Free The Folks at Fifty-Eight by Michael Patrick Clark Page B

know.” They strolled for a while before Allum spoke again. “Conrad Zalesie’s nobody’s fool. Anyway, I briefed him this morning. He knows we’re doing everything we can. It wasn’t our fault the silly bitch got herself arrested. I mean, who the hell asked her to start carving up half the Sov army? Anyway, my money’s on Hammond.”
    “You’d better hope you’re right. I get the feeling Conrad’s taking this one personally.”
    “Yeah, I kinda got that feeling, too.”
    Despite his assurances and the undoubted skills of his old Princeton friend, Marcus Allum was a good deal less certain than he sounded. Daniel Chambers asked about Hammond.
    “Gerald Hammond? The name’s familiar.”
    “He was OSS, with Jedburgh. Before that, he was the one who pulled Carpenter out of Rouen that time. I think he was one of a handful who could have done it.”
    Chambers looked puzzled.
    “I don’t follow. If he’s as good as you seem to think, why did you wait until now to bring him on board? Why didn’t the State Department snap him up straight after the war?”
    Allum smiled as he recalled the belligerent and artless Hammond.
    “Nobody trusts a man you can’t corrupt, Daniel. You should know that better than most, and Gerald Hammond’s incorruptible. He has a moral compass that points six degrees west of self-righteous; it never varies. He’s straight, and he’s as belligerent as hell. It’s a shame. With a little flexibility, he could have gone all the way.”
    “But you still trusted him for this?”
    “I didn’t have a lot of choice. This business with the girl happened too fast. I had to move, and I didn’t have time to worry about the fine points. But do I trust Gerald Hammond? Yeah, I trust him. Out in the field I trust him a hundred per cent. It’s when he gets back to Washington and resets that moral compass, that’s when I have to put him on a short leash. That’s when the real headaches begin.” He took the opportunity to change the subject. “So, how’d it go with the president?”
    Chambers appeared even more sombre than usual.
    “He still won’t sanction any covert activity, and the rest are still on the fence.”
    Despite his bluster, Marcus Allum was already on the raggedy edge. News of this latest set-back almost sent him over the top.
    “But he has to sanction it. Jesus! This isn’t a game. Don’t they understand the position we’re in? They set up a Central Intelligence Group to counter Sov expansionism, tie one hand behind their backs, and then expect them to take on Beria with a fucking water pistol. And lest anyone forgets the reason we’re in all this shit, the reason we had to use Hammond for Magdeburg was because Truman wouldn’t sanction covert ops.”
    “I’m sorry, Marcus, but it’s still not going to happen; not in the short-term, not officially.”
    Allum’s mood was deepening by the second.
    “For Christ’s sake, Daniel. I’m not asking for any great advantage here. Beria may have pissed away most of the old NKVD in the shake-up, but he’s still running more covert crap out of the Lubyanka than you can shake a stick at. I can beat him. I know I can. All I’m asking Harry Truman for is a level playing field.”
    The response was sympathetic, but unyielding.
    “I know that, and so does the president, but give it time, Marcus, give it time.”
    “So what the hell happened this time?”
    “You tell me. What always happens?”
    “Hoover.”
    Daniel Chambers nodded moodily and continued walking. To the uninitiated and those few passers-by who ventured out on a chilly late-spring afternoon, the men’s stroll would have appeared innocuous enough. The pauses, frequent features of that same casual stroll, similarly appeared as innocent gaps in conversation, rather than any need for confidentiality.
    They could have been regular businessmen discussing sales strategies or their favourite baseball team, but the reality was anything but that. Daniel Chambers explained