The Innocent Bystanders c-4

by James Munro

  "You're hell on women," she said.

  "And middle-aged furriers. I want you to remember that."

  She drove him to the skeet-shoot club, through downtown Miami, past the resort hotels and the restaurants and the pastel-blue Atlantic. Traffic was light, the tourist season was over, and they made good time. Craig sat back easy and relaxed, drinking in the wealth of the place. There was so much of it, and it went on for so long. They left it at last, and got into country-club land, golf-club land, where shaven grass was as obvious a sign of wealth as a Cadillac or a chinchilla coat, and stopped at last before a building of glittering white stone, of the kind

  that she had called Hispaniola Baroque that time she had kidded Marcus about it, when he'd shot there five years ago—a glittering white building with pillars and pilasters and mullioned windows, and miniature cannon on its embrasured roof. All it needed, she'd said, was Long John Silver limping down the stairs, a parrot on his shoulder. Marcus had laughed then. He wasn't laughing now.

  They left the car to a Negro attendant in white, a scarlet cummerbund round his waist, and walked up the steps toward him, Craig on her right. When they reached him Craig's left arm went round her waist, his right hand held out to Marcus, who hesitated.

  "Take it," said Craig, "or I'll hurt her."

  His fingers moved, and the girl gasped. At once Marcus's hand came out to him.

  "Great to see you again," Marcus said. "How are you?"

  "Fine," said Craig, "Everything's fine. So far. Let's get on with the match, shall we?"

  They went inside the building then, through a low, cool bar to the gun room, where Kaplan signed for two guns and ammunition, then picked up one gun as Craig took up the other. With the gun in his hands, Kaplan changed at once. The gun was something he knew; it gave him confidence, even courage.

  Craig said, "You walk ahead, Miriam. Lead the way while Marcus and I talk."

  She did as he bade her at once, without question, and Craig followed, the shotgun under his arm, English style, the muzzle aimed at a point behind her feet, but Marcus knew, capable of tilting to her back in less than a second. He had been warned about shotgun wounds, knew what they could do to her at such close range. His courage receded.

  "Guns are useless things," Craig said, "unless we're prepared to shoot. Don't you agree, Mr. Kaplan?" "What do you want me to do, Craig?" "Tell me where your brother is." "I don't know."

  They reached the shooting range then, and Miriam waited till they came up, ready to work the treadle that would fire the skeet.

  "That's a pity," said Craig. "For you it certainly is."

  "For all of us. You see I know you're lying, Mr. Kaplan. And if you go on lying, I'm going to kill Miriam here." "You're crazy," Kaplan said.

  Craig said, "I'm desperate, certainly. And I mean it." His hand moved onto the safety catch of the shotgun, the barrel came up. "I'll kill you" said Marcus.

  "Maybe," said Craig. "You've never done it before .. . And even if you did, she'd still be dead." Kaplan didn't move.

  Craig said, "Mr. Kaplan—if I don't find your brother, I'm dead anyway." His finger moved to the trigger.

  "Marcus," said the girl, "he means it. For God's sake tell him."

  "Outside Kutsk," Kaplan said. "In Turkey. He sent me a postcard from there eight months ago. That's the first time I heard from Aaron in twenty-five years. I told you that."

  The gun barrel dropped.

  "You told Miss Benson and Mr. Royce too?"

  "Yes," said Kaplan. "A man from the CIA asked me to."

  "What else did you tell them?"

  "Things," said Kaplan. "Family things. You know. About my father, my uncle—all that. The way things were in Russia. So Aaron would know they came from me."

  "Does Miss Loman know these family things?" Kaplan nodded. "Then I won't bother you about them," Craig said.

  Kaplan looked up. "You mean you're not going to let her go?"

  "How could I?" said Craig. "You'd tell the CIA." He raised the gun again. "Just be quiet and everything will be fine."

  Kaplan stood immobile, his hands clenched round the shotgun. The CIA had warned him so carefully: no one but Royce and Miss Benson must be told the things he knew about his brother. To tell anyone else would be to betray his country, and Kaplan loved his country, not because of what it was, but for what it would become. His was a questioning, suspicious, and demanding love, but it was real; real enough for him to die for it. He had seen this, in his daydreams: Major Kaplan, USAAF, in a dogfight with Messerschmitts; Commander Kaplan, USN, steering his tincan to intercept a Jap cruiser. In the reality of his warehouse he had acknowledged the silliness of his daydreams, but not his right to the dreams themselves. Only he had never daydreamed Miriam's death. His hands loosed their grip.

