E I G H T E E N

Tom came striding into the laboratory, elated, talking, talking. "We've got it! It's done! Couldn't be better!" Bruhn stood to greet him, Mosca flitted between them. In a rush of words, Thomas told them he'd arranged an appointment, not only with the DDS&T, but with the DCI himself. "Tomorrow!" He would arrive with Mosca at one pm at the DCI's office at headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The DDS&T would be waiting there for him. He would present Mosca in person---- in flyson, to them both and review the highlights of the MKMOSCA program, trace the trail of good fortune and inspired science that had culminated in this triumph. "Who should take the credit, who should get the blame? The credit goes to us. Blame? Nonexistent. So when the DDS&T goes to meet his reward, I will be front-and-center in the DCI's mind, and s0 he will naturally think of appointing me."

Thomas beamed at the fly and the man. "Gents," he said, "you are now looking at the next Deputy Director for Science and Technology."

He remembered how he felt when, despite the influence his father and mother held over their congressman, his application for appointment to West Point had been rejected.

Soon he would no longer feel humiliated by this profound disappointment.

"Right there in the DCI's office, Mosca can deliver truly sophisticated culture, our viral culture, to our favorite Philistine, our dear old pal, Ed, the DDS&T." Thomas straddled an office chair. "Mosca. At The Farm, where Donovan and I went for our intermediate training, they generated understanding of the elements of opposing forces, communism for example, by means of psychodrama. We've both played the part of KGB agent, of Russian general, of Latino fellow-traveler, all in the context of mock events. Each one of us would play all of the parts in rotation. Okay! I'll be the coach. We'll anticipate tomorrow's meeting. Think of us as rehearsing a football play or a scene in some TV serial. For a game or a soap. They're both closed systems into which people project themselves and live for a while. Fans sink into those systems, into the stats, the plot, the players, the implicit setting in society, and feel themselves a part of it, enjoy the comfort of the limited and comprehensible. People need drama in their lives. Okay. Yeah! So let's rehearse. Donovan's the DCI; Mosca is me; I'm the DDS&T. We're sitting at a table in the DCI's private dining room, when I---- you that is, Mosca---- when Mosca comes in."

Will running this Tom-mobile in imagination resemble driving the Pedromobile in fact?

It did.

"Okay, Mosca, the next round, you be the DCI, Donovan'll be me. A fly/ as DC Aye! Who's AC Eye? Of course. Tesla! That makes Edison DC Aye. And Washington DC? How'd Edison get the nation's capital named for Direct Current?"

"Calm down, Thomas, and let's get on with it."

She buzzed concurrence.

And they got on with it. Mosca and Bruhn regarded it as a charade. Pay attention! Don't laugh! Suppress mirth, above all during the many dry runs Mosca made to different parts of hir companions as she rehearsed excreting lethal culture first on this patch of skin, then on that. They would get the DDS&T to hold Mosca in the palm of his hand. No. Better for Mosca to alight on his neck at the same time Ed was explaining Mosca's function as an assassin. The next morning Bruhn loaded Mosca with the culture, and then she and Thomas rode in Swifty, Thomas' East Asian Lincoln, along the Spellman Parkway toward Washington, Direct Current.

* * *

And how, you ask, did Thomas learn to drive? Tommy clambered into the driver's side of the 1934 Buick. John shifted into second gear and turned the ignition key. He told Tommy to hold down the clutch with both feet. "When I yell, let it up gently." He slammed the door. John and Richard began pushing and kept on until the car seemed to be rolling fast enough. "Now, Tommy, now!" The clutch rose, the engine roared, and, fueled by both throttle and choke, the car lunged ahead. As it sped toward the river, a sudden apprehension struck the brothers. Tommy was too small to see out the windshield and work the pedals at the same time. They watched him desperately pop in and out of sight till at last, blindly, he sat on the floor, vanishing, and held the wheel s0 the car would circle. Turning and skidding as the child hung onto the wheel, the auto ran over the articles they'd gathered. Tommy worked the brake with his hand as he struggled to sit on the clutch. Down it went and the Buick stopped. To the sound of a racing engine, the brothers opened the door, shifted into neutral, pushed in the choke and the throttle, and, John driving, praised Tommy all the way home. And now Tommy---- Thomas Cortlandt Spofford---- was guiding his East Asian Lincoln by College Park toward the Beltway. He clicked on the radio and it responded with the voice of Gospel Pam, America's most popular electronic evangelist. Mosca crouched on the dashboard, absorbing the suburban scene through all hir eyes. Thomas turned onto the Beltway and, at Silver Spring, drove the Lincoln down into city streets.

