The Twentieth Day of January

by Ted Allbeury

  CHAPTER 16

  Nolan sat in the unmarked van with the headphones on and the tape-recorder plugged in. He was listening intently, his hand half up to stop Langfeld from speaking.

  Then he slid off the earphones and leaned back.

  “That’s it. Katin has called him to a meeting at the UN. Take the pick-up team and lift him, when he gets to Mitchell Place. Take him to King’s Point and isolate him. I’ll be there when we’ve gone through his apartment.”

  “OK, Mr. Nolan.”

  He gave his team careful instructions. There was a man on the fire-escape already and the rest of the team were waiting for Kleppe to come out. They had monitored incoming and outgoing calls and the message from the UN building had been what they were waiting for.

  Nolan wanted to go in the apartment before Kleppe was alerted and that was best done while he was out. If they tried to enter the apartment while he was there he could be phoning his influential friends.

  At last Kleppe was at the entrance hall of the apartment block. They could see him talking with one of the security guards. He was laughing as he turned to come through the glass doors. He stood on the wide steps for a moment, looking up and down the street and then he turned left and walked slowly down Sutton Place towards the UN. Langfeld’s men called the car and it turned round to follow Kleppe.

  Nolan showed his card to the security men in the reception area of the apartment block and left one of his team with them. He guessed that they had been well greased by Kleppe and he warned them not to attempt to use the phone. Nolan’s man would take all calls.

  The search team piled into the lift with Nolan, their leather cases heaped in one corner. There was no hurry because Kleppe would not be coming back. He would be going straight to the safe-house.

  The locksmith tested the two door locks for ten minutes before he turned to Nolan.

  “I can’t open the second one without breaking the alarm circuit. There’s a whole loom of wires spread through the door.”

  “OK. Break the circuit.”

  There were no ringing bells or flashing lights but Nolan guessed that the signal was telling its story somewhere. He went to the telephone on the ornate desk and called his men in the foyer.

  “We’ve had to break the alarm circuit. You’ll be getting visitors soon. If they’re from NYPD take their badge numbers and check their ID cards. Refer them to the downtown office. No explanations, just identify yourselves. If it’s a captain refer him to the Commissioner. He knows about the search warrant. But no explanations. Understood?”

  “OK, Mr. Nolan.”

  Nolan’s team were already at work in pairs. One pair searched for electronics, a pair looked for documents and a pair checked the structure for cavities. One of each pair recorded comments into a portable cassette machine as they worked, and a photographer recorded the search. None of them had been told what they were looking for.

  When the structure team came down from the attic they were shaking water from the three plastic bags and they had a small metal case. They laid them all on the long table. Nolan watched them unseal the plastic bags and shake out the shiny black notebooks. They opened one and after glancing at it briefly they passed it to Nolan.

  “Looks like the Dead Sea Scrolls, chief.”

  The radio team identified the contents of the metal case. They were spare circuit boards for the high-speed transmitter.

  It was midnight before the search was complete and they took away radio equipment for evaluation, and piles of documents and correspondence. A reserve team re-checked the structure against the taped commentary with an electronic heat probe. They found nothing new.

  Nolan went down to the lobby to check that the station wagon was there. It was. So was an irate police lieutenant and two sergeants. The lieutenant turned to look at Nolan.

  “Are you Nolan?”

  “Yes, lieutenant, I’m Nolan.”

  “I’m taking you down to the precinct.”

  At that point the first load of equipment and documents came down in the lift and the lieutenant verged on apoplexy.

  “None of that goddamn stuff leaves these premises.”

  His angry eyes searched Nolan’s face for surrender, and not finding it, he called on his troops. Pointing to his two sergeants, he said, “If they make one move to take away that stuff, book ’em and take ’em to Riker.” He looked back at Nolan in bristling challenge.

  “What’s your name, lieutenant?”

  “Don’t you back-answer a police officer in the course of his duty or you’ll be down the precinct in two minutes flat.”

