Intelligence

Wiretaps and tapes, concealed bugs and mikes, intercepted letters full of passionate declarations, contradictory intelligence— how attached he’d grown to the subject’s documents, revising and rearranging the influx of intelligence with a sentiment, he acknowledged, almost like love: he felt the cool gray eyes of his superiors trained on him, rebuking him for swerving, for letting himself go—such tender obsession occasioned by the file! Not quite the professional style he or the Agency expected… But such official loyalties seemed mere protocol to this!— what was wrong with him, he wondered, that he construed the documents to make the subject seem a hero, a bastard whose sole patrimony was a pair of shoes and a rusted sword left by an unknown father beneath a stone? And yet his exploits in the tabloids, the headlines screaming, SCOURGE OF MONSTERS STRIKES AGAIN! HERO FOUNDS REPUBLIC were these heroic different in kind from the rumors, unverified, of a rape, a murder? —But to have met undisguised the devouring monster! To have escaped the twisting tunnels of the maze… On balance, for such a life, the hero’s reputation wasn’t bad: think of the opportunities for evil a man of such qualities must have had! How well he knew him—an essential innocence that followed impulse, blind to protocol, not noticeably more kind than he was cruel. But to stamp Case Closed and cease gathering intelligence, to give the hero up, almost, he admitted, like a lover…: such limits the hero unknowingly transgressed! And the Agency, cold-blooded where limits were concerned (“mere protocol”?— more like a second backbone!), committed to keeping order, could not afford such sentiments—the Chief of Security felt an awful pang: that the work of intelligence should lead to this… He leaned back in his chair and sighed: a forged genealogy certifying that the hero’s father was a king; a mutual assistance pact to aid in taking back the usurped crown: he could see them now, the wind blowing lightly, the two of them sweating as they climbed the cliff, discussing the terms, exchanging information, intelligence— how would his own face look staring down across the sea as he gestured earnestly toward some island, saying, “According to our sources, the tax revenues…” And then, edging the hero closer to the cliff, pointing out the harbor, he’d push.