Act of God Read Free Page B

half the coffeepot in the process. The news was about as bad as it had been every day of his life, no change there. The usual little wars were in progress. More little wars were expected soon in the usual hot spots. Typical day. His order arrived and he ate, listening to the inanities from the radio behind the counter. Afterwards, he got into his old Chevrolet and drove across town to a nondescript building in a nondescript neighborhood.
    Inside, he stopped at a desk and picked up his ID badge. The man behind the desk grinned at him and shook his hand. "Good to see you again, Mr. Taggart. How are you feeling?"
    "OK," Taggart said, slightly annoyed at the concern. "Is Morgan in?"
    "He came in about fifteen minutes ago. Said for you to check in with him first thing."
    "Thanks." Taggart pinned the ID badge to his lapel and walked past the desk. The desk man watched him to see if he was moving unsteadily, but Taggart seemed to be in pretty good shape, if a little on the thin side. Not bad, all things considered. Getting four bullets cut out was no picnic.
    Taggart took an elevator to the fifth floor and knocked on Morgan's door. "Come in." He went in and Morgan, a tall, beefy man in an expensive suit, stood and grinned and shook his hand. "Sit down, Sam. Good to have you back. How're you feeling?"
    "Fine. The doc says I'm about ninety-five percent."
    "Good. That's good to hear, Sam. Too bad about that last assignment. I want you to know I think you did the right thing."
    "Of course I did the right thing. Who says I didn't?"
    "Easy, Sam. Nobody does. Still, getting shot full of holes is considered by some to be an unwise move."
    "Now, hold on a minute, nobody said—"
    "It's a closed matter, Sam," Morgan said icily. "Now, I said I had something for you. We're going over to State to talk to a defector."
    Taggart calmed himself with an effort. He knew his position with the agency was precarious. Best to play it cool. "A defector? That's not my kind of action. I'm a field man."
    "Of course. But ninety-five percent's not good enough for field work. You've got to be one hundred percent."
    "All right, I'll go along with that. What kind of defector, military or intelligence?"
    "Neither. This one's an astronomer."
    Sam wasn't sure whether to be incredulous or insulted. He decided on both. "You can't be serious. What good is a Russian astronomer?"
    "Not Russian. Estonian."
    "Jesus. A defecting astronomer from a satellite state. Is somebody trying to tell me something?"
    Morgan was perfectly bland, which for him indicated intense satisfaction. "Only that someone thinks this is important enough to demand an operative of your caliber, Sam."
    Taggart sat in stony silence during the drive to State. He had worked with defectors before, in the days before he got important field assignments. Mostly they had been high-up people from opposition intelligence agencies, people who needed protection and who had to be escorted by someone trained in eliciting and handling sensitive information. Once he'd nursemaided a Czech general for two months, picking up some good Warsaw Pact intelligence in the process. As much as a Czech general would be trusted with, at any rate. That was a long time ago. Being put back on that kind of duty was like a police captain finding himself back in uniform and pounding a beat.
    At State, they had to go through the same rigmarole about ID tags before being allowed into the sanctum. They were guided along featureless corridors and past featureless rooms. Sam knew for a fact that these rooms were mostly inhabited by featureless people, which was a major reason that he had opted for hazardous field work as soon as he had sufficient seniority. Just being here was depressing.
    In one of the rooms they met Steinberg, a man Taggart knew very slightly. Morgan walked over to a small window in one wall. "That her?" he asked.
    A woman? Taggart took a look. The window was a one-way mirror. Sitting in the next room at a table was an