"You know, Mosca, I think Gospel Pam, with all her talk about being reborn in Jesus, works for us, or maybe our surrogate in domestic affairs, Wackenhut Security." Double damn! A runny nose! "Police departments, too." He sneezed and dripped. "We infiltrated the Los Angeles PD and a number of others." He sniffed and wiped on his hand. "Allergy." He wiped it again. "In Latin America, and Africa too, the Company works through a number of fundamentalist missionary organizations, and pays part of the cost of this merciless holy dedication to ethnocide with the taxpayers' money. Here I am, confiding in a fly. Enjoying it. It's easy. Put your trust in Jesus and the Diptera, in hope for salvation through the power of molecular biology.

"What a bloody hypocrite! That's what you're thinking. So, hey, guess what? I looked up hypocrite in the Oxford English Dictionary, and learned it's not referred to the way Hypocrites did things, but really means actor, as in Ronald Reagan."

"I'm thinking: Why we going through the city?"

"To kill time, and to show you around, and bounce some thoughts off you, and organize what's on my mind."

"This is the day the Lord has made," said Gospel Pam. "Rejoice in it! Heed His word and do His work."

Tom silenced Gospel Pam.

And I want to get used to Mosca as a companion.

I truly can confide in him. I feel all right about it, which is more than I can say about humans I know. They passed a garden, rich with melons and corn. "When my father ate from the cob, he ate methodically, back and forth, gnawing off the rows. Me, I'm a rotary eater, and the twins just bite anywhere." Mosca cringed at the thought of slobbering down corn. Eaters! Thomas stopped to consult a map, drove into a wide street, and parked. "My grandfather told me the Civil War was the American tragedy. All the young idealists on both sides, men who could have done so much, were killed or brutalized. It happened again in the World Wars, especially to Europeans. And Korea. Vietnam! And think of what's been happening since. Somalia. Bosnia. Northern Ireland. San Salvador. Rwanda. Timor. Lebanon. Guatemala. Angola. Nicaragua. Sudan. Zaire! During the past few years everything has been collapsing into tribal warfare, energized as much by hatred as by economics, and conducted not with arrows or spears, but with efficient modern weapons." He looked at the map again, drove another fifty yards, and parked.

"In the summer of 1864," he said to Mosca, "toward the end of the Civil War, General Jubal Early led a large Confederate force up from the Shenandoah Valley to attack Washington. They got this far, five miles north of the White House, right where we are now, which then was farms and woods, not lawns and houses. The government panicked. The combat forces were with Grant before Petersburg or with Sherman, preparing to attack Atlanta. So they flushed clerks out of offices and wounded out of hospitals and put them on the parapets to defend the city. Early's fifteen thousand men were all tough combat veterans. Had they attacked immediately, they probably could have taken Washington and burned it. But Early chose to rest and reorganize his troops. Lincoln rushed the Sixth Corps of seasoned veterans up from Virginia, and they deployed between here and the fortifications over there and saved the city. In this episode, hundreds of people were killed. We have a family letter about it written by a captain from the Sixth Corps. Last night, I took it out, and pondered it. Here it is. I brought it along."

He drew the letter from the glove compartment.

"I'll read part of it."

He sniffled and wiped his nose.

