The Twentieth Day of January

by Ted Allbeury

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “A problem in New York, comrade.”

  “What problem?”

  “They have been inside your apartment in New York.”

  “Who has?”

  “There is no information on that.”

  “How do we know this?”

  “The listening post at the Consulate-General reported that the activator in your telephone registered.”

  “Oh for God’s sake. Those bloody electronics are never reliable. Activator switches are always jamming on or off.”

  “They think the telephone was lifted and put back. There are two registrations with a gap of several seconds.”

  “Any recorded noise or speech?”

  “No, comrade. But they want you to go back immediately. They are holding the London plane for you. Major Gelov is on his way to the airport to meet you.”

  Kleppe sighed and stood up. He was at Sheremetyevo an hour later. Gelov was tense and agitated.

  “They have booked you on a flight to Canada, comrade, and suggest you go on by car to New York. Contact Washington immediately with your situation.”

  CHAPTER 7

  MacKay contacted the CIA man at the US Consulate at Museumsplein. There was a long message from Nolan giving an estimate of Kleppe’s trade in diamonds and urging him to check for positive evidence of smuggling. It was also requested that he identified himself as CIA, not SIS.

  He walked slowly from the Consulate to the Amsterdam police headquarters at Elandsgracht, and asked for Inspector van Rijk.

  The Dutch and their police have a civilized tolerance about the facts of life. They do not find it incredible that men want to sleep with pretty girls, or that pretty girls might be willing to allow all sorts of exciting privileges in return for guilders, dollars, marks and yen. Or that there may be those in the community who prefer their sex in books and films. As long as everything is kept neat and tidy, and on the administrative railway-lines, the vagaries of the human libido are accepted as realities.

  But in two areas their fuses are shorter. One of the areas is hard drugs, and the other is diamonds. The special diamond squad in Amsterdam is constantly aware that a market’s reputation, which has taken a dozen decades to build, can be destroyed in a week. There’s not much goes on in the Amsterdam diamond market that the squad is not aware of. It doesn’t always do something about what it knows, because informers and sources might be identified that way; and there are more ways than one of skinning these particular cats. So when MacKay pushed his piece of paper across the Inspector’s desk he guessed that something very near honesty would be the best policy. A question or two would decide how near.

  Inspector van Rijk pushed the paper back across the desk.

  “Yes. They’re both big dealers. Both have international dealings.”

  “If you particularly wanted Russian diamonds, which one would you go to?”

  Van Rijk half-smiled and patted the ball back.

  “You could get them from either.”

  “At short notice?”

  Van Rijk smiled openly.

  “Mr. MacKay, these men deal in millions of dollars’ worth of stones every year. They can supply or buy anything, just so long as it exists.”

  MacKay realized that it was going to have to be something very close to the truth that cracked this nut.

  “Do you understand what I mean, Inspector, if I talk about ‘laundering’ money?”

  “Yes. And to save you the question, yes, people do ‘launder’ diamonds from Russia.”

  “Which of these two would be most likely to ‘launder’ diamonds from Russia?”

  “Mijnheer van Elst.”

  “Why him?”

  “Because the other one is a Communist and he knows he would be suspect.”

  “Is it illegal?”

  “Indeed not. A man brings you Russian diamonds, you exchange them for South African diamonds to a slightly less value. There is no crime there.”

  “So you have no objection to this sort of trade?”

  “On the contrary, we have every objection. Particularly when they come from the Soviet Union. The official Soviet diamond dealing keeps absolutely to the rules. There is no need to ‘launder.’ But Soviet diamonds do come in unofficially and we object strongly. They can be used to depress the market, and we also have security objections.”

  It was going to be almost the whole truth, so MacKay plunged in.

  “We suspect a New York diamond dealer of working for the Soviets. We think he could be exchanging illicit Soviet diamonds for others. He has imported no Soviet diamonds so far as we know in the last ten years.”

  Van Rijk shrugged.

  “You mean Kleppe?”

  MacKay sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “You know about him, then?”

  Van Rijk stood up and walked over to a row of metal filing cabinets. He sorted through one of the drawers and pulled out two files. One thick one, and one which was almost empty. He sat down at the table and opened the thin file. There were three typewritten sheets and van Rijk read them through silently and slowly. Then he looked up at MacKay.

  “I can’t show you these but I can tell you the parts that will interest you. But I shall need a request from Washington.”

  “I’ll get CIA Langley to speak to you immediately.” Van Rijk shook his head slowly.

  “It would have to be a request from the State Department to Foreign Affairs in the Hague.”

  MacKay squinted sideways at van Rijk.

  “I guess I’ll have to pass, Inspector. It would take days and I haven’t got days.”

  He knew from the look on van Rijk’s face that the Dutchman didn’t believe his story. The Inspector sat there silently, waiting for him to continue. When he saw that the CIA man had nothing to add, van Rijk said, “Of course I could show you Kleppe’s file. He’s an American national.”

  MacKay waited silently as the policeman opened the thick file and leafed through the pages. Van Rijk turned down the corners of several sheets and then looked up at him.

