Angel Eyes by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online

no one before him had been able to do. Godwin admired those attributes, and had rewarded Slade for them.
    But Slade could not help but suspect that the old man was jealous, too. Though his hands were bony with age, gnarled with arthritis, still they refused to relinquish the reins of power. For Slade had the one thing that the old man did not-indeed, could not-possess: youth. Though Slade was at the heart of the Mail, Godwin had yet to divulge to him the last level of his worldwide contacts, the ultimate power that made even presidents defer to him.
    The Mall and its godfather, Bernard Godwin, were and always had been laws unto themselves, and this power was what Russell Slade coveted beyond anything else. The time has come, Slade thought as he watched the old man gazing at his sheared English yews. Damnit, render unto Slade that which is rightfully Slade's!
    "Russell, let me give you a bit of advice," Godwin continued. "The moment you cannot control the lives and deaths of your field people, you know it is time for you to step down."
    ''You talk as if this is the first casualty we've had in the field.''
    The flapping of that feminine hand again. "Of course we've lost agents before. But in my day they were sacrificed for a greater cause. There was a meaning to their deaths. Everything was planned. Do you understand me?"
    In my day, indeed! Godwin was as callous as they come, Slade thought. How quickly will he sever me if the situation gets too hot? Has he already got someone lined up to take my place? By God, I'll fight to the death to keep this position.
    Slade understood that Godwin had abruptly distanced himself from the current situation, just as he understood that his own immediate priority was to regain the equilibrium Godwin had stripped from him. Godwin loved nothing better than to prod his people. Pressure, he firmly believed, sharpened the wits and brought out the best in his people-and if it did not, they were severed from the Mall.
    Without betraying any of his thoughts, Slade said blandly, "You know, Bernard, it occurs to me that you've been spending
    altogether too much time with the administration's spin doctors. Those presidential apologists who call themselves aides love to rewrite recent history, and so do you. I notice that you're deliberately ignoring the losses the Mall suffered at the hands of the KGB's Operation Boomerang."
    Godwin grunted "Ancient history."
    "Really? Your predilection-dare I say it, borders on obsession?-toward helping Soviet dissidents is all too well documented. It cost us ten good agents, lost to the KGB, who were running the bogus dissident cell inside Russia. The KGB sucked in a lot of people with that scam-including you, the expert's expert on the Soviet Union.''
    "That was a bad dream, all right," Godwin said. "I don't mind telling you it gave me some sleepless nights. But in the end, I put that slip down to a temporary loss of my acute sense of cynicism."
    Slade, thinking of how cynical Godwin's response was in itself, shook his head. "No, your error was in placing too much trust in your friends over there.''
    ''In the end, friends are all that make a man a man,'' Godwin said firmly.
    "Even in this shadow world of ours?" Slade said skeptically.
    "Especially here." Bernard, in the shadow of one of his hoary hawthorn trees, never seemed more mysterious. He had the kind of soft eyes that engendered trust, that completely masked his cynical heart. It was all too easy to believe what he said even when you suspected him of spin control: distorting me truth to suit his purposes. "I don't know about you, Russell, but it's a friend I want at the other end of a three a.m. phone call when my ass is in the fire in Istanbul or Prague or some other godforsaken red zone when the opposition has blown my cover and is closing in, not some operative who may or may not have been turned while I was looking the other way."
    He gave Slade a tiny, ironic smile that made Slade's stomach contract.