Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

  Scatliffe had told me to stay put, but as far as I was concerned I was now back under Fifeshire’s instructions and I intended to be on a plane to New York at ten o’clock in the morning. Any further shouting Scatliffe wanted to do at me was going to have to be done from a range of 3½ thousand miles.

  I set the alarm on my watch for half six and stretched myself out on the stone-hard heavy-duty carpet of my office. As I lay there trying to lapse into sleep with a continual cold blast shooting up my nose, I wondered if I would ever be able to get used to sleeping in a proper bed again. It didn’t take me too long to decide that I would. Millions upon millions of people were sleeping tonight, as they did all the nights of their lives, in their soft warm beds, quite unaware of what utter luxury it was.

  The girl at the airline ticket desk looked like a badly assembled robot. She had evidently studied and mastered the technique of passenger aggravation, and she did it all with the most remarkable economy of words. For the first several minutes in fact she said nothing at all, in spite of the absence of anyone else or any other task to occupy her. When she did finally speak she punctuated all her sentences with the phrase ‘Do you?’

  ‘I want a ticket on the 10.00 am flight to New York,’ I said.

  ‘Do you?’ She remained motionless.

  After a few more minutes had passed I asked, ‘Are you selling tickets?’

  ‘I don’t see anyone else,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  I didn’t rise to her bait. I had a cricked neck, a stiff arm, a running nose, a blinding migraine, a toenail that was on its way back into my toe and hurting like hell, and my hair felt like a vulture had thrown up onto it. I was tired out, my teeth felt like they were full of turkey from last year’s Christmas dinner, and my stomach felt like it had a power drill inside it; all I wanted to do was to get my ticket and get my ass onto an airplane seat. ‘14B,’ I asked for and to my surprise got. On a 707 it’s not a particularly great seat but I felt I should keep in the spirit of things.

  The plane was half an hour late boarding and nearly full. I sat in the blue nylon seat, hoped no one had booked 14A, and clipped my belt shut so that I didn’t have to endure a brittle reprimand from another ill-assembled robot. I don’t like airline seats in the upright position; I find them extremely uncomfortable. Being already stooped as a result of stiffness from my night’s sleep on the floor I slouched in the seat, hanging forward, partly arrested in mid-slouch by the belt; I felt like a rather gormless marionette.

  As I hung in this peculiar but not unrelaxing position a sporadic assortment of the jet-set division of humanity shuffled past, clutching their overstuffed hand baggage and their wafer-thin Samsonite briefcases; fat women in butterfly glasses and cream polyester trouser suits, glaring with menacing bewilderment at the seat numbers; businessmen in pin-striped suits wearing their ‘I always go first class but they hadn’t got any room on this flight’ expressions; students, grandmothers and the rest, struggling through the folding of coats and the slamming of lockers while a motley assortment of hostesses and stewards battled to get them into their seats.

  My thoughts turned to Sumpy; the fact that she would be there was about the only thing to look forward to when I got back to New York. Her temper had now had over a week to subside and I spent much of the flight thinking up a suitable explanation to give her for what had happened.

  We landed at half one in the afternoon New York time. I took a cab straight to the Intercontinental building and took the lift up to my floor. Martha was sitting typing. She looked up and smiled at me as I entered the reception area. ‘Is your cold better?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Is the world still going round?’

  ‘If someone moved my desk to a window I’d be able to tell you. All your messages are on your desk and your mail too.’

  ‘Is Hagget in?’

  ‘No, he’s been away on a trip for the last few days.’

  I was relieved by that. Hagget was the president of Intercontinental, and the only person who could carry out any of Scatliffe’s orders other than myself. I went into my office, which was considerably more spacious than the one in Whitehall.

  I sat down, pushed the post to one side, buzzed Martha for a coffee, then attacked the pile of pink message slips. There wasn’t a single one from Sumpy, which puzzled me – I thought there would have been half a dozen by now; there were more than half a dozen from Scatliffe, which didn’t surprise me, although there were none from him today – as yet he didn’t know where I was. There were three messages from a life insurance salesman; he evidently didn’t know my profession; I could imagine his face when it came to putting my occupation down on the form: spy. That would go down a treat at Sun Life.

