Executive orders - Tom Clancy [292]
What do I mean by seduction? Everyone in this room has done it once or twice, right? You listen more than you talk. You nod. You agree. Sure, you're smarter than your boss-I know about him, we have the same sort of jerk in our government. I had a boss like that once myself. It's hard to be an honest man in that kind of government, isn't it? You bet, honor really is important.
When they say that, you know they want money. That's fine, Clark told them. They never expect as much as they ask for. We have the budget to pay anything they want-but the important thing is getting them on the hook. Once they lose their virginity, people, they can't get it back.
Your agents, the people you recruit, will get addicted to what they do. It's fun to be a spy. Even the most ideologically pure people you recruit will giggle from time to time because they know something nobody else knows.
They will all have something wrong with them. The most idealistic ones are often the worst. They experience guilt. They drink. Some might go to their priest, even-I've had that happen to me. Some break the rules for the first time and figure no rules matter anymore. Those kind will start boffing every girl that crosses their path and taking all sorts of chances.
Handling agents is an art. You are mother, father, priest, and teacher to them. You have to settle them down. You have to tell them to look after their families, and look after their own ass, especially the 'good' ideological recruits. They're dependable for a lot of things, but one of them is to get too much into it. A lot of these agents self-destruct. They can turn into crusaders. Few of the crusaders, Clark went on, died of old age.
The agent who wants money is often the most reliable. They don't take too many chances. They want out eventually, so they can live the good life in Hollywood and get laid by a starlet or something. Nice thing about agents who work for money-they want to live to spend it. On the other hand, when you need something done in a hurry, when you need somebody to take a risk, you can use a money guy-just be ready to evac him the next day. Sooner or later he'll figure that he's done enough, and demand to be got out.
What am I telling you? There are no hard and fast rules in this business. You have to use your heads. You have to know about people, how they are, how they act, how they think. You must have genuine empathy with your agents, whether you like them or not. Most you will not like, he promised them. You saw the film. Every word was real. Three of those cases ended with a dead agent. One ended with a dead officer. Remember that.
Okay, you now have a break. Mr. Revell will have you in the next class. Clark assembled his notes and walked to the back of the room while the trainees absorbed the lessons in silence.
Gee, Mr. C., does that mean seduction is okay? Ding asked.
Only when you get paid for it, Domingo.
ALL OF GROUP Two was sick now. It was as though they'd all punched in on some sort of time clock. Within ten hours, they'd all complained of fever and aches-flu symptoms. Some knew, Moudi saw, or certainly suspected what had happened to them. Some of them continued to help the sicker subjects to whom they were assigned. Others called for the army medics to complain, or just sat on the floor in the treatment room and did nothing but savor their own illness in fear that they would become what they saw. Again the conditions of their prior imprisonment and diet worked against them. The hungry and debilitated are more easily controlled than the healthy and well fed. The original group was deteriorating at the expected rate. Their pain grew worse, to the point that their slow writhing lessened because it hurt more to move than to remain still. One seemed very close to death, and Moudi wondered if, as with Benedict Mkusa, this victim's heart was unusually vulnerable to the Ebola Mayinga strain-perhaps