Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor

Originally Published as

Six Days of the Condor

James Grady

Rosetta Books

Copyright

Three Days of the Condor

Copyright © 1970 by James Grady

Cover art and eForeword to the electronic edition copyright © 2002 by RosettaBooks, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

For information address [email protected]

First electronic edition published 2002 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

eISBN 0-7953-0475-7

For a lot of people, including the folks,

Shirley, who helped,

and Rick, who suffered through it

Contents

eForeword

Preface

Chapter 1 Wednesday

Chapter 2 Thursday, Morning to Early Afternoon

Chapter 3 Thursday Afternoon

Chapter 4 Thursday Evening-Friday Morning

Chapter 5 Saturday

Chapter 6 Sunday

Chapter 7 Monday, Morning to MidAfternoon

Chapter 8 Late Monday

Chapter 9 Tuesday, Morning Through Early Evening

Chapter 10 Late Tuesday Night, Early Wednesday Morning

Chapter 11 Wednesday Morning

Chapter 12 Wednesday Afternoon

About The Author

About this Title

eForeword

James Grady knows the secret to writing good spy thrillers: always put extraordinary events into a believable context. It is the carefully-blended combination of imagination and verisimilitude that animates
Three Days of the Condor
and makes its explosive plot so spine-tingling. Although we know that nothing in the novel ever happened, Grady goes to painstaking lengths to convince us that it could have. The story was also the basis for Sydney Pollack's classic 1975 film, which featured an all-star cast including Faye Dunaway and Robert Redford.

The story is a classic "man on the run" plot, familiar to fans of such films and novels as
The Fugitive, Marathon Man
and
The Terminator
. CIA agent Ronald Malcolm, aka "the Condor," works with a handful of other agents out of a nondescript Washington brownstone. When he returns to work from an extended lunch break to find all of his coworkers shot dead, he realizes that only an oversight by the assassins has spared his life. Panicked, he contacts CIA headquarters for help. But when an attempted rendezvous with agents goes terribly awry, Malcolm realizes that no one is to be trusted. He disappears into the streets of Washington hoping to evade whoever is pursuing him long enough to unravel the mystery and save his life.

The atmosphere, as one might expect, is one of unremitting tension and paranoia. The paranoia trades on the sense that something sinister lurks unseen— but only just out of sight— beneath the surface of everyday life. To this end, Grady has rendered his beloved Washington, D.C. in vivid detail, down to the names of real bars, theatres and army-navy stores. The inner workings of the CIA and the array of tactics employed to search for the elusive Condor have been carefully researched and meticulously documented. The end result is believability, a three-dimensional background that makes the adrenalized events of the Condor's six-day (reduced to three days in the movie), high-stakes game of hide-and-seek seem all the more fateful and chilling.

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ThreeDaysoftheCondor

Preface

The events described in this novel are fictitious, at least to the author's best knowledge. Whether these events might take place is another question, for the structure and operations of the intelligence community are based on fact. Malcolm's branch of the CIA and the 54/12 Group do indeed exist, though perhaps no longer under the designations given to them here.

For the factual background to this story, the author is indebted to the following sources: Jack Anderson, "Washington Merry-Go-round" (various dates); Alfred W. McCoy,
The Politics of Heroin in

Southeast Asia
(1972); Andrew Tully,
CIA: The Inside Story
(1962); David Wise and Thomas B. Ross,
The Invisible Government
(1964) and
The Espionage Establishment
(1967).

…most significant triumphs come not in the secrets passed in the dark, but in patient reading, hour after hour, of highly technical periodicals. In a real sense they [the "patriotic and dedicated" CIA researchers] are America's professional students. They are unsung just as they are invaluable.