  There was a mass of genuine business matters to be dealt with: I had to maintain my front and to do that I did from time to time actually have to do some proper work for Intercontinental. Right now, however, I wasn’t in any mood for it and I didn’t have any time to spare.

  I picked up the telephone and stabbed out Sumpy’s number. It rang on without being answered. I was worried, very worried, although at this hour in the afternoon she would almost certainly be out. I rang Werner, her boss at Parke Bernet but he hadn’t seen her in over a week. I rang Sumpy’s number again then I bashed the desk a few times with my hand; it didn’t make Sumpy answer the phone and it didn’t make the pile of work go away.

  Outside the window it began to sleet. It was just over a week to Christmas; I wondered if I’d make it that far and where I’d be spending it if I did. Once upon a time I’d been excited by Christmas; I wondered how long ago that was.

  Martha appeared with the coffee.

  ‘I want a staff list of the British Embassy in Washington – any ideas where you could lay your hands on one?’

  ‘Planning a party?’ she asked.

  ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘Hope I get an invite.’ There was a smile in her eye; it had the effect on me of half a dozen valium combined with a giant shot of adrenalin. I actually felt cheerful.

  ‘It could be arranged,’ I said.

  She grinned. ‘I’ve a friend in the consulate here – I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘I need it right away.’

  ‘It’s a good friend,’ she said and she swept out of the room. She was not the sort of girl one could call unattractive, not by a long stretch.

  I allowed myself the luxury of a few glorious moments of contemplation of Martha and then returned to more serious thoughts. It couldn’t be long before Scatliffe discovered that I had completely disregarded his orders and I was in no doubt that the moment he did, the proverbial shit would hit the fan in no uncertain terms. I intended to be well out of the range long before that happened. I picked up the Yellow Pages and turned to real estate agents.

  A while later I went down to the computer room to find my friend Charlie Harrison, née Boris Karavenoff. I was relieved to see him sitting down – at least I hadn’t done him any lasting damage in that direction.

  He was alone and looked pleased to see me although he greeted me nervously. He opened a cupboard and unearthed a brown folder, which he handed to me. We didn’t talk much and I made my way back to my office as quickly as I could.

  It only took me a short while to be convinced that Boris Karavenoff had delivered the goods: inside the folder were print-outs of all messages that had passed through his hands during the past few days, both to and from Moscow. There was a confused flurry of reporting on the death of Orchnev, on the deaths of the gorillas who had hijacked me, on the deaths of the men in the basement of Sumpy’s apartment. The Russians were very worried about a possible leak in the communications system. The mysterious G in Washington, who had sent the memo to Scatliffe about Battanga, was there affirming that there had been absolutely no leak that end. I was more than fascinated to read the report from the Pink Envelope in London that the situation was ‘contained’.

  I put the package through the office shredder. As I wa
s feeding the last page in, Martha came up behind me. ‘That last year’s guest list?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.

  She handed me a manila envelope. ‘Here’s this year’s.’

  ‘You must have friends in high places,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and she’d like to come to the party too.’

  At five I left Intercontinental and took a cab to East 56th and 1st, getting out the customary couple of blocks from Sumpy’s apartment. I made myself a promise that one day I would be in a respectable job, one that would enable me to take a cab all the way up to someone’s doorstep, a job that wouldn’t require me to have to case every building I entered. A cab moves too quickly down the street, walking gives you a chance to take in what’s going on; there wasn’t much going on, right now, down 58th Street.

  I rang the entry-phone buzzer but there was no reply; a couple of women walked out, and I grabbed the door before it could shut and went in. The two security men hardly looked up from their game of cards. I walked over to the elevators, went in and pushed the button for the forty-second floor. Sumpy could have been anywhere: out at work, out shopping, out copulating with a boat-load of Norwegian matelots; but I had a feeling she wasn’t doing any of those, and I had a horrible feeling of apprehension as I left the elevator that I was going to find a very grim solution to her silence.

