The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  Clock’s ticking, Schroeder, what now? Where would the Princess hide the murder weapon? Somewhere close at hand, but also a place where Maria wouldn’t stumble on it when she tidied up the room, as she’d done this morning.

  Well, Stela might keep the razor in her purse overnight, then tuck it away in a more secure hiding place once Maria had changed the sheets.

  I got down on my knees, ran my hand under the mattress, groped around for half a minute and snagged it. A dainty little number with an ebony handle.

  That she had a straight razor stashed under her bed should have been enough but I wanted hard evidence to convince myself that Princess Stela was a cold blooded killer. If she could kill Dmitri and Ilinca with her own hand she was capable of something worse.

  I opened the blade slowly. It was gleaming clean. But some of the victim’s spurting blood might have wicked into the handle cavity. I pounded the open handle against my palm.

  All I got were a couple drops of water. PS had rinsed out the damn thing.

  I went to the bathroom and hunted up a Q-tip. There was one last possibility. I gently poked the cotton swab into the hinge between the handle and the blade. I let it sit there for the count of ten.

  When I removed it the Q-tip was dark pink.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I went to my bedroom and got the Remington and its holster from the bureau drawer. No, I didn’t plan to shoot anyone, I wanted to return it to Frank Wisner. I removed the bullets so he wouldn’t notice one was missing, took a pillowcase and stuck the gun and holster inside and carried my awkward bundle down the hall to the living room.

  Wisner and Stela were still huddled on the white linen sofa, a bit closer together than they had been. Maria was in the kitchen stirring up another pitcher of martinis. The boy king was slumped over in the armchair, fast asleep. Outside the bay windows the basilica of St. Peter’s was lit by floodlights against the night sky.

  And not two weeks ago I’d been shelving books in the back stacks of the Cleveland Public Library.

  “Schroeder, what have you got there?” said Frank Wisner, happily.

  I sat down on the wing of the L-shaped sofa. Princess Stela clenched her cheeks in a smile.

  “It’s something that used to belong to you sir. Captain Dragomir loaned it to me. I thought you’d like to have it back.”

  No flicker of recognition from Wisner. That changed when I removed the six gun from its holster and presented it to Frank with both hands.

  “Good Lord,” he said, “good Lord.”

  I’m guessing memories of the war years came flooding back, leastwise Wisner’s eyes grew moist as he stared at his parting gift to Sorin Dragomir.

  I chanced a glance at Princess Stela. She still had her phony smile in place but her eyes were solid ice. Could be she didn’t appreciate my distracting Frank from their boozy reminiscence with a treasured keepsake from the kidnapper of her son.

  But then she wasn’t going to like anything I did tonight. I got up to fetch a fresh martini and flirt with Maria but she sat on a stool in the kitchen, rubbing her feet, in no mood to talk. I poured myself a drink and stood there like a stooge, looking at nothing.

  I didn’t really care that Princess Stela had killed her Soviet minders. I might have done the same if I thought it necessary to make our escape. But it wasn’t necessary, not really. She could have cut the power to their transmitter instead of their throats. What PS did was eliminate witnesses in case the NKVD intercepted us on the road to Sibiu. If nabbed she would claim I’d kidnapped her, and finger me as the neck slicer.

  Princess Stela was the rat who blew our mission and got Dragomir and his men slaughtered.

  I knew that, felt sure about it save for one tangle. Stela supposedly sneaked out the bedroom window with her son so that Lucian could drive her to her hiding place at the airstrip before the Captain and his contingent arrived.

  Not likely. Stela wouldn’t have trusted cowardly Lucian to come through in the crunch. More likely she would have used him to sneak a letter to her NKVD contact in town. A letter detailing where she was being held and when the CIA supply plane was due to land, but not where. She wouldn’t give away the store right away. I imagine Lucian had to shuttle a few letters back and forth before Stela and the Blue Caps worked out a deal.

  Thus Stela would have waited until after our departure to leave the pagoda. The Blue Caps would have swarmed the joint, rushed PS and her son out the door and killed anyone in their way. Lucian, Cosmina, anyone.

