The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  “You got the gist,” I admitted. “I was a bitter young shit on the make who managed to cover his tracks. Till now. But the ‘Irish hoodlums’ were just dumb kids dragged along by yours truly. Leave ‘em alone.”

  “In exchange for what?” said Julia.

  “I’ll give you all the gory details your little heart desires,” I lied. “After the election.”

  “I’ll expect your call on Wednesday,” she said crisply, handing me her card.

  I looked it over. “Is this your home address?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your building have a doorman?”

  “No.”

  “Then move.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You’ve gone and ticked off some powerful people.”

  “I’m used to that.”

  I chewed my lip. How to say this?

  “Julia, despite your relentless campaign to destroy me, I like you.” She fanned her face in mock humility. “But the people you’ve ticked off aren’t city council candidates or utility board commissioners. They’re among the most powerful men on earth. You need to be very careful.”

  Julia studied me carefully. “On earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve ticked off foreigners?”

  “I believe the term you want is ‘foreign powers.’”

  Julia bit her lip most fetchingly.

  “I don’t have any inside dope, Julia. All I know is that sometimes who gets elected President of the United States is more important to our enemies than it is to us.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I decided to walk those six extra-long blocks back to the Mayflower in order to clear my head. I hiked west on K Street. The White House figured to be somewhere nearby but I couldn’t catch a glimpse of it.

  The night had taken a turn for the worse, a jagged wind whipped pinprick rain. I put my head down, my collar up and trudged on, telling myself that nothing much had happened.

  I’d been asked a few embarrassing questions by a cub reporter, been robustly defended by Captain Jenkins and hadn’t been pursued by any other reporters. The press was zeroed in on the big election and I didn’t matter a whit in the larger scheme of things.

  But Miss Julia had exhumed a corpse I would have just as soon stayed buried. She knew details of the Federal Reserve bank heist that never made the papers.

  She had an inside source. And I had two possibles in mind.

  Both men harbored a deep and abiding hatred for yours truly and who could blame them? But only one of them was likely to follow me down a dark alleyway on a cold ragged night in an attempt to top me off.

  I looked around for a dark alleyway to test my theory but K Street didn’t co-operate. It was too early for the Shakespearean Act Five anyway. When that ghost and the Prince meet/And everyone ends in mincemeat.

  We had just concluded Act Three, best I could tell. Prince Hal now had to determine the identity of the ghost. And whether this low rent production was tragedy or farce.

  The rain stiffened into needles. By the time I arrived at The Mayflower twenty minutes later my mug felt like a cube steak. I took the elevator up to the sixth floor, changed into dry clothes and rode back down.

  I was unsurprised to find William King Harvey parked on a barstool at the Towne and Country Lounge. He wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to have a hearty laugh at my expense.

  But it wasn’t like that. I almost fell over backwards when Harvey said, “That was a wrong thing that girl did to you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A man gets precious few opportunities in life to enjoy the tribute of his colleagues. That was a wrong thing she did.”

  I figured this for a drunken jibe but Harvey didn’t smirk and he had a cup of black coffee on the bar in front of him.

  Christ. A sober sympathetic Bill Harvey was more than I could take at the moment. Where the hell was Winston?

  I don’t want to say he descended from heaven on cottony clouds amid beams of rosy light right about then, but that’s the way it seemed to me.

  “Good evening, Mr. Schroeder.”

  “And a good evening to you, Winston. One of your perfect Manhattans if you please.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  I watched Winston perform his mixing, shaking and pouring ritual before I leaned in. “I’ve got a choice piece of dirt for you, Bill, but it comes with a price. You tell me some deep dark FBI secret first.”

  Bill Harvey did not reply, not right away.

  Winston served me. I nipped at my cocktail while I waited to find out how much Harvey valued me. Was I a crystal blue cat’s eye or just a plain ball bearing? I got a surprising answer.

  “You remember Igor Gouzenko, the NKVD coding officer?”

