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Cherny will handle an insurrection, I don't know, and I'll bet you don't either." |
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Fisk added quietly, "Frankly, that scares the shit out of me, Vincent." |
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"Don't overreact. Not yet, in any case." |
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"Well, I hope you're right," Fisk said. He hesitated only momentarily before asking, "How secure are you here, Vincent? How often do you have the NSA ferrets in?" |
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"That's a damned strange question from someone with your reputation as a poacher, Charlie," Kellner said. |
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With the Administration perennially hungry for money to fund domestic programs, the demise of the cold war offered Cole Caidin opportunities his predecessors in office had ignored. One of them was to reduce the Central Intelligence Agency to a cadre. "I hate all that snooping around. I agree with Henry Stimson that gentlemen don't read each other's mail. It's unseemly. And look at the billions we'll save. But I suppose we should leave a nub so as to be ready to expand our intelligence in a crisis or in wartime," the new President had told Kellner. How little Caidin understood of international affairs, Kellner thought, and how difficult it would be to reestablish vital connections, once broken. |
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But Kellner and those who agreed with him had lost. The choice of Marshall Gray, a Wall Street banker friend of Cole Caidin's, to head CIA had been a clear message that the Agency was being "powered down." From the moment Caidin had been inaugurated, resignations from the Central Intelligence Agency had increased to a flood. |
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"Let me put it this way, Vincent," Fisk said. "There can be no turf battles where there is no longer any turf to defend, right?" |
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Kellner frowned. He was uneasy whenever he saw an internecine battle looming in the Caidin Administration, especially in those areas upon which he was so dependent. Marshall Gray might be a poor director of CI, but he was a pround man and a big contributor to Caidin's party. Gray |
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