinkled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Gray hair disheveled, face unshaven, cheeks sunken. A cigarette smoldered in the corner of his mouth, the ash long; he hadn't even bothered to flick it off. His eyes were empty and indifferent. He looked at me for ten seconds without saying a word.

"James Angleton?" I asked. Instead of answering, he drew on his cigarette. The ash fell onto the threshold, but he seemed not to notice.

"Depends who's asking," he said in a deep, hoarse voice.

"If you're a journalist, go fuck yourself. If you're from Langley, also go fuck yourself, with the added note that you can shove something large up your ass. And if you're selling vacuum cleaners, I don't have carpets."

"Private sector," I said.

"Job offer." He looked at me as if I had said something unbelievably funny. The corner of his mouth twitched.

"Job," he repeated, tasting the word.

"What kind? Security consultant for some bank? Watchman at a warehouse? Or perhaps guarding your country house from raccoons?"

"Building an intelligence network from scratch. For a private company." He stayed silent for a moment, drew on his cigarette, and narrowed his eyes through the smoke.

"I see," he said without any interest.

"Another boy has decided to play spy. How old are you, thirty? Read too much Le Carré, watched too many films, decided intelligence is pretty girls, secret meetings, and microfilm in a heel? Go home, boy, and play with toy soldiers."

"I'm twenty-nine," I corrected him.

"I dare hope that means I'm no longer a boy. My company brings in three million a year, organized crime is pressuring me, information is leaking from inside, and I need a man who can build a system capable of stopping it." Angleton took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully, then turned his gaze back to me.

"Three million. Impressive, for a boy." He leaned against the doorframe.

"All right. Tell me your story. Entertain an old man. The only thing on my schedule today was dying of boredom, so you came at the right time." He did not remove the chain and did not invite me in. He simply stood there, watching me with the lazy curiosity of a cat observing a mouse. I quickly laid out the essentials: Aegis Enterprises, manufacturing, the security company, growth, criminal pressure, information leaks, lack of our own data collection networks.

I spoke briefly, to the point, without unnecessary emotion, and Angleton listened in silence. When I finished, he pulled a fresh cigarette from his pocket, lit it from the old one, and tossed the butt onto the porch.

"Amusing," he said.

"A boy businessman crossed half the country to ask a disgraced old man to protect him from gangsters. Do you know what your problem is, Mr. Miller?"

"Enlighten me."

"You think intelligence will solve your problems. It won't. You'll find one rat, and he'll be replaced by another. You'll identify the gangsters' informant, and they'll find a new one. You'll build a network, and they'll build theirs. It is an endless race in which you will always be one step behind, because they have been playing this game longer than you."

"Then I need to play better."

"No." He shook his head, and for the first time something like emotion entered his voice.

"You need to understand that this game has no winners. Only losers who don't yet know they've lost." He looked me in the eyes.

"I spent thirty years hunting moles inside the most powerful intelligence service in the world. And do you know what I achieved? They threw me out like a dog. The people I protected signed the order dismissing me. Thirty years of loyalty, devotion, sleepless nights, and all it took was one signature on one piece of paper. End of story. You probably think I'm trying to make you pity me, boy." He took a drag and looked as if he were staring straight through me.

"But it's simpler than that. This old man proved too poor at the very thing he devoted his life to. So why should I get involved in your little war with gangsters, if I couldn't even win my own?" He said it calmly, like a man who had long since gone through the sickness and accepted it.

"How much are you offering?" he asked suddenly.

"Eighty thousand a year." He smirked.

"Not bad. For that money, I could pretend I care. But I won't."

"Why?"

"Because I truly don't care, Mr. Miller. I don't care who is stealing information from your little company, which gangsters demand tribute from you, or what happens to you personally." He drew on the cigarette and blew smoke toward me.

