Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels

by David Drake

  “It’s easier to be an individual with somebody who’s—an individual himself,” Annamaria said as she let the agent hand her out of the car. “It’s been a delightful evening”—her teeth winked in a wide grin, lighted by the lamp at the side door—“Angelo. I hope there’ll be—wait a minute! Do you like jazz?”

  “Well enough, I guess,” Kelly said, eyes narrowing a fraction at the woman’s change of subject.

  “Wait here,” she called, already darting to the unlocked door. “It’ll just be a moment.” The latch clicked behind her.

  Kelly grimaced, but he realized that he was still holding the car keys. There was no practical way he could leave even if he wanted to . . . and a good deal of him did not want to, anyway. In the event, Annamaria was back in little more than the moment she had promised, holding what seemed at a glance to be a note card. “Here,” she said, handing the card to Kelly.

  Christ, it was an invitation with a US Seal embossed at the top.

  The Ambassador of the United States of America

  and Mrs. Rufus J. Gordon

  Request the pleasure of the company of

  Mr. Angelo Ceriani

  at a buffet with American Jazz

  on April 19

  from 8 pm to 10 pm

  R.S.V.P.

  “Mr. Angelo Ceriani” was hand written; the other blanks in the printed form had been filled in on a typewriter.

  “Anna,” Kelly said. He touched his lips with his tongue. “I’ve got—I don’t know what I’ll be doing day after tomorrow. It, it’s apt to be pretty fluid.” He felt that he was stuttering, though he knew he was not.

  “Come if you can,” the woman said simply. “And—wait.” She stepped back and reopened the door. Kelly strode forward with the car keys. Instead of entering the house, Annamaria only reached inside. The light clicked off. She took the keys in the sudden darkness. Kelly heard them clink in her purse. Then she was in his arms, her waist softer than her furs, her lips softer yet on his.

  “Jesus God,” Kelly whispered as Annamaria stepped back from him.

  “Come if you can,” she repeated. “It’s more pleasure than I can tell you to—speak Italian again.”

  Kelly still stood with a bewildered look on his face when the door closed behind her. “Jesus God, Mrs. Gordon,” he whispered to the panel.

  He began to be conscious of the reggae music again. Time to check in with Doug at the Chancery, set up things for the next day. A lot to do the next couple days.

  He slipped the invitation carefully into the breast pocket of his coat. A lot of things to do the next couple days.

  XV

  The voice that responded, “Yes?” to the Chancery bell was American.

  “Angelo Ceriani,” Kelly said, “to see Sergeant Rowe.” The guard had said Doug was still in the compound—where indeed, the photo processing was sure to keep him considerably longer.

  The lock buzzed open and Kelly pushed the door back. At the reception desk with the phones and monitor was a blondish man in his late twenties. His suit coat lay folded on the edge of the desk, but he still wore a tie and a white shirt. “Ah, hello,” he said, rising to take the agent’s hand. He was looking at Kelly as he might have looked at a Doberman pinscher that had wandered through the door. “I’m Steve Tancredi—I’ve got the duty tonight.”

  Kelly laughed and shook hands. “Join the club, I guess,” he said. “I need to talk some things over with Doug. Any notion where I’d find him?”

  “Down in the darkroom, Mr. K—ah—”

  “I figure it’ll confuse the other side as bad as it does everybody around here,” the agent said, forcing a smile. “The KGB can run around gossiping and trying to straighten out its files, instead of worrying about anything that matters a damn. But can you tell me where the darkroom is?”

  “I’d better call Sergeant Rowe up here,” the duty officer said apologetically. “I shouldn’t leave the lobby, and you’d get lost, the place was built in 1620. Say! Charlie!”

  A big, soft-looking man of about fifty was shuffling up the stairs to the right of the lobby. He wore jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and a thoroughly disgusted expression. At Tancredi’s hail, he looked up without brightening in the least.

  “Charlie,” the duty man continued, “I know you’re P.O.-ed, but look—could you take Mr. Ceriani here to the darkroom? Or, say, if you’ll just watch things up here for a minute, I’ll run him down. It’s just that I’m sort of expecting a, ah, follow-up on that earlier cable. You know?”

