Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  “The police were in twice today, Mr. Showers,” she said, after she had identified his voice. “Mr. Jordine came by, and someone from the FBI.”

  “Did you reach Laidlaw?”

  “No. He’s out of the country. They took the message. I trusted them. Should I have?”

  “Whom did you talk to?”

  “She didn’t give her name. She said he would try to reach you.”

  “Is everything else all right? Are you all right? Have you had any problems with any strangers?”

  “There was a strange man outside my apartment last night, but he was gone in the morning. I don’t know. I think it’s all right.”

  “Judy, I want you to get away from there. I think it could be dangerous. Go to your mother’s in Philadelphia for a few days. Jordine will let you do that. I’ll call you there later. But before you go, tomorrow, I’m afraid I need you to send me some money. A thousand dollars, from the emergency travel fund.”

  “They’ll find out.”

  “Only after you’ve done it. Send it to the telegraph office in Ottawa, on Bank Street. In the name of Alixe Reston. A-L-I-X-E. Then go up to Philadelphia. If you have any problem, if you get scared about anything, call …”

  “Yes, Mr. Showers?”

  “Call my friend Jack Spencer. The newspaperman. His number’s in my desk directory.”

  “I will, Mr. Showers.”

  “Take care of yourself, Judy. I wish I could tell you precisely what’s going on, but I don’t know myself. Just take care.”

  “I will, Mr. Showers. You too.”

  Showers hung up. A thousand dollars from the emergency travel fund. Now he was not only a fugitive murder suspect but an embezzler.

  He and Alixe rode in the back seat leaving Montreal. They were asleep in each other’s arms by the time Joyce had the gray Ford speeding across the Pont de l’lle aux Tourtes on Highway 40, heading west along the Ottawa River.

  Inspector Beckett, feeling entirely comfortable about the way matters were proceeding, arranged his rendezvous with the British Major Hotchkiss in his favorite restaurant in Ottawa, an Italian restaurant on Kent Street called Mamma Teresa’s. It was a bright, happy, usually crowded place, with hearty pasta and not much prospect of being seen by any of the officialdom that congregated so numerously up the street by the river.

  Hotchkiss, dressed in civilian clothes more typical of British journalists than military officers, a gray suit, blue tie, blue socks, and brown shoes, proved an amiable and engaging dining companion. He ate ravioli and talked of Singapore; drank the good Italian red wine, and talked of Icelandic akvavit. He remembered mutual acquaintances. He suggested that Sergeant O’Neill had gone about selling his wares in a too clumsy and obvious fashion.

  “It pays to advertise, Major. The price is not too dear?”

  The major’s blue gray eyes remained noncommittal, but at the ends of his clipped brushy mustache, his lips curled slightly into a sort of smile.

  “The price is quite fine, Inspector. A jolly price. It’s the wares that put me off. You see, I already have them. I’m in the market for quite something new.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “We have a pretty fair idea of what’s to happen, and who’s to do it, and when. What we don’t know is who on the inside is involved, and how high up, and why. We’d like to know what’s expected to come of this, what whoever inside is involved in this plans to do.”

  “And?”

  “Can you answer those questions?”

  “Yes. Some of them. With a little time.”

  “There isn’t much time.”

  “Soon then. And the price?”

  The inspector deftly brought a swirl of spaghetti to his mouth, chewed it carefully, then took a large swallow of wine.

  “Your price is dear, actually, but we’re willing to increase it,” Hotchkiss said.

  “By one hundred percent, my good Major.”

  “That’s quite extreme.”

  “This is an extremely serious business.”

  “You realize what I want?”

  “You want everything.”

  “I want the half of everything I don’t already have. I already know about most of the people you’ve been talking to. I know what you brought back from Alberta. I know who you’re going to see from Quebec. I think I know who’s involved on high. I want confirmation, I want all the rest of it.”

  “The one hundred percent increase is not too dear?”

