The Rhinemann Exchange Read Online Free

shaped by world or national conditions. He’s not blind; anyone who can read a newspaper sees that we are being drawn into the war.”
    “Do you think we should be?”
    “I’m a Jew. As far as I’m concerned, we’re late.”
    “This Spaulding. You’ve described what seems to me a very resourceful man.”
    “I’ve described only what you could have found out from any number of sources. And
you
have described the conclusion you have drawn from that surface information. It’s not the whole picture.” At this point, Pace recalled, Mandel had gotten out of his chair, avoiding any eye contact, and walked about his office. He was searching for negatives; he was trying to find the words that would disqualify “his son” from the government’s interests. And Pace had been aware of it. “What certainly must have struck you—from what I’ve told you—is David’s preoccupation with himself, with his comforts, ifyou wish. Now, in a business sense this might be applauded; therefore, I disabused you of your concerns for stability. However, I would not be candid if I didn’t tell you that David is abnormally headstrong. He operates—I think—quite poorly under authority. In a word, he’s a selfish man, not given to discipline. It pains me to say this; I love him dearly.…”
    And the more Mandel had talked, the more indelibly did Pace imprint the word
affirmative
on Spaulding’s file. Not that he believed for a minute the extremes of behavior Mandel suddenly ascribed to David Spaulding—no man could function as “stably” as Spaulding had if it were true. But if it were only half true, it was no detriment; it was an asset.
    The last of the requirements.
    For if there were any soldier in the United States Army—in or out of uniform—who would be called upon to operate solely on his own, without the comfort of the chain of command, without the knowledge that difficult decisions could be made by his superiors, it was the Intelligence officer in Portugal.
    The man in Lisbon.
OCTOBER 8, 1939, FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA
    There were no names.
    Only numbers and letters.
    Numbers followed by letters.
    Two-Six-B. Three-Five-Y. Five-One-C.
    There were no personal histories, no individual backgrounds … no references to wives, children, fathers, mothers … no countries, cities, hometowns, schools, universities; there were only bodies and minds and separate, specific, reacting intelligences.
    The location was deep in the Virginia hunt country, 220 acres of fields and hills and mountain streams. There were sections of dense forest bordering stretches of flat grasslands. Swamps—dangerous with body-sucking earth and hostile inhabitants, reptile and insect—were but feet from sudden masses of Virginia boulders fronting abrupt inclines.
    The area had been selected with care, with precision.It was bordered by a fifteen-foot-high hurricane fence through which a paralyzing—not lethal—electrical current flowed continuously; and every twelve feet there was a forbidding sign that warned observers that this particular section of the land … forest, swamp, grassland and hill … was the exclusive property of the United States government. Trespassers were duly informed that entry was not only prohibited, it was exceedingly dangerous. Titles and sections of the specific laws pertaining to the exclusivity were spelled out along with the voltage in the fence.
    The terrain was as diverse as could be found within a reasonable distance from Washington. In one way or another—one place or another—it conformed remarkably to the topography of the locations projected for those training inside the enormous compound.
    The numbers followed by the letters.
    No names.
    There was a single gate at the center of the north perimeter, reached by a back country road. Over the gate, between the opposing guard houses, was a metal sign. In block letters it read:
    FIELD DIVISON HEADQUARTERS—FAIRFAX.
    No other description was given, no purpose