  “It’s in Dutch so I’ll read it out for you. OK?”

  “Fine.”

  “Kleppe comes over here twice a year. He books in for two days at the Hilton. Pays the bill but he doesn’t stay there. He shacks up with a girl, Marijke van Aker. Very pretty, about twenty-eight, paints pot-boilers to be sold in Düsseldorf and Essen. He stays a week, usually. The first full day he buys a few stones at a number of merchant houses. Totals about ten thousand dollars. The second or sometimes the third day the girl goes to the Hague to a house on Groot Hertoginnelelaan.”

  Van Rijk looked up smiling.

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the best whore-house in the Hague. Embassy people, politicians and film-stars. And very expensive. You don’t come out for less than a hundred and sixty guilders.”

  MacKay tried to work it out in dollars but stopped calculating because he knew he would never remember the street. And van Rijk was going on.

  “The girl goes to one of the private rooms and is visited by a man from the Soviet Embassy. Generally the same man. I can give you his name. He’s known KGB. He stays for an hour usually and he hands over a package which she brings back to Kleppe in Amsterdam.”

  Van Rijk stopped. His eyebrows raised in query.

  “So ask me.”

  “Does he screw her?”

  Van Rijk laughed. “Americans. Yes, he screws her, but that wasn’t the question I had in mind. I thought you might wonder how we know about the handover.”

  “I’d guess you filmed it.”

  “Right. Back to our mutual friend Kleppe. He exchanges the Russian stones for South Africans and Venezuelans. Van Elst filters the Russian stones through the market to other dealers and some as direct house-sales. Wholesale value of average purchase by Kleppe each trip about half a million dollars. Retail value about double, unmade-up. Five times that value as jewellery.
Four months ago Kleppe made an extra trip. Using an Egyptian passport under the name Ali Sharaf he left Schipol on the Aeroflot flight to Moscow. He came back eight days later. Came back here to Amsterdam and took a flight the following day to New York via London. He neither bought nor sold diamonds.” He pursed his lips. “That’s about it, my friend.”

  “Thanks. Can you give me the departure and return dates of the trip to Moscow and the flight numbers?”

  “Sure.”

  Van Rijk picked up a ball-point and, checking the file, wrote out the details on his pad, tore off the page and slid it across his desk to MacKay, who folded it twice and put it in his pocket.

  “Can I invite you to a meal, Inspector?”

  “Afraid not. We’ve got the English here tonight playing Ajax and I’ve got a ticket. Maybe next time, eh?”

  They had fixed him an office-bedroom at the Consulate, and he sat down at the small desk and wrote out his report to Nolan. He ate while it was being encoded and transmitted, and then checked out the girl’s address in the telephone book.

  It was an hour later when Nolan came through on the telephone.

  “This report, Jimmy. Would your contact make a notarized statement?”

  “They’d want a request from State.”

  “Why isn’t Langley enough?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s their rules and regulations.”

  “Right. You’re staying at the Consulate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get them to transmit me photostats of those passenger lists. Both outward and return flights. OK?”

  “OK.”

  In Washington, the Netherlands ambassador was at the British embassy, so was Morton Harper. And medals were being worn to celebrate the anniversary of the declaration of independence by some part of the former empire. Harper and His Excellency van Laan had been allowed to retreat to the privacy of a spare bedroom. They sat like uneasy children on the spring beds, Harper with his hands in his pockets, and the ambassador with his head on one side expectantly.

  “You remember, Your Excellency, that your people approached me a few months ago regarding one of your nationals in Lansing. It was thought that he might be concerned with a drug line?”

  “Let’s not be too formal, Morton. I remember very well you gave me some unlikely story about needing the permission of the Secretary of State.”

  Harper barely smiled. “I need some information most urgently from your police in Amsterdam. Can we trade?”

  “What’s the information about?”

  “A United States citizen named Kleppe who deals in diamonds. We think he’s been ‘laundering’ stones for the Russians.”

  “I’ll be flying to the Hague at the week-end. I’ll bring anything we have back for you.”

  Harper shifted his huge bulk uneasily.

  “I need it in hours. There’s more to it than it sounds.”

  Van Laan’s tongue explored a hollow tooth as he looked at Harper.

  “I’ll go back to the embassy now. Just let me say my farewells to H.E.”

  “The Dutchman in Lansing is working for us. He’s part of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics team. I can arrange for you to interview him, if you want.”

  His Excellency stood up. “Thank you. We’ll talk about it some time. Meantime let me say ‘au revoir’ to Joe.”

  Even with total co-operation it was seven o’clock next morning before Nolan was opening the brown envelope. It contained a single sheet of 6″ × 4″ microfiche and he walked over to the reader in the coding annexe and sat reading page after page of the translations of the files on Kleppe and van Elst. He had made a list of the pages that he wanted in hard copy and walked back to his office.

  He phoned through to Harper and told him that he was moving his group, except the two surveillance teams, down to the house at Hartford. They had evidence now of criminal activity by Kleppe and they had established Kleppe’s contact with Dempsey. Both in New York and way back in the Paris days.

