Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “And I am large. I blunder, like a blunderbuss, right?”

  “I would say that once seen, Herb, you would never be forgotten.”

  “This I know, and I use it to advantage many times. We must not be seen by certain people. It would also be a bonus if others did not identify us. You understand?”

  Passau nodded.

  “Okay, then first I put you on parole. You stay here, in this car. You are like three wise monkeys, okay?”

  “You have my word. In any case, I’m tired.”

  “Just wait, and trust me. I must first buy one or two essentials. I did not even bring my toothbrush. My bag was in the trail car, so it’s probably shot full of holes by now, and we have not much time, Lou. I’d say about an hour before they alert people that we might be here at JFK. So, I will not be long. Stay.” This last as though to a faithful dog.

  Herbie trundled off across the parking lot and took the elevator down, into the Pan Am Terminal. Nobody knew that, in a matter of months, Pan Am would cease to exist: a victim of global financial chaos. In the elevator he tried to smarten himself up. He also put on a pair or spectacles made of clear glass. Not much of a disguise, but if he really concentrated on his walk he might just get away with it.

  First he scouted for wheelchairs. There are always wheelchairs in airport terminals if you know where to look. People who are sent to assist travelers tend to dump the chairs once they have collected their gratuity. They like to disappear for an hour or so for a smoke or a cold beer. The chairs are often left unattended for some time. It took Herbie four minutes, and, once he had found a chair, he headed straight for the Budget Car Rental desk and explained that he had a sick elderly gentleman who he could not get down to the car rental area. Could they bring a car up for him if he did the paperwork here and now? As he spoke, Herbie felt in his left inside breast pocket, the one containing paperwork, credit cards, passport, everything he’d need, in the name of Buckerbee. In other pockets he had I.D. and all the trimmings in his own name, and the names of a Professor Spinne, and Gordon Lonsdale. This last had been a piece of humor only Kruger would have the nerve to use. Normally you would not put the name of a notorious Cold War Russian spy on extra paper.

  The Buckerbee wallet included a Platinum Amex card which, though she would never in a thousand years show it, impressed the girl at Budget. Car rental agents are rarely interested in faces. They look at I.D. and the kind of paper that gets pushed over the desk at them.

  Mr. Buckerbee had German paper: Federal Republic paper, naturally, now the D.D.R. was definitely dead.

  He filled in the forms; the Amex card was given the thumbs up from the electronic telephone swipe, and the girl said a silver-gray Cutlass Supreme would be outside the arrivals terminal in fifteen minutes.

  It was, and so was Herbie, pushing the wheelchair into which he had loaded Passau. People actually helped to get the Maestro into the car. Later, not one of them came forward. Herbie had made Louis Passau put on his coat and wrap his mouth in the silk scarf he had been carrying in the pocket. “Play almost dead, Lou,” he had advised.

  “I am almost dead.”

  “So you don’t need to do one hell of a lot of acting. Good.”

  They drove back along the expressway and headed south. Hours later, at a little after three in the morning, a touch north of Washington, D.C., they pulled up, for the second time that night, at a twenty-four-hour gas station.

  After Herbie had filled the car he used the telephone booth: dialing an 804 number straight out of his memory bank. It rang ten times before a sleepy, slightly disgruntled, voice answered.

  “You remember the night they invented champagne?” Herbie asked.

  “Jee-ru-sa-lem, Her—”

  “Name’s Cross, sir. James Cross, as in a church, huh?”

  Naldo Railton, now in his sere and yellow years—seventy-four to be exact—felt his memory retreat across the years to the last time he had spoken like this to Herbie. Naldo, which was a nickname for Donald, was the man who took over a young spindly German boy, an OSS asset in Berlin just after World War Two, and helped turn him into a member of the British Secret Intelligence Service. The lanky boy was Eberhardt Lukas Kruger.

  Now, long retired and living out placid golden years with his wife, Barbara, in the shadow of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Naldo’s heart leaped at the sound of Big Herbie Kruger’s voice, and his mind ran an endless stream of memories.

  “Of course, Mr. Cross. I remember you well. What can I do?”

  “You heard anything yet?”

  “About what?”

  “Good, you haven’t heard anything yet. I need to meet.”

  “Come here. You’ve got the address.”

  “Not the wisest plan in the world, sir. No.”

  “Ah.” There was a long pause, during which Herbie strained to catch any clicks, hums or power being drawn off the line which might indicate a wiretap—even though he knew it was unlikely he would detect anything. It was equally unlikely that anyone in New York or Washington had figured he was, as they said in old hard-boiled dick novels, on the lam with Lou Passau. He was banking on it.

  “How long?” Naldo asked.

  “Three hours tops.”

  “Right. Town called Ruckersville, to our north. I’ll be parked in a white Lincoln. Plates are ONE 391. You’ll just have to drive through the place to see me. Got it, Mr. Cross?”

  “See you,” Herb smiled, then, as an afterthought, added, “Don’t grow anything from your backside.”

  Passau slept, and, half an hour later, Kruger pulled in to an all-night diner, taking steaming Styrofoam beakers of coffee out to the Cutlass and gently waking his passenger.

