Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  Leaning heavily on the arm of the couch, he rose on one foot and stood hesitantly for a moment, then attempted a forward step, crying out in pain and falling back on the couch. The aging nymphet nurse, as though clairvoyant, came flying through the door an instant later.

  Thatcher had been to the Oval Office several times. This was his first visit to the vice-president’s office. It was slightly smaller than the president’s official sanctum, but no less magisterial. The furniture was modern and expensive, the carpeting deep, the wall decorations not the de rigeur official photographic portraits. His predecessor, a navy veteran, had had old models of sailing ships set about the room. This vice-president, a former air force pilot and astronaut, had replaced them with air and spacecraft models. The large one on his desk was of the space capsule he himself had piloted.

  He motioned everyone to seats by the empty fireplace, while remaining at his desk to go through the folder the deputy CIA director gave him. It contained everything they knew about the Bolshinin matter, though nothing about Dennis Showers beyond his official State Department portfolio. As the vice-president read the papers, the others could do nothing but sit in silence. Besides Thatcher and the deputy they included a retired air force general who was the vice-president’s chief of staff and an attractive middle-aged woman who was his appointments secretary and served as his closest confidante. As soon as everyone else came into the room, she turned on a tape recorder and set it on the coffee table.

  “Judas Priest!” said the vice-president, closing the folder. He left his desk and joined the others by the fireplace, taking a large leather chair that had been left vacant for him. He set the folder on the square table and slid it toward the deputy.

  “Madge,” he said to the middle-aged woman, “I want to see Max Diehl up here right now. Go down and get him personally. If he’s with the President, we’ll skip it. Otherwise, I want him here on the double.” She left the room like someone on a life-saving mission, with a dark look at the tape recorder that dared anyone to touch it, including the vice-president.

  He turned it off as soon as she was out of the door.

  “I’ve been following the Canadian stuff in the morning report,” he said. “Is this mixed up with that?”

  “Possibly,” said the deputy, a tall, thin, cerebral man with a precise manner and a lifetime of intelligence service.

  “This guy Showers is wanted for murder, for blowing up his neighbor’s wife or something,” the vice-president said.

  “Yes,” said the deputy. “We believe he is innocent of that, that it was the work of the professional killer hired by this Russian double agent Bolshinin.”

  “Do you know where Showers is?”

  “We have him in protective custody.”

  “Good. This Canadian stuff, is it as bad as it looks?”

  “Possibly worse,” said the deputy. “We have taken certain measures, certain precautions. Showers may be of some help.”

  “Good. I want to stay in touch with you on that.”

  He turned on the tape recorder again, with a quick grin. “I had a great time in Cleveland,” he said. “Cleveland is one of the best-kept secrets in the country.”

  The woman returned with Diehl in tow, looking much like a truant school boy. He sat where the vice-president gestured, on one of the straight-backed chairs next to the hearth. It did not appear to make him less uncomfortable.

  “Thanks for coming up, Max,” said the vice-president. “Do you know Thatcher here? From the Agency?”

  “Hiya,” said Thatcher.

  Diehl nodded at him, moving his head in a quick, nervous jerk.

  “Max, there’s a problem concerning Canada.”

  “Canada?” Diehl was beginning to sweat.

  “Yeah, Max. It’s about the new DCM we’re sending up there. Dennis Showers.”

  “Yes?” Diehl’s eyes darted from one to the other of them. “Showers is the guy wanted for murder,” he said. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Somebody hired a professional killer to murder Showers,” said the vice-president.

  “Somebody in Canada?” said Diehl. He began rubbing his hands together.

  “The professional killer is an American,” the deputy said. “He was hired by a Russian embassy individual we’ve used as a double agent in the past.”

  “The Russians are doing a wet job on one of our FSOs? What’s this to do with me? What’s it to do with Canada?”

  “That’s what we’d kinda like to find out, Max,” said the vice-president.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve lost me.”

