Ride a Pale Horse by Helen MacInnes Page B

United States Intelligence.
    Drayton followed quickly. He was State Department, fifty-five years old and on his way up, a specialist in East European politics. The letters had alarmed and angered him, but he hid his emotions as usual and gave Bristow a warm greeting. “I hear you have more surprises waiting for us, Peter.”
    Bristow smiled back. “Just some clarifications.” He was thinking, I’ve got one friend at least among this bunch. As the bearer of ill tidings, he wouldn’t be exactly popular around here. That and the fact he would probably be the youngest in the room—he was thirty-nine and feeling it at this moment—put him into the lower league of less experience.
    Next to come was Robert Schlott, a brisk sixty-one in age, erect in bearing, smart in movement as a retired general should be. He was acting today as the eyes and ears for the Secretary of Defense. A nod to the room, a sharp glance at Bristow and then at the equipment on the table, and he sat down beside Maynard Drayton.
    Frederick Coulton drifted in, a mere forty-eight-year-old to be the expert he was in forgeries. He was attached to the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs, whose scope was wide enough to include serious study of Soviet “Active Measures” (in Russian, aktivnyye meropriyatiya), one of the KGB’s most flourishing endeavours. It master-minded political operations, from economic blackmail, forgeries, disinformation, manipulation of front organisations and cultural exchanges, to attempted control of foreign media. The Bureau of Public Affairs gathered the facts (many of them furnished by Central Intelligence officers like Peter Bristow) and even published some of them. The CIA published nothing. It was the old conflict between silence to protect agents’ identities and disclosure to alert the public. Bristow’s personal opinion was that facts not actually dangerous to security could be published; and should be. But he didn’t make policy.
    Coulton, his desultory stroll taking him to the central chair, was reminded just before he sat down by a word from his State Department colleague that the seat was reserved for the President’s special observer. Coulton shrugged, allowed his annoyance to be directed at Bristow in a brief stare. I know, I know, thought Bristow; you are wondering why the hell the letters were delivered to me and not to you. But you’ll learn, once you listen to Karen’s clear voice detailing the events in a hotel garden on the outskirts of Prague. One thing you won’t learn, though, will be her name. It is something better left unidentified, even in this roomful of eminently important people. Sufficient that it has been made available to the Director, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the President. They need to know; you don’t.
    Unobtrusively, the special observer came into the room—Abel Fletcher, a wily old bird, with seventy-four years behind him and forty of them spent in public service: lawyer, congressman, ambassador-at-large, presidential commissions; you name it, he’s done it, thought Bristow as he left the wall against which he had been standing and took his own seat once Fletcher had sat down, and waited. It was now exactly five thirty. The Secret Service men had been left outside to disperse themselves in the long hall. Security was tight but low in profile. This meeting was supposedly on new problems in Guatemala.
    Fletcher began by placing a small recorder in front of him. “The President would like full details of our arguments,” he announced. “Any objections?”
    There were none. Bristow repressed a smile. How many had a microrecorder tucked away in either a wrist watch, a tie pin, a cigarette holder, or a cuff-link? Menlo, for one, most certainly had; Kirby of National Security, too. Schlott of Defense—possibly; Drayton of State, perhaps. Coulton? He just looked bored. All in all, it was a first small breach in tight security, but Abel Fletcher had achieved one