"Do you know what happens to a man who has trusted no one for thirty years? He stops believing in anything at all: people, justice, the meaning of his own work. Only inertia remains, and the habit of breathing." That was when I understood the standard approach would not work. He didn't need money; he had savings and a pension. Recognition? He had long stopped believing in it, and I wasn't even sure he had ever needed it. Revenge against the system was too banal; he was smarter than that.

I had to ignite his professional hunger somehow. I stayed silent, frantically running through options. Angleton watched me with a faint smirk. Apparently, he enjoyed seeing me flounder. The old fox was entertaining himself, and the entertainment was coming to an end.

"Well then." He put his hand on the door.

"It was pleasant talking. Give my regards to New York." And then I did what I always do in hopeless situations: poked a finger into the sky and said the first thing that felt right, even though I had no guarantees whatsoever.

"And what if I told you I know why you were really fired?" His hand froze on the door. His body tensed, and for one second the mask of indifference cracked, just a little. His eyes remained empty, but the fingers gripping the door turned white.

"You were not fired for paranoia," I continued, looking him in the eyes.

"Not for witch hunts, and not for overreach. You were removed because you found something you were never supposed to find." The cigarette burned down to the filter and scorched his fingers, but he seemed not to notice.

"You got close to something real," I said slowly, choosing every word.

"Not individual moles, but a structure. An organization buried far deeper than the KGB, belonging to no single state, but with people in every one of them. You found threads in Langley, in the Pentagon, maybe even in the White House, and when you pulled on them, the system reacted. Congress didn't fire you. They did, through Congress." Angleton stood motionless. The cigarette fell to the floor, but he did not bend to pick it up. His face became a mask from which I could not read a single emotion.

But I saw his eyes. The emptiness had gone, and in its place appeared a dangerous gleam, the look of a man who had just been hit by a sniper's bullet and was trying to understand where the shot had come from.

"Who are you?" he asked quietly. His voice had changed. No laziness, no contempt, only cold, ringing steel.

"David Miller. Manufacturer of notepads. As I already said."

"Don't." He stepped toward me, and I physically felt the pressure of his presence. Short, thin, old, but in that moment he radiated such force that I instinctively took half a step back.

"Who. Are. You? CIA? MI6? Mossad? Who sent you?"

"No one sent me."

"Bullshit," he snapped.

"What you just spoke of was known to four people in the world. Me, my deputy who died of a heart attack in seventy-three, and two others I suspected of being connected to that very structure. If you are not connected to any of them, explain to me how you could know this. Right now." His voice rose, not to a shout, but to the kind of tone that makes people nervous. I forced myself to stand straight and not look away.

"Mr. Angleton, there is much more hidden in this world than you can imagine, even with your thirty years of experience. You found only the tip, and it cost you your career. Imagine what lies at the bottom." He stared at me, and I could see the gears turning in his head. An old machine, covered by the rust of indifference, suddenly started working again. He was analyzing my posture, my voice, my words, searching for lies, manipulation, a trap.

The process was so familiar to him that his body performed it automatically, like breathing.

"You're bluffing," he said at last, but there was no confidence in his voice.

"You read a few articles, gathered rumors, and built a theory. A pretty one, but empty."

"Maybe." I shrugged.

"Or maybe not. But you have a simple way to check."

"What way?"

"Accept my offer." He snorted, but without the earlier contempt.

"You want me to work for you on the basis of hints and half-truths? I spent thirty years exposing people who recruited agents exactly like that."

"I'm not recruiting you. I'm offering a deal. You build me an intelligence network: external intelligence, counterintelligence, everything needed to protect the company from crime and corporate espionage. You watch competitors, officials, anyone who poses a threat. You find information for me. You grow, strengthen, recruit people." I paused.

"And when the time comes, when the network is strong enough, when we have resources, people, and information, I will tell you everything. Then you can finish what you started in Langley. Truly finish it. Not alone and unsupported, as before, but with resources, with a team, with a man who knows where to look." Angleton was silent for a long time. Probably a full minute, though it felt like an hour.

