“Sleep well, Mara?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“You drugged me!” she said indignantly.
“What’s good for the goose, right?”
“Where are they?”
“Your Russian pals? We had a nice talk, shared some yuks, promised to do it again soon.” I stepped into the room. “Rise and shine, now it’s our turn to chat.”
“Oh no, Ah’m leaving.” She swung her legs over the bed and stood, smoothing out her shirt and skirt.
“Not yet.” I strode close, clapped my hands on her shoulders, and sat her down on the edge of the bed. I pulled over the chair from the corner. “How do they contact you?”
“Let me go,” she said defiantly. Her makeup was almost perfect: lipstick glossy, mascara barely smudged, eyelashes still curled.
“Soon as you answer my questions. How do they contact you?”
She looked away but didn’t answer, her fingers gripping the bedcover.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “You won’t be hearing from them anymore.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re done, Mara, they’re not gonna use you after what happened.”
She shook her head, to my disbelief—didn’t she know how lucky she was to be out?
“Look, I’ve known who you were from the moment we met,” I said.
“How?”
Because I’d been interrogated for an hour by N.K.V.D. agents before you came on the scene! But I couldn’t tell her that.
Instead I said, “Your pretend boyfriend, he gave it away.”
“Dale did?”
“He kept glancing my way when you two were staging your row,” I lied. “Dead giveaway.”
“For real?” Sounding doubtful, like she wanted to be convinced.
I nodded vigorously. “Three times I counted.”
“Ah knew it! Ah told him to follow my lead, Ah coached him, we went over it again and—”
“Listen, forget about Dale—tell me how they contact you.”
“Ah’m not going to tell you that.”
She still believed they’d use her, I could see it in her eyes, she was busy thinking, already working out how she’d tell them it wasn’t her fault, that “Dale” had given them away, that she was still A-One. Arguing with her wouldn’t change her mind, sure as hell wouldn’t help me. Was she a true believer, a bred-in-the-bones Red all dewy-eyed for a Marxist utopia? Or was she a baller, in it for the excitement and the rush? I decided to try a different play.
“Then I guess there’s no point talking to you anymore,” I said slowly, standing up and gesturing at the door. “Good luck.”
She stood but didn’t leave. “Why do you want to know how they contact me?”
“Doesn’t matter now. Sorry about doping you, but …” I gave a little shrug.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t think you wanna know.”
“Tell me.”
“Your Russian pals offered your head on a platter. Told me if you were still here when I got back, I should run you in on an espionage charge for trying to turn me.”
“You’re lying.” Glaring at me.
“You wanna find out if I’m on the level, get in touch with them and see what happens.”
She sank down on the bed. “Ah’ve no reason to trust you.”
I sat back down. “Not yet.” I leaned close, looked her straight in the eye. “Mara, do you know why the N.K.V.D. is after me?”
She shook her head.
“Would you like to know?”
Now a nod. And a gleam in her eyes.
“Then I need you to contact them and then tell me what happens.”
“They wouldn’t like that.”
“They don’t need to know, do they?” I placed my hand on her thigh and squeezed.
“How will Ah contact you without them knowing?”
I slipped from my chair to the bed. “That’s easy enough to figure out,” I whispered in her ear, my hand still on her thigh. She turned her head, pressed her lips to mine, closed her eyes. My exhaustion and pain vanished as a surge of excitement, of desire, energized me. What drove Mara’s desire, I couldn’t say, but of this I was certain: her cries of pleasure weren’t part of her cover this time.
