Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  “So you’re saying that he—”

  “Just listen! What I’m saying is that these…activities of his, and his connections to them, and not Gilley himself, are what make any sort of remedy off-limits as far as you’re concerned. So it’s pointless and maybe even dangerous to try. Do you understand me?”

  “But, if—”

  “Helen! Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  He released her hand but held her gaze. She still had questions, but knew they would only yield further admonishment in that terrible tone, so she remained silent.

  Vanishings and disappearing acts. Meaning killings and assassinations, of the sort that never found their way into the news. Except on those occasions when he had to act hastily, even sloppily. No weeks or months of careful planning had been possible where Anneliese was concerned. Helen thought again of the photo, the girl’s mouth agape, her face contorted by the violent twist of her neck, all of it arranged by the man whom she would never be able to touch or harm.

  Baucom handed back the glass. He drank with her for a few quiet moments, letting things subside. Then he put up his feet on an ottoman, threw an arm behind her across the back of the couch, and told her one of his oldest stories. It was from back during the war, when the State Department had sent him to Moscow, an odyssey involving planes, trains, a bicycle, and an oxcart.

  She’d heard it before, but he knew that. It was a comfort to see and hear him spinning a yarn, his eyes alit with the wonders of his memory and the amber of the brandy.

  “And then, of course, while I was knocking around a year or so later, in banged-up old Budapest after the war, that was when I first got into this racket.”

  He’d never mentioned that part before, and she wondered if there was a reason he was doing so now.

  “With the OSS?” she asked.

  “I’ve never claimed to have worked for them.”

  “Well, no. But who else was there to work for back then? Army G-2?”

  “Have you ever heard me mention them before?”

  “Okay. Army CIC, then, the Counterintelligence Corps.”

  He smiled and shook his head, like they were playing 20 Questions and she was missing by a mile.

  “Well, there wasn’t anyone else.” A pregnant pause. “Was there?”

  He looked away and reached for his Gitanes. Then, after a decent interval that left her stewing over his insolence, he spoke again, his words issuing with uncharacteristic somberness from an oracular cloud of smoke.

  “Tell me, my dear. That conversation you heard back at the safe house. The first one, I mean, with all that fraternal mumbo jumbo about various bodies of water. You ever make heads or tails of that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. There you go. The answer to your question.”

  And that was the way Baucom chose to tell her, in his own maddeningly elliptical fashion, that whatever Lewis and the wheezing man had been talking about was somehow connected to his own past, presumably involving a network of spooks she’d never heard of.

  “Okaaay,” she said slowly, after a contemplative sip of brandy. She took another of his cigarettes and deliberated over what to say. “I think I know what you’re saying, but why are you telling me now?”

  “To help you sort out your priorities. I still don’t know what you saw or heard later that day, when the talented Mr. Gilley came calling. What I do know is that the conversation you heard earlier offers—if you’re careful, if you’re smart—a greater chance at leverage. But even there you must wield your knowledge judiciously. That’s your road to redemption, my dear, especially if you’re disciplined enough to hold your fire on the other front. Then, after a decent interval of time, maybe someday you’ll be in a secure enough position to revisit it.”

  “A decent interval? A young woman is dead. There is no decent interval.”

  Baucom shook his head.

  “I’ve said all I’m going to say on that subject. I have moved on, and you had better do the same. For you there is only one road forward, and I just drew you the map.”

  She stewed for a few seconds longer. It rankled, but maybe by following his suggestion she could at least regain her footing.

  “Assuming I take this advice, will you help me?”

  “Overtly? Out of the question. But there are certain things I can do—and, more to the point, that others can do—as long as you stay the course.”

  “Such as? And who are the others?”

  He frowned and shook his head, and his meaning was clear: Not her business. Need to know. Plus all the other usual operational rules that made perfect sense professionally, but were no less maddening for it.

  “I’ll have to sleep on it,” she said. “Preferably here, and preferably on the couch.”

  “Take the bed. At this hour I won’t be going back to sleep, anyway, and I’m leaving for Tegel at five.”

  He kissed her on the forehead, which was a shade too fatherly for Helen. She pulled him into an embrace and kissed him on the lips.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I think.”

  He smiled ruefully and gestured toward his bedroom. She headed down the hallway, and he did not follow.

  17

  Helen awakened early in an empty apartment. There was a handwritten note from Baucom on the bedside table. He’d lived overseas for so long that he formed his letters and numbers just as a German would, which made her smile.

  Helen,

  Please forgive the nature of my departure. Rest assured that it was necessary in all respects.

  —CB

  His way of apologizing for leaving without saying goodbye, she supposed, although she hadn’t wanted him to wake her at such an ungodly hour. She stretched, luxuriating beneath the duvet. Out in the drawing room she could hear the big porcelain furnace steaming like a teakettle, and she crossed the floor barefoot to the bathroom, where she took a long shower before remembering belatedly that she’d be wearing the same smelly clothes from the night before.