Then he looked at me, and for the first time in the entire conversation, something alive appeared in his eyes: the true professional interest of a hunter who had caught a scent.

"This is a very large project," he said slowly.

"Do you understand how large? If even ten percent of what you are hinting at is true, we are talking about an enemy with more resources than most states. A private company, however successful, cannot contend with such a machine."

"Not now. But in five years, or ten… we'll see."

"Optimist." He smirked, but without venom now.

"All right, Mr. Miller. Suppose, only suppose, that I consider your offer. But you need to understand how I work."

"I'm listening."

"I will watch everyone. Every employee of your company, from the cleaner to the financial director. Your partners, contractors, clients. People you speak with outside work: friends, acquaintances, casual contacts."

"Expected."

"I'm not finished." He raised a finger.

"I will watch you personally. Your finances, meetings, calls, movements. Every decision, every contract, every appointment. Because if you are who you say you are, you should have no secrets from your own security. And if you are not who you say you are, I will find out." I held his gaze.

"I'm only glad to hear it." He blinked almost imperceptibly, but I caught it.

"Glad?"

"Absolutely. More than that," I allowed myself a smile, "I advise you to watch yourself as well. A man who suspects everyone must suspect himself too, otherwise he becomes the blind spot in his own system." Angleton looked at me for five long seconds. Then something happened I did not expect. He laughed.

"Watch myself," he repeated, shaking his head.

"In thirty years, no one has ever said that to me. Not one director, not one politician." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"In any case, I won't be bored with you." He removed the chain from the door, opened it fully, and stepped aside.

"Come in. We'll drink whiskey and discuss your little firm." I entered the house. Inside, it was cluttered, but not dirty. Books everywhere: shelves, tables, floor. Stacks of newspaper clippings bound with rubber bands. Maps on the walls, covered in notes in several languages. Ashtrays full of cigarette butts. The smell of tobacco and old paper seemed to have soaked into everything. Angleton led me to his study, a large room with windows overlooking the overgrown garden.

The massive desk was buried under documents and folders, the leather chair cracked with age, and on the wall behind the desk hung a corkboard covered with pins and strings: photographs, notes, clippings. A web of connections he had continued weaving even after being fired, a habit that had become second nature. He took a bottle of bourbon and two glasses from a desk drawer, poured generously, no water, no ice. We drank in silence.

"So," he said, setting the glass on the desk and looking at me with entirely different eyes now.

"Let us be frank, Mr. Miller. You want me to build an intelligence network. Suppose I agree. First, explain the scale of the task as you see it. Because if this is only about New York gangsters, you don't need me. Hire a couple of competent detectives and be done with it."

"It is not only about gangsters." This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"I gathered that. What else?" I took a sip of bourbon, gathering my thoughts.

"Stage one is crime, yes. A map of organized crime in New York: who is who, who is connected to whom, who controls what. Informants in the right circles, whether bars, ports, unions, or police. An early warning system. Plus counterintelligence inside the company: find the rat and shut down leaks."

"That's stage one. And stage two?"

"Corporate intelligence. Competitors, potential partners, people who can influence my business. Not espionage for its own sake, but understanding the balance of forces: who is planning what, who is negotiating with whom, where a strike may come from. Plus information on people or events that interest me and that I may need." Angleton nodded.

"Standard set for a large company. Many do it. They simply don't admit it. Next?"

"Politics. Officials, legislators, regulators. Who makes decisions, who is being pressured, which bills are being prepared. I want to see the whole picture, not react to each surprise after the fact."

"And the fourth stage?" I stayed silent for a moment.

"The fourth stage comes when the network is strong enough: we begin looking higher, toward the place you were thrown out of. But you understand better than anyone that it will take a long time to grow to that level." Angleton poured himself more bourbon and thoughtfully rotated the glass in his hands.

"You know what I like about your offer, Mr. Miller? You are not demanding immediate miracles. You say: build, grow, strengthen. That is the correct approach, because haste kills in intelligence."