  Nolan looked at him calmly. “Maybe we’d better do that, lieutenant. He reached for the warrant in his inside pocket and the lieutenant’s hand flashed out. It stopped in mid-air as if it were set in concrete and as Nolan held it he said, “I have a search-warrant including right of removal. My men have already told you that we are CIA. If you still want to play games there will be an official inquiry as to why you were prepared to ignore the documentation. And don’t try to manhandle me again.”

  The flushed face glanced at Nolan but the aggressive arm was lowered. “Where’s the warrant?”

  Nolan removed it, folded, from his pocket and handed it to the lieutenant who unfolded it and read it slowly, his lips silently mouthing the words. When he was finished he held it in his hand as Nolan put out his hand for it. “Not so quick, mister. I’ll keep this. We’ll check it out.”

  Nolan turned to the driver of the car who was standing just outside the open main doors. “Use the car radio, Finnegan, and call the Commissioner. Ask him to come down here right away.”

  As the driver turned to the door the lieutenant shouted to his men. “Stop him. Stop the bastard.”

  “Hold it.”

  Nolan’s voice echoed in the tiled lobby and as the lieutenant turned he saw Nolan’s hand and the gun. The two sergeants froze. Apart from the gun they would have taken a cut in pension rather than miss this scenario.

  The lieutenant stood like some reconstructed cave-man, with red bulging eyes and prognathous jaw.

  “By Jesus, you’re gonna be right in the shit, mister. Obstructing an officer in the course of his duty. Threatening with a firearm, grand larceny, and God knows what.” His mouth was opening and closing silently, desperately searching for further offences.

  Nolan kept his eyes on the lieutenant and said to the driver. “Call the Commissioner.”

  Neanderthal man had second thoughts.

  “No need to involve the Commissioner, Nolan. He’s a busy man. Just you and your men get your arses out of this building fast. We’ll seal the apartment doors.”

  “They’re double-locked, lieutenant, but seal them if it makes you happy. I need the warrant.” And he held out his hand.

  There was only a moment’s hesitation before it was handed over. The lieutenant and his men watched as the station-wagon was loaded. They stood looking through the glass doors as the car pulled out into the traffic. Nolan wondered how much the lieutenant’s rip-off had been. It must have been substantial for him to take those risks.

  When the material had been unloaded at the safe-house at Central Park, Nolan walked back to the car. He was asleep before they reached the expressway and the driver shook him awake in the doorway of the house facing the sea. There was a glint of light on the sea from the false dawn, and he could see lights on some of the small craft moored in the bay. The week-end sailors who defied the winter weather.

  He turned to look at the house. There were lights in every window and all the windows were barred. He walked slowly to the front door and the duty officer handed him a clutch of messages.

  “Where’s Kleppe?”

  “In the basement, sir.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Your men are still here. They’re in the canteen. I gather he put up a struggle at first but after that he’s been tame enough. He won’t talk.”

  “I said he wasn’t to be interrogated until I came.�
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  “I meant about food or coffee, sir. He’s been left strictly alone.”

  “Did he talk on the way here?”

  “I understand not, sir.”

  Nolan slid off his coat and slung it over a chair.

  “Take me down to Kleppe.”

  They walked down the stone steps to the basement. There were three rooms clad with steel plate and with heavy metal doors. Kleppe was in the last one and Nolan waited as the key was turned and the door opened. He slid the bleeper into his pocket and walked in.

  There was a small table bolted to the cement floor and two light wooden chairs. Along the facing wall was a concrete slab with a folded sleeping bag. Kleppe sat at the table, hunched up and grim-faced, a lock of hair hanging over his forehead. Nolan sat down opposite him and looked at his face. It was a typical Slav face, dark skinned, high cheek-bones and a massive jaw. Kleppe’s dark eyes looked back at him defiantly and uncurious.

  There was no response of any kind. Nolan saw no point in playing formalities.