  “Think so. He defected in Ottawa, early ’46 I think it was.”

  “That’s when the press broke the story. But Hoover was briefed on the defection by the Canadian MPs in September of ’45, just a few weeks after the A-bomb finished off the Japs.”

  “Didn’t know that.”

  “You remember anything else that happened around that time?”

  “Sure, Truman disbanded the OSS by executive order. October first, 1945.”

  “Something he would have had a tough time doing,” said Harvey, nostrils flaring, “if Wild Bill Donovan had been able to report to Congress that the Soviet Union, our stalwart ally in war and peace, had an extensive spy ring in place to steal our atomic secrets.”

  Harvey lowered his voice to a rumble. “Igor Gouzenko provided hard evidence that GRU, Soviet military intelligence, had twenty agents in Canada, in 1945.”

  “Did Hoover brief Truman about it?”

  “Post haste.”

  I was stunned to silence. How could Truman have disbanded the OSS after that briefing? I wrangled up my tongue.

  “How, or why, did the story come out in ’46?”

  “Hoover leaked it himself.”

  “Wasn’t that around the time Hoover was lobbying for the Bureau to assume all intelligence activities foreign and domestic?”

  Bill Harvey dug wax from his ear with his little finger. I took that as a yes.

  I kept my end of the bargain. Truth is I would have told him details of my Romanian misadventure anyway. Harvey worked counterintelligence, he needed to know that the Vampire Princess was now an independent operator in the employ of Frank Wisner. But I wouldn’t tell him why. I wasn’t going to peach out the boy king.

  I ran down the chain of events. When I got to the part about Stela blowing Dragomir’s operation, Harvey surprised me. He was full of surprises this evening.

  “Then you have your culprit in the roll-up of the ex-pats in Bucharest.”

  “I braced Stela about that. She said Wisner would never have given her such sensitive intel. Which is true.”

  “She may have come at it from the opposite direction,” said Harvey. “The expats didn’t check in to the Bucharest Hilton wearing OPC name tags, Harold. They would’ve had safe houses, local support. The underground Stela knew from her days rescuing downed pilots.”

  “But they rolled up the whole lot, not just a few strays.”

  “Drink up,” said Harvey. “You don’t think good sober.”

  I finished my Manhattan and set the glass on the bar. I wasn’t sober, I wasn’t drunk. I was right where I needed to be.

  “You’re sayin’ that, since they worked together saving pilots, Stela and Wisner’s Bucharest networks were one and the same.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin’.”

  Man oh man. And I thought I was a proxy assassin. “But Wisner had to suspect that Stela’s hands were bloody on the Bucharest deal.”

  “What are you carpin’ about? She saved your sorry posterior didn’t she?”

  Touché.

  “Think long term, Schroeder, big picture. Frank Wisner didn’t really expect you to succeed anymore than he thought his ex-pats would run the Reds out of Romania. You were part of his ‘indigenous anti-C
ommunist’ shakedown cruise. He took your report as good news, as progress.”

  I was developing a new appreciation for this drunken wildebeest. Harvey was a nice counterpoint to gung ho Frank. While it pains me to quote the bastard, J. Edgar Hoover’s rude assessment of Wild Bill Donovan seemed a better fit for Frank Wisner. ‘He has all of the answers but few of the facts.’

  Then Harvey lowered the boom. “Hoover was willing to let sleeping dogs lie, but you’ve gone and embarrassed the old coot. You campaigned against Truman and pissed on Dewey’s big night so now both camps hate you. Wisner will drop you like a hot rock and Allen Dulles and his black knights are drawing straws to see who gets to stuff you in a duffel bag and drop you off the Arlington Memorial Bridge.”

  “C’mon, Bill, is it really bad as all that?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how bad a boy you were back there in Cleveland.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Get the hell out. Go to Ireland. No extradition treaty.”

  “And I have friends there.”

  A wry smile from Harvey. “Do tell?”