  “Say, that’s a joke!” said the older man. There was nothing in his face to suggest he saw anything funny about that or any other facet of his recent life. He studied Kelly. The agent met his eyes steadily. “Sure, why not,” Charlie said. “He’s screwed up the evening so far, why not another ten minutes? Come on, buddy.” He turned back down the stairs, beckoning disinterestedly.

  Kelly followed. “Sorry about your evening,” he said to the man’s back.

  “Not your fault,” the other grunted. “Besides, this gives me a chance to have another slug before I drive home. As a matter of fact”—he halted on the stairs and turned, extending his hand to Kelly—“as a matter of fact, Mr. Kelly, I’m going to give you a slug too. I’m Charlie DeVoe, I’m a Communicator as you probably guessed. And you know why I’m giving you a drink?” Kelly’s facial shrug was unnecessary, but he offered it anyway. “Because whatever you did, you pissed off the Ambassador royally. And anybody who’s in that bastard’s bad book is a man I want to drink with. Come on, I’ll find you the darkroom and then I’ll find us all some Scotch. Doug deserves a shot too—Posner’s as big a shit as Gordon, if he just had the rank.”

  Kelly could have located the darkroom with proper instructions, but the basement corridors of the old building were as complex as the duty officer had suggested. “Code Room’s the other way,” said DeVoe at a T intersection. “So’s the bottle.” He laughed. “I keep one in the code safe,” he explained. “Nobody but me and the other guys are authorized in it. Not that it matters, I’ve got my papers in already. Should’ve stayed in the fucking Navy.”

  At the end of the plastered corridor was a door with a hand-lettered sign reading “KNOCK DAMMIT!” Kelly knocked, shave-and-a-haircut.

  “Who the hell is it?” demanded the sergeant in a muffled voice.

  “Simon Legree,” the agent called back. “Here to lend a hand.”

  “Oh—oh, just a second, Tom. Let me get these in the hypo.” There were sounds of movement within. The Communicator gave Kelly a thumbs-up signal and began striding back down the hall.

  An inner door opened, then the hall door itself. Sergeant Rowe, looking tired but smiling, stood in the room which was being used as a light trap. “Come take a look,” he invited. “Some of them aren’t bad, but the angles. . . .”

  “Look,” the agent said in a low voice, shutting the corridor panel behind him, “DeVoe, the Communicator, he’ll be back in a minute. He just sent out a cable about me. If you’re in a good place to take a break, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad time to shoot the breeze and see what we could learn.”

  Rowe shrugged and gestured toward the darkroom proper. Kelly could hear water circulating in the print washer and the buzz of the dryer’s heating element. “Be ten minutes before I can put anything else in the dryer,” the sergeant said. “And it turns out there was a pouch for you. . . . It’s up in the commander’s office now. I don’t mind getting out of this hole for a while.” He grinned, “Oh—the commander took care of your room. Went out to the Aurassi tonight and just called in a few minutes ago. He’s about as happy as you’d figure, but he soldiers on like the rest of us.”

  Kelly opened the door almost before DeVoe’s knuckles could strike it the second time. The Communicator held up what was left of a liter of Glenfiddich in its odd, triangular-cross-section bottle. “Come on upstairs, Charlie,” the agent said, “and we’ll take a look at what the pouch bringeth.”

  That was a calculated risk. All Commun
icators were CIA employees. While they were officially forbidden to discuss cables with anyone, their promotion and merit raises depended on the Efficiency Reports they received from the CIA Station Chiefs at the post where they served. Smart Communicators learned early to run everything of interest past the Company rep—and from what had been said, Harry Warner would have given his left arm to learn what was being pouched to the DIA man.

  On the other hand, DeVoe was obviously disaffected; and if he had really put in his retirement papers, he had little to gain from spying on embassy operations in the usual manner. Letting him in on a bit of Kelly’s operation was a hell of a good way to get details of the equally-secret cable the Communicator had just sent.

  The ploy worked like a charm. “It better be something you can take care of somewhere else than Algiers,” DeVoe said as their steps echoed up a back staircase. “Because you’re not going to be here any longer than the next flight out if his asshole Excellency has anything to say about it. Took him nearly a thousand groups to say it, but that’s what it boiled down to, pure and simple.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Kelly in genuine surprise. “Hell, it doesn’t matter to him about one visa request or another, not really. Does he think his prestige is on the line because I’ve got a channel to State myself?”