  “We’ve been searching your apartment, Mr. Kleppe. We’ve found the radio, and the papers are being sorted now, including the notebooks from the cold-water tank. Do you want to talk about them now or later?”

  Kleppe sat silent and unmoving.

  “Kleppe, you can choose which way you want it. We can talk like this now or I’ll get the medical orderly to give you a shot. You’ll talk then.”

  Kleppe spat, and the saliva was warm on Nolan’s face. He wiped the saliva away slowly with his hand and then pressed the bleeper.

  Nolan saw the small remote-control video camera mounted in the ceiling slowly scan the area of the table and then the walls of the room. A few seconds later the door opened and he walked out and on up to the entrance hall. He slowly mounted the wide staircase that led to the first floor. They had given him a temporary office facing the stairway and as he pulled up a chair to the desk he pressed the button in the panel beside the telephone. A young man came at the double.

  “Sir?”

  “Ask the medic to come and see me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I’d like a bowl of soup and a banana sandwich.”

  There was a hesitant half-smile. “What’s a banana sandwich, sir?”

  “You mash up a banana with sugar and make a sandwich.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The medical officer wore a blue denim shirt and Levi’s. He looked as if he had just been woken up. He put his black bag at his feet.

  “Fowler, Mr. Nolan. You wanted me?”

  “I want something to keep me awake for about three hours.”

  “What are you going to be doing in that time?”

  “Interrogating.”

  “OK.”

  “And I want the guy in the basement to keep talking—the truth.”

  “Is he antagonistic?”

  “Very.”

  “We’ve got a choice; there’s a pentothal variant that makes talking and response to questioning certain, but the subject can wander far away from what you’re talking about and the guy can take hours to get back. It’s a bit like unleashing a flood of words. They’ll all be there but may be irrelevant. Or there’s a new thing, TH 94. That gives a lower compulsion to talk. He’ll talk but you’ve got to pull it out of his unconscious. The user reports we have had so far indicate high truth factors but slower commentary. You have to go a long way down.”

  “Let’s try the TH 94.”

  “OK. I’ll give you your shot first. I’ll need a pulse count and a lung check.”

  The young man put his fingers remarkably lightly on the artery at Nolan’s wrist and closed his eyes. It was a high count and he did it again to make sure. He was used to abnormal counts. Adrenalin glands were generally working overtime when he was called in. He put the stethoscope probe up to his mouth and breathed on it. He went carefully over Nolan’s chest and back. There were no lung problems, and he folded up the stethoscope and knelt down to his bag. He stood up and put two pills on the desk.

  “Take those, without liquid, then they’ll work faster.”

  “Is it OK to eat afterwards?”

  “Yes. It’ll help. Where’s the guy for the TH 94?”

  “In the basement.”

  “It will take half an hour to start working. Shall I go down now and give him his jab?”

  “No, I want to be there. I’ll give you a buzz when I’m ready.”

  He pulled across the bundle of reports as he waited. There was a brief report on the electronics at Kleppe’s place.

  Prelim: Electronics.

  Extensive anti-bugging frame covers all rooms and doors. Similar to MAJOR MK IX.

  Miniaturized high-power transceiver. Modified SOVTORG model 30. Four crystal fixed frequencies. Component analysis indicates extensive use, approx. nineteen repeat nineteen hours. Cameras Polaroid SX 70. Olympus OM2 with macro lens 55mm and copying device and Recordata back. Signed Harrap and Simon.

  The soup and sandwich came, and he read the Moscow embassy report as he ate.

  “Your 97016 stop subject Tcharkova, Halenka aged twenty-seven repeat twenty-seven with child (female) aged seven stop well-known painter acceptable to regime stop current address Minskaya Ulitsa 17 repeat 17 Moscow stop several successful exhibitions stop married stop photographs to follow message ends 147011.”

  He pressed the red button and when the medical orderly came they walked down to the entrance hall and collected the duty guard.

  Kleppe was still sitting at the table, as if he had never moved since Nolan had left him.

