Color of Blood(5)
His friends were all grizzled agents and analysts of assorted intelligence services spread throughout the Washington, DC, area. It was a small community consisting almost entirely of men that worked for an alphabet soup of obscure and not-so-obscure organizations like the CIA, the FBI, Naval Intelligence Service, the Army Intelligence branch, the National Security Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and many others. Men often switched jobs just to fight boredom or to get away from the personality conflicts that seemed to be a backdrop for this kind of work.
For the past six months Dennis had rarely hung with this crowd, hunkering down instead in his house watching TV and reading books that he never quite seemed to finish. He found himself in an alternating flux of lethargy and anxiety.
“It’s entirely normal to feel sad in these circumstances,” Dr. Forrester said in their first session. But in a later session she had gone further than Dennis expected one afternoon by pointing out, almost as an afterthought, that Dennis had likely been depressed for years in reaction to his childhood.
Dennis expended a great deal of energy avoiding the past and was a reluctant patient for Dr. Forrester. He just wanted to get well enough to go back to work. Forget the past; move ahead. More than anything he needed to get out of his little Cape Cod–style house in Arlington and get back to work. He needed to prove his worth to the inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency. The fact that he could not remember who the current IG was didn’t matter. Work equaled survival, he reckoned.
***
Dennis had rented a Holden Barina, a small car made by General Motors’ Australian subsidiary. The US Consulate was on St. George’s Terrace, not far from the hotel. He reminded himself that Australians drove on the left side of the street, which meant that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car. If that was not complicated enough for a jet-lagged American investigator, he inadvertently turned on his windshield wipers instead of his blinker when he pulled out of the hotel.
“Goddamnit, Cunningham,” he groaned as he lurched down Mill Street with the wipers screeching across his barren windshield. “Stay on your side of the road.”
By the time he arrived for his appointment, he was running late. He was met by Casolano, the public relations officer.
“I’m so sorry I woke you up, Mr. Cunningham,” he said, holding out his hand. “Please forgive me.”
“Really not a problem,” Dennis said.
“Well, I hope you got some sleep nevertheless,” Casolano said.
“The CG is just finishing up a meeting with the West Australian Farmers Federation and will meet with you in about fifteen minutes. Can I get you something to drink while you’re waiting?”
“No, thank you.” Dennis flopped onto a large faux leather couch in the waiting room, picked up a copy of the consulate’s newsletter, and leafed through the fourteen pages of US propaganda: the consul general opening the WA Prime Lamb Sire Sale in the town of Moora, the consul general welcoming a Fulbright Scholar from the University of Wisconsin, the consul general commemorating Remembrance Day at the State War Memorial in King’s Park, the consul general blah, blah, blah. While he knew that someone had to wave the flag out here in the farthest reaches of the globe, he still could not fathom why anyone would choose to do that for a career.
Dennis did not have much respect for the State Department and their employees, which he and his Agency cohorts derisively called “staties” in mixed company and “pussies” in private. He was sure that State Department employees were equally disapproving of Agency employees and had charming nicknames for them as well.
After twenty minutes, a door opened, and a group of men left the CG’s office. There were parting handshakes and cordial salutations delivered.
A tall, angular man stayed in the doorway after the group left and said finally, “Mr. Cunningham, please come in.”
At five feet ten inches, Dennis always felt disadvantaged by taller men. Dennis was a rugged, handsome man by most standards. His square jaw was complemented by short-cropped, brown hair at the top, a slightly dimpled chin at the bottom and penetrating ice-blue eyes in the middle. Dennis’s eyes were his single defining physical attribute; they were deeper and bluer than most. Some women found them mesmerizing and attractive; others found them penetrating and unnerving. A naturally muscular 175 pounds, with a short, thick neck, Dennis was not easily physically cowed. Still, the patrician bearing of someone like the consul general made Dennis feel inferior.
Dennis settled into a wooden chair in front of a huge mahogany desk. A name plate, angled severely, reported the desk belonged to “Wilson St. Regis.” The room was huge; several large windows looked down on parkland and a river a quarter-mile away.
“So, Mr. Cunningham,” the consul general said, “you’re here on official business. I see you’ve been sent to follow up on the disappearance of Geoffrey Jansen.” He stopped, adjusted his half-height reading glasses and looked down at a folder. “Ah, but that was probably not his real name, was it?
“Well,” he continued, “this is quite an unfortunate incident. To my knowledge we’ve never encountered something like this here. I mean, we’ve had an occasional AWOL, and you expect that, especially from the younger folk who might have partied a little too hard and got distracted, but never a tragedy like this.”
Dennis studied St. Regis closely. His file said he was sixty-one years old, but he looked older. He was tall and thin, with a remarkably sharp chin. His thinning gray hair was combed straight back, leaving a tuft at the center of his forehead between two expanding bald areas at the temples. His nose was long and hooked downward slightly, giving him a hawkish appearance.