CHAPTER 19
STRINGING MARA WAS ONE BIG HEAP OF STUPID, FOR SURE, AWFUL RISKY. Maybe the Russians had fried too many brain cells, maybe the shock had messed with my instinctive wariness. I couldn’t trust Mara, but if she ran straight to the Russians to tell them I’d tried to turn her, which is what I was counting on, that helped me. Despite having convinced the Reds I was working for them, I feared it still looked like a setup. What if the Professor, after a good night’s sleep, started thinking harder about my sudden eagerness to help after spending days on the lam? He might conclude I wasn’t worth the risk—bad for me, very bad. As much as I knew about how they operated, they’d not hesitate to kill me. Sure, they’d cover their tracks by making it look like an accident, but that wouldn’t do me much good. If the Professor believed I was operating as a double agent by trying to turn Mara, perversely he would be reassured; his suspicions about me would ease. Thinking he knew what I was really up to would make him think he could better control me, through Mara. She was my life insurance, carrying a double indemnity against commie distrust. Just before I fell asleep, I decided I wouldn’t tell Paslett about this arrangement. He wouldn’t like it, not at all, but it was my neck on the block, not his.
The jangling alarm bell finally woke me up at nine. I’d set it for seven but hadn’t heard it for two hours, I was that beat. My entire body ached, every move hurt. Wished I had a bathtub, but a long, hot shower had to do. Shaved, made instant coffee, heated up a can of tomato soup, the only chow in the cupboard. Put on my uniform, stepped out into a day so pristine it almost choked me up. Azure sky, temperature in the high seventies, light breeze. The azalea in the tiny front yard of my flat smelled fresh, bountiful, good. Last night, a brush with death, then unexpected sex, now a beautiful summer day—the last twelve hours had whipsawed me but good. “Jesus, I want to live,” I murmured, then berated myself. Going namby-pamby wasn’t going to help. I needed to get to the Navy Building pronto, had to find out if Paslett had persuaded Groves to let me post to New Mexico. I’d told the commander I’d be in by eight, I was now almost two hours late.
Shook off my worries, hailed a hack. Went straight to Paslett’s office, found him smoking, brooding. He put me at ease and spoke before I could ask about Groves.
“Expecting his call any second.”
“Yessir.”
“Why’re you late?”
“Russians didn’t waste any time, sir. Picked me up at my flat right after I got home.” I tipped off my cap, turned my head so he could see my neck. He whistled.
“Jesus, what’d they do to you?”
“Electric shocks. Two Russians, one American. Russians were waiting for me when I got home last night, sir.”
“Know where they took you?”
“Nosir. Knocked me out in my flat, I came to lashed to a chair.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Russians I didn’t get a good look at, sir, and they didn’t talk much. Stayed behind me. They kept a light in my face so I couldn’t see the American, but I could hear him just fine. Educated, lots of silver dollar vocabulary, accent I wanna say is Ohio, maybe Michigan. Arrogant, cocky, real sure of himself. First impression, a professor a’some sort.”
Paslett snorted derisively. “Those goddamned eggheads, they’re all Reds or pinkos. Did he ask about Himmel?”
“Yessir. Like you said, they think I killed him. Kept juicing me to get me to admit it.”
“What’d you say?” Paslett might never have been tortured, but he sure as hell knew what men did to stop the pain.
“Told them we knew the N.K.V.D. is busy knocking off veteran operatives and officers up and down the East Coast. Told them Himmel musta known he was next soon as
he turned over the diagram from New Mexico, so he went on the lam.”
“They bought that?”
“Yessir. But that’s not what finally made them happy.”
“You sold them New Mexico?”
“Yessir. Wasn’t easy—the American, this professor-type, he wanted to know why Groves hasn’t identified the spy yet. Didn’t think it was too hard to figure out how many scientists coulda had leave the week of the meeting with Himmel.”
“What’d you say to that?”
“Told him Groves doesn’t know for sure he’s a scientist. Coulda been anyone who got the diagram and smuggled it out. I guessed fifty, sixty people coulda had leave and said that’s why Groves wants me down there, to speed up the identification.”
“Good thinking—couldn’t’a been easy, either, coming up with that line while they were—”
“When you said you’re waiting for him to call, sir,” I interrupted, “does that mean he’s thinking about it or he’s just briefing his men first?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant, I just don’t know. I gave it my all, believe me. He said he’d call by noon. This wrangling with the O.S.S.—he didn’t say anything about it, but it’s driving him nuts, I can tell.”
