The Once and Future Spy
Robert Littell
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0142004057
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Robert Littell is a master storyteller of the highest caliber in the ranks of John le Carré, Len Deighton, and Graham Greene. The Once and Future Spy is a tale of espionage and counterespionage that reveals the dirty tricks and dangerous secrets of the subjects Littell knows best—the CIA and American history. When “the Weeder,” an operative at work on a highly sensitive project for “the Company,” encounters an elite group of specialists within the innermost core of the CIA protecting a clandestine plan, the present confronts the past and disturbing moral choices are weighed against a shining patriotic dream. Inventive, imaginative, and relentlessly gripping, The Once and Future Spy is Robert Littell at his most original.
elevator told Wanamaker. No small talk, not a word about being an hour and a quarter late. “I have an after-dinner speech to deliver. The President is one of the guests.” “We’ve got trouble,” Wanamaker announced. “Someone’s ticked to Stufftingle.” The thickset man waited for him to go on so patiently that Wanamaker wasn’t sure he had been heard. He raised his voice. “I got a love letter in the interoffice packet today.” “You don’t need to shout. It mentioned Stufftingle? It used the word?”
into D.C. for a symposium on wisdom teeth, he was in his late fifties, but his chalk-colored hair made him seem a dozen years older. His first wife (as he called her, though never to her face) had been after him for years to dye it, but the Admiral flatly refused; every white hair, he liked to say, represented a secret that would go to the grave with him. Wearing spit-shined oxfords, aviator glasses with trifocal lenses and civilian sport clothes that might have fit him before he went on a
turned opaque with dust. Snow screamed. The Weeder, his eyes tearing, located her from the scream and got a grip on her mackinaw and pulled her through a doorway into a hallway. They stumbled down the hallway into another room as one wrecking ball, and then the other, burst through outer walls behind them. “They’re trying to bury us alive,” Snow cried. “They’re going to destroy the floor above the break in the staircase,” the Weeder said. He looked around wildly. “We’ve got to get to a lower
him becoming violent. Let’s hope your lady friend doesn’t back him into a corner.” “Let’s hope,” Fargo agreed worriedly. “Do you think you could talk her into setting up a meeting between you and Sibley?” “I can try,” Fargo said. “Be careful not to let on you have doubts about him,” the Attorney General warned. “I’ll say I checked his story and want to help.” “You need to meet him face to face.” “To work out a way to stop the atrocity. To punish those responsible.” “That’s the ticket,”
showed Toothacher whispering into the ear of the young man who looked half-Indian. Another showed the young man with an arm over the Admiral’s shoulder. The Admiral, visible over the boy’s shoulder, was flushed with excitement. In the lobby the Admiral shoved the photographs back into the envelope and looked around in panic. He came back on the line. “Who are you?” he whispered harshly. “If you want money you’re barking up the wrong tree. All I have is my retirement checks and they barely cover