Free Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue by Barbara Paul

detail was taken care of. Alles in Ordnung . Bullshit, as the Americans would say. Sir John’s years at Bletchley had taught him just how inefficient the Master Race could be.
    But the Germans still liked to think of themselves as the most incontrol people in the world. Like Heinrich Schlimmermann. He had all the requisite qualities: orderliness, aristocratic arrogance, a need to manipulate, a compulsion to power. Sir John strongly suspected that nothing had gone wrong in Greece. He suspected that Heinrich Schlimmermann had done exactly what he’d set out to do.
    The upcoming UN inquiry, Sir John knew, would waste a lot of time on trying to determine motive. Why did you think this was the best way of handling insurrections, why did you do this or that. Let others worry about why; right now Sir John’s responsibility was to determine what . By the time the inquiry officially opened, he would have enough hard evidence for the commission to nail these lethal meddlers in other people’s lives.
    But time was running short. Sir John had never seen a bureaucratic organization move as fast as the Security Council was moving now. The inquiry, fully televised, would begin in a matter of weeks. The membership of the commission was almost complete. The chairman hadn’t yet been determined, but Sir John was betting on the Canadian. The American and Russian delegates were both on the commission, as were a couple of the Arab representatives—but nobody really trusted any of them. The other members of the commission were compromise choices, selected more for the geographical balance they offered than for their political influence. Sir John’s money was on the Canadian.
    He came to with a start. It was beginning to get dark—and here he was, sitting on his London derrière alone on a bench in perilous Central Park. Sir John hurried away as fast as his elderly legs would carry him.

CHAPTER 18
    THE ONLY REBELLION LEFT
    Shelby increased her pace as she rounded a corner onto Lexington Avenue and ducked into a storefront. There she hid behind a large woman with a shopping bag and pretended to stare intently at a window display of meerschaum pipes, all the while watching the street out of the corner of her eye.
    There he was. The brown man hurried past without seeing her. Shelby slipped back into the stream of pedestrians behind him, determined to find out what he was up to. But she’d taken only a few steps when the man stopped abruptly and turned to look behind him. A big man, with brown hair, brown eyes.
    â€œHere I am,” Shelby said. “Now who the hell are you and why have you been following me?”
    The man gave a half-laugh. “You’re not supposed to find me out that easily.”
    â€œIs that meant to be disarming?” Shelby said suspiciously. “I want to know who you are.”
    â€œYou know, you shouldn’t just go up and accost strangers like that,” he scolded. “Call a policeman, let him take care of it.”
    â€œStop stalling. Show me some identification.”
    The brown man fished out a small leather folder. “My name’s Gilbert. I’m with UN Intelligence,” the man said, “and I wasn’t following you, Mrs. Kent, so much as I was trying to catch up with you. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
    â€œYou know my name.”
    â€œCould we talk? Now?”
    â€œWhat’s this all about, Mr. Gilbert? And don’t try to lie to me—I’ll know when you aren’t telling the truth.”
    â€œI know,” Gilbert sighed. “Oh boy do I know. Look, there’s a fairly respectable-looking bar across the street—let’s have a drink and I can explain everything.”
    The bar was half empty at midafternoon and they took a table in the corner. “Scotch straight up for me,” Gilbert told the waitress, “and a Bourbon for the lady, no water, one ice cube.” The waitress left,