Checked my watch: a few ticks past ten. What if Groves said no to me coming to New Mexico. What then? Move into the Navy Building, become a virtual prisoner? Get orders for the Aleutians or Iceland, try to dodge the Russians for the rest of my life?
“Sir, if Groves says no, what am I gonna tell the Russians when they pick me up next?”
“Been thinking about that. What we might be able to do is—”
A firm knock on the door.
“Goddammit, we’re busy in here!” Paslett shouted.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s a detective sergeant from the Metropolitan Police here, says it’s urgent.”
My heart pounded, my mouth went dry. The commander gave me a long look.
“All right, let him in.”
A warrant officer opened the door, I turned to look as the sergeant entered. Short, with a ruddy face faintly traced by acne scars, reddish hair bristling out beneath his hat brim. His expression—tight lips, cop stare—didn’t change as he looked directly at me. A familiar face. Detective Sergeant Durkin and I had met in April, a few months or a lifetime ago, depending on how I measured it. Durkin had been assigned the murder of Lieutenant Logan Skerrill, had been investigating all of twenty minutes when Paslett sent Daley and me in to take the case away. Durkin had pouted, he’d glowered, he’d tried to beat us to the coroner’s office for the autopsy, but we’d boxed him out. Then without asking, I’d roped him in on the interrogation of our suspect because I needed a local cop present. But Detective Sergeant Durkin wasn’t here to get an apology.
From the hallway, the warrant officer closed the door and Paslett simply asked, “Yes?”
“Gotta take him in,” Durkin said, pointing at me.
“Why?”
“We got a boy in the hospital, he’s been shot. His mother tells us a fella showed up on her doorstep on Saturday asking lotsa questions about her son. Said he was from Horn and Hardart, the boy’s employer. Said his name was William Brady. Thing is, there is no William Brady at Horn and Hardart.”
Durkin stepped forward and dropped a folded sheet of paper onto the desk. Paslett unfolded it as the sergeant said, “Boy’s mother sat down with an artist to describe this Mister Brady. Some kinda resemblance, isn’t it?”
Paslett didn’t have to answer: it was a drawing of me.
CHAPTER 20
WE ALL STARED AT THE DRAWING, AS IF WE EXPECTED IT TO TALK. Then Paslett broke the silence. “Lieutenant, you better go with him.”
Durkin gave us a baleful look. I stood up. My legs turned to jelly, my mouth went dry—I gripped the back of the chair to steady myself. Last night, I’d suffered interminable pain at the hands of the Reds, but at that moment, if I had a choice between another bout of electrical shocks or being interrogated about what had happened to Kenny Newhurst, I would have taken the prod without hesitation. That sketch was like a ghost, appearing to haunt me. You did this, you alone. I could tell myself that what had happened to Kenny had happened because of my case, that once I’d realized the danger he was in, I’d acted without hesitating, that I’d saved him, but I knew, deep down, such a rationalization was utterly unconvincing, weak salve for a deformed conscience. If I was just doing my job, why had I lied to Georgette? Why hadn’t I identified myself to her as well as to the police at the Harbor Station? Why so many lies? Were my instincts to protect my cover that engrained, or was it high time I asked myself if there were other reasons to keep lying?
“Detective, give us a moment, will you?” Paslett said.
For a moment, Durkin didn’t speak. Then he nodded, picked up the sketch, and left.
Paslett said, “Tell them everything.”
“Yessir. Including about the Russians?”
“Everything. What happened to the boy, it’s been weighing on me all night. We’re in a war, we all know that, and boys Kenny’s age are still dying in the Pacific. But he’s not in uniform, he still lives at home with his folks, he’s a schoolkid. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You and Donniker, you did what you had to do at the Automat, we had to know what Himmel and his spy were up to, but we should have looked ahead, we should have anticipated what the Russians would do once Himmel went missing. And we went looking for the boy too late.”
We meant me. No one knew better than I did the danger my actions had posed to Kenny Newhurst.
