Extraordinary Powers

PROLOGUE

The story begins, appropriately enough, at a funeral. The coffin of an old man is being lowered into the ground. The mourners surrounding the grave site are as somber as any funeral-goers, but they are conspicuously well dressed, radiating power and wealth. It is an odd sight: on this gray, drizzling, cold March morning, in a small rural cemetery in Columbia County in upstate New York, you can see United States senators, Supreme Court justices, the various scions of the New York and Washington power establishments, picking up wet clods of soil and flinging them atop the coffin. They are surrounded by black limousines, BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and the assorted other vehicles of the rich, powerful, and elect. Most of them have come a long distance to pay their respects; the graveyard is miles from anywhere.

I was there, of course, but not because I am famous, great, powerful, or elect. I was at the time merely an attorney in Boston-for Putnam & Stearns, a very good firm, and earning a respectable salary-and I felt distinctly out of place among the luminaries.

I was, however, the deceased’s son-in-law.

My wife, Molly-more formally, Martha Hale Sinclair-was the only child of Harrison Sinclair, a legend of the American Establishment, an enigma, a master spy. Hal Sinclair had been one of the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency, then a renowned Cold Warrior (a dirty job, but someone had to do it), later a Director of Central Intelligence, brought in to rescue the foundering Agency during its post-Cold War identity crisis.

Like his friend William Casey before him, Sinclair died during his tenure as director. We are all fascinated by the specter of a CIA director dying while in office-what secrets, one wonders, did the old spymaster take with him to the grave? And indeed, Hal Sinclair took an extraordinary secret with him when he went. But on the cold, overcast morning of his funeral, neither Molly nor I nor any of the VIPs gathered so mournfully knew it.

Without question, the manner of my father-in-law’s death seemed suspicious. He had perished a week earlier in a car accident in rural Virginia. It was late at night; he had been driving to an emergency meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, and the car had been run off the road by an unidentified vehicle, then exploded in a ball of flames.

One day before the “accident,” his executive assistant, Sheila McAdams, had been found murdered in an alley in Georgetown. The Washington police concluded that she’d been the victim of a mugging-her purse and jewelry were missing. Molly and I, to be honest, suspected from the start that both her father and Sheila had been murdered, that there was no mugging, and no “accident,” and we were not alone in our suspicions. The Washington Post, The New York Times, all the television networks, hinted as much in their coverage. But who would have done such a thing? In the bad old days, of course, we would all be quick to blame the KGB or some other dark, mysterious arm of the Evil Empire, but the Soviet Union no longer existed. American intelligence no doubt still had its enemies-but who would want to assassinate, if that’s the right word, the director of the CIA? Molly also believed that her father and Sheila had been having an affair, which isn’t quite as scandalous as it seems, since Sheila was single, and Molly’s mother had died some six years before, leaving Sinclair a widower.

Although Hal Sinclair was a remote, even cryptic figure, I had always felt a closeness to him, from the first time Molly introduced us. Molly and I had been friends in college, more like pals-she was a freshman when I was a senior-and there was unquestionably a spark of attraction between us, but each of us was involved with another. I was seeing Laura, whom I married immediately after college. Molly was involved with some lunk she tired of after a year or so. But Hal Sinclair took to me, and recruited me to the Agency upon my graduation from Harvard, nudging me toward the clandestine service, apparently figuring me for a better spy than I turned out to be. As it happened, this line of work tapped into a dark and violent side that made me a superb if reckless operative-much feared, including by myself.

So for two very tense years before I entered Harvard Law, I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a clandestine operative. I did quite well at it too-until the tragedy in Paris. That was when I quit the Agency and went into the law, not regretting the decision for a moment.

It wasn’t until I returned from Paris a widower, after the incident I still find hard to speak of, that Molly and I began to see each other seriously. Molly, the daughter of the man who was soon to become the Director of Central Intelligence, applauded my decision to leave the espionage business behind me. She had seen firsthand, after all, what it could do to a family, the strains it had put upon her own family, and she wanted no part of it.