  "This CIA man, Laurie Fisher-" said Craig.

  Kaplan looked up. "You know him?" he said.

  "I've seen him once," said Craig. "He was the one who told you to take a vacation?"

  "Yes," said Kaplan.

  "It was good advice," said Craig, "but from now on stay in a crowd. If you think I'm rough, Mr. Kaplan, you should try the KGB—like your brother." He paused, then added: "Let's see you shoot, Mr. Kaplan, That's what we came for, wasn't it?"

  Miriam worked the treadle, and the skeet balls shot out, small and traveling fast. Kaplan fired, pumped the gun, fired, pumped the gun, over and over. The first two missed, the next eight were smack on the target.

  "You're brilliant, Mr. Kaplan," said Craig. "If you could keep emotion out of your shooting you'd be deadly. Me, please."

  Miriam worked the treadle, and Craig shot: the first two misses, then eight hits. He grinned at Kaplan.

  "We must have a play-off sometime," he said.

  "So you're just brilliant, like me?" Kaplan said.

  "No," said Craig. "I'm deadly. But I've never shot skeet before."

  They left Kaplan at the clubhouse, and she drove back to the motel. On the way they were picked up by a blue Buick sedan that followed them decorously through the Miami traffic. It was still with them when they turned off for the motel. Craig sighed.

  "Drive on a bit," he said. "Make this thing go."

  The Chevrolet moved from fifty to seventy, then on to eighty, and the Buick was still there. When the girl slowed down, so did the Buick's driver. Craig sighed again.

  "That Buick's following us," said the girl. Her incredulity was touching.

  "Start to slow down," said Craig. "Wait till we get near a lay-by, then cut your motor and coast in."

  She did as he said, and the Buick slowed too. When they went into the lay-by, the Buick slowed even more, then entered it in front of them. By that time Craig had got out of the car and was looking at its offside rear tire. The man who got out of the Buick was young, broad-shouldered, Florida brown. He walked back to the Chevrolet and smiled at Miriam, a warm and friendly smile.

  "Having trouble, folks?" he asked.

  Before she could answer, Craig said, "Yeah. Look here," and the tall young man leaned toward the tire.

  Craig's body uncurled like a spring, and the tall young man went down to a back-handed strike. On the way down he met Craig's knee, and after that the concrete, then Craig went through his pockets, hefted him into the trunk of the Buick, and threw its ignition keys into the bushes.

  Miriam stared at him, her mouth open in a silent scream. "Let's go home," said Craig.

  She fought for words that refused to come, and at last gasped out, "You killed him."

  "No," said Craig. "He'll live. And he's out of the way for a while. Drive on."

  She obeyed at last, and they made for the motel.

  "Who was he?" she asked.

  "No card," said Craig. "Licence said Harry Bigelow. Just fifty dollars cash, a big smile and a Colt .38. Harry Bigelow, CIA."

  "You're so sure?"

  "We're lucky it was," said Craig. "The KGB wouldn't play it like that. And neither will Harry—not any more. To start with there'd probably be
two of them—tailing your uncle. When we left they'd split up. The better one would take Kaplan. I got the apprentice, poor kid. It all looked easy, didn't it?"

  "Horribly easy."

  Craig chuckled. "It isn't usually. But your Uncle Marcus was routine—so they thought. So they gave some of it to a new boy. It won't happen again. The CIA knows its stuff."

  And so does Loomis, Craig thought; yet he's risking a new boy.

  "What now?" said the girl.

  "We go back to the motel," said Craig, "and ask for a nine-o'clock call tomorrow morning. But that's because we're sneaky. Actually we leave tonight."

  "Where to?" Miriam asked. "Back to New York?"

  "Eventually," said Craig. "First we go to Caracas, Venezuela, then the Azores, then Rome, then Istanbul, then—if you're a good girl, back to New York."

  "But you can't," Miriam said.