"Fort Stevens, Defense of Washington, July 13th, 1864. Dear Mother, I know you will feel anxious after hearing of our engagement yesterday. You see, I am not in front of Petersburg, but within four miles of Washington City. We left our portion of the lines at Petersburg on Saturday night at eleven o'clock, and marched to City Point by daylight Sunday morning where we embarked on transports and reached Washington Monday noon. We landed and immediately marched through Washington on out to the front. We arrived just in time. The rebels were within two hundred yards of Fort Stevens, and the gunners, having no support, were about leaving, when some of the cavalry arrived and were deployed as skirmishers, and pushed the rebels back a few hundred yards. Then they in turn commenced pushing our cavalry, just as our brigade, the first to arrive, came upon the ground. We advanced, and immediately opened fire on the rebels. I had one man wounded in my company and I narrowly escaped being hit myself, a ball just grazing my boot. At dark firing ceased and the night passed quietly. Yesterday we skirmished all day and about five o'clock received notice that after three volleys from the fort we should advance, and we did. Our regiment skirmished, protecting the flank, and the principal battle took place on the right where the firing was very heavy until after dark. When the fighting ceased, we had gained considerable ground on the rebels and had burned the house which we wished to take. Some regiments suffered severely. The battlefield was in full view from Fort Stevens and the President stood there and viewed the action. Doctor Crawford of the 102nd was wounded by a stray ball while standing next to the President. For my part I think the affair was poorly managed or we might have taken a good many prisoners. We were relieved about eleven o'clock last night and are now lying about eight hundred yards to the rear of the fort on the Fourteenth Street Road. The cost to our regiment was two killed and eleven wounded. Sergeant Richards of Company H and Private Burns of Company A were killed. The two wounded in my company were Joseph Sissy---- toe amputated, and Oliver Spang, hit in the thigh."

He sniffed and wiped.

"You know, Mosca, young Oliver Wendell Holmes, later a Supreme Court Justice, not realizing the tall civilian in the stovepipe hat was Abraham Lincoln, yelled, "Get down, you damned fool, before you get shot!"

"They all sound like damned fools to me."

Thomas started his Lincoln, thinking it had come as close to the real Lincoln as it ever would, or was it the real Lincoln? And he drove down Fourteenth Street and over to Sixteenth Street, and down it toward the White House. Talking to you Mosca is like talking to myself. I can say anything. But with you I get response. "Mosca, CIA kills people all the time. They smothered Casey in the hospital with a pillow so he wouldn't testify. At least, so I heard. When the Shah of Iran became a serious embarrassment, they killed him with a chest X-ray machine which radiated him continuously through the wall of his hospital room, and they did the same in prison to Jack Ruby. Now, we're going to kill one of the killers. Doing it will save countless people and change the tone of our Directorate. This guy Ed, this DDS&T . . . . I recommended to him we drop counterfeit currency on Iraq instead of bombs. Send it by airplane, as a form of crop dusting. Greed dusting. Or deliver it by a million balloons. Talk about fortifying the embargo! With our perfect counterfeits we could have produced one-million percent inflation in twenty-four hours. That would have been a painless kill, the coup-de-grāce to Saddam's economy. The Company had distributed phony money in Cuba. Why not in Iraq? Not only did Ed reject the idea, but he refused to forward it. So, thousands have been killed. As usual, the little people are the ones who suffer."

They were passing embassies now.

"I have to get in harmony with YWOT, pronounced eewat, the Yale Way of Thought, before we get there. Public service is the theme of eewat as it is with CIA. Honor. Responsibility to our mission and to my part within it. CIA's a club, a school, a secret society, a family. In a way I feel I'm about to double-cross that, but, deeper, I know you and me, we, we're following it." On both sides embassies filed by. "Over there, Mosca, on that corner, we mugged a guy."

"Why?"

"At lunchtime we were searching his office and photographing everything of interest, and he started back early, s0, before he could come in and catch us, our man outside knocked him down and robbed him. The embassy called the Capital Police, who by investigating added one more to the local crime stats. I complained to Ed about it, and he laughed in my face. CIA still mugs people from time to time."

They soon came to the downtown business district where they saw beggars and homeless, reminding Mosca of what she'd seen in San Francisco. "Look there!" cried Thomas, pointing at them, "cast them in bronze, and you'll have the Nixon Memorial."

He turned the car into K Street, passed by a group of Pro-Choice pickets, one of whom carried a sign saying KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY UTERUS, went around Washington Circle, through Foggy Bottom, and enjoyed a splendid view of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial while crossing the Potomac on the Key Bridge into Virginia.