Even after Hal Sinclair became my father-in-law, I saw little of him, and never got to know him well. We saw each other only at the occasional family gathering (he was the quintessential workaholic, a committed Company man), where he seemed to regard me with a certain warmth.

But as I said, the story begins at Harrison Sinclair’s funeral. It was there, as the mourners began to disperse, shaking hands with one another under their black umbrellas, walking quickly back to their cars, that a tall, lanky man in his early sixties, with tousled silver hair, slipped up to me and introduced himself.

His suit was rumpled, his tie askew, but beneath all the sloppiness, his clothes were expensive: a double-breasted charcoal wool suit of impeccable tailoring and a striped shirt that looked like it had been custom-made for him in Savile Row. Although I’d never met him, I recognized him at once as Alexander Truslow, an old CIA man of considerable renown. Like Hal Sinclair, he was a pillar of the Establishment, with a reputation for moral rectitude. For a few weeks during the Watergate scandal of 1973-74, he served as acting Director of Central Intelligence. Nixon disliked him-largely because, it was said, Truslow refused to play ball with the Nixon White House and involve the CIA in the cover-up-and moved swiftly to replace him with a political appointee more to his liking.

Soft-spoken and elegant in his slightly disheveled way, Alex Truslow was one of those well-mannered, well-bred WASP Yankee types, like Cyrus Vance or Elliot Richardson, who radiate fundamental decency. He had retired from the Agency after Nixon passed him over, but naturally he never aired any gripes about the President; that would be ungentlemanly. Hell, I would have called a press conference, but that was not Alex’s way.

After casting around a bit, doing the lecture circuit, he had formed his own international consulting firm, based in Boston, which was known informally as the “Corporation.” The Corporation advised corporations and law firms around the world on how to deal with an ever-changing, ever-baffling world market. Not surprisingly, given Truslow’s upstanding reputation in the intelligence community, the Corporation also worked quite closely with CIA.

Alexander Truslow was one of the most respected, eminent men in the intelligence community. After Hal Sinclair’s death, Truslow was known to be on the shortlist to replace him. For reasons of morale in CIA’s ranks alone, Truslow should have been named, so popular was he among the younger officers and the old boys alike. True, there were grumblings about Truslow’s work in the “private sector.” And then there were those with good reason to fear a “new broom.” Even so, as he introduced himself to Molly and me, I silently wagered that I was shaking hands with the next Director of the CIA.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said to Molly. Truslow’s eyes were moist. “Your father was a wonderful man. He’ll be sorely missed.”

Molly only nodded. Did she know him? I couldn’t tell.

“Ben Ellison, is that right?” he said, shaking my hand.

“Good to meet you, Mr. Truslow,” I said.

“Alex. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other around Boston,” he said. “You may know I’m a friend of Bill Stearns’s.” William Caslin Stearns III is the senior partner of Putnam & Stearns, and himself an old CIA man. Also, my boss. Such were the circles in which I moved.

“He’s mentioned you,” I said.

A few minutes of awkward chat followed as we walked toward where the cars were parked, and then Truslow got to what was clearly his main point. “You know, I’ve mentioned to Bill that I’d be very much interested in having you do some legal work for my firm.”

I smiled pleasantly. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t had anything to do with CIA or intelligence or anything of that sort since I left the Agency. I don’t think I’m the one you want.”

“Oh, your background has nothing to do with it,” he persisted. “It’s purely business, and I’m told you’re the best intellectual-property attorney in Boston.”

“You’ve been badly misled,” I said with a polite chuckle. “There are lots better than me.”

“You’re too modest,” he replied gently. “Let’s have lunch sometime soon.” He gave a lopsided smile. “All right, Ben?”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I’m flattered-but I’m afraid I’m not interested. My loss.”

Truslow looked directly at me with his sad brown eyes. They reminded me of a basset hound’s. He shrugged, and shook my hand again.

“Then it’s my loss, Ben,” he said, smiled forlornly, and disappeared into the back of a black Lincoln limousine.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that it wouldn’t end there. But I could not help thinking it odd that he would want to hire me, and by the time I understood why, it was too late.