  The tangle I couldn’t unknot was how the Blue Caps got Princess Stela and the boy king to their hiding spot on the far side of the landing strip before Captain Dragomir rolled up in his truck. We hadn’t been overtaken by any fast moving Soviet jeeps on that winding highway.

  True. But we had bypassed a few dirt roads that climbed straight up the mountain. Sheep trails or toboggan runs. A four-wheel GAZ-67 could have powered up and over those peaks and beaten us to the airstrip with time to spare.

  I was, I must admit, impressed. Back in my wayward youth I had managed to play both sides against the middle myself, on a small scale. But Stela Varadja was straddling the middle stripe of a four-lane highway, leveraging the two most powerful nations on earth to her benefit and doing a damn fine job of it. So far.

  I took my drink and the pitcher of martinis back to the couch. I set down the pitcher on the glass coffee table. Frank Wisner looked at their two empty glasses and said, “Your timing, Schroeder, is first rate.”

  Seemed like he’d said that to me before, at his Maryland farm. I hoped he was right. If I didn’t torpedo Princess Stela this evening she would beguile her way into some important OPC posting where she could do real and permanent damage. She was dirty, no question, but it would take more than a bloody Q-tip to convince Frank Wisner. I was still low scrotum on this totem.

  “Princess Stela has been singing your praises, young man. She tells me she could never have rescued her son without your able assistance.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Or attendance for that matter,”

  “Come again?”

  “I was not aboard the C-45 when it prepared for takeoff.”

  “Well, that wasn’t Stela’s fault, certainly,” frowned Wisner.

  I looked at Stela. She met my gaze over the rim of her martini glass. She would have already told Wisner how she talked her way past the Blue Caps. I could say that was mere playacting and that she would have been only too happy to leave me behind but…

  “No sir, I guess not.”

  We sipped and chatted for a few until PS turned to look at her sleeping son with maternal concern. “I should now be putting him to bed.”

  Ah, here it comes. The big reveal.

  “Yes, he finally wore himself out,” said Wisner. “He’s a ball of fire that boy.”

  “Just like his father,” said Princess Stela, pointedly.

  “I never had the pleasure. Your husband was stationed in Prague as I recall.”

  “For a time. Then to Zagreb. I did not see him for most of a year.”

  “Is that so?” said Frank Wisner, surprised. And oblivious.

  Princess Stela and I shared a little moment just then. Our last.

  Her quick glance said, Can you believe this guy? Or, more completely, Funny how blind people can be when an uncomfortable truth is staring them right in the face.

  I acknowledged her with a tiny shrug. It’s too bad she was such a shit because I did admire her style.

  She sighed. “The boy is your son, Frank.”

  Frank Wisner took a long moment to absorb this shock, then turned to me, eyes ablaze.

  Why was this my lookout? “Princess Stela shared this information with me,” I explained, “but I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything. Sir.”

  Wisner pivoted to Stela. “How can you be sure?” he demanded, as if a Princess obsessed with bloodlines would be careless about questions of paternity.

  She crossed to the arm chair and picked up the slu
mbering boy king and carried him back to the white linen sofa. She placed him in Frank Wisner’s arms and left it to him to note the familiar large brow and angled ears.

  I had a dark thought as Wisner reached the obvious conclusion. He was now theoretically subject to blackmail from Princess Stela. Or me. And he had the power to make us both disappear. I knew he wouldn’t do that – Beria would, Wisner wouldn’t. But the fact that Frank Wisner held the same unchecked authority as Lavrenty Beria made me queasy. The history books are full of well-meaning leaders who start out good and end up wicked. The Angel Lucifer was God’s right-hand man before he decided to go into business for himself.

  Young Vlad awoke in his father’s arms. He didn’t fuss or squirm, seemed, in fact, right at home.

  “Hey there, cowboy” said Wisner, putting his finger in the boy’s chubby palm. “My name is Frank, pleasure to meet you.”

  “My name is Vlad,” he replied in a tiny stern voice, as if offended by the informal greeting.

