Slater said, “Commander, we’d be happy to informally deliver a message to the director about your interest—”
“Don’t hide behind Hoover’s skirts—you came to me! Tell me I got an officer who’s off the rails, urgent, urgent, must meet right away, and now you wanna clam up?”
“We’re here about Voigt!” Reid exclaimed. “He’s the officer who’s fouled everything up! We’re here as a courtesy. Commander, we could arrest him this moment but instead we’ve come to ask you what you’re—”
“Sir, these two may not be authorized to talk about Skerrill—what about me?” I cut in.
“Proceed, lieutenant.” He held up a hand at Slater and Reid’s protests. “Like I said, you two can slink back to Justice any time you want.”
They stayed put, they needed to hear what I said. Just as I’d hoped, Paslett wanted them to hear it, too. Skerrill turning Red, that was a stain on O.N.I., an embarrassment we wanted to keep quiet; but the Bureau running him as a mole without authorization was a secret Hoover wanted to keep. Paslett wanted him to know how much we knew. Quid pro quo, you keep mum, we will, too.
“Skerrill was walking both sides of the street, sir. I don’t know when, or why, but he must’ve come to the Bureau—”
“You don’t know that!” Slater shouted. “You can’t prove we didn’t pick him up.”
“I also can’t prove you both got two-inch pricks, unless you wanna stand and drop your trousers.”
Before they could fire back, Paslett said, “No more interruptions, understand? Otherwise, I debrief Lieutenant Voigt by myself.”
Slater lit another cigarette, furious; Reid slumped in his chair, scowling.
“You’re right, I can’t prove he came to you,” I continued. “But odds are, he did. If you had something on him, you woulda swept him up and leaned hard. Knowing Skerrill—and I did, we went through training together—he woulda bluffed you, knowing you couldn’t hold an officer without informing Navy. So he comes to you, gives you something fat and juicy so you know he’s a real Red, then he hooks you but good by promising to bring you more if you don’t charge him or tell us we’ve been compromised.”
Paslett asked, “Why would Skerrill expose himself, Voigt, if no one was on to him?”
“That was his way, sir. He loved being in control, loved manipulating everyone. Look at his jacket, look at how he got started with that Mexican operation, changing it on the spot to put himself at the center. It worked, suddenly he’s Boy Wonder—for us and the Reds. You’d think that’d be enough excitement, but it was like a drug with him, sir, he needed more. What’s more dangerous than being a double agent? Being a triple agent.”
“So what’d he bring the Bureau that was so fat and juicy?”
“I don’t know, sir,” I said slowly, drawing out I and know. Paslett caught my cue. The Bermuda Special, the German scientist, the New Mexico project—that’s what Skerrill had brought them.
“What about the spy ring at the clipping service?”
“Whatever he gave the Bureau, he gave them, too.” Which meant every O.N.I. operation Skerrill had a finger in had been compromised, an intelligence agency’s worst nightmare. Had to give him credit, Paslett hid his dismay well, didn’t wince, didn’t sigh. Thank God he didn’t know the whole truth.
“How’d the Reds find out he’d gone to the Bureau?”
“They followed him, sir.” Just a guess, but Himmel wasn’t around to contradict me, was he?
Reid studied me closely. The Bureau would’ve been extra careful when meeting with Skerrill, they would’ve had shadows on him to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Reid didn’t believe me—didn’t matter. Thanks to Paslett, he and Slater were gagged until I finished my account.
“Himmel moved fast, sir. He’s the head of the clipping service—we dig deep enough, we’re gonna find out he was born in Russia, sir, I’m sure of it. He’s the Soviets’ conduit, he gets everything to the embassy.”
Paslett was nodding along, tapping his finger on the desk, jazzed. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said the night he assigned the case to me and Terrance: coded cable traffic from the Soviet embassy had shot up recently. Hell, maybe what I’d just said was true—coded cables did transmit the espionage to Moscow.
“So what Himmel did is,” I went on, “he tricked Philip Greene, one of the clipping service managers, to shoot Skerrill. Greene’s got a crush on the other manager, Nadine Silva—but she was Skerrill’s gal. Himmel told her to get lovey-dovey with Greene, to tell him that Skerrill had betrayed them all, that he had to be taken care of. Greene’s a loyal commie, plus he’s jealous of Skerrill—he didn’t need to be asked twice to be the trigger man. Once I found the gun, well . . .” I shrugged—the rest didn’t need to be said.
“He denies shooting Skerrill, you know.” Slater could no longer contain himself.
“Yes, I know,” I replied matter-of-factly, “I interrogated him.”
“Nifty trick you pulled on him,” Reid said, “but it’s not gonna work.”
Paslett said, “What Agent Reid is trying to tell you, Voigt, is that the Bureau has removed Greene and Silva from the custody of the Metropolitan Police and is currently holding them on federal charges.”
As in, espionage. Fine by me, no way Himmel told Greene or Silva who I was—what if he had needed me to take care of one of them? The local police wouldn’t protest, Skerrill’s death wasn’t on their books, we’d taken it from them. Didn’t matter if Slater and Reid believed Greene was innocent, they were going to use the evidence I planted to leverage Greene on the espionage charges. As long as Paslett believed Greene had killed Skerrill, no one would investigate further.
