Bodyguard of Lies

CHAPTER 13

“John Masterson is dead," Nero's metallic voicebox grated the words out.

"Do you have his package?" Senator Collins asked. He hadn’t bothered to sit down since entering the room a minute ago. One of the lights over Nero’s head was out; making it look like a pair of headlights was over the old man. Collins wondered if the effect was deliberate or simply that no one had mentioned to the old man that the light bulb had burnt out.

"No."

"Damn it!" Collins exclaimed.

"His package isn't as important as Gant's," Nero said.

“What about the woman?” Collins asked.

“Masterson’s wife?” Nero was puzzled for the moment.

“No. Gant’s girlfriend. I assume she has his package.”

“Ah, Neeley,” Nero said. “She made it to John Masterson before we could.”

Collins grimaced. “Then she has Masterson’s papers now. She has to.”

Nero shrugged. “And she probably either has Gant’s tape or knows where it is. When Gant was alive they had them also. I still believe nothing has changed and by acting we are forcing a dangerous situation.”

"Do you realize the repercussion if this becomes public?" Collins asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "This will make Iran-Contra look like a parking violation! A lot of heads will roll, yours among them."

Nero did not appear to be particularly worried about that possibility. “It is curious you mention Iran-Contra. I was never briefed on that action, never mind sign off on it.”

“Remember your place,” Collins threatened.

Nero abruptly shifted the subject. "I understand you had Mister Racine perform a task for you in Baltimore not long ago.”

Collins frowned. "So? It was a minor matter.”

“Racine works for the Government under specific contracts, not for you," Nero said.

“I am the government," Collins said. He caught the look Nero gave him and quickly amended: "All right, not exactly, but I have input. I’m on the Oversight Committee for Christ’s sake."

“Input?" Nero repeated the word, as if considering it. “The action in Baltimore was not sanctioned by the Committee. Has Mister Racine worked for you in the past?”

“No.”

Nero was running his fingers over a piece of paper. Collins looked at it, but all he could see were the raised Braille bumps. “I have the official report from when you were in the Sudan in August 1993. You were helping Cintgo negotiate pipeline rights across Afghanistan. I had surveillance on the meeting. When I found out you were there, I contacted you about the tape. You asked me to send my people to recover it. I did.

“But what exactly happened there? Racine seems to have disappeared during that time period also,” Nero continued. “It was of no great concern at the time because Racine often took extended, how shall we call them, jaunts. But I’ve done some checking and it turns out, of all things that he was in Africa also at that time. An interesting coincidence considering you say he never worked for you before.”

Collins face went pale, unnoticed of course by Nero. But the change in his breathing pattern was obvious to the old man. Collins remained quiet.

“Also what’s curious about the Sudan at that time was that the FBI had a counter-terrorist cell there. And certain notorious terrorist figures were also concurrently in-country. And shortly after your visit, the FBI’s team was pulled out.” Nero tossed that piece of paper to the side and picked up another one. “You know the Cellar rarely takes action, don’t you Senator?”

Collins nodded, realized Nero couldn’t see him and spoke. “Yes.” The word came out drier that he wished.

“Mainly the Cellar’s job is to gather information. Information unbiased by political, religious, moral — any slant. Just the facts. Even if they don’t, how should I say, shine a favorable light on our own country. After all, we do bad things in the name of freedom, do we not? For the greater good?”

Collins remained silent.

“The problem though, is who determines the greater good? All the information is useless unless someone is able to do something with it. Do you know what a Bodyguard of Lies is?”

Collins still didn’t answer.

“Winston Churchill said that ‘in wartime, the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a Bodyguard of Lies’.” Nero put the paper down and Collins shoulders relaxed slightly. Nero held his hands up and then pointed at his face. “Do you know what happened to my eyes?”

Collins tongue snaked across his lips. “No.”

“Someone put a red hot steel reinforcing rod into each eye socket and burned them out.”

Beads of sweat were on Collins’ forehead. “Listen, I—“

“That someone was a Gestapo interrogator,” Nero continued as if he hadn’t heard the Senator speak at all. “History. It’s very, very important. There’s the famous saying that those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it. I think it’s much simpler — those who don’t know history are stupid. Ignorant. I’ve made history in this room. And you’ve made history, too, haven’t you, Senator? Of course, much of it will never be written down in the books. Only the effects. Some good. Some bad.

“Do you know what a Jedbergh team was?” Nero asked. He waited a second. “Speak up man.”

The powerful Senator had not been spoken to like this in many years. “No.”

“The OSS?”

“No.”

“SOE?”

“No.”

