Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

Inside was a blaze of warmth, with tightly packed, wooden tables and chairs, a wood-beamed ceiling, blue-and-white check cotton curtains, and a full-length bar loaded with trays of blueberry muffins and, as the sign on the wall assured us, home-made belly-busting Lunar donuts. There was a liberal sprinkling of artefacts in keeping with the seafood and seaside atmosphere, including tiffany-style lamps with lobster and clam shell motifs, hanging plants on thick rope cradles, a map of Olde Long Island, and a 28-pound lobster nailed to a wooden board. Handwritten signs on the wall advertised ‘The clams that made Long Island famous served here’, ‘Root beer served in a frozen mug’, and what has now become an almost statutory item in every American restaurant with any aspersions to grandeur, Eau Perrier.

  I ordered a beer and a bowl of steamers from a small boy in a baseball cap who had been sitting on a bar-stool, practising sticking a knife into a beer mat, and he rushed off through a doorway shouting at the top of his voice, ‘There’s a lady out there wants serving.’

  A good wait later a girl in a sailor-suit uniform placed a massive bundle of silver foil on the table, and opened it up to reveal an enormous pile of whitey-beige shells of varying size, from medium to huge, each with a shrivelled grey protuberance like an elephant’s trunk. As far as attractive-looking food goes, Long Island steamer clams must rate in the top 10 most ugly creatures ever to be eaten by mankind; but as far as taste goes, they have few peers.

  I glanced up; the girl, and the boy in the baseball cap, were both looking curiously at me. I turned my attention to my bowl and began to lift out the content of another shell, when I heard a snigger. I saw a second girl in sailor uniform dart her head back behind the doorway, then cautiously look round again at me. For someone who’s job it is to pass unnoticed at any time, anywhere, I hadn’t begun my trip to Fire Island too successfully.

  The weather lifted a little, and in a shorter time than the ticket collector had predicted, I was in the covered downstairs section of the hydrofoil as it pitched through the none-too-gentle swell with a disturbing lack of ease. The pencil silhouette of the island appeared from time to time as the bow dipped. I looked up at the ceiling and wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or worried by the fact that it was thick with orange lifejackets.

  Other than the pilot, a large bearded man with a fat cigar, who was reminiscent of the man in the John Player advertisement, and a youth with him on the bridge, there was only one other person on the ferry, an elderly woman in a purple mackintosh, who held three miniature poodles on a tangled string of leashes. She discussed with them the finer points of the voyage, pointing out to them landmarks they shouldn’t miss, and discussing how they might like their steak cooked for supper. They were called Tootsie, Popsie and Baby.

  The arrival of the ferry in Ocean Beach harbour could not be accurately described as a major event for the islanders. A man in a donkey jacket came with evident reluctance out of the long shed that ran the length of the dock, caught the line the youth tossed him and pulled it swiftly down over a bollard.

  It was bitterly cold now, and as I stepped ashore I felt the wind and damp gnawing through every inch of my body. It made me thoroughly unenthusiastic for anything. If Ocean Beach had a charm in summer, it had been packed away most efficiently for the winter; the whole place felt morose, like an abandoned film set. The air was full of the flapping of boat tarpaulins and the clacking of halyards as an assortment of power boats and small yachts jerked uncomfortably at their moorings in the tiny marina, on the other side of the George Crohn Senior Wagon Park, where a myriad of rusting four-wheeled kiddy karts sat waiting for their owners to return next spring and load them with their baggage and provisions.

  I walked around the town, looking for an open shop. A sign in a window said, ‘Have a great winter, see you in the spring. Larry and Don’. Underneath it, two young men in athletic outfits beamed out, one pulling the other in a kiddy kart. A shutter banged in the wind, and some gulls flew screeching overhead. A small group of people sat drinking coffee inside a real estate agency, but I walked past.