"You know, Mosca, what I really hate about Ed is he's the ultimate bureaucrat, no guts, no imagination, no spontaneity, an embodiment of what the Company has become." He sniffed and wiped. "In the old days, CIA was daring, romantic, creative---- funky. In most respects, it was highly civilized, classic Ivy League. It ain't like it used to be and it never was. No. It definitely was. Maybe I think so because I was young and pure with clean belief in the mission and the team and my responsibility to both. We were the shock troops in the clandestine war against communism. Some things we did were intrinsically immoral, but we had no choice, because the KGB did them first. CIA was intense, it was quality with high meaning. Now? It's like Ed. Bureaucratic mediocrity."

A freeway sign announced the turnoff to CIA.

"For years, Mosca, for fucking years, some cretinous functionary blocked the placement of that sign. As if we could hide the existence of a one-million square-foot building."

The East Asian Lincoln took them through a commercial area and by the Evans Farm Inn, a CIA watering hole. "Boozing hole, to tell the truth. Heavy drinking's one of our structural flaws. Booze is the oil of covert operations. It's a legitimate expense, so case officers and others get all they want, free." Everywhere, maple trees were turning red. Indian Summer. "The code phrase broadcast to the French Resistance just before D-Day was: The wine is red. And the Bay of Pigs? The fish is red." They slowed to turn into what the old timers call the Campus. "Right there, at the entry, is where back in ninety-three when traffic was jammed tight a Pakistani went from car to car with an assault rifle, blasting people. He spared the women and a Republican senator."

Dense woods flanked the approach road, and concealed the chainlink fence surrounding CIA's hundred and twenty-five acres. Emerging at the gate, they saw the facade of an immense seven-story concrete building reflecting sunlight from a multitude of narrow windows. "The DCI's office is on the seventh floor, in the corner, overlooking a canopy of treetops. And do you know? All these years, and I've never been there. I've never met a DCI." Circling around, he looked for a parking place. "That building . . . ! Just seeing it, thrills me." He coughed and spat. "I'm getting a sore throat! When I'm about to see my first DCI . . . . Is he like Riley, Ace of Spies, or Wild Bill Donovan? Smiley? No, he resembles Flashman and in concurrence with Flashman's assessment of the UK's nineteenth-century clandestine

establishment, he believes: In the political service we have but one criterion: If it's good for the service, it's true."

Thomas could not find a legitimate place to park, so he wedged into a walkway. Now I get a fucking ticket! "Here we go!" He stepped out carrying his dispatch case, Mosca flitting along above him. He locked the door. "Okay, pal, you ride on my shoulder. I'll trudge around a while for sentimental reasons, and be your tour guide, and time it so we arrive chez the DCI at a perfect one." He walked toward a long concrete rain awning and the grand entry. "Remember. You have to squirt the stuff, like toothpaste, like taking a dump." Mosca buzzed indignantly. "Okay. So I forgot. What would you know about either of them? Strain! Excrete. As we rehearsed. With that cream-of-wheat." They were now crossing a lawn, and it was so hot and so still they could hear the grass grow.

"Dee Dee Ess and Tee, start singing your death song." Beyond the shelter, by a tree near the grand entry to CIA's state-of-the-art Morada, upon a block of polished granite, stood a heroic-sized bronze youth, trussed for hanging.

"Our patron Saint and martyr, Nathan Hale, Yale version. Nobody knows what Hale really looked like. Me, I prefer the New York City statue, modeled on Alexander the Great." He stood contemplating this clone of the bronze guardian of Yale's Old Campus, CIA's own Saint Sebastian. "You know, Mosca, sometimes I wonder if Nathan Hale existed at all, or is he like Washington's cherry tree, detritus of old disinformation?" Thomas sniffed and coughed. "Double damn! You know, Mosca, Yale's a nation within a nation. It has its mythical founders, its heroes, its flag, its anthem, its songs, its police, its government, its housing and quarters and stores. Its patriotism. Its tradition. Everything but an economy. It sucks its sustenance out of the host nation. CIA's also a nation within a nation. Now it's become more like a tumor within a nation. Or, better, a virus, because it's altering the national DNA in to its own image. You might even say the same of Yale. CIA's developing an economy. It's becoming a complete germ. We'll soon have everything but songs. I've tried to invent some, but the best I can do aren't worth hearing." He smacked his hands together. "Oh yeah!" Abruptly, he cried out: "A-ri-stophen-eeees! Brekekekekex, Ko-ax, Ito-ax!" He snuffled and spat. "That, my high flying friend, is Yale's cheer. Another thing the Company lacks."