"That is exactly why I am here. I need the man who will patiently assemble all this over years." He was silent for a while, looking out the window.

"I will need people. At the start, at least fifteen. Field agents for undercover work, two analysts for data processing, one technician for equipment and surveillance. Another expansion cycle in six months."

"Where do we look?"

"Former CIA officers and military intelligence men. After Vietnam and Watergate, there are plenty: angry at the government, out of work, willing to work for real money. I have contacts, but each must be checked thoroughly. Two months minimum."

"Budget: two hundred thousand for the first year. Salaries, informants, equipment, safe locations, everything needed for work. Also, I already have a military intelligence man on my team, so I'll introduce you." Angleton nodded.

"Enough to begin. But I want you to understand: intelligence is dirty work. You will have to recruit dubious people, pay people a decent man would not let through his door. Sometimes break the law. Not in grand ways, but in small ones, constantly."

"Provided those violations do not lead to criminal cases against the company."

"I won't give guarantees. But in thirty years, I learned not to leave traces." He finished his cigarette and crushed it in an overflowing ashtray.

"One last thing," he said, and his voice hardened.

"I warned you that I would watch you. You said you were glad, and those are pretty words to my ears. But here is what it means in practice: I will have access to the company's financial records, your personal accounts, your meeting schedule. I will know who you spoke to, about what, and for how long. If you lie to me — and sooner or later everyone lies — I will find out. And then our cooperation will end, possibly in a way unpleasant for you." He looked me in the eyes.

"Still glad?"

"Still glad," I nodded.

"Because if you discover that I am lying or hiding something, that means one thing: the system works, and something is wrong with me." Angleton leaned back in his chair.

"Good, Mr. Miller. You have convinced me. Not completely — you will never convince me completely, that is professional deformation — but enough for me to agree to try." He extended his hand. His handshake was dry and firm.

"When can you start?" I asked.

"In a week. I need to settle matters here." He looked around the cluttered study.

"Gather the archives. Some papers will come with me. Don't ask which."

"I won't. I'll arrange housing in New York and an office for your department, separate from the main company building."

"Reasonable. The fewer people who know where I work, the better." He walked me to the door. On the porch, he stopped and lit another cigarette.

"Mr. Miller," he called when I was already going down the steps. I turned.

"What you hinted at. That organization." He drew on the cigarette, looking at me through the smoke.

"If it's true… if even part of it is true… then we are in very deep shit."

"We are in very deep shit. I won't reassure you there." I shrugged. He frowned and stayed silent for a moment.

"Prepare a list of all company employees. Positions, salaries, personal data, hiring dates. I'll start with our own. I always start with our own." I nodded and went to the car. My hands were trembling slightly from adrenaline. I had just hired a man the United States government considered too paranoid to work in intelligence. Even saying it sounded funny.

For internal security and control, I would have liked to hire my own former countrymen. The thought came back again and again, persistent as a mosquito by the ear. The Cold War produced monstrous professionals on both sides of the ocean. I remembered names that history textbooks mentioned only in passing, while in classified archives they filled entire volumes. People who built agent networks in dozens of countries, recruited generals and ministers, developed operations that changed the course of history.

Masters of their craft, for whom the world was a chessboard and people were pieces. And the best of them were my former countrymen. The ones I remembered from my previous life. Legends of the KGB, the GRU, the First Chief Directorate. Men beside whom their American colleagues sometimes looked like talented amateurs standing next to professionals. But hiring them was impossible. Absolutely, categorically, hopelessly impossible. In 1976, the Iron Curtain stood firm.

Soviet intelligence services did not let their people go, and defectors were rare, extremely hot merchandise. Each such person instantly fell under CIA or FBI control. An attempt to hire a Soviet intelligence officer into a private company in New York would not end with a contract. It would end with me being interrogated in a basement. Sometimes I caught myself mentally making lists. Who was currently serving, who would defect to the West in five years, whom I might intercept.