  A general store was open and I went in. The woman behind the counter was a cheerful old stick and gave the impression of not having had any form of contact with human life for several days as she reeled into a ten-minute monologue about such topics as the weather, the general state of repair of the harbour wall, and the dangerous condition of the lanes on the island due to increasing congestion of bicycles. There was no stopping her, and by the time she had finished talking, I knew everything about the island except the one thing I was interested in: the house in Duneway Avenue called Coconut Grove. On this topic Fire Island’s answer to the Doomsday Book was stumped. All she knew was that it was owned by someone she thought lived in New York, who rented it through an agency. Mostly, this summer, she thought it had remained empty, although occasionally a tall fair-haired man, Harriman or Harris she thought his name might be, would visit it. Sometimes he came alone, sometimes with another man; but no one from the house ever came into the shops, nor did they take any interest in the community affairs of the island. She asked me if I was thinking of renting the house, and I told her I had heard it might be coming on the market and I wanted to take a look at it.

  She gave me elaborate directions to the house. I thanked her and set off through the tiny town. A notice in the window of the wooden police station warned me not to evade buying a bicycle licence. A large free-standing notice further on made it very plain that there was to be no eating or drinking nor changing of clothes on the beach, that the use of radios was regulated, and that I was to pick up my dog’s droppings. The population of Fire Island was evidently big licks on notices.

  I walked past a massive water recycling plant and was suddenly out of the town. A long concrete path stretched out in front of me, lined with thick evergreen vegetation – pines, firs, holly; anyone planning to ambush me would have it all his own way with this high shrubbery. I was glad of my disguise, but knew, as anyone lying in wait for me would know, that not too many people would be out walking around this island for their health right now.

  I had my hand sunk deep into my coat pocket, and clamped firmly and reassuringly around the handle and trigger of my gun. I know of agents who don’t like to carry guns; I’m not one of them. There are many agents who prefer to carry small unobtrusive guns; I prefer to wear a jacket that’s one size too large than a gun that’s one size too small.

  We’re allowed to choose whatever gun we want, and my current companion is a Beretta 93 R – one of the most up-to-date weapons on the market. It holds magazines of 15 or 20 rounds of 9 mm parabellum bullets, and can be made to fire them either as a semi-automatic, one round at a time, or as a machine pistol, firing bursts of three at a time. If one happens to have sufficient ammunition about one’s person, it is capable of firing off 110 rounds per minute – which is more than adequate for the average tight corner. An additional little gadget it has is a handle in front of the trigger which can be folded down for two-handed shooting – much the most accurate way to use a hand-gun. It’s about as accurate and powerful a hand-gun as it is possible to have, and it fits into a clever holster under my left arm-pit: The holster can easily be taken apart and reassembled around the gun to make the whole thing look like a pistol-grip cine camera – very simple, blindingly obvious, and it never fails to fool airline security inspectors.

  I passed a succession of old and modern timber houses and bungalows, mostly shuttered up against the winter, all looking bleak and uninviting in the fast fading twilight. Knowing the logical route to the house, I worked out a different route of my own, which I hoped would bring me out around the far side of the house. Being a complete stranger to the island was no help, but since all paths went either lengthways or width ways, navigation wasn’t too difficult; I cut across the width of the island, keeping as close to the hedges as I could. At one intersection I was nearly run down by an old man on a bicycle, fishing rod trailing out over his shoulder behind him; it was good just to see human li
fe.

  I hit Duneway Avenue at what, provided the woman’s directions were correct, was the furthest point away from Coconut Grove. It was a concrete path, like all the others, with houses fairly evenly spaced down it; I calculated that Coconut Grove was about 300 yards from where I stood. The sky was still a little light for comfort, and I ducked into the porch of a boarded-up house to wait for dark.