  “I’ll accept it. There’s some urgency here. Too right.”

  “Indeed. Money first.”

  “All right.”

  “Tonight.”

  “I haven’t that much in my kit.”

  “What you have on you will do for now.”

  “Right.” The major glanced around the room. An entire family of eight were noisily eating at a long table not three feet from them.

  “Not in here,” he said.

  “Of course not,” said the inspector. “The parking lot is quite convenient, sufficiently dark. And I think it’s raining.”

  It was raining quite heavily, the sort of thunderstorm that was the wrath of God one moment and would be gone the next. They went to a far corner of the lot, behind a long station wagon. The major, an experienced spy, bent over the door as though looking for the key to unlock it, the rain thudding on his back. He had taken out his wallet and was looking through the thick wad of Canadian currency he had pulled from it.

  “I can give you twenty-four thousand dollars Canadian,” he said, without looking up. “Will that do until tomorrow?”

  The inspector grunted affirmation. He had reached into his own pocket, pulling out a much-sharpened swingblade hunting knife.

  It was all a gamble, of course. No matter how much force you used, if you hit a rib, the shoulder blade, or the spine, you’d fail. He might die eventually, but there’d be too much noise.

  He turned the knife sideways, so the blade would have the best chance of striking between the ribs, then slammed it down. The major gave a grunt and a groan, crumpled to his knees, then collapsed in a spasm on his stomach, lying lifeless. The inspector took the money and the wallet. The missing wallet would leave the police in doubt. The missing money would leave the major’s employers in doubt.

  He slipped away, moving quickly along the row of parked cars. This was unfortunate, really. He’d now not be able to visit Mamma Teresa’s again for some time.

  17

  Macoutes and Paulette had argued about how to transport the explosives to Ottawa. He was for a single shipment, bringing them in beneath the false floor of a van. The gelignite involved didn’t amount to that much weight. Everything they had could be carried by two men. Cocaine and heroin were shipped out of Montreal in vans like that every day.

  Paulette wanted the bombs distributed among the Papineau Fils and brought to the capital singly, in individual packages. This would increase the chance of detection, the chance of delay and of some of the explosives going astray. It could compromise the plan seriously, but, with Porique’s disappearance, Paulette had abandoned all thought of the plan and its part in what they had been given to understand was the grand design. She had yelled and sworn at him for a day after he told her about Porique and the woman. After that, she had been yelling and swearing at him just as continuously about the foolishness of the Hillion plan and the wisdom of her own; a sudden massive outbreak of bombings and shootings all over Ottawa, to show the weakness of the federal government.

  Much of what she wanted to do had always appealed to him. As things stood, the Papineau Fils weren’t being cut in for much of the killing. It might be true that Paulette had no standing in the Papineau Fils other than her hold over Macoutes, but that was considerable.

  It wasn’t enough. As much as he lived in fear of her, he feared more what Pierre Hillion might do, even from behind bars. He feared all the unnamed and unseen others involved in this uprising. He feared his own Papineau Fils. He enjoyed very much de
stroying things and killing people, but what there mostly was to Leon Macoutes was fear.

  So he would do the safe, easy, simple thing: what he had been told. The explosives would go to Ottawa in this van in one trip, and half of them would be turned over to Guy Porique, according to plan. If Porique did not show, no one could blame Leon Macoutes. But Macoutes had no doubts. He was a fanatic, that Porique.

  Macoutes smoothed out the carpeting on the floor of the van, stepped back to admire it approvingly, then slammed the door. Like the Papineau Fils driving the van, he was dressed in the olive drab work clothes of an electrician, complete with heavy tool belt. The sides of the van were decorated with the name of an electrical repair company that did not exist. He stuck a pistol into the tool belt, then climbed into the front passenger seat, shutting the door. Paulette, mean-faced, handed him an Uzi submachine gun through the window. He set it carefully on the floor between his feet.

