Night Trap. Gordon Kent

      “You mean I’m a loner.”

      “That’s right.”

      “Wrestlers get like that. Four years in somebody else’s armpit, you want a little space.”

      “You need to learn to interact. I bet you weren’t in a fraternity.”

      “You’re right.”

      “See? That’s where you really learn in college. Human skills. I paid a lot of attention to that side of it. You ever notice how I handle Rafe, for example?”

      Alan hadn’t, but he said, “Mmmm,” in an appreciative way.

      “That’s my point. You understand what I’m saying? You’re in his face all the time—like that shit with the BG and the radar. You made it sound like he had to do it because it was some big moral thing. I’d have made it a game, a team thing. See, it’s really a kind of management thing. Management skills. That’s what sports are all about. I expect to be an astronaut, right? That’s a team effort all the way. I’ll be way ahead in that department.”

      “Afraid I’m a little late for a sports team.”

      “Never too late to improve yourself. That’s one of my beliefs. I have a book I’d like you to read. Will you read it?”

      Alan was surprised that Narc read any books at all. He said that of course he’d read it.

      “It’ll change your life.”

      Alan wondered if he wanted his life changed. That brought him somehow back to his father, then to a question as to whether all the changes he had made had simply been tacking back and forth across the unchangeable fact of being Mick Craik’s kid.

      0420 Zulu. Langley, Virginia.

      A bored clerk watched the low-level traffic feed in, now and then routing a message to file or analysis. Most of it, she knew, ended up somewhere in the attic of a mainframe computer, bytes on a chip that would be dust-covered from neglect if dust were allowed there. She yawned. Her eyes stung with fatigue. She sipped cold coffee.

      Somebody had got herself murdered in Amsterdam. Big deal, she thought, you should live in DC. Hey, the somebody was a possible agent. She looked at the clock. Oh, Christ, she thought, four hours to go yet! A woman in Amsterdam. Yuck. Oh, gross. It made her slightly sick—a pregnant woman killed with a knife. Who does these things? “Lover of assistant naval attaché, Turkish mission.” That was it? One murder, one pair of hotpants. Big deal. She routed it toward the back burner.

      16–19 March 1990. Mid-Atlantic.

      Peretz was a born teacher. Alan learned more from him in four days, he thought, than he had in months of Navy schools. Peretz was crippled by a cynical wit, a submerged though very real arrogance. Yet he loved intelligence.

      Once, in those four days, Alan said to him, “HUMINT’s a dying craft.” He had learned that in intelligence school: HUMINT—human intelligence, “spies,” was history; the future belonged to technology.

      “Should I write that down?” Peretz had said. He had made this joke several times, pretending that Alan had said something so important it should be kept for posterity. “Jeez, I wish I had pen and paper. Maybe I can just commit it to memory. Now, how did it go? ‘HUMINT’s a dying craft.’ Boy, that’s really beautifully put.”

      “Okay, you don’t agree.”

      “Not me, sonny. It’s folks like the KGB—sorry, the SVRR. You think they have seven hundred thousand employees because they believe HUMINT’s a dead issue?”

      “And look where they are. They lost. It’s over.”

      “Communism lost, so HUMINT’s a dead issue. I think I missed a logical connection there someplace. Does your mind always work that way?”

      Alan repeated to him some of the wisdom that he had learned in intelligence school, and Peretz laughed out loud at him. “Oh, to be young again!” he said. “Look, Al—” He had taken to calling him “Al,” a name he had hardly heard since high school. “—satellites are wonderful, spy planes are superb, NSA is the greatest organization of its kind in the world. But without the guy on the spot, they’re just fodder for the bean-counters. You need both, SIGINT and HUMINT. Americans love technology; for one thing, it’s expensive, and we trust things that cost a lot. Anything as cheap as a spy is immediately suspect to us. But you can really get hurt by old-fashioned human intelligence. How do you think the Soviets got the atomic bomb?”

      “Forgive me, but I think your example says it all. That was more than forty years ago.” Alan chuckled; he knew Peretz well enough by then to be able to say, “Come on—spies?”

      “Al, right now you’re in love with your computer and your radar. That’s fine. But I keep trying to tell you, you’re an intelligence officer. Be intelligent.” Peretz saw his skepticism. He sighed. “My greatest fear is, somebody’s going to plant an agent on me and I’ll be the unwitting means for some two-bit country to learn something that will hurt us—South Africa. France. Israel. One of the Arab states. You think I’m living in the past. Wrong end of the stick, chum: I’m living in the future. You wait until low-tech countries start going after our shit. You’ll see how important HUMINT is, in spades.” He shrugged. “Okay, so you need to grow up some. Come on, I’ll buy you a slider while you’re aging.”

      They worked late together one day, running the new template through its paces. Alan knew he was good at it, had even proposed an improvement that Peretz fastened on to. Now, pleased with themselves, at ease with each other, they sipped cold coffee in the intelligence spaces, feet up.

      “You know this is my last tour,” Peretz said.

      Alan tried to think of a politic thing to say.

      “Your dad told you I’m out, didn’t he?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Peretz began to play with his fingers. “I could give you a lot of reasons why. They’re on my fitreps, right? But, between you and me—let me tell you this, because I see in you another … guy who might have to make the same choices. I wouldn’t make the sacriflce. You understand what I mean?” He made a face, sighed. “I wouldn’t make the sacrifice. Of my doubts, of my jokes, of my family. Of myself. What I mean is, if you stay in—there’s a cost.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to pay it.” He looked at Alan. “You sure you want to pay it?”

      He wasn’t sure at all. He didn’t yet know Peretz well enough to say what he really feared: I’m only here until I prove something to my dad.

      The last morning, Alan went to say goodbye. They were anchored in the Bay of Naples. Alan was excited, mostly about the imminent meeting with his girl, an imminence of sex that was so powerful he was sure he smelled of it. Sailors and women, oh boy—it was all true!

      “I’m on my way, sir.”

      “Hey, it’s been good. Your dad’s a lucky guy. Listen—” He held Alan’s arm. “Stay in touch. I mean that.”

      “I will.”

      And he would. His father wouldn’t approve, but he would stay in touch with Peretz.

      Alan ran his father down in the squadron ready room. They shook hands, neither moving to an embrace because other men were nearby. The distance that had opened between them had not been closed, and Alan found himself dodging the suggestion that they get together in Naples.

      He would think later of the time thrown away, time they might have had together, valuable only when it was too late.

       4