  The night was falling rapidly, and in little over half an hour, I emerged, crossed over Duneway Avenue and walked down to the next intersection; there I paced 300 yards, which brought me to the back of a tall house of almost futuristic design, topped with an attic studio. A bizarre fire escape, made from statues of naked men standing on each other’s shoulders, went right up to this attic. I climbed it, and at the top, using the window ledge as a foothold, hauled myself up onto the roof. It was pitch dark now, and I crawled carefully over to the far side. Less than 50 feet in front was a bungalow with a light shining behind its drawn curtains. I pulled out of my pocket the night-vision binoculars I had bought in New York that morning, and studied the bungalow closely. It was the only building around that had any lights on, and I figured that it must be Coconut Grove. The curtains this side were all fully drawn. I scanned the area around the bungalow; everything appeared in ghostly clarity, and whilst it was dim the detail was so good I could have seen a rabbit move. It didn’t take me long to find my mark: a great hulk in a mackintosh, spreadeagled over a rooftop, about two houses closer to the harbour than the bungalow. I could see a rifle, with telescopic sights, by the man’s right hand. Poor sod, whoever he was, must have been half-frozen to death. He was taking a gulp from a thermos flask, his head transfixed in the direction down which he would have expected me to come.

  I decided to tackle Harrison first and let the night watchman carry on freezing a while. I climbed back down to the ground, cut straight through to the bungalow, and went up to the curtained window where the light came from. Close up, there was a slight chink and I peered through it. The sight was not a particularly pretty one: a tall fair-haired man that I immediately recognised as Charlie Harrison was sprawled, stark naked, on what looked like a doctor’s couch. A shorter, dark-haired man, who I put in his early thirties, also naked, was gently squeezing the contents of a tube of lubricating jelly down the small of Harrison’s back, and rubbing it in with slow caresses. He squeezed more over Harrison’s buttocks, rubbing that in too, then sweeping his hand down inside Harrison’s crutch and along the inside of his thighs; Harrison squirmed in apparent ecstasy at every movement.

  There was a door a few feet from where I stood, and I carefully tried it. It was the typical wood-framed wire-mesh door for keeping insects out of North American houses. It swung open, revealing a second, Yale-locked door. I carry about my person a small flat device with a choice of bevelled edges; it is particularly suited to Yale locks and this one was no exception. The door opened, and with my gun out I stepped through into a kitchen, securing the door behind me. There was a closed door on my right, which presumably led through to where the party was. Provided nothing had changed, both occupants should have their backs to this door; I pulled it open, very slowly, and heard their voices.

  ‘Oh, Howie, ooohhh, oh, fantastic, shit, wow! Oh wow! Come inside me, man!’

  I could see them clearly now; the sight was even less attractive from here.

  ‘I’ll get more jelly.’

  ‘Yeah, wow!’

  Howie turned and walked straight towards the kitchen. I ducked behind the door, and as he came through I gently pushed it to behind him, clamped my left hand around his mouth, and slammed my right arm into the base of his neck; he folded up without a murmur, and I lowered him gently onto the floor. I’d never seen him before. I opened the door again; Harrison was still lying face down, clenching and opening his hands in anticipation. I marched straight up to him, and thrust my gun the full length of its barrel up his welcoming anus.

  He screamed out a strange, deep howl, a mixture of pain and sublime ecstasy. ‘‘Ooohhh! Wow! Howie!’

  ‘I’m not Howie, and this isn’t his cock,’ I said.

  He froze for a moment, then spun his head round towards me. I pushed harder on the gun, and with a groan his head fell forward into the pillow; goose-pimples of fear sprang across his body. ‘You’re hurting – ohhh – you’re hurting.’

  ‘It wasn’t hurting a moment ago, and Howie’s got three inches on this.’

  ‘Ohhh – for God’s sake take it out – ohhh – who are you – ohhh – what do you want?’

  ‘I’ll do the questions, you do the answers.’ I pressed my point home a little further. He let out another fairly genuine-sounding moan. ‘Firstly, who’s your friend – the fiddler on the roof?’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You heard – your buddy in the mac, with the pop gun – he’s not looking for grouse, and if he is, he’s about three and a half thousand miles too far West right now.’

  ‘Take – please take out – oww – take out – oww – take that out –’ He was whimpering and starting to shake.

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘I don’t know out there. I don’t know who’s out there. I don’t. I really don’t.’