  If Porique survived whatever transpired in Parliament, he would let Paulette kill him. Porique deserved that. Andre the lookout was dead because of him; maybe by him. Hillion probably wanted Porique dead as well, when all was done. He’d let Paulette kill the American woman, too. She’d like that. She could kill them the way the man and woman in California had been killed. The Papineau Fils had a shotgun somewhere.

  The driver, a large youth whose face was covered with bloody little cuts from where he had just shaven off his beard, got in and started the engine, then lighted a cigarette. Macoutes, who had refused to part with his beard, signaled to another man standing by the garage door. It opened, swinging up to reveal a blindingly bright morning sunshine.

  “Bientôt,” he said to Paulette.

  She grunted, and looked away.

  “You’ll be in Hull tonight?”

  “Oui. I’ll take a bus.”

  “The last battle. La victoire.”

  She grunted again, this time looking at him.

  “Vive Québec!” he said, as the driver put the van in gear and lurched out into the street, the bumper scraping against the concrete ramp.

  “Vive Québec,” said Paulette, mostly to herself. “Merde.”

  Mendelsohn had gone to a corner chair in Thatcher’s office, next to the table where they kept the chessboard. This game had been going on, intermittently, for nearly three weeks, and Mendelsohn was finding himself at a disadvantage. Thatcher wore a crew cut, drank beer, and liked to watch silly ball games on television, but he was an excellent chess player—the engineer’s meticulous mind. Mendelsohn was ahead in games won, but only just. He lifted his remaining knight and set it down in a position inviting an exchange with one of Thatcher’s bishops, hoping to draw one of Thatcher’s pawns in file and weaken his left flank.

  “Your move, William,” he said.

  “Next time,” said Thatcher, from his desk. “I’m running late.” He had a slim attaché case open on the desktop before him, nothing but a manila folder and its papers within.

  “Is this it, Freddy? Is it enough?”

  “You have everything we have except that which Hugh wants held back. I think it’s enough.”

  “But will the deputy? The bottom line in there has the name Max Diehl on it.”

  “I came up with the name Max Diehl as a matter of logic. The computer produced the name Max Diehl by sheer dint of its intellect. Madeleine thinks it’s Max Diehl. The paperwork involving Bolshinin has Mr. Diehl’s name on it. A trout in the milk.”

  “What?”

  “‘Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.’ Henry David Thoreau.”

  “Freddy, I’m about to go into the deputy’s office and state as a matter of record that we think that a high-level guy in the President’s basement has taken out a contract on a serving American foreign service officer. I hope to have more to offer than the fact that everyone around here, including the computer, has it in for Max.”

  “He asked Gary Lesser for Bolshinin. He’s been grilling Showers in the White House basement. He’s been making some big bank deposits. I am seldom wrong, William.”

  “I know, you went to the University of Chicago. So did Leopold and Loeb. What else do you have for me, before I go up there?”

  “Dennis Showers’ secretary called in. He’s made contact with her. He’d like to make contact with Hugh.”

  “Bingo. Did you tell Hugh?”

  “Immediately. I also told him something else. The computer has spoken. Mr. Showers is a moral man.”

  “What?”

  Mendelsohn turned on his eerie grin; his teeth seemed to glow.

  “Morality. ‘A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality.’ John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage.”

  “Kennedy was a philanderer.”

  “And so must we describe Mr. Showers at this juncture, but he remains a moral man, a man who does what he must, what he perceives to be the right thing, no matter the cost. Hence his search for the unfortunate woman. Hence his sticking by Madame Showers, years after he should have left her. Hence his refusing to help us. Hence the solemn commitment of his debt to Guy Porique. The computer has traced this peculiar character flaw throughout his record. He once beat a man in Sicily for flogging a burro, a great big paisan. Our Mr. Showers almost killed him. It made for something of a diplomatic incident. In fact, it seems to be the only black mark on his record.”

  “Don Quixote.”

  “Not quite, but certainly a Nathan Hale.”