  “I’m sure you’ll understand our curiosity, Mr. Diehl,” said the deputy. “The contact with the Russian was requested through our agency—by your agency. The request origination has your name on it.”

  “Bolshinin!” said Diehl. He was beaming. He looked at each of them, relaxed now, and grinning. “Bolshinin,” he said. “That was the Russian, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. I was the origin of that request. I asked your Humint section for a doubled Russian who was needed for an odd job. It was a routine request.”

  “What was the odd job?”

  “I don’t know. Something low profile. They never told me. The request came from some high-ranking guy in State, over the high-priority line. He wanted a doubled Russian. Your guy gave me the name of Bolshinin and I passed it back. I’ve got all the calls logged. I thought it was all routine. That they were running a message or something.”

  “Who was the man in State?”

  “Jordine, Arthur Jordine.”

  After Diehl left, the vice-president gestured to the deputy and Thatcher to stay.

  “You didn’t ask him about the ten thousand dollars,” the Deputy said.

  “I didn’t have to. I have no doubts about it,” the vice-president said. “I’m sure he took it. Ten thousand dollars, from the chairman of Alberta Gas and Oil Consortium.”

  “And directly thereafter he had Showers’ posting moved up,” the deputy said.

  “I’ll bring it up with the president. At our weekly luncheon.” That was five days away.

  21

  Laidlaw thought all skulls grim, whether employed for the graveyard scene in Hamlet or displayed in museums such as this. Laidlaw was not disturbed by the sight; he had a skull on the mantle of his study, that of a particularly vicious Mongolian assassin he had killed in Hong Kong in 1963. Laidlaw just found skulls grim. Laidlaw found much in life grim.

  A reflected face appeared beside his own on the glass of the display case.

  “You are late, Pavl.”

  “I paused to admire another exhibit. They have Hermann Goering’s staff car in this museum. What a perfect villain he was.”

  “Many countries have produced as bad.”

  “But none so decadent. The beast wore rouge.”

  Kodakov looked all about them, appreciatively.

  “Marvelous museum, this Canadian War Museum. Perhaps better than Imperial War Museum in London, don’t you think?” he said. “There they have no such skulls.”

  “These are Indian skulls.”

  “From dead Indians?”

  “Some of them. Some are from unfortunate white men. They are war trophies, kept by victorious Indians. Some fool actress on a late-night television talk show the other night was babbling on about how the Englishman had taught the Indian to scalp. That was quite inaccurate. What do you want, Pavl?”

  “Trench is here in Ottawa.”

  “I am painfully aware of that.”

  “Showers has been harmed?”

  “No, as I’m sure you are aware, with your many associates here.”

  “I’m sorry about the woman. Our people stayed with Showers and the Negro. She is …”

  “Alive and well. Why are you here in Ottawa?”

  “To find Trench and eliminate him, as I’ve been ordered.”

  “If you’d been this inefficient in Mexico, Trotsky would have died of old age.”r />
  “If I had been involved in that matter, Hugh, Trotsky would have died of old age and Stalin would have enjoyed the violent end.”

  “You flatter yourself, Pavl. Are you prolonging this? Is finding Trench your cover? What are your people interested in here?”

  “You are so vulgarly direct, Hugh. Is unlike a man of your manners.”

  “It’s getting late. I’ve been here too long.”

  “I have something else to tell you. Better news. I can now say with great certainty that we are not in this one, Hugh. Complete neutrality. Not Soviet Union, not satellites, not client states. Not Cuba. Not Libya. Strictly clean. All your show.”

  Laidlaw turned and motioned for Kodakov to follow him. They had been staring at the skulls for too long.

  “I do not, of course, believe you,” Laidlaw said.

  “It’s true. You will see. We are sponsoring some peripheral activities in this sector …”

  “With some Inuit.”

  “… as you know. And we have naturally increased our, curiosity …”

  “You have the city overrun.”