A meaningless exercise, but planning years ahead had already become part of my nature. Maybe in ten or fifteen years, when the Soviet Union began to crack at the seams… But that was fantasy. Right now, I had to work with what I had. The second was Tennent "Pete" Bagley. Son and brother of admirals. Marine in World War II, then CIA from the very beginning, since 1950. Twenty-two years in clandestine services: Vienna, Bern, Brussels. He recruited Soviet officers, extracted defectors, hunted moles.

Rose to chief of counterintelligence in the Soviet Division, then deputy chief of the entire division. Polyglot, doctorate in political science from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, analyst with a razor-sharp mind. And a paranoid. A real professional paranoid on Angleton's level, but of a different breed. Bagley was convinced that the CIA and FBI were deeply penetrated by Soviet moles. Not one, not two, but an entire group.

He handled the case of the defector Nosenko and believed him to be a KGB plant sent to cover real agents inside the Agency. He wrote nine hundred pages of evidence, which his superiors read, nodded over, and placed in a safe. Because accepting his conclusions meant admitting that the enemy was sitting at the very heart of American intelligence. Bagley paid for his certainty twice. First, he himself came under suspicion. An analyst named Petty seriously considered the theory that Bagley was a KGB mole.

An absurdity worthy of Kafka: the mole hunter accused of being the mole. Then Petty switched to Angleton. In the world of counterintelligence, paranoia spreads like an epidemic. When everyone suspects everyone, sooner or later suspicion reaches everyone. Bagley retired in seventy-two. Early, of his own accord. He moved to Brussels, away from Langley and the whole mad carousel. He lived quietly, worked on memoirs that would one day become one of the most controversial books in intelligence history.

But that was still thirty years away, and for now he was simply sitting in Belgium, bored and restless in idleness. I managed to reach him through Angleton. They disagreed on a number of matters, but respected each other. I had to fly to Brussels. Bagley opened the door of his neat suburban house and looked at me with an expressionless gaze. Tall, lean, military bearing despite being in his fifties. Cold blue eyes, neatly trimmed graying temples, and a face like a wax mask.

"Mr. Miller," he said without greeting.

"Angleton called me. Said the old men may have a serious affair on their hands."

"And what do you think about that?"

"I won't decide until I speak with you personally. Come in." The conversation lasted four hours. Bagley was a completely different type of paranoid from Angleton. If Angleton was a genius who saw webs of conspiracies and wove his own in response, Bagley was an analyst to the marrow. Precise, methodical, merciless. He did not build grand theories; he collected facts, arranged them into logical chains, and drew conclusions. And if those conclusions contradicted common opinion, too bad for common opinion.

I offered him the position of head of counterintelligence and internal security. Eighty thousand a year. The task: protecting the company from outside penetration and identifying moles inside. Everything he had done in the CIA for twenty-two years, only now in the private sector. Bagley listened and asked a question that made me twitch.

"Angleton heads external intelligence, I handle counterintelligence. Are you assembling the old Langley team?"

"I am gathering the best people I can find." He smiled a thin, sharp smile without a drop of humor.

"Mr. Miller, in such matters there are no coincidences. But let us suppose there are. The terms are acceptable. When do I start?"

"As soon as you move to New York."

"Give me three weeks. I need to close matters here." Then he added, looking me in the eyes:"You do understand that I will watch Angleton. Not because you ask me to, but because it is my job."

"I expect it. He will watch you as well."

"Naturally. It would be strange if he didn't." The third was William Hood. Hood left the CIA in December seventy-four, the same week as Angleton. For twenty years, he had been executive director of the counterintelligence staff, the right hand of the system Angleton had built. But if Angleton saw the picture, and Bagley saw the details, Hood was the mechanism. The man who turned ideas and suspicions into working processes.