They advanced into the lobby. People swarmed everywhere. Busy busy. Look there: a newsstand run by the blind. No one in the swirling crowd gazed at the concrete-and-Georgia-marble north wall with its names of dead agents and bas-relief bust of Allen Dulles; none glanced at the south wall and its inspired inscription:

And ye shall know the truth and the

Truth shall make you free.

John VIII-XXX:I

"Truth Macht Frei! Could that be Flashman truth?" Coughing again, he led into the south corridor, with its messages of appreciation from various presidents. Thomas' credential passed him by security points as they wandered through halls painted off-white except for color-coded doors: red, blue, yellow, and then back into the crowded lobby. "They have a lot more people working here than they really need, and they generate memos, meetings and conferences best left undone. My theory is the less certain you are of what you're doing, the more people you need to do it."

He followed another hall, deep into the building. "When we get to the DCI's private elevator, you'll observe security gets as tight as a bull's ass in flytime." He put Mosca into a small ventilated metal box which he slipped into his pocket shortly before they arrived at the DCI's security station. A guard studied his papers and then phoned upstairs to double-check. The elevator doors were of stainless steel. The other guard examined him with a metal detector. "What's in this pocket?" He drew forth the box. "What's in it?"

"A fly."

"You can't take that up. You'll have to leave it here."

"I have to take it up."

"I'm not going to let unauthorized flies in here."

"This is an authorized fly."

Another phone call confirmed such was indeed the case. They rode the elevator to the seventh floor and stepped out into a reception area where an aide met them. She guided the way along a corridor to a large wooden door admitting into an office paneled in white oak with a number of gorgeous Persian rugs spread out over its parquet floor. Windows extending along two walls looked out on a magnificent woodland scene of greens and browns, yellows and oranges and a variety of reds, in all a leafy screen hiding the suburbs beneath. And there, at a desk, sat the Director of Central Intelligence! The Pope of Spies. The Prince of Foul Play. Big and flabby, the wreck of an athlete, very much like Dave. Back there, in the Broadway Manor, San Francisco, where me and Dave trapped the wrong fly, Pedro and that flashy sexy lady should have cross-dressed Dave instead of me. Let's do it to the DCI. He imagined the DCI in drag, loops of pearl necklace, ą la J. Edgar Hoover. He can't possibly be as dumb as Dave. Or as vile as Hoover. The DCI rose in greeting. A warm handclasp and smile. "Edwin's waiting for us in my dining room." The top of the rosewood desk displayed little but a memopad, a console and keyboard, phones, and a sign: QUESTION REALITY. "A nice touch, eh?" The DCI led across the hall to a small conference room where he gathered some papers. "Our strengths, often, are also our weaknesses. We Americans are our own predators. We are our own prey. That I sense such realities is, I think, the reason the President brought me in from outside, and why after his death they kept me on. I'm a political. A guy who has lived a different point of view." T hey step into the dining room. "The Company seems to repress the spontaneous, human qualities you need to run an outfit like this." Ed waits at a table by the window. Lilies bloom in a vase before him. Tom sniffs and coughs. Ed rises and shakes hands. Although, as usual, he looks like a superannuated movie star, his face shows no expression; it yields not a single clue as to his feelings. The DCI seats himself. Is this chief of the Company a company man? "Well, now," he says, as drinks are served, "something I'm sure we all feel, as does everyone around here who supervises some cage in our menagerie of moles and cougars and schnauzers, our prime axiom is also our fatal flaw."

"Need to know?"

"Yes, Tom, need to know. I see you've given it some thought. Restricting the diffusion of information to those who need it to advance their missions builds a honeycomb. The first thing I sensed when I began working as DCI is nobody knows what we have, or what we've done, or what's true and what's cover-your-ass. Imagine two generations of need-to-know and c-y-a. Cover stories. Record shredding. What's sealed in the honeycomb, or utterly lost? Imagine, now. The media accuse us of some gross crime. Let's say an Agee of the third millennium exposes something in his memoirs, like training and running death squads in some goddamn savage place, and we don't know if we did it or not, and have no way to find out. We don't know what all 175 MKULTRA programs were. Worldwide, what bank accounts do we have? What do we own? What promises have we made? I'm supposed to direct and I've been here more than a year and I still don't know how much money we have, what we've done, or what's going on."