  “Yes, Vlad, of course. Such a powerful name.”

  Princess Stela smiled beatifically at this sweet moment. I might have joined her save for the realization that I had now slid down another notch on the totem pole.

  The boy king’s eyes got droopy. Wisner returned him to his mother, who rocked him to sleep.

  “I will see to it that you are well taken care of,” said Frank, suddenly all business. “In exchange for which you will work for us.”

  “I will accept,” said Stela. “But not in Paris. Paris is no fit place for to raise a child.”

  “I agree. What did you have in mind?”

  “A small city, with fine schools.”

  “Such as?”

  “Copenhagen.”

  Frank snorted. “And why would I waste a woman of your talents on Copenhagen?”

  This exchange caught me by surprise. If Stela wanted to do real damage she would seek a posting to a major capital. Maybe grooming her son to become the next King of Romania really was her first priority.

  Maybe not.

  “I will find you a place in London,” declared Wisner. “Where royalty is always welcome.”

  Princess Stela did not object.

  No good deed goes unpunished. It looked as if my attempt to keep the boy king from becoming a political trophy had led to a Commie rat being posted to the nerve center of European intelligence. And the home of Guy Burgess.

  I poured gin and vermouth down my gullet as I watched mumsy-wumsy and popsy-wopsy fawn over their fair-haired boy. Might as well get blotto, I had nothing. I was about to pour myself another when young Vlad suddenly came to in his mother’s arms.

  He writhed and squirmed. She clutched him tight, he fought harder.

  “Why don’t you let me take him for a minute?” I said. Stela shook me off.

  “Oh, let him hold the boy for God’s sakes,” said Wisner.

  Stela handed him over. “Not long, he needs bed.”

  I stood the boy king up on my knees and looked him in the eye. He didn’t struggle, he didn’t cry. Why did he resist his mother’s touch so fiercely?

  Simple, Schroeder. The boy had seen what happened to his beloved nanny when the kill squad arrived at the pagoda.

  I had the evidence I needed. I had an eye witness who was beyond reproach. All that remained was to ask the question.

  “Hi, Vlad, it’s me, Hal. I first met you with Cosmina, remember?”

  The boy king didn’t answer. Stela jumped up.

  “She was a nice lady, Cosmina. How is she?”

  Vlad’s face crumpled and he started to cry. Stela snatched him back.

  I gave Wisner a hard look. He came through.

  “Let the boy answer the question, Stela.”

  I asked young Vlad again about Cosmina.

  He answered tearfully, in Romanian, before his mother hauled him off.

  I looked to Wisner. “What did he say?”

  Frank’s big sturdy mug was contorted, out of joint. “He said they shot her.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I filled in the blanks for Frank Wisner. How Stela slit the throats of her Soviet minders. How she betrayed our supply operation in exchange for a plane ride out. How she staged a confrontation with the kill squad at the airstrip that was intended to schnooker me into thinking she was on our side. By the time I was done Wisner was muttering darkly to his martini glass.

  I didn’t attempt to advise him. What do you say to a man who has just discovered that the mother of his son is a murderous traitor. He didn’t have long to agonize in any event. A moment after Maria bid us Buonanotte and shuffled down the hall, Stela reappeared, her cheeks red with gin and anger.

  “I am responsible for my son, and for survival of my lineage!”

  Okay. No dispute there.

  “I was under guard, with long way to aeroplane.”

  Yeah. So?

  “I knew Sovietici would get us to there.”

  “You told me it was Lucian who helped you,” I said.

  “I did not say the truth.”

  No shit. “Why did the Sovietici agree to let you flee?”

  “I promise more secrets for them.”

  Frank Wisner cleared his throat to speak. The long day had taken its toll, he sounded like an outboard motor with a clogged fuel line. “How did you know…the plane crew… wouldn’t fire at the NKVD?”

  “And risk their aeroplane?”

  I jumped back in. “And I suppose the chance to get revenge on Sorin Dragomir didn’t figure into your decision.”