  ‘There’s a man on a rooftop with a rifle, other side of the lane. He’s not up there for his damn health – who the hell is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Ohhhh – please – take it out. I don’t know who he is and I never saw him.’

  ‘All right, my friend, let’s change the subject. Tell me what the number 14B means to you?’

  ‘14B?’

  ‘You heard right. Tell me all about it?’ This time I pushed the gun very hard, and he screamed very hard. ‘You’d better understand I’ve come a long way to have a chat with you, and I’m not going back home till either you’re dead or I have the answers to a lot of questions, and it’s going to be a whole lot more pleasant for you if you give the right answers, because each time you don’t, you’re going to get another one of these.’ I jabbed the gun again, and he screamed piercingly. It didn’t sound to me that it was all pain. ‘Got it?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Right. Let’s begin at the top: Your name’s Charles Moreton Harrison?’

  He emitted an affirmative grunt.

  ‘Born Charlottesville, Virginia, 14 October 1937?’

  Another similar grunt.

  ‘Both your parents, your two brothers and your sister were killed in an air crash in Acapulco on 20 December 1958?’

  He grunted again. This time I gave him a hard prod. It caused him to cough for several moments. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘It’s for lying.’

  ‘I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘Charles Moreton Harrison, born in Charlottesville, Virginia, 14 October 1937, whose family was wiped out in Acapulco on 20 December 1958 was drafted into the US Army on 12 January 1966. On May 10th of that year he was sent to Vietnam. On June 2nd he went out in a six-man patrol which walked into a Vietcong ambush. The six men between them stopped 290 bullets; what was left of their bodies was found that afternoon. So who the hell are you?’

  14

  His name was Boris Karavenoff and he worked for the KGB. He’d been planted as a mole fourteen years back, assuming the dead Harrison’s identity. The Russians had been looking for someone in the computer field, with no living relatives to be able to positively identify him. When Harrison had been killed in Vietnam, Karavenoff, chosen for his similar appearance, had been neatly planted in the US with all mention of military service deleted from his records. I allowed myself a smile; in the language of the Americans, I’d got to first base.

  Karavenoff blurted it out with a peculiar tone in his voice – there was an element of relief, a sense of shedding off all the years of deception and anxiety, of ecstasy at being freed of the shackles, yet also of regret, as if in casting off Charlie Harrison he was parting company with an old friend. His head sank down into the pillow and his body went limp; he lay
still for several moments, then he lifted his head slightly and looked towards me. ‘Please take the gun out and I’ll tell you everything I know.’

  I believed him. I took the gun out and he started to talk. He had been studying computer programming at the Leningrad Institute when the KGB approached him with the offer to go to America. In one year, at an academy in Izhevsk, he was meticulously converted into an American. He was taught how to be a good American, a nice American, a nasty American, what he should know about American history and what he shouldn’t know, how to talk about football and baseball, about Yogi Berra and the other great names of his youth, how to walk, how to talk, when to buy a battered Chevvy and when to change it for a slightly less battered Chevvy and why he shouldn’t change it for a Lincoln Continental, what to watch on the box, how to chew gum and how to eat hamburgers. They even taught him how to fart the American way.

  Boris Karavenoff’s role was that of the last man in the line of Russian Intelligence inside the United States; he was the person that actually physically sent to Moscow the information that the KGB network in the US managed to acquire. He also received from Moscow any instructions for the network and was responsible for passing them on. The tools Karavenoff employed for his trade were, not unnaturally, computers.

  Most computer owners suffer from the same problem as most car owners: they haven’t the faintest clue what goes on under the bonnet. The result is that they have to rely totally on the experts they hire to operate, run and maintain their computers. The scope for crooked operators is, as many have already discovered, enormous. One enterprising programmer for a New York banking concern added several noughts onto his own bank balance, withdrew the money, invested it wisely, earned himself several million dollars, then repaid the money to the bank, with full interest, and restored his balance to its original level, disposing of his profit in a numbered Swiss account. It took this self-made millionaire over a year to persuade his employers to believe what he had done.