Troika | Page 5

item, however, was coded only with a small red, white, and blue tab. He tapped it against his thumbnail before opening it. Wheatland had only received such a folder four times in his career. Each summoned him to a top-secret conference room off Lafayette Square across the park from the White House. This time the contents were simply a time and a date for him to appear. He glanced at his watch and placed all the other documents into the Top Secret file basket.
"Ms Curtis," he called, "Please have Security return this to the safe."
His secretary, Regina Curtis, a fiftyish, brown haired, slightly overweight woman entered his office. She was dressed in a blue business suit and wore steel-rimmed trifocals. The combination gave her the appearance of a prim school principal. She reached over the desk, picked up the ring of keys that her boss had casually dropped on the desk, and picked up the ring of keys that her boss had casually dropped on the desk and locked the file basket. Regina Curtis shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and left the room.
Hank smiled. Her silence was an admonition. He knew he should not have left the keys on his desk in such a cavalier manner, even though he was in the most security-sensitive sector of the building.
At fifty-seven, Hank Wheatland was just a few years older than his secretary. In appearance, he could almost have been her younger brother. Just over middle height, he was as trim and fit now as he had been at Colgate College and the Woodrow Wilson Graduate School at Princeton, thirty years earlier. His jet black hair was just beginning to gray, slightly, at the temples.
Summonses from "On High" meant that something was happening, and it was about to become his albatross.
He called for a staff car to take him into Washington. The CIA driver had an encyclopedic knowledge of the back streets and short cuts into and in the District. He stopped the driver on Connecticut Avenue and walked down the street to his destination, several blocks away.
A few minutes later, Wheatland stood in front of a building with a small brass plate which read, AMERICAN CARTOLOGICAL HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, and, in smaller letters "members only". At the reception desk he signed the register "HOW", surrendered his hat, coat and gloves and took the elevator to the third floor. As he walked down the corridor, surveillance cameras followed him. At the end of the corridor there was an inconspicuous door. He touched a panel with his hand, which recognized his hand print. He entered what looked like any conference room. It was electronically swept every forty-five seconds in a random pattern. The facility provided a place for various intelligence officials to meet when it was not prudent to have sessions in their own offices.
Inside, he recognized the CIA Director, the National Security Advisor, and the head of the National Security Agency. He did not know the fourth man, a major general. Hank greeted the three whom he knew and waited to be introduced to the fourth.
"General Robert Cowan," the man said as he extended his hand. "I'm with the International Commission on Verifiable Nuclear Testing. You're here specifically at my request. The Russians assigned a Military Intelligence Officer, GRU Colonel-General Grigory Obadivsky to their team. We need someone to bird-dog him. Since you are on 'unspecified duty' at Special Services, you fit the bill. Your official title will be Special Assistant."
Hank stood until he was motioned to a chair. The group sat down.
"When do I start?" he asked, looking at the other three.
"In a couple of weeks," answered his immediate superior, the Director of Central Intelligence, Philip Miller. "You'll join the team at Lawrence-Livermore in California. We're fairly sure the GRU and KGB have some idea of who you are, but then we know who Obadivsky is, too. So it's a fair trade. By the way, I want you to read over all the reports, thus far, of the International Commission. That was what was in your in-basket this morning."
When the meeting was over, Miller remained behind and motioned to Hank to remain. "I want you to know, before you find out from Bob Cowan. Mary Mallory's a member of the team, too. I hope it won't cause problems for you."
Hank shook his head. It shouldn't matter one way or the other, was the implication. The men left the building as they had arrived--separately.
Hank returned to his office and began to read the file which he had asked Ms Curtis to retrieve. It was not very thick. He read slowly, circling some items, checkmarking others and underlining still others. Two items were heavily underscored; the date he was to meet the team, November 3rd, and the dates of the International Commission meetings, November