In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum
Author:Howard Blum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-29T05:00:00+00:00
23
THEN, WITHOUT ANY WARNING, THE high-flying investigation went into a tailspin. For Bob and Meredith, there was the before, and then the after. And in the aftermath, America’s hegemony came to an unexpected end, and the world changed forever. Bob would always remember the day he’d heard the shocking news, and the deep sense of personal failure that swiftly followed.
His eventful week had started off badly, and in that still innocent time he might very well have thought things couldn’t have gotten any worse. Bob had been tethered to his desk at headquarters, poring over the latest batch of decrypts, when in a sudden flash of insight, a piece in the puzzle fell into place. The code name of the KGB agent mentioned in one of the new cables had been gnawing at him for days. Why did he keep returning to it? he wondered. But Bob couldn’t find the answer. The connection eluded him.
Then there it was—he had seen it before, more or less. The name in the cable was similar to the cover name of a Soviet operative the Bureau had unearthed in a previous investigation. He ran to check the files and, digging feverishly, he tracked it down. The two names were so close it couldn’t be an accident. They had to be the same man.
It was a finding, Bob was firmly convinced, that would open up new investigative paths, reveal previously undetected Soviet espionage activities.
But beyond the operational significance, it was also a personal triumph. Bob had come up with this new, important clue on his own. For once he hadn’t relied on Meredith to make the breakthrough. They were a team, but nonetheless it bothered the competitive Bob that Meredith had been leading the way. Bob felt he’d be able to show the code breaker that he wasn’t the only one who had the acuity to penetrate Moscow Center’s secrets.
Flush with pride, Bob hurried to Arlington Hall. And all the way there he was beaming—“Waiting for compliments,” he’d candidly recall.
Meredith listened with an impassive concentration. When he finally spoke, he was, Bob would concede with gratitude, “gentle.” But at the same unflinching time he made it clear that Bob had gotten it all wrong. The problem, explained Meredith, seeming truly embarrassed to be in the role of teacher correcting the naïve pupil, was that Bob didn’t know Russian. Although the two names did look alike, they were worlds apart when pronounced correctly. There was no connection at all.
Chagrined, Bob slunk out of his friend’s office. Over the days that followed, the rebuke, despite the elaborate politeness with which it had been delivered, continued to sting. But Bob was never one to brood for too long; he possessed too much self-confidence. In time he managed to find the philosophy to shrug it off. Looking back at the conversation, he now could be “amused at my own stupidity.”
And then, without warning, this rosy perspective, along with everything else he’d been working on, or so it seemed at the terrible time, no longer amounted to much.
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