Wrote instructions, allocated resources, controlled budgets, made sure the counterintelligence machine did not stall. Hood was not a paranoid in the classical sense. He was something more terrible. A pedant. An absolute, uncompromising fanatic of procedures, protocols, and reporting. A man for whom every dollar had to be documented, every decision justified, every action recorded. In the CIA, he was hated almost as strongly as Angleton, but for another reason. Angleton was feared for his suspicion.

Hood was hated for his meticulousness. When Angleton was thrown out, Hood was offered a chance to stay. A transfer to another position, away from counterintelligence. He refused. As Angleton later told me, Hood said he would not work in an organization that got rid of people who knew where the skeletons were buried. The phrasing had been more elegant, with several unprintable expressions, but that was the essence. After the CIA, Hood did what he was best at: he wrote.

In my previous life, I knew he would write a book about the Popov case, one of the first Soviet GRU officers recruited by the CIA. The book would be brilliant: precise, detailed, stripped of romance. That was how Hood lived too. Without romance and without illusions. I assigned him to internal control and audit. Seventy thousand a year. The task: oversight of financial flows for the entire security structure and the company as a whole, identifying abuses, making sure every dollar was spent as intended.

Hood accepted the offer by phone, without long hesitation.

"I will need full access to the financial documentation of all departments," he said in a voice that contained neither request nor threat, only statement of fact.

"Including Angleton's and Bagley's departments. No exceptions."

"Of course."

"And one more thing. I will examine your personal expenses, Mr. Miller. Every contract, every purchase, every receipt. You must be clean, just as your company must be."

"Check whatever you want, however you want." A short pause. Then:"When do I start?"

"Tomorrow."

"Today," he corrected.

"Send the documents by courier. I'll begin with the current quarter." The fourth was Peter Wright. He deserves a little more detail, because Wright was not American. He was British. And not merely British, but a former deputy director of MI5, His Majesty's counterintelligence service. A man who spent twenty years hunting Soviet spies on British soil and was convinced the chief spy sat in his own boss's chair. Wright left MI5 in the spring of seventy-six, literally a few months before I began assembling my team.

He left amid scandal, angry as hell. The British government denied him a full pension, using some bureaucratic trick. Twenty years of service, dozens of exposed agent networks, revolutionary technical developments, and in the end a kick in the ass and half the money he had earned. But Wright was valuable not only as a counterintelligence officer. He was a scientist. The son of the director of research at Marconi.

A technical genius who came to MI5 specifically as a scientific specialist, the first in the service's history. He unraveled the operating principle of the Soviet listening device known as The Thing, hidden inside the wooden Great Seal given to the American ambassador in Moscow. He developed methods for detecting hidden microphones, secure meeting systems, interception technologies for enemy communications. Half the technical methods used by British intelligence in the sixties and seventies were his inventions.

If I put him together with Phineas, the result would be a hellish combination. And then he became a mole hunter. He reached a conclusion that made his superiors' hair stand on end: Roger Hollis, former Director General of MI5, the head of the whole damned shop, had been a Soviet agent. You can imagine how that went over upstairs. About the same as if a private soldier accused the supreme commander of treason. The investigation was buried, Wright was sidelined, and then quietly sent into retirement.

Wright and Angleton had known each other for a long time. Friends, if that word can be applied to two professional paranoids. They exchanged theories about Soviet penetration, shared suspicions. It was Angleton who first pointed MI5 toward Harold Wilson, the British prime minister whom part of MI5 suspected of ties to the KGB. The connection between Angleton and Wright was one of those threads that wove the transatlantic intelligence community into a web.

When I told Angleton I wanted to hire Wright, the old man froze with a cigarette near his mouth.

"Peter?" he said the name with unfamiliar warmth.

"He's a genius. Scientist and hunter in one. I studied the files on your scientific people; I think he would work well with Phineas. But there's a problem."

"What problem?"

"He is British and worked for MI5. He has secrecy obligations to the Crown. If he is caught working in a private intelligence structure abroad, Whitehall will make his life very amusing."

"He's retired."

"All the more dangerous. An offended former intelligence officer is a walking bomb. The British will be watching him."

