Free Permanent Interests by James Bruno

he still had plenty to do. Donner's real given name was Peter. He acquired the moniker Speedy Petie in high school. He always seemed to be the fastest in everything. Ran the swiftest in track. Liked to drive suped-up hot rods. He was the first to be accepted by a university as well as the first to get a degree. He was the first among his peers to marry, the first to have a child, and the first to get divorced. His superiors liked Speedy because he saw before anyone else in the government the new dangers posed by the reconstituted Russian KGB, now broken up into several separate components, the CIA counterpart known as the Foreign Intelligence Service -- in Russian, Sluzhba Vnye Shneii Razvyedki , or SVR. As the former Soviet Union crumbled and frayed at the core as well as at the edges, it was Speedy who, in a memo to the Director, predicted that Russian officials would be increasingly looking out for their own personal aggrandizement. Diplomats and spies, he maintained, 68 JAMES
    BRUNO
    would flock to Western intelligence services to be recruited
    -- for remuneration, of course. Others, however, could be expected to become renegades, free-lance criminals, as well as sellers of state secrets. The Director of Central Intelligence, who was shown the memo, praised Speedy in a letter to his counterpart at the FBI, for demonstrating
    "foresight in predicting that former servants of an ex-superpower living in an ideological vacuum with little in the way of monetary compensation would inevitably be out for themselves in their deep disillusionment." He added that Speedy was one of the first to raise alarm bells about the possibility of Russian nuclear scientists selling their expertise to the likes of Iran’s mullahs or North Korea's Kim Jong-il.
    The fact of the matter was, Speedy simply loved his work. He adored Russian language and culture and was obsessed with piecing together the personal lifestyles, motivations and beliefs of ex-Soviet officials. If they shipped him off to Des Moines to chase after bank robbers, he would just shrivel up and die. He therefore resolved to be the best in CI.
    Innes kept in touch with his old college roommate. The bonding went further than that. As graduates of the State University of New York at Geneseo, they were often the butt of jokes and smirks from their colleagues in the elite government services in which they worked.
    They agreed to meet at Rio Lobo on upper Connecticut Avenue for their monthly pig-out lunch of Tex-Mex.
    Speedy, naturally, arrived first.
    "How's work?" Speedy asked.
    "Shitty. I work for fools. How about you?" Salsa dripped down Innes's chin as he wrestled with a Taco Grande.
    "I also work for fools. But they like me."
    PERMANENT INTERESTS
    69
    "Who you going out with these days?"
    "You know Heidi Klum?" Speedy was plowing through his Tres Burritos de Texas methodically, nary losing a crumb.
    "You mean the model?"
    "Yeah. And do you know Maria Sharapova and Charlize Theron?"
    "Uh, I know who they are, sure." Innes's eyes followed a clump of chili as it escaped his lips and went splat onto his lap.
    "Nobody like that," Speedy finished.
    "How's your kid?" Innes asked.
    "Sore subject."
    "Okay, now that we got all that out of the way, I have a business-related question.
    "Shoot."
    "You know anything about a Russian diplomat who was murdered the other day in Ankara?"
    "Never went out with him."
    "Cut out the wisecracks."
    "I saw the same press reports, but since it's out of FBI's bailiwick, we're not getting anything on it. And we're not asking either. If you're interested, how come you aren't asking the CIA? They're supposed to know everything."
    "I thought you would ask for me. I've been getting the run-around from them. In any case, you know everybody who works the Russian beat."
    "No sweat. I'll get a full report to you tomorrow."
    "Great. How about a beer after work, say 6:30 at The Pub in Georgetown."
    "I'll be there. By the way, how's the wife?"
    "Sore subject."
    Speedy