—President Lyndon B. Johnson, on swearing in Richard M. Helms as CIA director, June 30, 1966

Chapter 1

Wednesday

Four blocks behind the Library of Congress, just past Southeast A and Fourth Street (one door from the corner), is a white stucco three-story building. Nestled in among the other town houses, it would be unnoticeable if not for its color. The clean brightness stands out among the fading reds, grays, greens, and occasional off-whites. Then, too, the short black iron picket fence and the small, neatly trimmed lawn lend an aura of quiet dignity the other buildings lack. However, few people notice the building. Residents of the area have long since blended it into the familiar neighborhood. The dozens of Capitol Hill and Library of Congress workers who pass it each day don't have time to notice it, and probably wouldn't even if they had time. Located where it is, almost off "the Hill," most of the tourist hordes never come close to it. The few who do are usually looking for a policeman to direct them out of the notoriously rough neighborhood to the safety of national monuments.

If a passerby (for some strange reason) is attracted to the building and takes a closer look, his investigation would reveal very little out of the ordinary. As he stood outside the picket fence, he would probably first note a raised bronze plaque, about three feet by two feet, which proclaims the building to be the national headquarters of the American Literary Historical Society. In Washington, D.C., a city of hundreds of landmarks and headquarters for a multitude of organizations, such a building is not extraordinary. Should the passerby have an eye for architecture and design, he would be pleasantly intrigued by the ornate black wooden door flawed by a curiously large peephole. If our passerby's curiosity is not hampered by shyness, he might open the gate. He probably will not notice the slight click as the magnetic hinge moves from its resting place and breaks an electric circuit. A few short paces later, our passerby mounts the black iron steps to the stoop and rings the bell.

If, as is usually the case, Walter is drinking coffee in the small kitchen, arranging crates of books, or sweeping the floor, then the myth of security is not even flaunted. The visitor hears Mrs. Russell's harsh voice bellow "Come in!" just before she punches the buzzer on her desk releasing the electronic lock.

The first thing a visitor to the Society's headquarters notices is its extreme tidiness. As he stands in the stairwell, his eyes are probably level with the top of Walter's desk, a scant four inches from the edge of the well. There are never any papers on Walter's desk, but then, with a steel reinforced front, it was never meant for paper. When the visitor turns to his right and climbs out of the stairwell, he sees Mrs. Russell. Unlike Walter's work area, her desk spawns paper. It covers the top, protrudes from drawers, and hides her ancient typewriter. Behind the processed forest sits Mrs. Russell. Her gray hair is thin and usually disheveled. In any case, it is too short to be of much help to her face. A horseshoe-shaped brooch dated 1932 adorns what was once a left breast. She smokes constantly.

Strangers who get this far into the Society's headquarters (other than mailmen and delivery boys) are few in number. Those few, after being screened by Walter's stare (if he is there), deal with Mrs. Russell. If the stranger comes for business, she directs him to the proper person, provided she accepts his clearance. If the stranger is merely one of the brave and curious, she delivers a five-minute, inordinately dull lecture on the Society's background of foundation funding, its purpose of literary analysis, advancement, and achievement (referred to as "the 3 A's"), shoves pamphlets into usually less-than-eager hands, states that there is no one present who can answer further questions, suggests writing to an unspecified address for further information, and then bids a brisk "Good day." Visitors are universally stunned by this onslaught and leave meekly, probably without noticing the box on Walter's desk which took their picture or the red light and buzzer above the door which announces the opening of the gate. The visitor's disappointment would dissolve into fantasy should he learn that he had just visited a section branch office of a department in the Central Intelligence Agency's Intelligence Division.

The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency, a result of the World War II experience of being caught flat-footed at Pearl Harbor. The Agency, or the Company, as many of its employees call it, is the largest and most active entity in the far-flung American intelligence network, a network composed of eleven major agencies, around two hundred thousand persons, and annually budgeted in the billions of dollars. The CIA's activities, like those of its major counterparts— Britain's MI6, Russia's KGB, and Red China's Social Affairs Department— range through a spectrum of covert espionage, technical research, the funding of loosely linked political action groups, support to friendly governments, and direct paramilitary operations. The wide variety of activities of these agencies, coupled with their basic mission of national security in a troubled world, has made the intelligence agency one of the most important branches of government. In America, former CIA Director Allen Dulles once said, "The National Security Act of 1947… has given Intelligence a more influential position in our government than Intelligence enjoys in any other government of the world."