  Baucom had left his coffeemaker loaded with fresh grounds and a full reservoir of water. She pushed the button and sawed a thick slice from a brown loaf in his bread box. He’d left a carton of yogurt on the counter next to a banana, and she made short work of both.

  She wondered whether she should again call in sick. Would that be risking getting fired over the phone? Baucom seemed to think Herrington didn’t know what she was up to, and with any luck—and a little help—maybe he’d never find out. But Schnapp must have spilled the beans to somebody. She cursed the detective beneath her breath.

  But, without any worthwhile leads on Delacroix, maybe she should follow Baucom’s advice and lay low on Gilley for a while. She could instead start poking around on the question of Lewis and the strangely coded conversation. Maybe the two men she’d overheard had strayed out of bounds, and Baucom thought they needed reining in? She could start by looking further into the requisition of the fancy brand of Scotch. Who had requested it, and why? She also wondered who her so-called allies within the Agency must be. These were questions she would only be able to answer by returning to Berlin station.

  After deciding on a quick detour to her apartment for a change of clothes, Helen gathered up her things to leave. It was nearly 8 a.m.

  Reflexively, she felt in her shoulder bag for the two tapes, which she’d last checked on while riding the subway to Baucom’s apartment, but she couldn’t find them. She dropped the bag onto the couch and pawed through it a second time. No luck. Growing frantic, she dumped the bag’s contents onto the coffee table in a great clatter, and quickly surveyed the wreckage.

  The tapes were gone, both of them.

  She looked wildly around the room in case Baucom might have gotten them out and then left them sitting in plain view, on a table or chair. Nothing.

  He
r fury rising, she searched the apartment room by room, checking every closet, every shelf, every drawer, beginning in the kitchen and finishing in the bedroom. Fruitless, as she knew it would be.

  “Fuck! What the hell, Clark?”

  She then spied Baucom’s note on the bedside table and finally saw it for what it had been all along—a confession. Forgive me, for I have sinned against you on behalf of the Agency. He’d stolen the tapes, and by now they were probably in Herrington’s hands. He had then disappeared into the ether, leaving only yogurt and a banana in compensation.

  “You duplicitous asshole!” she shouted, realizing as she said it that, as a spy, she had just paid him a handsome compliment, which prompted her to kick the end of the bed. This caused a pile of books on the bedside table to totter and then tumble to the floor.

  “Clean it up yourself, you jerk. Unbelievable!”

  She threw her things back into her bag and left in a rage, not even bothering to lock the apartment. Downstairs, she intentionally left the main door ajar, only to have it latch anyway as she rushed down the steps to the street.

  “Fuck!” she said, drawing a disapproving glare from a passing shopper. “Fuck all of them!”

  She stopped on the sidewalk, momentarily at a loss as to where she should go and what she should do. Home was a bleak prospect, even with clean clothes awaiting. A trip to the office in her agitated state would probably lead to another confrontation with Herrington, which she couldn’t afford right now.

  Then she thought of Otto Schnapp, conceivably the one person she could scream at without consequence. What more could he do, turn her in twice? She walked around the corner to the nearest phone booth, took out his business card, and dialed the number.

  “Schnapp,” he answered.

  She lit into him in English, and without even saying her name.

  “The first thing I want to know, Herr Kojak, is why you lied to me.”

  “Miss Abell?”

  “Yes, it’s Miss Abell. And I need an answer.”

  “Lied to you about what?” He sounded wounded. He was either a good liar or an innocent party.

  “You didn’t phone my office?”

  “Yes, but only the one time, when you were present at my desk. Has something happened to you?”

  “And they haven’t phoned you again? Or paid another visit?”

  “No. Even if they had, why would I want to damage the one person with your organization who might actually help me later? Although I will confess I never really expected to hear from you again. Nothing personal, of course. It is the nature of your job.”

  “Well, you’re hearing from me now, and as long as that’s the case I might as well make it worth your while.”

  She then told him most of the story of what had happened in the safe house between Gilley and Anneliese Kurz, although she only identified Gilley as “one of our senior case officers,” and she didn’t tell him the address of the house.

  “And you believe Mr. Delacroix is working for this senior case officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You realize I will still not be able to, how do you say it, lift a finger on this matter?”

  “Yes. But I figured you were entitled to know.”

  “I thank you for that.”

  “And I was thinking that, well, you might at least be able to help me find him. Delacroix, I mean.”

  “Even if I did so, I would not be able to take him into custody, not unless he did something of further provocation.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to. All I want is a location, an address. For myself.”

  “Is that wise for you?”

  “Probably not.”

  There was a long pause. She imagined him frowning, or rubbing a hand through his buzz cut as he thought it over.

  “I will do what I can, Miss Abell.”

  “Thank you.”

  She felt better now, even though by this time Delacroix had probably left Berlin. At least she’d tried. She’d been a bad employee but a good citizen of the world, which for now would have to be enough. Alone, that’s what she was—personally and professionally. Unarmed, too, now that the tapes were gone. The only tangible result of her efforts of the past few days was that Anneliese Kurz was dead. Dead and unmourned, by anyone but Helen and a powerless Berlin policeman.