  “We arrived somewhere?” Passau stretched, made sucking movements with his mouth, signifying that it felt like a parrot’s cage.

  “Soon. I wanted you awake. Coffee. Didn’t know if you took sugar.”

  “Sure I take sugar, one of an old man’s vices.”

  Herbie tore the edges off three packets and dumped them into the beaker, stirring it with the little straw they give you in places like that in lieu of a spoon.

  “How much longer?” Passau asked.

  “Couple of hours before we meet a friend, then heaven knows. I need a place to squirrel you away. Out of sight and mind. So we can talk. Who tried to kill you, Lou?” The final question fired from the lip quickly to catch the old man off guard.

  “Kill me? Oh, those people with guns? I have an idea, but it’s a long story.”

  “You’re going to be good with me, Lou, aren’t you? You’ll talk. Tell all …”

  “With no porky pies? Maybe. Depends on what you want. I’ll give you all the German stuff, but it’ll take time. Stretchfield got most of it right in his book, but then he tried to blackmail me. To understand, you have to learn about me, Herb. You have to know why it all happened.”

  Kruger gave a big mock sigh, sipped the scalding coffee, and said, “I’m more interested in the last five years, Lou. More concerned about Mother Russia. Very interested in the last few months, to be honest.”

  There was a long silence. Passau contemplated his coffee, and, for a moment, Herbie tensed, thinking the old man might hurl it in his face. Instead, Passau spoke very quietly, “If you want all that, it might take weeks. You see, Herbie, you would have to travel with me through this whole damned and bloody century, because—I tell you already—you have to understand why.”

  “I don’t mind as long as we reach the end of the journey together.”

  “My last confession, eh? Give me extreme unction? Cleanse me from my sins? And me a good Jewish boy.”

  “However you want to think of it, Lou. I’ll hold your hand, and go the whole way, if that’s what you want. I’ll even try and do a deal for you. Get you out and into safety.”

  “At my age?” A second long pause. “There must be music. I can’t do it without being able to at least listen to music.”

  “I’ll fix it.” Herbie took an
other sip. “We have a deal?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We’re two old spies, Louis. A couple of dodos left over from the big freeze. Soon we might be extinct. At least we can leave our story. Others could profit, because the people we both used to work for will still go on. They’ll go on with it until the end of time, whatever they say—death of communism, death of fascism, death of all isms. You know it, don’t you?”

  Passau nodded, finished his coffee and handed back the beaker. “Let’s get going before my memory gives out altogether.” He seemed very still, very calm and, in a way, very young. “I have a tale that’ll take the wax out of your ears, Herb. The genuine article. The laughter and tears. The soundless wailing, the silent withering of autumn flowers.”

  Herbie recognized the last sentence as a quotation, but he could not catch where it came from.

  “You think you know from spies, Herb. You know from nothing till you hear what happened to me.”

  Herbie nodded, then turned on the ignition again, and put the Cutlass in drive.

  (4)

  SINCE THEIR RETIREMENT TO the United States, Naldo and Barbara Railton had made many friends. One of them was an English widow, an American citizen because of her former marriage to a wealthy oilman. Her name was Gwyneth O’Brien and—as she was the first to admit—she lived in what she called “the back of beyond,” in a pleasant house built at the head of a small cleft in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The nearest hamlet was some nine miles away, and her friends, for whom she threw legendary and lavish dinner parties, always had to travel long distances to reach her. They did not say she lived in “the back of beyond.” They said things like, “Gwyneth lives to hell and gone,” or “Love Gwyneth’s parties, but they should carry health warnings saying, how the heck d’you drive forty miles after soup, fish, roast beef, cheese, fine wines, two helpings of profiteroles and superb cognac.”

  By a happy coincidence, Naldo always looked after the house when Gwyneth was away, as she was now, on an extended visit to the United Kingdom and her roots. On these occasions she gave Naldo carte blanche with the place. “If you come across a tenant for a short lease, darling, just go ahead,” she told Naldo, who, after meeting Herbie in Ruckersville, telephoned Gwyneth in London to say he thought he had the kind of tenant of whom she would approve.

  “Go ahead, Naldo darling. Screw as much as you can from them, and make certain they’re out by the end of the first week in December. You’re in charge.”

  The meeting with Herbie had been worrying. Naldo sat in his white Lincoln, on Route 29, pulled off the road in the small town of Ruckersville.

  He saw no other car stop nearby, and the first he knew of Herbie’s presence was the front passenger side door being wrenched open and Herbie’s huge face appearing close to his.

  “Nice to see you again, Nald, but you’re getting careless in your old ageing. Twenty years ago you’d never have sat in a car with the unlocked doors.”

  “Christ, Herb, you gave me a shock.”

  “Be bigger shock if it had been some Moscow Center mobster.” He settled comfortably beside his old friend and mentor.

  “They still exist? Moscow Center mobsters?”

  “Come on, Nald, ’course they still bloody exist. Openness, freedom, dissolution of Communist Party, only goes so far. They’re going to take a few decades to catch up. You hear any news yet?”