“Yessir,” I repeated numbly.
“The goddamn Reds can’t just shoot a kid in our back yard and expect to get away with it! Burns me up just thinking about what they did. But it shows how desperate they are to find out what we’ve got cooking down in New Mexico.”
“That’s for sure, sir,” I said lamely.
“There’s another side to this, too, Voigt. We want the M.P.D. to chase down the two Russians who shot the boy, we want them to feel heat.”
“But they’ve got to have diplomatic cover, sir, we can’t even arrest them let alone—”
“I know, I know, but if Durkin is able to pick them up, then we’ll let the press know what happened. That story’ll splash across page one, the Soviet consulate will have to recall those two pronto. And that’ll slow down their operation here in a big way.”
A brilliant ploy, I had to admit, but my awe for the commander’s genius also disgusted me. If I stayed in this game—if I survived this game—was this the future that awaited me, having the monomaniacal mind-set of a Commander Paslett, puppeteering everyone and everything in the name of the case? Or was my path even lonelier, more despicable? I didn’t want Shovel-face and his partner expelled from the U.S., I wanted real revenge, I wanted to kill Shovel-face for what he had done to Kenny. And if I managed to get away with that, could I ever return to the straight and narrow, or would I stay rogue?
DURKIN’S UNMARKED PLYMOUTH WAS PARKED ON SEVENTEENTH STREET.
“How’s the boy doing?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, I didn’t ask again. Neither of us spoke a word during the drive, his contempt as thick as the smoke from the cigarettes we smoked. The station house was cramped and cluttered, astir with that mix of idleness and excitement peculiar to police stations and emergency rooms. Citizens slumped in rickety chairs, a desk sergeant yelling into his telephone, two beat cops jawboning about a Golden Gloves card, a crying woman trailing behind a plainclothes pulling a disheveled, cuffed man in a dirty T-shirt. I followed Durkin to an interrogation room. Without speaking, Durkin motioned me to take the hot seat, slapped his notebook down. It was in a monogrammed leather case, worn and scuffed along the edges. He sat and took out a pencil and licked the tip, flipped the notebook open.
“How do you know Kenny Newhurst, Voigt?”
“From the Automat where he works,” I answered.
“When were you first there, what were you doing?�
�
“Night of May Ninth, we were following a mark, we wanted to listen in, we had to set up the rig in the kitchen.”
“We?”
“Filbert Donniker, civilian, our gadgets guy. Old fella, he sat close to our mark, had a hidden mike. I was in the kitchen listening on a headset.”
“What time was this?”
“About seven.”
“How long were you there?”
“Forty minutes, give or take. We hustled outta there when the mark left. Donniker went back to the Navy Building, I tried to follow the mark.”
“Tried?”
“I lost him.”
“Did you go back to the Automat?”
“No.”
“You say anything to Kenny before you left?”
“Told him it was military business, secret stuff, and he shouldn’t say anything to anybody about us being there.”
“That’s it?”
I nodded. “We had to get outta there, I had to get after the mark, there was no time to coach him. Kenny, I mean.”
“Did you follow up with him?”
“Not until Saturday.”
Durkin shot me a cold look. So much time had passed since that night at the Automat—why had I waited so long?
“Nothing was happening with the case, and the mark we’d been listening to just disappeared,” I explained. “I guess I thought it was better not to visit the kid, we didn’t want him to get excited, didn’t want him to start talking about that night to his friends or other Automat workers.”
“This mark—he’s Russian?”
“Yes. Name’s Himmel, he’s the owner of the clipping service I went undercover at.”
“And you didn’t ever think your case put Kenny in harm’s way.”
“Not until this last weekend.”
“What happened over the weekend?”
Here I had to be careful. Tell them everything, Paslett had ordered me. But I hadn’t even told him about my interrogation by Shovel-face and his partner on the night before they shot Kenny.
“Himmel’s been missing since that night, and the Reds are awful anxious to find him. Saturday, it occurred to me I oughta go see Kenny, ask if anybody had come to see him.”
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