He had a habit of dropping in on his agents unannounced, trying to put the fear of God—read Sperling—in them. He’d ruined a few of our younger, newer recruits that way, and after they’d washed out, they’d wound up going to the CIA.
Of course he tried dropping in on me. Once.
The Boss felt I needed an office for the rare occasions when I’d been in DC, and one had turned up on the seventh floor. Sperling apparently thought that put me within his jurisdiction.
I’d been using a rubber band to shoot paperclips into a mug set on my windowsill. I’d long since perfected my aim, and what I was really doing was mentally working through the scenario of an operation I was about to run.
Sperling had burst through the door of my corner office, shouting, “What’s the meaning of this?” or some such bul
