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you want to work with me or not?”
    Conklin slowly sank back in his chair, a smile gradually emerging on his lips. “I told you I had no sweat with your appointment, sir . It was just intuition, but now I know why. You were a field man. ... I’ll work with you.”
    “Good, fine ,” said the director. “We’ll work up a controlled surveillance and hope to Christ your theory that they want you alive is correct because there’s no way we can cover every window or every rooftop. You’d better understand the risk.”
    “I do. And since two chunks of bait are better than one in a tank of piranhas, I want to talk to Mo Panov.”
    “You can’t ask him to be a part of this,” countered Casset. “He’s not one of us, Alex. Why should he?”
    “Because he is one of us and I’d better ask him. If I didn’t, he’d give me a flu shot filled with strychnine. You see, he was in Hong Kong, too—for reasons not much different from mine. Years ago I tried to kill my closest friend in Paris because I’d made a terrible mistake believing my friend had turned when the truth was that he had lost his memory. Only days later, Morris Panov, one of the leading psychiatrists in the country, a doctor who can’t stand the chicken-shit psychobabble so popular these days, was presented with a ‘hypothetical’ psychiatric profile that required his immediate reaction. It described a rogue deep-cover agent, a walking time bomb with a thousand secrets in his head, who had gone over the edge. ... On the basis of Mo’s on-the-spot evaluation of that hypothetical profile—which he hours later suspected was no more hypothetical than Campbell’s soup—an innocent amnesiac was nearly blown away in a government ambush on New York’s Seventy-first Street. When what was left of that man survived, Panov demanded to be assigned as his only head doctor. He’s never forgiven himself. If any of you were he, what would you do if I didn’t talk to you about what we’re talking about right now?”
    “Tell you it’s a flu shot and pump you full of strychnine, old boy,” concluded DeSole, nodding.
    “Where is Panov now?” asked Casset.
    “At the Brookshire Hotel in Baltimore under the name of Morris, Phillip Morris. He called off his appointments today—he has the flu.”
    “Then let’s go to work,” said the DCI, pulling a yellow legal pad in front of him. “Incidentally, Alex , a competent field man doesn’t concern himself with rank and won’t trust a man who can’t convincingly call him by his first name. As you well know, my name is Holland and my first name is Peter. From here on we’re Alex and Peter, got it?”
    “I’ve got it—Peter. You must have been one son of a bitch in the SEALs.”
    “Insofar as I’m here—geographically, not in this chair—it can be assumed I was competent.”
    “A field man,” mumbled Conklin in approval.
    “Also, since we’ve dropped the diplomatic drivel expected of someone in this job, you should understand that I was a hardnosed son of a bitch. I want pro input here, Alex, not emotional output. Is that clear?”
    “I don’t operate any other way, Peter. A commitment may be based on emotions and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the execution of a strategy is ice-cold. ... I was never in the SEALs, you hard-nosed son of a bitch, but I’m also geographically here, limp and all, and that presumes I’m also competent.”
    Holland grinned; it was a smile of youth belied by streaked gray hair, the grin of a professional momentarily freed of executive concerns so as to return to the world he knew best. “We may even get along,” said the DCI. And then, as if to drop the last vestige of his directorial image, he placed his pipe on the table, reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, popped one up to his mouth and snapped his lighter as he began to write on the legal pad. “To hell with the Bureau,” he continued. “We’ll use only our men and we’ll check every one out