  A US Navy helicopter took Nolan and his team from Floyd Bennett Field to Hartford. The Brainard Airport buildings were just visible from the house and there was an entry to the southbound carriageway of Highway 95 a mile from the main gates. The house had been built at the turn of the century for the retiring partner of one of Boston’s leading law firms, and stood in its own five acres of woods and landscaped gardens. It was secluded and ideal for the operation.

  Nolan checked the Hartford files that covered Powell and his associates. There was very little useful material but there was one lead, Gary Baker, who worked as an investigator in the Hartford District Attorney’s office. He had been a CIA contact for a number of years and Langley had helped him from time to time in return. Nolan had met him a couple of times in the days when he had run the CIA’s New York office. Nolan telephoned him and fixed to see him after lunch at the DA’s office.

  Gary Baker had the crew-cut look of a man who spent most of his time outdoors, and he gave Nolan an amiable welcome.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m doing a bit of background checking on Andrew Dempsey. I wondered if you’d got anything on file.”

  “Nothing that would interest you. He’s clean as far as we’re concerned. Anyway, he’s a Washington responsibility now. It was in this morning’s papers. He’s been appointed Powell’s Chief of Staff.”

  “Anything on Powell?”

  Baker looked up quickly. “Like what?”

  “Like anything you’ve got.”

  “Local boy. Lived here all his life. His old man teaches at Yale. He was a lecturer there himself for a time, then he set up shop in town here as a business consultant.”

  “Successful?”

  Baker pursed his lips and shrugged.

  “In a small way. He was barely established before he went into politics.”

  “How did he get started?”

  “He just came out of nowhere. He was one of six or seven possible runners. A complete outsider, then—boom—he was the Republican candidate.”

  “How did he make it?”

  “Nobody knows. There was the strike. That put him on the map locally, and a week after that he was the candidate. The GOP has had the State governorship in its pocket since Adam and Eve, so like all the others, the candidate became the Governor.”

  “What was the strike?”

  “It was about five years ago at Haig Electronics, a big plant on the other side of the river. Six thousand workers laid off. Most of their stuff goes to Detroit for the car plants. There were contingency delivery penalties, and Haig’s was very near to going down the pike. Powell was made arbitrator. Settled it in three days and that was it, I reckon. Fame and fortune.”

  “Who appointed him?”

  “Old man Haig agreed and the union local agreed.”

  “Who was the union negotiator?”

  “Siwecki, Tadeusz Siwecki. He was plant negotiator.”

  “How come you remember so much, Gary? It’s a long time ago.”

  Baker looked across at the window, silent for several minutes. Then he turned back to look at Nolan.

  “For the same reason you asked the question, I guess.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It stank. It was so convenient.”

  “Did you do any checking.”

  “I started. Then I stopped.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “I got the message from on high.”

  “How high?”

  “From the State Attorney’s office.”

  “Did you find anything before you stopped?”

  “There had been some stock dealing a week before the strike. Some more afterwards. That’s about all.”

  “Was it significant?”

  “God knows. I didn’t have time to check.”

  “Can I see your files on it?”

  Baker smiled grimly. “There ain’t no files, old friend.” He reached for his cigarettes. “If you want to know more I can introduce you to a girl
who might know.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name’s Angelo. She works in this office as the DA’s secretary. She gets screwed by a guy named Oakes.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Senior partner in a successful downtown law firm. Got to be successful about the same time as Powell. Specializes in trust administration and tax. He’s a stockholder in Haig’s. Since the strike.”

  “What’s the girl like?”

  “Gorgeous, but don’t be fooled by the big, melting brown eyes. She’s a tough baby. I know she squeezed Oakes for a lot of bread some years back for an abortion. There was talk that he had to go out of town to raise the cash so that it didn’t show in his bank account. But he’s still screwing her so she must be good at it.”

  “What’s her attitude to him?”

  “I’d guess it was a money relationship. There’s at least two other guys screwing her regularly. One’s an out-of-town salesman, the other’s a junior partner in a law firm in New Haven.”

  “I’d like to meet her this evening, if you could fix it.”

  “OK. There’s a new bar called Pinto’s Place two blocks down from me. Soft lights and a piano sort of dump. Say seven?”

  “OK. But you leave when you’ve had a drink. I don’t want any witnesses.”

  “OK, pal. But watch it, she’s not dumb. What are you, for the introductions?”

  “IRS.”

  Haig agreed on the telephone to see him at four but probed about the purpose of his visit. Nolan told him that he was from the Justice Department looking into a union problem.

  Nolan was shown straight into Haig’s office where Haig himself stood waiting. He waved Nolan to a chair after shaking hands, and retreated behind his massive desk.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Nolan?”

  “I’d like to go back to a strike you had here about six or seven years ago. The strike that Logan Powell settled.”

  Haig tapped a metal letter-opener on his blotter, waiting for the first question. Nolan sensed that he was already suspicious.

  “Can you give me the name of the union official who represented your work force?”

  “Not off-hand, I couldn’t.”