  “Wasn’t that,” said the Communicator. He looked back down the corridor. There was no one, of course, but he still waited for Doug Rowe to unlock the Attaché’s office and usher them in. “No, he got that one before he left the Chancery this evening,” DeVoe continued behind the closed door. “Before I left, too. I get home and bam! there’s a rush call to come back and shoot off an Immediate. Don’t eat, don’t help your wife move the Bird of Paradise plant in the back yard—she’s screaming she’s had it, she’s going home, and goddam if I don’t wish she would sometimes. . . .” Gloomily, the Communicator unscrewed the cap of the Scotch. “Rustle up some glasses, Dougie,” he said. “Or hell. . . .” He raised the bottle and drank deeply from it.

  “Let’s see what we got,” Kelly said, squatting on the floor beside the steel-banded packing crate, the “pouch.” The exterior was stenciled CORRESPONDENCE DIPLOMATIQUE several times, and in all likelihood the Arabic markings said the same thing. Rowe handed a pair of pliers to the agent. Kelly cut the bands with them one after the other. The twang of the tensioned steel was the only sound in the office for some moments.

  Under the wood was a layer of lead foil to block X-rays. Kelly drew his pocket knife, the Swiss Army folder and not the double-edged sheath knife clipped to his waistband. The small blade sheared the lead neatly against the top of the case within. This one was stenciled POUDRERIES REUNIES DE BELGIQUE, SA. “Right,” the agent murmured as if his mind were not almost wholly occupied with what DeVoe had said about the cable. He lifted the inner lid. The top layer of the twenty-four cylindrical grenades, fused and ready, squatted in the styrofoam packing. “Right . . .” Kelly repeated. “Here’s the smoke. I hope the tear gas shows up tomorrow, but we still got a little time.”

  “Jeez,” said the Communicator, in sudden awe of the grenades.

  “The Ambassador say anything about his wife?” asked Kelly without looking up from the crate.

  Rowe started. DeVoe smirked in surmise and clapped Kelly on the shoulder. “Well, you bastard!” the Communicator said with delight, “no wonder he was so pissed. Say, that’s a goddam fast job, boy. You should’ve been a sailor.” He pummeled the agent again and quoted, “‘Personal activities benefiting neither accomplishment of the task in hand nor the reputation of the American community in Algiers.’ Pretty goddam quick!”

  “He’s exaggerating,” Kelly said with a false, knowing smile, “but my tour’s not up yet either—whatever his Excellency may think.” DeVoe handed over the bottle. Very deliberately, Kelly drank. “Well,” he said after he had taken a breath, “have we got a place to store these, or do we just leave them here with the radio equipment?”

  “We’ll put them in the armory, I guess,” Sergeant Rowe said after a moment. “The commander’d have kittens if he found them in his office in the morning. Come on, it’s right down the hall.” He lifted one end of the heavy crate. Kelly took the other after handing the Scotch back to DeVoe. “Oh,” the sergeant added diffidently, “why are these French? Are they better?”

  “Belgian,” the agent corrected as DeVoe opened the door for them. The crate would surprise anybody checking the mission stocks, but presumably that didn’t happen very often at a quiet post. “And I think the word is ‘deniability.’ Wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the fellow who bought these let out that he was from the PLO . . . or Mossad, for that matter. It may not really fool anybody, but the folks in the Fudge Factory like to be able to lie gracefully. Anyhow, the chemistry’s pretty much the same in anybody’s product.”

  “You know, I used to get around some when I was younger,” said the Communicator, taking another pull from his bottle as he followed the others down the corridor. “Jesus, I’ll never forget the day I DEROSed—or maybe I ought to say I’ll never remember most of it. But what I do remember—” He chortled.