  “He kidnapped my son! Why do you now cry tears for kidnapper?” yelled Stela. “And he had no…how do you say?… no friends, no…”

  “Collaborators,” suggested Wisner.

  “Da. No collaborators in Bucharest, in Cluj, in Constanta. Sorin Dragomir was vainglorious fool!”

  Stela Varadja didn’t add ‘Just like all you men’ but Frank Wisner and I heard it just the same.

  Her point about collaborators in the cities was well taken. Had she made it earlier I might have rejected Dragomir’s plea for gold and munitions. Stela and I could have doped out another way to smuggle her and the boy king to freedom.

  And what way was that, Schroeder? Wisner might well have dispatched a plane to retrieve me, but in Stela’s mind, Frank would never permit his former mistress to climb aboard. The Vampire Princess was right. She took her only way out.

  I could see Frank Wisner sorting through all this in his lawyerly way. He couldn’t turn Stela over to the authorities for prosecution. And he wouldn’t return the mother of his son to Communist Romania. In the words of Bill Harvey he was ‘a gentleman of the old school in the wrong line of work.’

  “London will remain your destination,” said Wisner finally. He gestured for Stela to come and stand before him. She did so, eyes downcast, the humble penitent.

  Ha.

  “I will arrange for you a small apartment and a job to pay for it. A menial job. You will have no telephone privileges and your mail will be opened.”

  “I will have minder?”

  “Yes,” replied Wisner, icily, “but you’re used to that. I will see to it that young Vlad is properly educated, at schools of my choosing. And if you keep to the straight and narrow for a number of years, I might consider giving you an employment opportunity.”

  “Thank you, Frank,” said Stela, barely audible.

  “Get some sleep, we leave first thing.”

  Princess Stela Varadja whispered down the hall in that ballet dancer way she had, her feet barely touching the ground. And why not? She had won, Sorin Dragomir had lost.

  I was reminded of one of Wild Bill Donovan’s pithy maxims. ‘There is bad intelligence, but there are no bad sources.’ We don’t deal in good and evil, in other words, just truth and fiction.

  Frank Wisner would find a way to use Stela’s considerable skills. She wasn’t a Commie rat after all. Princess Stela was an all-purpose rat.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

 
I staggered into the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel more dead than alive after a Rome to Paris to London to Shannon to Gander to New York to Washington D.C. crossing. Three days and nights in the sweaty embrace of ‘the romance of winged flight.’ Give me a stateroom on a liner every time.

  The pigskin valise that Wisner provided before I left Rome contained new socks and underwear, a black wool topcoat and a shiny new set of lock picks. All the necessary accoutrement for the young-man-about-town.

  Plus a gun. Wisner included the Civil War Cavalry Officer’s Remington .44 he had given to Captain Dragomir who had then loaned it to me.

  I got it back. Wisner said I’d earned it.

  I checked in at the front desk. “Welcome, Mr. Schroeder, we’ve been expecting you.” I signed the ledger and gave the bell captain a buck to see to my suitcase.

  Then I crossed the lobby to the Towne and Country Lounge, lust in my heart. The joint was jumping at four o’clock in the afternoon. Reporters cadging free drinks from press flacks most likely. The big election was only days away.

  I searched out Winston behind the bar. He made brief eye contact, looked skyward, made more eye contact. Something was up, report to my room.

  I sighed and trudged off to the bank of elevators. My room key read 640, same as before. Made sense. The spy suite, swept for mikes on a regular basis. No doubt Bill Harvey was waiting to interrogate me, sitting on my bed with a bag of doughnuts.

  But the bed was unoccupied when I opened the door.

  “Welcome home” said the last man in the world I expected to see. He was seated in the club chair by the window. Major General William J. Donovan.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “How was your journey?”

  “Very long, sir.”

  He nodded. “Worst part of the job, travel, never cared for it. But it gives you time to think.”

  The great man had changed in the two years since I’d seen him. The wide-set eyes now a bit sunken, a slight tremor in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Hair white as snow. I made small talk, asked him what he had been up to.