"I'm on top of my department," said Ed, the DDS&T, from the depths of twenty-eight years of deception and c-y-a.

"True enough," said Tom, our Tom. "I know what's going on in my cell of the honeycomb, and fuck-all about the rest."

"With that in mind, men, let's eat."

This is Y-wot with a heart.

A table cloth was spread.

A menu appeared.

From among its offerings, Tom chose fish as least likely to produce indigestion. Ed and the DCI went for roast beef and mashed potatoes. Tom thought they rather looked like roast beef and mashed potatoes. They all exchanged ironic anecdotes until the waiter cleared the table and returned with coffee and brandy in gleaming snifters. Thomas sniveled and hacked. "All right, my friends," said the Director, "Tell me about Mosca."

Thomas opened the box and Mosca buzzed out.

"There he is."

The Director laughed. "This whole meeting is going to be TOP SECRET CRYPTO and even, at divers times, SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE CODEWORD, if you get my meaning. Have you cleared Mosca for either of those classifications?"

Ed sits in silence. Tom, too. Ed baby, it's up to you to answer that one.

"Well, Ed, is he?"

"You've got to be kidding."

The DCI's lips drew tight as he replied with ill-concealed ferocity. "Is he?"

"No."

"I see. Mosca is not cleared to know he exists. What do you think we should do with those who have information they're not cleared for?" He smiled and sat back and sniffed brandy. "Lobotomy? We did that in MKULTRA." He stroked the snifter. "I think we should run the whole staff of your Directorate through LCFLUTTER to make sure nobody knows something he shouldn't know."

"That would be resisted as facetious," said Ed.

"That would be commended as honeycomb maintenance," said the DCI.

"That," said Thomas, "would resemble fishing in the Hudson. Once, years ago, I remember getting a tremendous hit on my line. Believe me, I was one excited kid. And what broached surface after that titanic tug? A thousand-pound sturgeon? A world-class bass? No. Swearing and cursing, that's what. An angry skin diver."

"With LCFLUTTER, as you both are aware, you never know what you're going to get." He rubbed his finger around the rim of the snifter until it sang out a clear musical note. "And the damndest thing about it is the accuracy of lie detectors is highly suspect---- so much so that we know a talented, experienced liar, the very model of what we want our people to be, can flow through FLUTTER like, uh . . . liquid shit through an enema tube. And you know what? Most folks around here fear the polygraph more than fundamentalists fear the Last Judgment." He smiled and Tom, our Tom, charmsmiled back. Ed remained his usual fossil self.

"Tom, where'd you catch that fish?"

"Garrison. But you wouldn't recognize the place now. They rebuilt it to make a movie."

"Correct reality to fit the fantasy? Is that it? Yes. Good for them. We do it all the time. Sometimes CIA can't tell them apart, reality and fantasy, truth and falsehood," said the DCI, peering at Ed, transfixing Ed like a bug on the end of a pin. "And that's not only because need-to-know sometimes causes us to believe our own disinformation, and even work it into our intelligence estimates. The subtle problem is we---- some of us that is, within ourselves, have erased the line separating truth from mendacity. It's as if, day and night, we live on the plateau separating dreamsleep from awake. As with a pathological liar, we don't always know when we're lying, and so the lie sails through the polygraph---- the whole of LCFLUTTER---- as truth, and nobody knows the difference."

"Nevertheless," said Tom, "not fluttering people because of all that would be like not drinking water because fish fuck in it."

"You really think so?"

"Sometimes, sir, Tom's too outspoken."

The DCI peered at the DDS&T for a moment, in silence.

"Ed, sometimes I think your most profound understanding of truth is as an acronym. You know, T-R-U-T-H." He flicked his snifter, making it ring. "The Rubble Under The Heart. Is that it, Ed?" He laughed. "Or is it Beauty & Truth; Trudy & Ruth?" He let Mosca roost on his hand, pale and age-spotted. "Well, little Mosca, from what these fellows have reported to me it sounds like you're the best thing since the invention of brandy." He turned to Ed. "It's time for your report."