  Where to now, then? A café? A bar, to drink it off? Too easy, too predictable. So was the idea of taking another sick day. She would go to the office. Swing by her apartment first, for more professional-looking clothes that didn’t smell like a Bierstube, and then she’d waltz into work to sit at her desk, fill out her forms. If allowed she would find some way to seek out more information about the first conversation at the safe house, the one between the wheezing man and the contact named Lewis. Baucom may have betrayed her, but he wouldn’t have offered his advice if he hadn’t meant it. He had revealed too much of himself in doing so for it to have been an empty gesture.

  It was time to tread boldly. If anyone stared, she would stare right back. When Baucom returned to Berlin, she would cut him off at the knees. And if Herrington cut her loose, then so be it. At this point, with a young woman’s blood on her hands, she deserved nothing less.

  18

  August 2014

  They set out for Henson Point at seven the next morning. On the console between their car seats were foam cups of coffee and a bag of doughnuts.

  Steam rose from a dewy field of soybeans to their left. Seagulls circled above a county landfill to the right. As they crossed the Choptank River, the expansion joints of the bridge thumped beneath the wheels. Across the water, low-slung white boats patrolled the shallows. Watermen in ball caps and overalls hauled up crab pots and trotlines, already well into their workday.

  “What happens if we find him?” Anna asked. “Merle, I mean.”

  “I’m guessing we won’t. Or maybe hoping is the better word.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, if he did have something to do with this, don’t you figure he’s gone by now?”

  “Unless he’s more disturbed than my brother.”

  “In which case we’ll have to tread carefully, try not to stir him up.”

  “But you think he’s gone?”

  “If he had a part in it, yeah. But we should keep an open mind on that.”

  “For seventy-five a day aren’t you’re supposed to have tunnel vision?”

  “Plus expenses. Which reminds me, hand me another doughnut.”

  “Keep the receipt or you won’t get reimbursed. Glazed or powdered?”

  “Glazed. Always. Sharpens the mind.”

  Pulling into the Walmart lot they spotted a group of about twenty men gathered at the far end, where it bordered the lot for a Home Depot that was already doing a brisk trade. Henry stopped and let the engine idle as they watched from a distance.

  “See any likely suspects?” he asked.

  Most were dark-haired and wore jeans or canvas pants, with work gloves stuffed in their back pockets. Ball caps and paint stains. Stubbly faces. Some held coffee cups, or carried water bottles. Most of them looked Mexican or Central American, plus a few African Americans. Slouching off to one side were a couple of pale outliers, more like Merle’s type, although both were too young and too short to fit the Washam foreman’s description of a fiftyish guy over six feet tall, and neither fellow had a salt-and-pepper beard. Clear brown eyes, the foreman had also said. Never bloodshot.

  “No Merle,” Anna said. “That’s a good sign, right? I mean, if we think he was involved.”

  Henry nodded, threw the car into drive, and eased toward the laborers.

  The men looked up in interest as the car approached, and crowded closer as it braked to a halt. With the windows down you could hear a low rumble of Spanish, and smell the soap from their morning showers. One fellow
, moving with an air of brisk authority, forded the crowd to the window on the driver’s side as the others made room. He was tanned and fit, late thirties, and spoke with barely a trace of an accent.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “We’re looking for someone,” Henry said.

  “Just one? What’s the job?”

  “It’s not a job. We’re looking for Merle. He’s supposed to be a regular here.”

  The man turned aside to say something in Spanish to the others. Their postures sagged and they began to drift away.

  “Go,” he said, waving them forward like a patrolman directing traffic.

  “He’s an Anglo in his early fifties. Six feet, a beard. You know him?”

  “Go! These men need work!” He whistled loudly, and the men cleared a path.

  Henry rolled forward.

  “Who made him boss?” Anna said.

  “I suppose somebody has to, or it would be total chaos. I’m guessing he decides who gets what, then takes a cut for himself.”

  They pulled into a spot thirty yards away and watched a white panel van approach the workers, who again converged like paparazzi at a Hollywood premiere. The same guy leaned into the window, and emerged holding up three fingers.

  “Carlos!” he shouted. “Paquito! José!,” pointing as he went. His selections walked toward the back of the van. A door flew open and they climbed inside. The van drove away.

  “One-stop shopping,” Anna said. “That van was just over at the Home Depot. Bought his supplies then popped over here for a crew.”

  “And all of it tax-free. Wonder what the boss man would do if we got out and tried to talk to some of them? How’s your Spanish?”

  “I’m good at food. That’s about it.”

  “Same here.” He popped open his door. “I’ll try the two Anglos. Take the wheel, and keep the engine running.”

  Both of the men standing off to the side wore white T-shirts and jeans, and both were smoking. As Henry approached, the heavier one tossed his cigarette to the pavement and pointedly crushed it with a steel-toed boot before turning his back on Henry. The second one wasn’t exactly welcoming, but at least he looked Henry in the eye.