  “… This is, naturally, an extremely interesting situation. But we are clean in it, Hugh. This you will see. I will eliminate Trench and then be gone.”

  “Do not try to contact me again until he is dead.”

  Laidlaw walked out by way of Hermann Goering’s staff car, but he made a point of not looking at it.

  Wearing his full-dress RCMP uniform, a leather dispatch case on the seat beside him, Beckett pulled up at 24 Sussex in a staff car, Staff Sergeant Major O’Neill at the wheel. His presence was not questioned until he reached the door, and, as a high-ranking police officer bearing dispatches, he was admitted almost immediately.

  “You’ve a damn bit of cheek,” said York, after Beckett was ushered into the sitting room adjacent to York’s bedroom.

  “A very Victorian turn of phrase, Prime Minister,” said Beckett, seating himself in a chair that took full advantage of the mansion’s extraordinary view of the river. “And very English. How unlike you.”

  “More damn cheek. Things are a little anxious around here, you know.”

  York was reclined on a chaise longue, looking something like a balding Lord Byron.

  “I’m sorry, Prime Minister. I thought that appearing here in dress uniform on official business would be the least conspicuous way of making contact with you. I feared the other channels had gone sour by now.”

  “Probably right, Superintendent. I forget sometimes that you are such a clever man.”

  He moved his leg, painfully.

  “I was sorry to hear about the shooting, Prime Minister. You’re lucky it was such a small-caliber weapon.”

  “That’s what they keep telling me. The damned Papineau Fils are brutal enough, just basically stupid. Now, what have you brought me?”

  Beckett snapped open the latches of his dispatch case.

  “Everything, Prime Minister.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything I could possibly learn about planned insurgent operations west, and east. It’s most everything they’re doing.”

  He handed York a thick, neatly typed report.

  “East, you say, Superintendent. A bit off the track, eh?”

  “I followed the track where it went, Prime Minister.”

  York concentrated on the report, glancing over most of it, not wanting to keep the policeman there overlong, yet not wanting to dismiss him until he was sure of what was in the report. At one passage, he snapped back his head, then looked at Beckett with ill-restrained irritation.

  “Claude Sebastien, Superintendent?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  York read on. “This is very serious.”

  “Deadly serious.”

  “You have proof?”

  “No. Just strong suspicions, as I so state.”

  “You’re not just influenced by the fact he’s a Frog?”

  “That’s a small consideration, among many others.”

  York set the report on the table beside him. “What do you suggest I do?” he said.

  “Put him under surveillance. You have many loyal agents.”

  “None so loyal as you, Superintendent. Why not arrest Sebastien?”

  “I think that would best be deferred, Prime Minister. He’s performing a number of valuable functions for you right now.”

  “He claims to have located a big Papineau Fils headquarters here.”

  “He may have. I would just watch him.”

  “I will take all that you say under consideration, careful consideration. We may stop all this yet.”

  “I hope so, Prime Minister.”

  “Where will you go now?”

  “Back west. With things so close to breaking, I’ll be most valuable there.”

  “You’re more valuable than that, Superintendent. I’d like you to hang about here for a while, at least through tomorrow. I’m beginning the constitutional debate tomorrow.”

  The deputy and Thatcher drove directly from the White House to the State Department in the senior man’s limousine, but passed by the front entrance in favor of the more discreet one on C Street. The uniformed guard admitted them because of the photo IDs they flashed, though without even cursory examination. Thatcher sometimes wondered if one could get into State flashing a Ranger Rick, National Wildlife Federation membership card.

  They took a wrong turn in one of the labyrinthian corridors. “Damn this idiot building,” the deputy said. But they reached Jordine’s office in time to find him in, his door open, and on the phone. They walked quickly past the receptionist and secretary, entered the office, and closed the door.

  “I must ring off,” Jordine said into the phone. “Something’s just come up. Ciao.”