"Then we need to make his work for us look like something else." Angleton drew on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes.

"Technical security consultant. Legal position, legal contract. No intelligence, only equipment protection, sweeping rooms for listening devices, developing security systems. Officially."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, Peter will do what he does best. Build the technical infrastructure for the entire intelligence network. Communications systems, encryption methods, surveillance equipment. Plus his experience hunting moles will be useful to Bagley."

"Will they work together?"

"They both think Nosenko was a KGB plant. That's common ground. The rest will follow." I contacted Wright through Angleton. The old fox called a farm in Tasmania. Yes, Wright had already managed to move to Australia, to the edge of the world, away from London and the people who had betrayed him. He had bought land, bred Arabian horses, and cursed everyone he could still reach. The phone conversation was brief, but substantial.

Wright spoke sharply, with a distinct English accent that became even sharper when he was angry. And judging by everything, he was angry at practically everything: the government, MI5, the pension office, Tasmanian weather, horses that refused to obey, and perhaps the very existence of telephone communication between hemispheres.

"Mr. Miller," he said instead of a greeting, "Jim tells me you are building a private intelligence structure and need a technical specialist. I should warn you: the last time I built a technical system for an intelligence service, its chief turned out to be a bloody Soviet agent, and I was shoved into retirement for daring to say so. So if you're also a Soviet agent, say so now and save us both time."

"I'm just a businessman who needs protection."

"Just a businessman," he grumbled.

"Just businessmen do not call former MI5 officers on the other side of the world. Just businessmen hire guards with pistols and think that's enough. All right, jokes aside. What exactly do you need?"

"Technical security consultant. Surveillance systems, communications protection, technical counterintelligence. Seventy thousand a year, relocation expenses, housing." A pause. I could hear the wind whistling somewhere on the far side of the world, and Wright either coughing or laughing.

"Seventy thousand," he repeated.

"That's more than the Crown paid me for twenty years of loyal service, if you include that pension fit only for wiping one's backside. I confess, I simply wanted to stretch the old bones and give the British services something to worry about. Now it turns out there is real work involved."

"Worthy specialists deserve worthy pay."

"Nicely said. We'll see how it works in practice." He cleared his throat.

"But keep in mind, Mr. Miller, I am an old, sick, angry man. I sleep poorly, my joints ache, and I cannot stand idiots. Unfortunately, the world consists of idiots by roughly ninety percent."

"And the remaining ten?"

"The remaining ten are simply better at disguising themselves. All right, I like you, young man, but we'll discuss everything else in person. I have conditions."

"I'm listening."

"First: I need a laboratory. A real one, with equipment. Not a closet with a soldering iron and a pair of screwdrivers, but a proper room where work can be done. I spent twenty years squeezing MI5 for decent technical funding and receiving crumbs because those pompous Oxford blockheads sincerely believed proper equipment could be assembled on one's knee with a screwdriver and a kind word. I will not work that way again."

"You will have a laboratory."

"Second: I do not answer to Angleton. Jim and I are good acquaintances, and I respect him, but I will not work under him. Jim is clever, perhaps cleverer than anyone I know, but he is also a man who can get lost in his own theories and drag everyone else down that rabbit hole after him. I need autonomy."

"You will answer directly to me. Separate direction: technical security and special development."

"Good. Third, and this is the main point." His voice hardened.

"If I discover that someone in your organization works for a foreign intelligence service — any service, whether CIA, MI6, Mossad, or Papuan tribal intelligence — I demand authority for a full investigation. No interference from management, no political games, no 'let us first consult a thousand and one people.'""You will have the authority. More than that, I'll be glad for it." Another pause hung on the line, longer than the first. Then Wright laughed with a dry, barking sound.