“All right, that’s enough,” Paslett said. “Agents Slater and Reid, we’re done, you can go now.”
No protest, but after they stood, Slater said, “Commander, if I were you, I wouldn’t count on Voigt telling you everything you need to know.” Translation: once we finish grilling Greene and Silva, we’ll know inside out how much Skerrill compromised O.N.I., and we’ll keep that to ourselves unless you start playing nice.
But Paslett was in no mood to swap olive branches. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, you two-bit government gumshoe. The Bureau shoulda gone to Forrestal”—James Forrestal, the secretary of the Navy—“as soon as Skerrill came in off the street. You tell your boss if I don’t get a copy of your interrogation transcript of those two Reds, I’m letting the White House know what the Bureau did, including the beat-down you gave Voigt while he was undercover.”
Slater glared but didn’t answer. Paslett wasn’t just posturing—word was, Truman hated Hoover, wanted to get rid of him, and the old toad didn’t have any dirt on the new president. Reid said, “Let’s go,” and the two agents left.
“You can stay standing,” Paslett ordered.
“Yessir.”
“What happened to Himmel last night? Daley said you were gonna find him.”
“I did, sir. Traced him back to the Wardman, where he lives.”
“And?”
“He went to the Automat, on F Street, to meet with a contact. The doorman at the Wardman told me this, sir, so I was able to come here, to the Navy Building, to get Filbert Donniker before I went to the Automat.”
“Why?”
“To see if he had any gear we could use to eavesdrop. Couldn’t let Himmel see me, sir, obviously—”
“Why didn’t you get Daley, someone with field experience, to listen in?”
“Filbert’s been in the field, sir, he was perfect for the job. Looked like an old man, they never gave him a second glance, plus with the rig he brought, I could listen to every word they said.”
“Where were you?”
“In the kitchen, sir.”
“How do you know Himmel and his contact never suspected Filbert?”
“I looked through the service door window after he sat down.”
“Describe Himmel’s contact.”
I did, right down to the color of the man’s sweater.
“What did Himmel and his contact talk about?”
“Nothing important that I could tell, sir,” I lied.
“Filbert’s rig, did it record the conversation?”
“Nosir, it only has a microphone and a headset.”
“Did you memorize the conversation?”
“A’course, sir.”
“I’ll need a transcript as soon as possible.”
“Yessir.”
“But you don’t think they discussed anything important?”
“Well, sir, one thing they talked a lot about was the weather—my guess is, Himmel was telling him that he was folding up the clipping service, that it had been compromised.”
“I don’t want your guesses, lieutenant.”
“No, sir.”
“I want a verbatim copy of what they said, I don’t want you telling me what it means.”
“Yessir, I’ll do it straight-off.”
“Where did these two go, after they left the Automat?”
“I don’t know about the contact, he left first. I posted myself outside, two blocks away, to wait for Himmel, but he never came out the front. Maybe he did think something was odd about Filbert, so he went out through the back.”
“You lost him, you mean.”
“Yessir. I lost him.”
Paslett sighed, lit a cigarette, drummed his fingers on his desk. “I gotta file a spec, you know that, don’t you?”
“Yessir.” A “spec” was a specification of an offense, a disciplinary charge. Depending on how Paslett worked it, I faced reassignment, demotion, even discharge.
“Not for losing Himmel, for telegramming the girl and breaking cover.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You wanna tell me why you did it?”
“I thought I could lead two lives at the same time, sir. I was wrong—the case comes first, it always comes first, it’s always fulltime.”
He tapped ash from his cigarette. Jesus, I wanted a smoke, but I couldn’t light up without permission.
Paslett said, “My bigger problem right now is what you brought in as the Reds’ courier, that schematic and the postcard.”
“They’re both fake, aren’t they, sir?”
“How’d you know?” Surprised, leaning forward, looking straight at me.
I thought of exactly what I could tell the commander. Because Himmel, a.k.a. Pavel Nevelskoi, plotted all of this out from the moment he discovered Skerrill had gone to the Bureau, sir. He knew his espionage ring was done, the best he could do was hold on until he got the last delivery from his source in New Mexico. That’s why he had me kill Skerrill instead of having the N.K.V.D. do it, that’s why he picked a location that would allow O.N.I. to take the case from the locals. He wanted me to draw the case, he expected it. Because he knows of your fixation with Reds—I’ve given them lots of reports about you, sir—and he was betting that you’d send me in under cover. Then he arranged for me, as Ted Barston, to courier hoax espionage material to throw O.N.I., and the Bureau, off the real trail. The trail that led to the Automat, that led to the final delivery, that led to the message and schematic on how to diffuse Uranium 235.
But I didn’t say any of this to Paslett. Instead, “Because it was too easy, sir. To waltz into the clipping service, even with the cover story of being that commie union man’s son, and get a job that important. I thought I was doing a good job, but Himmel musta seen through me right away.”
He shook his head wearily. “These goddamned Reds, they’re devious bastards, aren’t they?”