  "I'm doing it."

  "But I haven't got my passport."

  "I picked it up for you," said Craig. "While you were dressing." Suddenly she started to blush again. "What's the matter?" he asked. "I've got to go to the John," said Miriam.

  CHAPTER 7

  The tall man's name was Lederer. His cover was that of investment counselor in the firm of Shoesmith, Lederer, and Fine. The chubby man with hexagonal glasses was called Mankowitz. His cover was that of consultant psychologist, and was worth a hundred thousand dollars a year. Some of those dollars he invested on Lederer's advice. It was an excuse for meeting, and Lederer's advice was good. They met in Lederer's office as Craig and Miss Loman landed in Caracas. Both men liked Lederer's office. It was in Wall Street, on the eighteenth floor of an aging skyscraper, it had a kind of brown-leathered, New England dignity, and it was not bugged. The last, negative virtue was the most desirable of all, but the others also had charm. For Lederer they represented a continuity of life: prep school in New England, Harvard, a home in Long Island, a summer place in Maine. For Mankowitz they had all the charm of novelty. Enormous leather chairs, Hogarth prints, period furniture; there was even a humidor, and the cigars it contained were Havana, and quite illegal in the States, no matter where your allegiance lay. He took one and pierced it with a device that might have been used for extracting confessions. Lighting it was a ritual that occupied two minutes and three matches. When it was drawing Lederer said:

  "Craig got to Marcus Kaplan." The chubby man looked up, surprised. "He took the girl with him. Miriam Loman. They met at some skeet club Kaplan uses. It seems likely that Kaplan told Craig all he wanted to know."

  Mankowitz sucked on his cigar like a fat child with a lollipop.

  "You gave us the wrong advice," Lederer said. Man-kowitz pouted.

  "I didn't give you any advice," he said. "I gave you facts. Craig as an agent was finished. That was a fact. He's too scared of pain. That was a fact. He'd lost his drive— another fact. And the way Fisher was handled threw him —also a fact."

  "In Miami he put through a nice, smooth operation. He wasn't scared and he didn't panic."

  "Then something's happened to him," Mankowitz said.

  "What?"

  The fat man's shoulders heaved in a comprehensive shrug.

  "How do I know? For that sort of guessing I need a crystal ball."

  "I'd be obliged if you'd use it," said Lederer, and Mankowitz pouted again.

  "I can tell you a possibility," he said. "But that's all it is."

  "Tell me a possibility."

  "Somewhere Craig's got the idea that he's got nothing else to lose. He's so far down he can only go out—or up. Craig isn't the type to go out. So he's started to hit back."

  "But you saw him a couple of days ago. What could have happened since then?"

  "He went back to London," the fat man said. "It's possible he saw Loomis."

  "Inevitable," Lederer said.

  "Maybe Loomis rejected him. The archetypal father-figure rejected him. That means he's absolutely alone." "Except for the girl."

  "The girl is expendable. For Craig, now, everyone may be expendable. And he is expendable to everyone. Hence his need for a hostage. Nobody loves him any more."

  "That's why I let him take the girl," Lederer said. "The way he is now, he might just do the job for us."

  "You can keep track of him?"

  "Oh yes. He's booked through to Rome. He stops over at the Azores. If he makes Rome, he goes on to Turkey. We've got plenty of chances to pull Loman out if we have to."

  as

  "It might be wiser not to take them," Mankowitz said. "If Craig's recovered his skill as a result of—whatever has happened, he'll need the Loman girl to find Aaron Kaplan. Then we can take over."

  "Not in Turkey. Turkey's a little difficult for us at the moment."

  "Then get him out of Turkey. Surely there are ways?"

  Lederer thought for a moment, watching the thick coil of cigar smoke plume into nothingness as the air conditioning got it.

  "There's a man called Royce and a girl called Benson. They're after Kaplan too. Craig won't want to meet them. Perhaps we could use that. I'd like to. It would make the whole thing so much neater."

  "It would make Loomis mad too."

  Lederer smiled. "There's that also, of course. And when Loomis is angry he's at his most vulnerable. Yes. That's the way we'll play it."