  “Nice idea, maybe later. Right now I need to uncover Julia’s source, find out who’s got it in for me.”

  “All right, do that,” said Harvey. “We backed the Christian Democrat candidate in Italy’s big election last spring. The NKVD mounted a last-minute smear campaign. If this girl’s source is trying to pull that crap around here I’d like to know about it.”

  Harvey gestured at my empty glass. “You good?”

  I met Harvey’s pop-eyed stare, which is something like facing the high beams of a runaway Mack truck that has careened into your lane on a mountain road.

  “Better than good, Bill. I’m perfect.”

  “Then pay the tab, assbite.” He waggled his eyebrows. “We’re going upstairs to play a little game I call Let’s Pretend.”

  We rode the elevator to the sixth floor. Harvey was carrying a bulging leather valise. I found out why when we got to room 640. He informed me that I would now be under round-the-clock surveillance by the FBI.

  “Why shag me? Julia was the one who did the damage.”

  “For all the Director knows you and Julia worked this together.”

  “Makes no sense, Bill. What do I have to gain from humiliating myself?”

  “Hoover’s not a lawyer, Schroeder, he’s a cop. He tracks behavior, then looks for motive. The Q&A was over, you were being ushered off stage. Yet you stop to call on an unknown reporter. The Director will wonder why.”

  “I called on her because I knew her.”

  “But you wouldn’t have called on her if you didn’t know her.”

  “Probably not.”

  Harvey smirked. “You see how this shit gets complicated?”

  He plopped his overstuffed valise on the bed, snapped it open and pulled out a package that looked like a gift box from a department store. He tore off the lid and passed me a box containing a brown uniform suitable for a maintenance man and a matching cap with a black bill.

  “There’s more underneath.”

  I removed the cap and uniform to see a pair of horn-rim glasses and a bushy paste-on mustache.

  “What, no mutton chops?”

  Harvey called me a bad word. I set the package down on the narrow glass table at the foot of the bed and noticed the name stitched above the pocket of the uniform shirt. Tony.

  “I don’t look the least bit Italian.”

  “That’s where the mustache comes in.”

  I re-examined the bushy black soup-strainer. “I would rather be tortured by Communists.”

  “Suit yourself,” groused Harvey.

  “And where am I supposed to be going in this ridiculous get-up?”

  “To visit Miss Julia, grill her about her source.”

  “And how did you know I wanted to do that before you spoke to me?”

  Harvey squinted at me with half a grin. I caught a quick glimpse of Sorin Dragomir in Bill Harvey’s easygoing self-regard.

  “Because I am one amazing motherfucker.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Harvey gave me his private phone number and left. I ducked into the bathroom to tap a kidney and change into my new duds. The pants were two inches too short, I’d have to wear brown socks. The shirt fit well enough, the cap was the problem. I tried wearing it at a rakish angle like Captain Candybar but it fell off. Time for a haircut.

  I put on the pair of glasses and looked in the mirror. Not bad. I was a horn-rimmed intellectual with a sexy Italian name. Not a woman born could resist me. I put my wool topcoat in a drawstring laundry bag and carried it out the door.

  Bill Harvey had a maintenance truck waiting for me at the service bay of the Mayflower. I stood on the dock, shot the shit with the driver and looked around. No Commie spies slunk around no corners.

  The driver took me north and east a couple miles to Miss Julia’s address on Seaton Place NE. The rainstorm had moved on, the night was calm. We weren’t tailed.

  I had him circle the block when we reached her apartment building just in case. Nobody followed. We parked in the alley behind her building. The only sign of life was a stooped ragpicker in a crumpled hat digging through garbage cans. I gave him a brief looksee but decided that no self-respecting federal agent would stoop that low.

  I told the driver I would lock pick my way in the back door of the building.

  “No need,” he said, handing me an all-purpose skeleton key. Former FBI agent Bill Harvey had tended to operational detail.

