The Stickmen by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online

apparatus. He was pink in the face from
laughing.
    “Real funny,” Lynn said.
    “See all the great things you get to do in
this job?” Myers said. He looked more like an over-the-hill high
school principal than a decorated technistics chief. Mid-50s, cheap
suit and tie, gray hair and a perennially bad haircut. “You get to
plant bugs, blackmail double-agents, put spies away for
life… and wipe toothpaste specks off mirrors!” Myers, then,
broke into more laughter.
    Lynn frowned. “Laugh it up, Myers, but I’ll
bet I made more money than you did today.”
    “How’s that?”
    Lynn whipped out two fifty-dollar bills. “I
did such a good job cleaning the room, Scammell tipped me.” She
waved the bills in front of Myers.
    “That’s an unauthorized gratuity,” Myers
reminded. “You have to turn it in to the finance-control
office.”
    Lynn gave one of the fifties to Myers.
    “Like I just said,” Myers commented.
“ Fuck the finance-control office.”
    “I thought that’s what you said.” Next, Lynn
gave him the tiny optical disk she’d swiped from Scammell’s hotel
room.
    “Good work. You make the switch all
right?”
    “Yeah, no problem.”
    “Can’t wait for our friend Saddam to
recalibrate his anti-aircraft radar now. Those old
frequencies on the snowflake will guide our AMRAMs right to
target.”
    “We’re getting a lot of mileage out of
Scammell.” Lynn grinned. “The moron thinks he’s selling his country
out, but doesn’t have a clue that every page of classified defense
data he’s giving the Iraqis is fake. I’ll bet we can use Scammell
several more
    times before they get wise. Men are just so
stupid.”
    “I hear that,” Myers said. “Come on, let’s
go get lunch.” He smiled at the newly acquired $50 bill. “With this
kind of money—hell—we might even be able to afford sushi.”
    Lynn rolled her eyes. “In this town.”
    “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Denny’s, here
we come. Oh, say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s your crackpot
ex-husband?”
    Lynn rolled her eyes again. “Harlan? I don’t
know and could care even less.”
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    APRIL 19, 1962
     
    Swenson was young for his rank: a brigadier
general now at age thirty-three. In a decade, he’d have three more
stars but he could hardly have known that at this moment, dressed
in fatigues and riding in an open jeep through the ridged Nevada
desert. The sun beat down on him like a crushing, physical weight.
The jeep’s suspension yanked him back and forth against his canvas
seat belt as if trying to throw him out onto the sand.
    Another one, he thought.
    Swenson’s job seemed ironic; with all the
crucial matters going on in the world, Swenson’s discreet
assignments were the most crucial of all, yet no one would ever
know. There was talk of a nuclear test-ban treaty, and there was
Vietnam. The current president in Saigon was using U.S. funds to
fight the Buddhists instead of the Vietcong, and rumors were rife
that Kennedy wanted a new administration there, even if it meant
assassinating the old. And as for Cuba, a full year after the Bay
of Pigs failure, Swenson had already seen the NSC briefings between
the state department and the CIA; Kennedy had six more
assassination plots on Castro in the works, plus another full-scale
invasion plan. Cuba was going to get hot fast; Swenson wouldn’t be
surprised if the Soviets started installing missiles there
soon.
    Racial unrest was exploding all over the
country—this man named King—and pro-communist militias were
springing up everywhere. Heroin was flowing into every major city,
and a risky tampering with the oil-depletion allowance could
potentially shatter the economy.
    Yet with all these dire examples, Swenson
could only think these two words that felt like a dark throb in his
head:
    Another one��
    “—by NORAD and the VLRA in New Mexico, sir,”
his driver was saying, Lieutenant Hanover, was saying beside him.
The young officer steered