Nero shook his head sadly. “The SOE was the Special Operations Executive. British. Their military spies in World War II. The OSS was the Office of Strategic Services. The forerunner of the CIA and our spy service in World War II. A Jedbergh team consisted of three men. One SOE — Brit; one American — OSS; and one Free French agent. Teams jumped into France, linked up with the Resistance and carried on the guerilla war against the Germans.

“Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?” Nero didn’t wait for a response this time. “But of course it wasn’t. Did you ever hear of Ultra or Enigma?”

“Yes,” Collins said. “Ultra was the British machine that decoded German messages sent via Enigma.”

“Very good. Every time Ultra decoded a German signal, Churchill had to decide whether to take action. This was much more difficult than it might initially appear. Because the primary consideration at all times was that he had to keep Ultra a secret from the Germans so they wouldn’t stop using Enigma. Quite a quandary wouldn’t you say?

“For example, the Ultra operators decode a German message from a U-Boat giving its location. It’s sitting right in the path of a convoy. So you go sink the U-Boat, correct? Wrong. Because the Germans will begin to wonder how you knew where the U-boat was if it just suddenly disappears without reporting being spotted. So, if you were going to attack it, you must send out a reconnaissance plane to that area, with the crew, of course, not knowing there was a U-Boat there. And when the plane reported seeing a U-Boat, why then you could attack it. But if the recon plane got shot down looking for a U-Boat whose location you already knew, not only was it tough luck for the crew of the plane, but tough also on the convoy because you couldn’t attack it. Also, if the plane didn’t spot the U-boat, which was likely, then again, tough luck on the convoy. This happened many times.

“Churchill allowed the city of Coventry to be bombed, even though he had adequate warning from Ultra to protect it. Which brings me to the Jedberghs. And things I didn’t know in 1943. We were young and full of piss, ready to fight and die. And our bosses knew that. So when they learned from Ultra that a Resistance network had been compromised by the Gestapo they were in a quandary. After all, they had already radioed the Resistance group that a Jedbergh team would be jumping in to join them within the fortnight. If they canceled the team coming, the Gestapo would know something was up.

“So some really smart chap, as the Brits were wont to say, thought, well let’s make the best of this, how shall we say, awkward situation. So they took me and my two teammates and they briefed us on various things.” A strange noise came out of the wand — Nero chuckling. “All lies — disinformation is the proper term. Except we believed it. Why shouldn’t we?

“So we jumped into France into a network our superiors knew had been compromised. We were quite disconcerted, to put it lightly, to be picked up by the Gestapo before we could even gather in our parachutes. The Frenchman was the smartest. He went down shooting on the drop zone rather than be captured. The Brit and I were taken prisoner.”

Almost perfect silence reigned in the dark room for several moments. The only slight sound was Collins’ breathing.

“I talked,” Nero finally said. “After the first eye I talked. I never quite understood why they took out the second considering they were going to execute me the next day. A touch of sadism I suspect. The Brit talked too. And the Germans believed us. I would have believed too. Because we believed what we were saying under torture. Which was, of course, lies fed to us. Quite a brilliant scheme, if you think about. Which I have, of course. Often over the years.

“I don’t regret it. In retrospect, my little team of three helped- along with many other lies — convince the Germans the invasion was coming in Calais, not Normandy. Do you know how many lives that saved in the long run? And I lived. The only one. These—“ he waved his hand in front of his face—“what are the loss of these compared to death?

“Do you know how I survived? The Resistance attacked the Gestapo building where I was being held. One of the fighters got me out of my cell. But we were trapped on the third floor. There was only one way out. Through a window and sliding down a radio transmission wire extended across the street to the next roof.” Nero held up his hands, showing the scars. “My hands were sliced to the bone sliding down that wire, but I didn’t let go until I got to the other side. The Resistance gathered me in and eventually got me back to England.

“I later found out that someone here in Washington had approved of the mission I was sent on. My predecessor here in the Cellar. He’d heard about me and he had me brought here. He wanted to know how I felt about what had happened. I told him the truth.” Nero paused for a couple of seconds. “That if I were him, I would have done the same thing.”

Senator Collins wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“From that moment on he began grooming me to be his replacement. I took over from him in 1947 and have been here ever since. I also learned later that he had ordered that Resistance unit to rescue me. Most interesting and foresightful don’t you think?” Nero frowned, an obscene gesture with eyebrows furrowing over empty sockets. “Do you understand what I am saying to you, Senator?”

“Yes.”

“No, you don’t, I fear.”

"Is this matter going to be taken care of?" Collins demanded as he checked his watch.

"Oh, yes, indeed, it will be taken care of," Nero assured the Senator, the nature of his artificial voice making it impossible for Collins to determine anything of meaning in the comment beyond the words themselves. "That's my job, taking care of things."