  The armory was a walk-in closet in the Deputy Chief of Mission’s office. Rowe had keys to both the office and the recent steel door of the armory itself. Within, under the light of the bare bulb in the ceiling, were racked a dozen 12-gauge pump shotguns and a single M16 rifle. Revolver holsters were suspended from pegs across from the long-arms; the handguns themselves were presumably in the metal filing cabinet beneath them. Against the walls were stacked cases of gas masks, ammunition, and a crate of spherical gray grenades. Rowe and the agent set their own load down on the other grenades. “Hope to God those are gas and not the old Willie Pete,” the agent remarked, “White phosphorus scares the crap out of me.”

  “Scaredest I’ve ever been in my life,” said DeVoe, “was getting up the morning after, like I said. See, I’d told my wife I was getting out the next day, so I could stop off in DC. Picked up a black whore on Dupont Circle—” he drank and offered the bottle to Rowe.

  “Thanks, but I’ve still got pictures to print,” the sergeant said. “Can’t know myself on my ass like I’d like to.”

  “Anyhow, next morning I felt like all kinds of shit,” DeVoe continued, passing the bottle to Kelly. The rest of the story was obscene even for a sailor. DeVoe told it with a knowing smirk, man to man. At the end, his laughter boomed in the narrow room.

  Doug Rowe managed an uneasy smile, but Kelly laughed too, laughed and wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers and slid open a drawer of the filing cabinet. From its box within the agent took a revolver, a snub-nosed S&W Military and Police. “Used to be pretty good with one of these,” he remarked as he unlatched the cylinder, showed the others the six empty chambers, and closed the gate again with the pressure of his thumb. “Quick draw, even.”

  “Go ahead, show us,” said the sergeant, relaxing a little now that the talk was of weaponry.

  Kelly shrugged and took off his coat. If the others noticed the sheath knife, neither remarked on it. The agent belted on one of the holsters, standard police pattern with a strap to secure the weapon for carrying. Kelly bolstered the revolver and rotated the strap out of the way. “Now we need some room,” he said, stepping out in the office proper, “and a quarter.”

  “A dinar piece do?” asked DeVoe, fishing one out of his pocket.

  “Perfect,” said Kelly. “Oh—and some lubricant.”

  “I’ve got a can of WD-40 in my office,” said the sergeant. “Shall I get it?”

  “Naw, not for the gun,” said the agent, grinning, “for me!” He took the Scotch from the Communicator again and drank, his throat bobbling. After three swallows he handed back the bottle, nearly empty, and burped.

  “Now . . .” Kelly said, facing the hall door. He held his right hand above the holster with its fingers extended. The dinar piece lay on top of the webbing between thumb and forefinger. His arm moved, the wrist pivoting, down and up. The revolver
was pointed at the center of the doorway and the office echoed with the dry clack! of the hammer falling on an empty chamber.

  “Say, that was quick,” said Rowe uncertainly.

  With his left hand, Kelly gripped the bottom of the holster and lifted it, leaning his body forward to help. The coin, on his hand before he drew the weapon, rolled out of the holster into which it had dropped. The aluminum disk pinged and spun on the tile floor.

  “Yeah,” said the agent, unbuckling the rig, “quick enough.” He handed the revolver and holster to Rowe, keeping the muzzle of the weapon pointed safely toward the ceiling. “Haven’t forgotten everything I used to do. . . .”

  Grinning like a death’s-head, Kelly took the bottle from DeVoe again.

  XVI

  The car whose lights had been behind Kelly most of the way back to the Aurassi continued up the driveway when the agent turned right into the hotel parking lot. The other vehicle was of no immediately recognizable make, dark and gleaming and rather large by Algerian standards. It was not a tail, at least not a professional tail. Only tension and the whiskey had made Kelly notice it at all.

  The lobby of the Aurassi was spacious, but its furnishings showed the same extreme of Western tastelessness as the building’s design did. Swivel chairs of molded purple plastic shared the orange carpet with bright yellow sofas and glass-topped coffee tables. Three swarthy men in dark suits sat together at the far left, where the lobby formed an L with the hotel bar. Apart from those three and a desk clerk, the big room was deserted.

  “Room 324,” Kelly said to the clerk. “Any messages?”

  “Let me see, sir,” said the Algerian, turning to the mail slots and taking a yellow form from that of 324. He frowned and murmured to himself before raising his eyes to the agent’s. “Sir,” he continued, in French again, “I’m very sorry but your room has been changed. You’re directly across the hall in 327 now.”