  “Let’s hope that much is right.”

  “In any event, the computer judges that the young lady appreciates this. It’s, it’s …”

  “What turns her on. She has the hots for shining knights. What did Hugh say?”

  “He was quite pleased. His optimism waxes.”

  “Mine don’t. How stand things with the Feebies?”

  “They are much concerned with Señor Chavez.”

  “And the local police?”

  “They remain the local police.”

  “And Mrs. Showers?”

  “Something a trifle curious. She has moved from her house to the residence of Mr. Jordine.”

  Thatcher stood chewing on his cigar a moment, then snapped shut the briefcase. “She’s scared,” he said.

  Madeleine opened the door. “You have five minutes to be upstairs, Mr. Thatcher.”

  “Right.”

  “I think I should accompany you, William. To represent the computer.”

  “The deputy doesn’t like you, Freddy. If we’re going to play interdepartmental office politics Mickey Mouse, I don’t want to give away any points. I’m going to take Madeleine. The deputy likes Madeleine.”

  Jordine left his office early, as Marie-Claire had called and requested, and was home in a few minutes. He found Marie-Claire dressing, very chic, her best pearls already around her neck. She smiled quite warmly at him in her mirror, then leaned forward to add a touch of eyeliner.

  “I took the liberty of inviting some friends over for dinner,” she said. “From the French and Belgian embassies. Do you mind? I need to see people. I’m afraid to go out, and I’m feeling so cooped up in this apartment.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and began massaging them. She closed her eyes in pleasure.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ve been neglecting my contacts what with all this going on.” He paused. “Dennis is in Ottawa.”

  She turned around to face him. “C’est vrai? You talked to him?”

  “No. But Judy Sadinauskas must have. She wired him a thousand dollars in emergency travel funds.”

  “She can do this?”

  “It’s quite routine, if one is traveling abroad, though one is supposed to be on government business. I thought she might try something like this. I’ve been checking the vouchers every day.”

  “Mais, where is he? Do you have an address? A telephone number?”

  “No. She wi
red it to a telegraph office in Ottawa. In the girl’s name.”

  Marie-Claire made a face. “I knew that Alixe would be trouble some day,” she said. “Did you tell the police?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t want to get the department mixed up in this any more than it has been. Dennis will be apprehended soon enough. We have some serious concerns in Canada, some urgent problems. I don’t want to be compromised by a police investigation.”

  “But what about me? He tried to kill me!”

  “He can’t hurt you if he’s in Ottawa, presuming he wants to hurt you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We should still hold out the possibility that he had nothing to do with this, that the bomb might have been meant for him.”

  “Arthur, you can’t believe that.”

  “I don’t like your husband very much, my darling, but murder isn’t exactly his style. If he wanted to leave you, I think he’d just leave you.”

  “Then he’d get no money. Rien!”

  “To be sure, Dennis is very fond of being wealthy.”

  “I want to find him, Arthur. I want to talk to him, at least. This Judy girl must know where he is. You must make her tell you.”

  “She won’t be in the office tomorrow. She’s taking a week of her vacation. She told one of the other girls in the office she was going up to Philadelphia.”

  “Make me a drink, Arthur. A martini. Just talking about this makes my nerves go crazy.”

  “On the rocks? With a twist?”

  “Bien. Bring it out to the balcony. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  The Russian embassy in Ottawa is much like the Russian embassy in Washington, housed in a hulking Victorian building with windows barred and shuttered and a forest of strange-looking antennas on the roof. It sits on the outskirts of downtown Ottawa next to a park and a pleasant turn of the Rideau River, but everything else about it is ugly and depressing. Kodakov thought it too typical a manifestation of his country’s xenophobia. He paid his respects to both the dry and wet sections of the embassy’s KGB contingent, read through several updated reports, then escaped to the sunshine again to go about his business, which first of all meant a long tourist’s stroll through the Canadian capital.