Ezra returned to Kykuit, however, not in triumph, but in the cold grasp of a newly formed reality. The silence of the estate seemed another, less of a refuge than the gold-plated cage of some horrible servitude. He walked directly to his study, that scene of so many victories, and summoned the one man of all men capable of understanding the deadly beauty of the game he now had to play.
Out came Baron von Hauser, his presence radiating a still, predatory serenity. He listened unmoved as Ezra recounted the meeting with Hoover, his version bald, crisp, affectless. He told of the veiled threats, the manipulation, and the final, chilling instruction about the Cambridge spy ring.
When Ezra finished, the Baron paced up and down before the fire, a tiny smile on his lips. It was the smile of an old judge mulling over some masterpiece of predatory finesse. "The monster is feeling its leash," remarked von Hauser, his voice smooth with practical admiration of Hoover's methodology. "Classic behavior. He establishes dominance, then demands tribute to confirm the new pecking order."
His advice was simple and unvarnished. "You must obey, of course. Give it what it demands. Discover some junior yes-men, put them on a silver platter, and pray that the Director derives pleasure from it. Show submission. Live to fight another day."
Ezra stood at the window, watching the last light leave the autumn sky over the Hudson. The Baron's counsel, for the first time, seemed faulty on a deep, elemental basis. It was the counsel of a survivor, but not of a king.
"No," replied Ezra, moving from the window, his eyes lighting up with a sudden, fierce clarity. "That is the reasoning of a servant. If I am only his dog, he has the right to kill me at any moment. A wayward dog, or an aged dog that has lost value, is discardable."
He paced, his mind running at frantic pace, building a fresh and still more reckless scheme. "But," he continued, speaking softly, "if I am his favorite hunting hound—the one that gives for him the largest prizes, prizes no one else has even found—he'll protect me at all costs. He'll protect me from his rivals, from Congress, from even his own base instincts." He paused, staring at the Baron, a dangerous glint in his eyes. "We will not simply comply with his ultimatum. We'll overwhelm it. We'll make his demand our offer. We'll make ourselves essential."
A slow smile of true understanding and appreciation spread over von Hauser's face. He had seen the shift. This wasn't about survival now. This wasn't about survival at all. This was about power. "A bold gamble," the Baron breathed. "To answer a threat by presenting alliance. Very well. How do we hunt?"
What followed was a chilling demonstration of the real reach and potency of the Prentice empire. Ezra didn't "make inquiries." He delivered a silent, multi-pronged blitzkrieg on the Cambridge spy ring, calling up his global network with a subtlety that would have made a national intelligence establishment green with envy.
Then there was the financial barrage. From a sound-proofed, sterile office in Zurich, Ezra's private bankers set to work. No ordinary financiers, they were world-class forensic accountants, virtuosi of the world's hidden monetary arteries. They traced every finance trail connected to the meager handful of suspect Cambridge profs Hoover had briefly mentioned. Within forty-eight hours, they had unraveled a complex web of shell companies established in Liechtenstein, numbered the Luxembourg accounts, and payments routed through an utterly innocuous East German trade mission in London. They extracted a flow chart of dirty money as clear-cut and conclusive as a signed statement of guilt.
Concurrently, Ezra summoned his human intelligence sources. He placed one, very heavily encrypted telephone call to the private residence of the deputy registrar of Cambridge University, a man whose financial insolvency through casino loans and related professional ruin Ezra had secretly saved from a decade previous. The man, now a standard bearer of the university establishment, owed Ezra a lifelong debt of blind loyalty. Within weeks, Ezra had class lists, private club memberships, and notes on the associates of each of the suspected members. He learned who sponsored whom, who engaged in private Marxist reading groups, and who had gained a mysterious, unexpected prosperity.
And, finally, he pulled out the muscle. Sullivan's men, chartered on a private Prentice Standard airliner, didn't play by MI5 rules of civilized restraint. They used state-of-the-art (for the time) bugging gears, mini-microphones planted at telephone junction boxes, long-distance parabolic microphones trained on the windows of a suspect professor's flat. They did not gather intelligence; they harvested it.
In seventy-two hours, the search was complete. Ezra had, besides that small list of names Hoover had doubtless expected, an entire chart of the organizational structure of the Cambridge spy ring, from its suave intellectual headman to its newest members. He had copies of their sales talks, verification of their methods, and, best of all, the identities of two of the young minds of physics they were soon to remove from the West to Moscow later in the month. It was a shimmering intelligence triumph, a private espionage masterpiece.
But, for Ezra, presenting the report, however brilliant, would still remain an exercise of submission. He had to change the essential dynamics of their relationship. He and von Hauser worked through the night in the study, fueled by black coffee and excitement over their dangerous plot. They did not craft a harmless intelligence summary. They drafted an official, substantive proposal. Burned into dark blue leather binding, stamped with a solitary, unobtrusive emblem—a stylized eagle holding a key—the document carried the codename "Project Sentinel."
It was a magnificent document, a prospectus of a private CIA. It began by presenting the achievements of Cambridge as a "demonstration of capability." It proceeded, officially, to make available to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation the entire, global reach of the Prentice industrial, financial, and human intelligence system to foreign counter-intelligence and counter-espionage operations.
It set up secure comms procedures through one-time pads, as well as code language carried on Prentice Standard's global telex system. It advocated for a streamlined organizational format that sidestepped the administrative minefield of the State Department as well as the CIA, reporting, straight, only, to one solitary point of contact at the Director's private office. It was a streamlined, mean, completely unaccountable intelligence branch served on a silver platter.
Ezra wasn't giving Hoover a mere fish, he gave Hoover a personal, deep-sea fishing fleet equipped with sonar, and he gave him a factory ship too. He had too much value to remain a pawn, too powerful to remain a servant. He offered terms to be a collaborator in tyranny.
The final step had arrived just before dawn. Ezra sat at his desk, the final "Project Sentinel" proposal bundled into its courier pack beside him. He picked up the secure telephone set and called a private, unlisted number at FBI HQ that Hoover's secretary had provided him. The Director himself had replied on the second ring.
"Mr. Director," said Ezra, his voice smooth and confident. "Prentice speaking. In response to your request on the state of affairs that prevailed at Cambridge... I've put together a finished, detailed report for your reading. And a proposition which may prove of significant benefit to the Bureau's future options for action. I've had both dispatched by private courier. They'll arrive on your desk prior to lunch. I believe they form the groundwork for a future... collaboration."
He had seized Hoover's leash and, through nightmarish ingenuity, was attempting to recreate it as a chain that would connect them as partners. He had met one threat of destruction with one offer of deity-like power.