“The crew knew this?”

“They were highly motivated volunteers with no sense of failure.”

“Too bad the plan failed,” Sandecker said.

“To the contrary,” LeGrand said. “The mission was an unqualified success.”

“How so? The Soviets built a hydrogen bomb close on our heels, as I recall.”

“Quite true. They exploded their first thermonuclear device in 1953, two years after the U.S. Remember what I said about hubris. Our people couldn't imagine that an ignorant peasant like Stalin could outsmart them. He was extremely suspicious of everyone. He ordered Igor Kurchatov, the Soviet equivalent of our man Oppenheimer, to set up a duplicate hydrogen research lab in the Ural Mountains. Their research was successful. Stalin thought the Siberian lab had failed on purpose and ordered its technicians liquidated.”

“I'm surprised a strike wasn't ordered into the Ural operation.”

“A raid was contemplated, but the mission was canceled. Maybe it was considered too dangerous, or perhaps the flying wing had insurmountable technical problems.”

“What happened to the plane?”

“It was sealed in its hangar with the cargo. The Alaskan base it flew from was abandoned. The men at the base were scattered all over the globe. None of them had a complete picture of the operation. That was almost the end of it.”

“Almost. You mean the protocol and the killing of the pilot?”

LeGrand stirred uncomfortably in his chair. “That and more. Actually the entire flight crew was killed,” he said quietly. “They were the only nonpolitical types who knew the mission and the target intimately. Four men died. Their families were told they were in an accident. They were buried with full military honors at Arlington.”

“A lovely gesture.”

LeGrand nervously cleared his throat. “You all know that I've done my best to clean things up at the Agency. Sometimes I'll scrape off one layer of dirt to reveal another even more filthy. Unfortunately much of the good work we've done has gone unheralded for obvious reasons. But the intelligence community did some things that are nothing to be proud of. This sad episode was one of them.”

“Austin filled me in on his findings. The pilot was at Arlington attending his own funeral. I understand his son saw him.”

“He insisted that he be allowed one more look at his wife and child,” the director said. “He was told he was going into protective custody for an indefinite time. Of course it was only a ruse. Shortly after he was placed under protection, he was killed by his protector.”

“The man who lived in upstate New York.”

“That's right.”

Sandecker's blue eyes hardened. “Sorry I don't feel any sadness for the assassin. He was a cold-blooded killer at an age when we supposedly attain wisdom. And he would have murdered Austin. What was the reason for the protocol? Wasn't murdering those crewmen enough?”

“The brass who decided this thing didn't want the faintest chance the secret would get out. They thought it could start an other war. Relations were bad enough as it was between us and the Soviets. The protocol was set up to react blindly to any at tempt to unravel the secret. They thought any spy snooping would come from abroad. No one dreamed the threat would come from the U.S. congress. It was all totally unnecessary. The speaker of the House was defeated for reelection, and his expose never got off the ground. It was probably assumed that the little land mine they left to blow up in the face of anyone following their trail would deactivate itself. They never thought it would still be dangerous fifty years later.”