“Yessir, they are.”
CHAPTER 41
I TYPED UP A FICTITIOUS TRANSCRIPT OF THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN Himmel and his New Mexico source, making sure it sounded authentic. What I was going to do with the message about uranium and the schematic hidden in my flat, I had no idea—but instinct told me to keep them to myself. Paslett accepted the typed sheets with barely a word and dismissed me, told me to go home and return in the morning to find out about my spec.
But I didn’t go home, I went straight to Liv’s rooming house at Tenth and M Streets.
“Yeah?” The woman answering my knock was on the buxom side of fat, right hand propped on her hip.
“M’looking for Liv, Lavinia Burling. Is she here or at work?”
“She moved.”
“What? When?”
“Today, right, Eunice?” she yelled into the parlor. In the dim hallway two women paused to listen, whispering shadows. I couldn’t hear the answer from the parlor.
The big woman turned back and said, “She left an hour ago. Had her bags, trunk, too.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Dunno.”
“Could you ask?” Checking the urge to shove past her.
This time I caught the answer: “Union Station.”
I ran off the porch and sprinted across the yard. Trotted east on M, looking around for a hack—none to be seen for a long block. Finally hailed one and told him I was in a hurry, gasping for breath.
“Everybody’s in a hurry, Mac,” he replied, but he pushed it, dropped me off at the station’s west side portal in two minutes. I burst through the doors. Sunlight brightened the latticed skylights of the barrel vault roof and left a sheen on the smooth tiled floor. A wooden colonnade separated the concourse from the massive central lobby, queues of passengers funneling out from gates. I skidded to a stop at the departures board and scanned the westbound runs. Figured she was bound for California, that meant a transfer in Chicago. Shoved my way through the first line, waved my O.N.I. identification card at the startled gate agent.
“Capitol Limited—which track?” I shouted.
“Seventeen. But they already made last—”
I was at Track Four. I hurtled down the concourse, dodging luggage carts, porters, and passengers. The Capitol Limited’s locomotive faced front, a gigantic black cylinder with a Cyclops-like headlight and a spotless brass bell. Faint smoke drifted from the stack as it idled. Athwart the spoked drivers, cylinders thrummed deeply, radio static crackled in the cab—this train was about to leave. I raced down the platform, past the tender, past the mail and baggage cars, past the gleaming riveted panels of the sleepers, toward the slim woman in a knee-length dress, a wide-brimmed hat atop black curls. She was talking to a Negro porter, who nodded and stepped sprightly aboard the train. She turned to board, reaching for the handrail—
“Liv!”
She whirled around. “El!” She stepped down to the platform and touched my cheek, damp with sweat. “You ran here?”
“Just about. From your boarding house.” I tried to catch my breath. “Liv, listen, I’m so sorry for what happened. I shoulda told you they’d come to see you, but I didn’t want you to worry, I was trying to keep you outta it.”
“It’s all right, it’s okay.”
“Did they—how bad was—”
“None of that matters, El, only what I make of it. When they threatened to have me fired, I realized what they were saying for real.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s like those agents were messengers, El, telling me it’s time to go to the Pacific. So I quit, I packed up—I’m going to San Francisco, I can leave from there as soon as the war’s over.”
“I want to go with you,” I said. “All the way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then come with me now.”
“What?”
“To San Francisco.”
“I don’t have a ticket, I’ve got no money.”
“We’ll buy it onboard, I’ve got lots of money. The bank can wire your account when we get to California.” Looking into my eyes, lips pursed, gripping my hand. Live free, and the rest will follow. Keeping true to those words meant I had to board that train with Liv and not look back. The whistle blew, two long blasts.
But I couldn’t live free. I was a traitor, a coward, a murderer; a man without honor, friends, or allies. If I went with Liv,
Paslett and Terrance would think I’d fled because I had something to hide, that I was afraid of what the specification of offenses might uncover. They’d start digging, they’d turn my life upside down, they’d search my flat—they’d find the schematic I’d taken off Himmel’s body. And then they’d come get me, no place in the world was safe from Paslett’s wrath and reach. Even if the O.N.I. couldn’t find me, the Russians would. I’d go down, for good, dragging Liv with me. I had to stay behind, I had to clean up my mess, I had to make things right.
“I can’t, Liv.”
She said nothing.
“Ma’am, please.” The porter spoke from the vestibule. “That was the last whistle.”
Liv wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed close for a deep, long kiss, my flushed cheeks hot against her cool, smooth skin, our lips parting softly. The cars shuddered, couplers clanking as the engineer eased open the throttle. She dashed to the steps, the porter pulled her aboard. As the train glided away, she leaned out and shouted three words. And then she was gone.
I didn’t answer until the locomotive had receded into the yard, just one train among many on countless tracks.
“And the rest will follow,” I said to the empty platform.
THE DEAD DON’T BLEED
Pegasus Books Ltd.
148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by David Krugler
First Pegasus Books cloth edition June 2016
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-1-68177-139-7
ISBN: 978-1-68177-183-0 (e-book)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
The Dead Don't Bleed: A Novel Page 32