  The young man checked Kleppe’s pulse and then undid the cuff-links on Kleppe’s right arm. He pushed back the arm of his jacket, and the shirt, swabbed the inside of his forearm and fetched up a vein with pressure from his thumb. The hypodermic looked more like a veterinary size to Nolan and he watched as the needle slid in. It took a long time for the plunger to empty the syringe. Kleppe watched the clear liquid empty into his arm. The puncture was swabbed and Nolan used the bleeper and he and the medical orderly walked back together. At Nolan’s office door the young man looked at his watch.

  “He’ll be ready to go at five o’clock. You’ll get four hours out of him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nolan walked across the causeway at the end of the lane to the edge of the water. There was a watery sun now on the horizon, sending fingers of light to the edges of the dark clouds and across the choppy water. It reminded Nolan of a biblical engraving in his room when he was a child; in flowing script the title was “Easter Morning.”

  A 36-foot Hatteras was making its third attempt to tie-up at the jetty on the far side of the Bay. It came in sideways-on and an offshore wind held it too far away for a rope to be thrown. It came round again and the penny had dropped. It went in nose on and when the for’ard rope was fast the engines brought its stern round. A skein of geese flew overhead from the reed beds behind where he was sitting. And there were three tugs and a navy patrol boat coming under the Throgs Neck Bridge. On the bridge itself the commuters still had the lights on on their cars, and there was a long build-up for the toll booths.

  Nolan, like most other senior operators in CIA, was well aware that he lived in a naughty world. It was that that justified much of what he did, or ordered to be done. Investigating committees frequently applied the word “horrific” to some of their operations, but the CIA put that down to the luxury of a loftiness that only the CIA’s work made possible. What the CIA did was generally all too routine, and the majority of their operations were counter-punching, resisting attacks rather than attacking. Nolan and the top echelons at Langley were used to their role, and the extravagant outrage of journalists and politicians. From time to time when depressions and storms rolled across from Capitol Hill there would be the pointed question asked of who would “preserve, protect, and defend” if the CIA took the Boy Scout oath.

  But this operation seemed as unreal to Nolan as other operations seemed outside the intelligence c
ommunity. After they had proved that the President-Elect was a reed that bent to Soviet winds, what then? What happened? Every solution spelt disaster. Deep depression for millions of people, a hundred McCarthys, all the words of 1776 made nought, the checks and balances exposed as a dream, and an icy tension between the two most powerful nations in the world. And the final excuse for the buttons to be pressed to turn a grinding ache into a final amputation. It was like working diligently to prove you had cancer. Whatever happened was going to be bad for America.

  They all knew that there was no easy solution. But he knew, and they would know, that there was an easy solution. It had lurked on the periphery of his mind for two weeks like a hungry animal at the edge of a wood.

  He stood up, brushed the seat of his trousers and walked briskly back to the house to expunge the lurking thought.

  Nolan looked at Kleppe’s face as the door clanged to behind him. There was something wrong with Kleppe’s left eye and that side of his face. It was like a man looked who had had a stroke. A kind of paralysis. He sat down facing Kleppe, and spoke calmly and quietly.

  “You’re Victor Kleppe. A Russian?”

  The head shook vigorously and the mouth distorted with effort.

  “Armenian. Not Russian.” The face contorted as he laughed.

  “You’re an officer in the KGB?”

  The dark eyes flickered but he nodded as his mouth worked without making a sound.

  “Andrew Dempsey is one of your men?”

  “’Merican, ’Merican.”

  “He’s an American?”

  Kleppe nodded energetically.

  “He’s a Communist. He works for you?”

  Kleppe put his hand to his lips as if to make them work. “Yes.”

  “He controls Powell?”

  He nodded. “Old friends, schooldays.”

  “You get your instructions from Moscow?”

  “Moskva and United Nations.”

  “Moscow wanted Powell to be Governor and then President?”

  “Money and influence. The networks.”