  Jordine was displeased and yet sensitive to the high rank of the most senior of his visitors. He nodded deferentially to the deputy, and glowered briefly at Thatcher. “Please take the leather chair, director,” he said. “It’s quite comfortable.”

  “The couch will be fine,” said the deputy, seating himself next to Thatcher. “Mr. Jordine, there’s a very serious problem we must talk to you about at once.”

  Jordine rose from his desk and joined them, lowering himself carefully into the leather chair and crossing his legs in an elegant, feline gesture, the Gucci buckles to the fore.

  “I would presume it to be a serious matter, director, for someone of your stature to be calling upon me directly.”

  “Are you acquainted with a Russian embassy official named Bolshinin?”

  “Bolshinin? No. The Soviet Union is somewhat outside of my sphere.”

  “There’s a Dennis Tobias Showers in your section. He has posting orders to Ottawa as deputy chief of mission. At the moment, he’s wanted for murder. It appears he tried to kill his wife and killed a neighbor instead. We have reason to believe that’s not the case. We know for certain, Mr. Jordine, that this Russian Bolshinin hired a professional killer to eliminate Showers. The unfortunate Merridew woman was his victim, not Showers’. But that’s not the point.”

  Jordine clasped his knee with both hands. “What is the point?” he asked.

  “The contact with Bolshinin was made through our agency at the request of the National Security Council. We are informed by Mr. Diehl of the NSC that the request originated with you. He has log entries for the calls.”

  “I don’t understand.” Jordine flushed.

  “Understand this, Jordine,” Thatcher said. “We might turn everything we know about this over to the FBI. And you know what that could mean.”

  Jordine moved his hands to the arms of his chair, but they began to shake, so he reclasped his knee. He lifted his eyes for a quick look at both of his guests, then again averted his gaze. “I know nothing about any murder plot against Dennis, who is a good friend of mine,” he said. “I did ask Max Diehl if he could find us a doubled Russian.”

  “Us?”

  “It was for a friend in a foreign
legation. He needed a pliable Soviet embassy type for some purpose. He didn’t explain. I didn’t press him. It was just a small favor.”

  “What legation? What friend?”

  Jordine looked at each of them again, this time with an obsequious timidity.

  “The French. Louis-Paul Argent.”

  The deputy and Thatcher made a point of not exchanging glances. Argent ran France’s intelligence operation in Washington.

  “You have no idea what he was after?”

  “He wanted a Russian. I don’t know anything more. It was all very casual. In fact, he made the request at a dinner party in Showers’ house.”

  The midday Ottawa heat had reached levels to match the legend. It had become as hot there as Washington or New Orleans. The cricket game played in the cricket patch outside Government House was made all the more incomprehensible by the lassitude of the players, who seemed to treat the contest as something to do, if one was up to it, during lapses in lawn conversation.

  Hugh Laidlaw, looking exceedingly British, stood by a garden hedge, watching transfixed. Showers, looking irritable and uncomfortable, and not a little hungover, joined him, observing the desultory cricket match unhappily.

  “I don’t like cricket,” he said.

  “Most Americans don’t.”

  “I don’t like baseball, either.”

  “It’s duller than cricket. What do you like, Mr. Showers?”

  “Badminton and croquet.”

  “You are indeed a Westchester County man, Mr. Showers.”

  “Is Alixe back in Washington?”

  “Not yet. She is en route. And safe. We are making very discreet arrangements, so that she’ll be able to contact her parents without contacting all of Washington officialdom. You understand the necessity, of course.” Laidlaw watched with great fascination as the batsman approached the pitch.

  “Felicity Stuart is in Ottawa, Mr. Showers. I expect you’ll see her tomorrow.”

  “Why not today?”

  There was a dull thwack of a hit. The players stirred themselves to motion. Laidlaw nodded, approvingly. “I don’t want you to see her until we have dealt with Porique,” he said.