Shibumi Read Free

waved that aside with pleased modesty. “Think nothing of it. If you want a job done right, give it to a busy man.”
    “Is that something else your old daddy used to say?” Diamond asked, his eyes not leaving the report as they raced vertically down the center of the page, speed-reading.
    “Matter of fact, it is, now you mention it.”
    “He was quite the folksy philosopher.”
    “I think of him more as a rotten son-of-a-bitch, sir. But he did have a way with words.”
    Diamond sighed nasally and returned his attention to the action report. During the months since the Mother Company had assigned him to control all CIA activities touching the interests of the oil-producing powers, he had learned that, despite their institutionalized ineptitude, men like Starr were not stupid. They were, in fact, surprisingly intelligent, in the mechanical, problem-solving sense of that word. None of the chitlin grammar, none of the scatological paucity of language ever appeared in Starr’s written reports of wet-work assignments. Instead, one found concise, arid prose calculated to callus the imagination.
    From going over his biographic printout, Diamond had learned that Starr was something of a hero figure among the younger CIA operatives—the last of the old breed from the precomputer era, from the days when Company operations had more to do with swapping shots across the Berlin Wall than with controlling the votes of congressmen by amassing evidence of their fiscal and sexual irregularities.
    T. Darryl Starr was of the same stripe as his over-the-hill contemporary who left the Company to write inarticulate spy novels and dabble over his head in political crimes. When his gross ineptitude led to his being caught, he clung to truculent silence, while his cohorts sang mighty choruses of mea culpa and published at great profit. After serving a bit of soft time in federal prison, he sought to ennoble his panicked silence by falling back on The Unwritten Code, which declares, “Thou shall not squeal—out of print.” The world groaned as at an old joke, but Starr admired this bungling fool. They shared that blend of boy scout and mugger that characterizes old-timers in the CIA.
    Diamond glanced up from the report. “According to this, Mr. … Haman, you went along on the spoiling raid as an observer.”
    “Yes. That is correct. As a trainee/observer.”
    “In that case, why did you want to see this confirmation film before reporting to your superiors?”
    “Ah… yes. Well… in point of most absolute fact…”
    “It wouldn’t be possible for him to report his eyeball reactions, sir,” Starr explained. “He was with us up on the mezzanine when it all started, but ten seconds later we couldn’t find hide nor hair of him. A man we left behind to sweep up finally located him in the back stall of the public benjo.”
    The Arab laughed briefly and mirthlessly. “This is true. The calls of nature are as inopportune as they are empirical.”
    The First Assistant frowned and blinked. Empirical? Did he mean imperative? Imperious?
    “I see,” Diamond said, and he returned to his scan-reading of the seventy-five-page report.
    Uncomfortable with the silence, the Arab quickly filled in with: “I do not wish to be an inquisitor, Mr. Starr, but there is something I do not understand.”
    “Shoot, pal.”
    “Exactly why did we use Orientals to make the slap?”
    “What? Oh! Well, you remember that we agreed to make it look as though your own men did the
hit.
But we don’t have no A-rabs in the shop, and the boys we’re training out to the Academy ain’t up to this kind of number.” Starr did not consider it tactful to add that, with their genetic disabilities, they probably never would be. “But your Black September boys have been members of the Japanese Red Army on their operations… and Japs we got.”
    The Arab frowned in confusion. “You are saying that the Japanese were your
own
men?”
    “You got it, A couple of Nisei