In an academic yet lucid manner Ed described MKMOSCA's progress and explained the new dimensions in surveillance and secret warfare now opened by hir existence. Hovering between them, at the center of attention, loving it, Mosca buzzed and stunted over and around. As Tom watched our favorite fly and listened to Ed expound, urgent questions swirled within. Am I making a good impression? Is it right to kill Ed? How many parking tickets are stacked on my windshield? How will I displace the DCI? Have they towed the car? He coughed and covered his mouth and hacked and wheezed. "You know," said the DCI, "I'm beginning to realize I'm not supposed to know anything. I'm here to guard the Company against invaders, especially demands for accountability and attempts to perforate the honeycomb. Casey wanted to privatize CIA, and maybe by now they've done it, and so mine is to serve as camouflage, to divert attention from the truth. The murder of the Kennedys set up a coup-d'état. Nixon had everything in place to accomplish it but stumbled over his own feet. Now, the infrastructure is there. The intel establishment, multinational business, multinational crime and banking. And mine, as chief of the intelligence establishment, is to believe and say the Company, as always, serves the government---- the people, when in fact, for its members, it serves greed and self aggrandissment, and, in general, acts as a military force in the service of those preparing the overthrow of our constitutional government. Well, in any event, we have Mosca. Nobody else knows about him. He's our ace of trumps. We can send him from cell to cell, whence he can transmit to me." He held up his hand for Mosca to settle on. "With me as the Almighty and you as master spy, we'll get this thing together, little fly, indeed we shall." He looked back at his companions. You may wonder why I do this job, other than for the fun and the money. It's because the president asked me to. And you, Edwin, why do you do yours? I know it can't be for the fun. You don't believe in fun. You're rich, s0 it can't be money." His glance transfixed Ed. "Why?"

"I feel a certain patriotic responsibility."

"Thomas?"

"It builds my saga. I'll retire when my song's as long as Snorri Sturlesson's."

Mosca zoomed up and lit on Ed's ear and deposited a death cake. Scratch one homosap.

Thoughtlessly, resenting the annoyance, Ed smacked at hir.

Mosca whooped with mirth.

So did the DCI.

"Habit, instinct, my dear Edwin, almost made you crush the first specimen of artificial life ever designed around a mission." He warmed his snifter between his hands. "And now, Mosca, it's time for us to converse in your strange electronic modus operandi."

Mosca buzzed assent. "Dr Bruhn tells me my hearing resembles yours, but my way of speaking is like radio."

"My fine flitting friend, before this is over, you'll have earned the Wild Bill medal." He beamed at Mosca. "But how can I pin it on you?"

And s0 it went.

After this very promising meeting with the DCI where, at the conclusion, Thomas---- our Thomas---- had convinced him molecular psychology and its application, mind engineering, will soon control society, and where he demonstrated this principle as embodied in Mosca, Thomas, now happily whistling "Marching Through Georgia," Mosca in

his pocket, rode down in the private elevator and strode through the building toward the lobby. Once outside, Thomas let Mosca out of hir box. Mosca buzzed to the idol of the deified Hale and gazed at the immense CIA building whence issue a thousand trails of blood. It's not a Morada. Those folk don't torture themselves in penance for His agony and death. No! Behold a temple of Baal where they write textbooks for torture classes at Fort Benning and elsewhere. At the car, Thomas snatched a pad of parking tickets off the windshield, and as he studied and mourned them, Mosca settled on to the steering wheel and, selecting a worn spot, extruded more of hir lethal cream of wheat.

Gratified that the time of postponement had passed at last and she'd now set forth on hir fateful course, she thought: Scratch three!

Only five billion plus to go.

As Tom wheeled his free-market Lincoln out into traffic, he burst into song, a lay common to the bruderschaft of the sons of Yale:

I have led a good life,

Blessed with peace and quiet;

I shall have an old age,

Full of rum and riot!

I have been a good boy,

Done what was expected,

I shall be an old bum,

loved but unrespected.

Mosca settled on to the dash and watched the scenery reel by.