  One of Lederer's phones rang. He had three on his desk and one on a side table, an old-fashioned piece of ivory, inlaid with gilt, that belonged to Paris in the naughtiest nineties. Most people thought of it as decoration, but it worked, though its number was unlisted. He walked to it now, and picked it up.

  "Yes?" he said. The phone squawked briskly, then went dead. He hung up and turned to Mankowitz.

  "Craig's recovered remarkably," he said. "Yesterday he clobbered a CIA man."

  The journey was a grueling one, and by the end of it the yellow Orion dress had lost its glitter. Beside her, Craig looked as indestructible as ever, in his crumpled suit, the shirt that had stopped being white the day before. Rome was behind them now, and they were on an Al Italia Caravelle, headed for Istanbul. She had a confused memory of meals that were always breakfast, of sound systems that shouted first in Portuguese, or Spanish, or Italian, then in English; of uneasy sleep and only half-awake wakefulness as one plane or another screamed across the Atlantic, Spain, the Mediterranean, Italy, and now the

  Middle East. All the way he had been kind to her, considerate for her comfort, easing the strain of travel that seemed to touch him not at all, so that in the end she had slept against him, her head resting on the hard muscle of his shoulder, and he had sat unmoving, hour after hour. Once she had awakened, and found him looking down at her. There had, she thought, been a kind of pity in his face, but it had disappeared at once, the blank mask taking its place as he settled her down again, put his arm across her shoulders, the most impersonal arm she had ever felt. It was there now as the plane strung islands like jewels below them: Limnos, Imroz, Samothraki, before the long ride down to Gallipoli, Marmara, Istanbul. He shook out one of his rare cigarettes and lit it left handed.

  "Are we nearly there?" she asked.

  "Soon," said Craig.

  "Boy, could I use a shower," she said. The arm quivered, she looked up and saw that he was laughing. "What did I say?" she asked.

  "Miss Loman, Miss Loman, how American you are."

  "Well of course I'm American," she said, "and anyway, I wish you'd stop calling me Miss Loman."

  "Never spoil a professional relationship for the sake of a little politeness," said Craig.

  She looked up at him, but his face as usual told her nothing. He concentrated on the pleasure the cigarette gave him.

  "Professional relationship?"

  "We're colleagues," he said. "We may not want to be, but we are."

  The no smoking sign came on then, and it was time to fasten seat belts.

  The customs, she thought, were disappointed in them. They carried so little luggage, but currency control cheered up appreciably when they sa
w the dollars he carried. They walked through the bright impersonality of the arrival lounge, and already she felt bewilderment, even resentment. The Middle East resembled the Middle West far too much. He guided her out to a clouded sunlight that added to her resentment—they had better weather in Chicago—and took her to a long line of taxi cabs. This too was Middle Western, but twenty years too late. An unending line of museum pieces: Fords, Chewies, Oldsmobiles, even a salmon-pink Cadillac that reminded her of the pictures Marcus had in his album; the kind of cars they made when Detroit started rolling again, just after the war, before she was a year old, battered now, their paint peeling, the shark's grin of chromium turned yellow, or nonexistent, but as American, she thought bitterly, as Mom's apple pie. Only the drivers were different, but there the difference was so marked it almost compensated for the rest. Miriam had never seen taxi drivers before who promised so much in so many different languages.

  Craig let his glance move across them, taking his time. To her they all seemed alike, swarthy, noisy, not very clean, but Craig found one at least who was different, and walked toward him, a tubby and excitable man with an ancient Packard that smelled of nothing more terrible than coarse soap, recently used. Craig spoke to him in a language she didn't recognize, but which she presumed to be Turkish, and the taxi driver grinned and answered him in a speech that lasted until they drove away from the cab rank and were on the highway to the city. From time to time Craig butted in for a word or two, and once they both exploded with laughter, then the driver gave up at last and concentrated on passing everything else on the road. As he did so, he twiddled with the radio, and station after station wailed out the music of the Middle East. For some reason this annoyed the driver, who twiddled even harder, but the radio was obstinate.

  "So you speak Turkish too?" she said.

  "No," said Craig. "That was Greek. There are thousands of Greeks in Istanbul."

  "You've—worked in Greece?" she asked.

  "During the war," he said. "My war. You weren't even born then."