"You know, Mr. Miller, in MI5 they told me 'no' for twenty years. No, you cannot investigate the Director General. No, you cannot interrogate a suspect without authorization. No, you cannot install a wiretap in a minister's office even if he is selling secrets to the Russians." He imitated someone's voice: "'It is inconvenient, Peter. It creates a precedent, Peter. Think of the service's reputation, Peter.'" He snorted and continued in his own tone.

"And then some American entrepreneur appears and says yes to everything I ask. Either you are a saint, or a fool who does not understand what he is agreeing to."

"I understand perfectly. That is exactly why I agree." He was silent, and I heard something like a thoughtful hum in the receiver.

"All right, Mr. Miller. Give me a month. I need to place the horses and close a few matters here. And tell Jim that I'm coming, so he should hide all his precious papers. No, forget that, it won't save him anyway. I've known all his hiding places since sixty-eight." He gave a hoarse laugh and hung up. Angleton, Bagley, Hood, and Wright. Four men united by one thing: a pathological inability to trust anyone. Plus paranoia elevated to professional mastery. Four legends.

Two Americans from the CIA, one American living in Brussels, and one Brit from MI5. Three intelligence services, three schools, three sets of prejudices. When Angleton first learned whom I wanted to hire, he leaned back in his chair and, for the first time since we met, looked pleased.

"Bagley really is good. Stubborn as a mule, but a counterintelligence officer from God. Hood is a pedant and an asshole, but if you want money not to leak down the drain, there is no one better. Peter…" He fell silent.

"Peter is a forever-grumbling pain in the ass, but he is the only man I would trust with my own communications systems." Then he added:"You want to set us all against each other?"

"Of course."

Bagley had his own opinion.

"Mr. Miller, in seventy-one, a CIA analyst named Petty spent a year trying to prove I was a KGB mole. Then he switched to Angleton. We all went through the meat grinder of mutual suspicion. We know each other's weaknesses. We know the methods. Do you understand what that means?"

"That you cannot be fooled by standard techniques."

"Exactly. Because we invented them." When he learned about Hood, Bagley nodded approvingly.

"Bill is the best administrator I ever knew. If he takes on finances, not one cent will vanish. True, working with him is a pleasure below average. He once returned an operational report to me with seventeen red marks in the margins. Seventeen." Four wolves in one pack, each watching the others. You may ask: how can you hand control to some old paranoids? Isn't it foolish to entrust company security to people who trust no one, including you? No. It isn't foolish. I don't want to become a full-time paranoid.

I have other tasks: building the business, developing technologies, planning the future. I physically do not have time to sit and suspect every employee. That work demands total commitment, and I prefer professionals to handle it. The best professionals on the planet. Let them watch. Let them check. Let them build their paranoid control systems. That only helps me. I do not want to wake up one day and realize my entire company is a shelter for Hydra, or the Hand, or that I have Skrulls working for me.

When I get the chance, I will slowly begin revealing to these old men just how much shit there is in this world. Honestly, I'm even curious how they'll react. I could already imagine Bagley, after learning that among our people there might be someone capable of reading minds or moving objects with a glance, taking out a new screening form and adding a line:"Presence of superhuman abilities: Yes / No / Fuck all of you, I did not sign up for this." I am not planning anything inhuman.

And what I am planning, these four would not even consider mischief. They have seen things next to which my plans look like a children's matinee. Political assassination programs, secret coups in sovereign states, experiments on people without their consent, defectors interrogated in solitary cells — that was their daily work. Compared with that, my plan to build a private military company and prepare for threats no one yet knows about is simply boring routine.

Besides, I planned to hire a couple of superhumans to help. But that would come later. First, the system had to start working. The four paranoids had to grind against each other, define borders, establish rules of the game. The great game of minds had to turn from chaotic snarling into a functioning mechanism of mutual control. That would take time.

But when the mechanism started working, I would have something no private company in the world possessed: my own little intelligence service, run by men who had built real intelligence services. Fury can go bite a curb. And let them watch me. Let them check every step, every decision, every dollar. I have nothing to hide. Well, almost nothing. And the little I am hiding, they won't find anyway.