  I stood outside her apartment door, braced myself, then slipped the catch and marched in.

  A quarter of the way into the living room I stopped dead in my tracks. What I found wasn’t what I was expecting at all; from the looks on their faces, they hadn’t been expecting me either. They were quite an elderly couple: the man in his late sixties, with a huge pot-belly, the woman, not much younger, very long and skinny – both stretched out stark naked on a mink coat that was draped on the bare floorboards. In unison they both rammed their free hands over the most private of their parts and half sat up, blinking at me with expressions that seemed to be a mixture of embarrassment, guilt and sheer amazement.

  I knew I wasn’t in the wrong apartment; and yet the entire room had changed. There were no curtains, no carpets and not a trace of any of Sumpy’s belongings. Apart from this couple, all that was in the room was a pile of packing cases, some sealed, some with their lids prised up. The man opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it again. This action gave him the appearance of a particularly ugly breed of fish in an aquarium tank. I broke the silence: ‘I’m looking for Mary-Ellen Joffe’ – that was Sumpy’s real name.

  ‘I think you’re in the wrong apartment,’ the woman said coldly, not that I could expect her to have been suddenly flooded with cheer.

  ‘I think it’s you two who are in the wrong apartment,’ I replied.

  ‘What do you mean, the wrong apartment? It’s ours; we bought it.’

  There was a silence for a moment. I looked through the window at the spectacular view down onto the 59th Street Bridge and the East River, at the maze of lights that stood still and the maze of lights of the traffic that moved, like the greedy eyes of foraging insects.

  ‘Bought it?’ I echoed.

  ‘Would you mind turning your eyes away, Mister,’ the woman said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘I’m not bothered by your appearance.’

  The man opened his mouth again. ‘Look,’ he said, then he appeared to forget what he was going to say next.

  ‘Tell him to go away, Myron,’ said the woman.

  ‘When did you buy it?’

  ‘Just get out of here,’ the woman said.

  ‘My wallet’s in my jacket – over by that door,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m not a burglar; I’m a friend of Mary-Ellen Joffe. I’m her goddam boyfriend. Eight days ago she was here and now she’s vanished, lock, stock and barrel; she never told me she was selling this apartment.’

  ‘You want to see the fucking deeds?’ yelled the woman, ‘because I don’t happen to have them on me.’

  ‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘Did she leave a forwarding address?’

  ‘No, she didn’t leave a fucking forwarding address; she didn’t even leave a fucking single light bulb in a socket.’

  I retreated to the corridor. I double-checked the floor and the apartment number; there was no mistake. This was Sumpy’s apartment. It didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t believe Sumpy could have up-sticked and vanished; and yet everything that was going on right now was bizarre, although this was one item that I didn’t think needed to be on the agenda. I had to know whether she had really gone, or whether she had been killed and now someone was trying to stamp out all traces that she had ever existed.

  I left the apartment, walked down the street and entered the first telephone booth I came to. There was a long list of Joffes in the directory and a corner smoke-shop grudgingly converted my five-dollar bill into a supply of dimes. On the eleventh call I struck Sumpy’s mother; a charming-sounding woman, with a strong, educated voice that came from several generations of money. She didn’t know her daughter had sold her apartment and moved out and was a good deal more amazed at the news than I, since her husband had only bought Sumpy the apartment six months before. She suggested I came straight round if I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind; I didn’t have anything else to do. Mrs Joffe gave me the directions; they lived a short way up town close to the Guggenheim.

  I left the booth deep in thought and stumbled on the step; there was a sharp crackle by my left ear – unmistakable. It was a sound I had heard before, too many times for my liking, and one I could never forget. It’s odd how being shot at can stick in the mind. I flung myself onto the sidewalk, rolling as I went, swivelling my head and trying to think logically at the same time, and work out which direction the bullet had come from.

