|
|
|
|
|
|
men of aiding and abetting Cole Caidin in his austerity program because it would make the National Security Council more important, more powerful. For a moment Kellner was tempted to discount the accuracy of the daily estimate, but his innate probity rejected that course of action. Moscow station was struggling to gather intelligence on the Russians with totally inadequate resources. The estimates showed this. Reports that used to run twenty to thirty pages now consisted of single pages and outlines. Marshall Gray, the CIA caretaker, took a perverse pride in the brevity of the Russian documents. And until today, Kellner had shared that attitude with the director of Central Intelligence. Despite his familiarity with international affairs and his years in politics, Vincent Kellner still shared the intellectual's conviction that, in the absence of proven hostile intent, spying on a friendly power was dangerous and unrewarding. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Until this very day, Kellner had also clung to the intellectual's ability to hold two or more contradictory opinions on any subject and act on whichever was expedient. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But the first day of December was a day the National Security Adviser would not soon forget. It was the day the Moscow station chief included in the national intelligence estimates the information that David Milstein, Finance Minister of Russia, had died in a hunting accident in Ukovo. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kellner sat at his bare desk and closed his eyes. Did I cause his death? He asked himself the same question a dozen times. A hunting accident? Did Dovi Milstein hunt? It was not the sort of sport Kellner could imagine him enjoying. Milstein was a book man, a computer man, an economic theorist. How much time did a career like his allow for murdering wild animals? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The digital clocks on the wall snapped to the hour position. Four o'clock in Washington, eleven o'clock in Moscow. Nathan Abramov must be there by now. Learning what? Who was to blame for Milstein's deathif Milstein was, in fact, dead. |
|
|
|
|
|