The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian Read Free Book Online Page B

blood-red eyes emerged to shock and sicken him.
    “You find my appearance disturbing, Hemlock?” Dragon asked in his atonic, cupric voice. “Personally, I've come to terms with it. The affliction is most rare—something of a distinction. Genetic indispositions like these indicate some rather special circumstances of breeding. I fancy the Hapsburgs took a similar pride in their hemophilia.” The dry skin around Dragon's eyes crinkled up in a smile, and he laughed his three arid ha's.
    The parched, metallic voice, the unreal surroundings, and the steady gaze of those scarlet eyes made Jonathan want this interview to end. “Do you have anything against coming to the point?”
    “I don't mean to draw this chat out unduly, but I have so little opportunity to chat with men of intelligence.”
    “Yes, I met your Mr. Pope.”
    “He is loyal and obedient.”
    “What else can he be?”
    Dragon was silent for a moment. “Well, to work. We have made a bid on an abandoned Gothic church on Long Island. You know the one I mean. It is our intention to have it torn down and to convert the grounds into a training area for our personnel. How do you feel about that, Hemlock?”
    “Go on.”
    “If you join us, we shall withdraw our bid, and you will receive a sufficient advance in salary to make a down payment. But before I go on, tell me something. What was your reaction to killing that French fellow who broke the statuette?”
    In truth, Jonathan had not even thought about the affair since the morning after it happened. He told Dragon this.
    “Grand. Just grand. That confirms the Sphinx psychological report on you. No feelings of guilt whatsoever! You are to be envied.”
    “How did you know about the statuette?”
    “We took telephoto motion pictures from the top of a nearby building.”
    “Your cameraman just happened to be up there.”
    Dragon laughed his three dry ha's. “Surely you don't imagine the Frenchman walked in on you by coincidence?”
    “I could have been killed.”
    “True. And that would have been regrettable. But we had to know how you reacted under pressure before we felt free to make this handsome offer.”
    “What exactly do you want me to do?”
    “We call it 'sanctioning.' ”
    “What do other people call it?”
    “Assassination.” Dragon was disappointed when the word dropped without rippling Jonathan's exterior. “Actually, Hemlock, it's not so vicious as it sounds to the virgin ear. We kill only those who have killed CII agents in the performance of their duties. Our retribution is the only defense the poor fellows have. Allow me to give you some background on our organization while you are making up your mind to join us. Search and Sanction...”

    CII came into being after the Second World War as an anode organization for collecting the many bureaus, agencies, divisions and cells engaged in intelligence and espionage during that conflict. There is no evidence that these groups contributed to the outcome of the war, but it has been claimed that they interfered less than did their German counterparts, principally because they were less efficient and their errors were, therefore, less telling.
    The government realized the inadvisability of dumping onto the civilian population the social misfits and psychological mutants that collect in the paramilitary slime of spy and counterspy, but something had to be done with the one hundred and two organizations that had flourished like fungus. The Communists were clearly devoted to the game of steal-the-papers-and-photograph-something; so, with a kind of ambitious me-too-ism, our elected representatives brought into being the bulky administrative golem of the CII.
    The news media refer to CII as “Central Intelligence Institute.” This is a result of creative back-thinking. Actually, CII is not a set of initials; it is a number, the Roman reading of the 102 smaller organizations out of which the department was formed.
    Within two years, CII had become a