  The sound of clattering footsteps solved that problem for me; I could see the shape of a man sprinting off down the sidewalk. I made to reach for my gun then thought better of it. I’d already been to one Manhattan police station for shooting a man – Orchnev; if I ended up back there again it wouldn’t look too good. It is, after all, the duty of law-abiding citizens in most civilised parts of the world to be able to accept being shot at without shooting back. A British agent arrested for a shoot-out in Manhattan wouldn’t go down much of a treat with the CIA; they wouldn’t need to telephone Whitehall – the sound of their voices would carry that far and it would be all Scatliffe needed to have me spending the rest of my days searching for enemy agents behind dustbins in John O’Groats.

  So instead of going for my gun I started sprinting too. The man turned the block looking over his shoulder, and seemed to falter for a split second when he saw I was following; he dived down an alley and I followed. He was running very fast indeed and I was stretched just to keep pace, let alone catch up; he ran out of the alley, crossed a sidewalk, and ran straight out across 1st Avenue. As I reached the sidewalk there was a mighty crash as I sent a Frankfurter stand and its operator reeling; water, steam, buns, mustard and a stream of oaths rolled around me.

  I flung myself back onto my feet and tore out into the road, cars and taxis and buses hooting and screeching. He turned down the sidewalk on the far side, sprinting and weaving in and out of the pedestrians; I did likewise but was less adept and side-swiped three pedestrians in a row before I got the hang of things.

  He carried on interminably down the sidewalk and we covered at least a mile at full sprint; my lungs were sore and bursting, my stomach pinched in a vicious stitch, but I was going to get him, I was going to get that bastard, I didn’t care if I had to run all night. He weaved straight back over the road again. I followed. Blurs of shiny metal, lights blazing in anger came at me from all directions and passed me, or I passed them, and somehow the deathly crunch didn’t come. Back across the road again, the same dazzling nightmare, then off to the right, down a dim street, sprinting now off the sidewalk down the middle of the street itself. Over a junction, past a steaming subway vent, on down an even darker road, past offices deserted for the
night, a few parked cars.

  He stopped, turned around, brought two pieces of metal hastily together, stiffened his arms out at me. I crashed onto the ground a split second before a tiny spurt of flame shot out in front of his arms, then another spurt of flame and a small chunk of road flew up and struck my hand hard; and now he was hesitating, half-aiming, half-deciding whether to start running again. I made his mind up for him by scrambling to my feet and lunging forward; I was inches from him. He swivelled and tried to break into a run. I could almost grab the back of his jacket but not quite. He was very tall indeed, a good 6½-footer. He was trying to snap the gun in two again, evidently realising the lack of wisdom in sprinting down a New York street clutching a rifle. I hurled myself at him in a flying rugger tackle, clamping my arms around his knees, and he came down with a heavy crash. I thought he was stunned, until a clenched fist, heavy as a lifting weight, crashed onto the end of my nose.

  As light alternately flooded into and ebbed out of my head I was vaguely conscious of my quarry wrenching out of my grasp; lurching to his feet, and starting to run once more. I dragged myself up onto my feet and stumbled on after him. I had lost all track of where we were; I was riveted to the back of the fur-collared anorak on the dark hulk in front of my eyes. I ran, increasing the pace as my head cleared. Already my nose was swelling and there was a clammy damp fluid running over my lips and down my chin. I was dimly conscious of the people we passed, some turning or half-turning out of a vague interest, but most ignoring us.

  We ran in between garbage bags, in between lines of parked cars, sometimes on one side of the road, sometimes on the other, sometimes it seemed we ran down both sides. We crossed street after street, my legs moving mechanically now, all physical strength drained from my body; my brain had taken over, forcing the muscles to keep those legs moving forward, to keep shoving one leg out in front of the other. I wondered if he too was tiring, or whether he could go on for miles more. We were running past some warehouses then he turned down yet another alley. As we lumbered down towards the end I could see he had a choice of either turning left or right; as we got closer I realised he could only turn right – there was no left. As we got closer still to the end I realised there was no right turn either; all that there was at the end of this alley was a high wall linking two buildings.