Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency enters the story less as a visible institution than as a source of competing agendas and concealed identities. Through Linda Steele’s disputed resignation, her return to Andy Dalziel, and an investigation aimed at Ashur-Proffitt Corporation, the agency becomes part of a wider struggle over who controls information and who gets to expose wrongdoing.

Identity and Institutional Reach

The Central Intelligence Agency is referred to in Andy Dalziel’s account through his irreverent shorthand for intelligence officers. Its presence is established through Linda Steele, a journalist who also works for the agency, and through her unnamed superior, who asks her to perform one last task before her supposed departure: check whether Dalziel intends to speak about what happened in the United States. Dalziel says British intelligence had already kept him quiet after his return, so the request is not simply about gathering news; it is about monitoring a potential source of embarrassment.

The agency’s reach overlaps with the book’s account of the Iran–Contra affair and Ashur-Proffitt Corporation’s dealings. Dalziel describes the company as deeply involved in the scandal, while noting that none of its people were named or indicted. The evidence does not establish that the Central Intelligence Agency directed the company’s actions. Instead, the connection lies in the intelligence and political environment around the affair, where secrecy, arms trading, and the management of disclosures all converge.

Linda Steele and the Ash-Mac Investigation

Linda returns to Mid-Yorkshire presenting herself as a journalist who has resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency. Dalziel believes her account and resumes their former working arrangement; their renewed intimacy gives her a place in his life as well as access to his confidence. She tells him about the agency, including her view that its American information networks can become so overloaded that people stumble over what they already know. Her candour strengthens his trust, but does not settle whether she has truly left the service.

Her proposed journalism provides a plausible route into Ash-Mac’s. Linda says she once worked for a newspaper in Hartford and has received approval to write a human-interest piece about a local firm expanding internationally. Kay Kafka, then both an Ash-Mac’s employee and Tony Kafka’s assistant, can help her meet people inside the company. But Dalziel discovers that Linda had never mentioned Hartford in their earlier conversations. When he checks with Dave Thatcher, a New York police officer with an intelligence contact, he learns that Linda is still believed to be on the Central Intelligence Agency’s books and that her record contains no Hartford newspaper job. The discrepancy turns her journalistic cover into a question rather than a settled explanation.

Thatcher offers Dalziel a further account: some figures connected to the Iran–Contra scandal wanted to protect their allies, while others could use a new investigation to settle scores and advance their careers. He thinks Linda was sent to examine Ash-Mac’s for evidence that might damage the company, and that Dalziel’s earlier undercover work with her made him a convenient way in. This remains Thatcher’s interpretation, relayed by Dalziel, rather than an independently confirmed account of the agency’s orders. Its force comes from the fit between Linda’s contested credentials, her access to the company, and the renewed relationship that made her presence seem natural.

Secrecy, Faction, and Consequence

The Central Intelligence Agency is not presented as a single-minded body. In Dalziel’s telling, internal factions have different stakes in the Iran–Contra affair: some seek to shield those implicated, while others might welcome evidence that could discredit rivals and clear paths to promotion. That division makes an investigation ethically ambiguous. A search for proof of corporate wrongdoing may also serve bureaucratic competition, and a journalist’s apparent independence may coexist with an intelligence assignment.

This pattern echoes the novel’s wider concern with the distance between public appearance and covert purpose. Ash-Mac’s can be approached through the cover of a local business story; an operative can present herself as a former agent; and Dalziel’s affection for Linda makes a professional inquiry difficult to separate from personal trust. The agency’s narrative significance lies in that entanglement: information is never merely possessed or disclosed, but gathered through relationships, institutional rivalry, and carefully maintained appearances.