  I climbed the stairs to Julia’s second floor apartment, apartment G. I knocked, nobody answered.

  I smelled a rank odor from inside. The skeleton key didn’t work on her door lock so I had to pick it, my hands shaking, fearing the worst.

  I rushed inside to find that the smell was just leftover liver and onions, the skillet still warm.

  I tossed the joint. Hey, it’s what I do. Unfortunately Miss Julia returned with the evening paper not a minute later and caught me red-handed. She didn’t laugh at my joke.

  “I told you this apartment wasn’t secure.”

  Julia picked up the phone. “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “You broke into my apartment!”

  “You ruined my career!”

  “Hal, I’m a reporter, I ask questions!”

  She dialed the phone. Say something, genius.

  “I’ve decided Bill Harvey’s wrong about you. You’re not a Communist agent.”

  “A what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Why would he think such a stupid thing?” she fumed. “And what made you decide I’m not?”

  “A hardcore Commie’s not going to have a framed copy of Norman Rockwell’s Fourth of July mounted over her commode.”

  “Maybe I put it up it to throw you off.”

  “Then you’d have hung it in the living room where everyone can see it.”

  Julia gave me a sour look but she set down the phone. Whew. Came an insistent tapping at the door.

  “Julie, you are okay?”

  Julia opened the door to a small spry old woman who was clutching a kitchen knife.

  “Sorry if we got a little loud, ma’am.”

  The old lady ignored me. “You are okay here with this person?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Rogash, I’m fine, thank you for your concern.”

  Mrs. Rogash shot me a hooded look and shuffled back across the hall. “She looks out for me,” said Julia.

  “I can see that. Now, since you’ve consigned me to the salt mines for the rest of my miserable life, the least you can do is offer me a drink.”

  “All I have is applejack.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s what we drink in southern Virginia,” she said with a droll look at my uniform. “Tony.”

  We sat on her saggy red corduroy couch and sipped moonshine so strong it made my eyes water.

 
“There are only two people I can think of who know about the Irish hoodlums and have a burning desire to see me dead. I figured one of them for croaked and I’m guessing the other would prefer to lay low. However I have learned from past experience that I am, occasionally, incorrect.”

  “You’re funnier than you know.”

  I smiled and nodded. “My first suspect is Commander Frederick Seifert, formerly of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.”

  The man I had used as a hostage to rob the bank. It remains the worst thing I have ever done and he was entitled to exact his revenge in any way he chose short of murder.

  “I’m familiar with Commander Seifert.”

  “Is he your source?”

  “You tell me,” said Julia, fighting back a yawn.

  “I don’t think so. The feebs let him retire shortly after…you know.”

  “After you robbed his bank.”

  “Yes. But Seifert’s the old fashioned type. I don’t see him trying to settle a score with a male rival by squealing to a girl reporter.”

  Julia looked at her wristwatch. “I’m late for an appointment.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Who makes an appointment for ten p.m.?

  “Then I’ll make this brief. My second suspect, the one I assumed was dead, is Leonid Vitinov.” No reply from Miss Julia.

  “Stupid to write him off now that I think of it. My Control Officer in Berlin released Leonid to the NKVD after we exposed him as a Soviet double, thinking Beria would purge him. But Leonid was a fluent English-speaker with first-hand knowledge of American intelligence. Why croak the guy?”

  “And this Leonid hates you because you exposed him?”

  “Yes. And beat the crap out of him.” Pause. “And stole his wife.” Pause. “Who I later killed.”

  Julia put her hand to her mouth in shock.

  “It was a terrible accident,” I said, “but you can see how Leonid might not be too open-minded on that score.”

  “Hal, all I know is I was contacted by a man from the Committee for Free and Fair Elections.”

  “Uh huh. And the man who contacted you was short, suave and smoked expensive Turkish cigarettes.”

  Julia nodded, reluctantly.

  “I suppose Leonid gave you some Federal Reserve Police contacts to corroborate his story.”