  “I listened to the radio on the way over. There seemed to be nothing new that would interest me—apart from the constantly changing situation in the Kremlin.”

  “They mention a shoot-out in the Queens Midtown Tunnel just after midnight?”

  “Why, yes. Yes, they did.” Naldo looked at him sharply and with some surprise.

  “And what they put it down to? Mob violence? Street gangs? Or some little domestic violences?”

  “The mob, as it happens. The cops are saying it was an attempted organized crime killing. Tied up traffic for two hours.”

  “Fatalities?”

  “Yes. The Feds’re furious. Three so-called civilians. But five special agents, on a surveillance operation, killed.”

  “Shit!” There had been the two in the Lincoln; another three meant the men in the trail car. Herbie thought of Mickey Boomer, Chuck, and another agent. Naldo’s brow creased. The surprised look had not gone from his eyes. “You involved, Herb? I thought you went private never to return.”

  “Ja, I was supposed to be gone. Gone and not be forgotten, huh?”

  “But you’re not?”

  “Talked into it by your son, Young Worboys and the new Headmaster,” Herbie grinned. “But I have to be like Dad, keep Mum, don’t I? You told me that. British wartime shogun, wasn’t it?”

  “Slogan, Herb.” Naldo almost bit his tongue. He had not been with Kruger for more than a minute or so before falling into one of the man’s word traps. With Herbie you rarely knew when he was having you on. “What’s the score, Herb? How can I help?”

  “Time,” Herbie said the word as though it was the sole explanation for his presence.

  “Time?”

  “We ain’t got much of it. Could be the FBI guys’re already knocking at your front door, and old Barb’s saying ‘Oh my, he go out, I don’t know where.’ Then they’ll get a bead on your car registration. It won’t take long for them to figure out you’re my obvious contact. They’ll also presume I wouldn’t be stupid enough to come riding into your place for all the world to see: like naked man in nunnery, yes?”

  “So?”

  “Less you know, better will be; so let me tell you what I need. If you can’t fix it, I’ll take to the road again. I do have another possibility, but it’s one hell of a long driving.” Without even mentioning Passau, except as “a friend,” he quickly told Naldo what he needed.

  “Like hunted fox I need a new sit,” he finished.

  “Set, Herb. Foxes have sets. Foxes and lawyers.”

  “So that’s what I need. A safe set, eh?” He gave a short guffaw.

  Naldo thought for a few minutes. “I can take you to a house that’s empty, but I’ll have to call the owner in London to square it away.”

  “There’s food? The necessities of life? Bottle of brandy, maybe two?”

  “No, but I’ll bring you everything you need: provided the owner says it’s a go. I presume you’ve got good money?”

  “In three different languages, Nald. Good as they give you in London: traveling checks; Visa, Mastercard, Platinum Amex, the works and a bundle of notes. This house? Is safe, yes?”

  “Right off the beaten track. They’d have to be mind readers to pick you up, as long as you don’t show yourselves.” He paused, “This really is necessary, Herb? I mean is it really kosher? You’re not playing off-the-cuff games?”

  “Kosher as chicken soup.”

  “Right. I’ll lead you to the place, then call the owner from there. I’ll be back later in the day with food. …”

  “Only if the G-men aren’t crawling all over your back. If they appear, you should assume they got surveillance—electronic and personal. Don’t suppose you hung on to any electronic countermeasurings when you left the Office?”

  Naldo shook his head. “If they are on to me then I’ll find some way of getting food to you. Now, if you follow me, I’ll lead you there. Where’s your car?”

  “Tucked away, back up the road. I got to use a phone booth at some place on our way.”

  “Any old phone booth?”

  “Just your run-of-the-windmill telephone cabinet.”

  “There’s one up the road. You can see it from here. A supermarket. There’re phones outside.”

  “Good, watch for me, Nald. … Oh, one other thing …”

  “Yes?”

  “This place we’re going. Does it have stereo?”

  Naldo nodded, “The owner’s a music freak. Knew Benjamin Britten. Big collection of CDs and tapes. That do you?”

  “I’ll let you know. Happy coincidence, Nald. The nonfiction is
always odder than the fiction, yes?” Herbie disappeared from the car and within five minutes headlights flashed behind Railton’s Lincoln. Dawn had now broken and the very early morning traffic had started to thicken.

  Naldo watched the car pull off at the supermarket. He followed them, checking his mirror all the way, and parked with a good view of the road and of Herbie’s Cutlass which was settled into a slot near the bank of three public telephones. Naldo suddenly felt very happy. He was up and running again, doing what he had loved all his working life. It felt good.

  He saw Big Herbie plodding to the telephones and had a pretty shrewd idea of what the old agent was about to do. In some measure, Naldo wished he was doing it, but the numbers would have been changed years ago.

  At the telephone, Herbie dialed a toll-free 800 number. It was a number that went unlisted, even to the U.S. telephone companies. Possibly the FBI, NSA and CIA knew it, but there was no way they could tap into the secure line at the distant end, which just goes to show that certain clandestine services never change. In London, it was just after eleven in the morning when the Duty Officer’s international line rang.

  AT THE OFFICE, in London, there was a panic in progress. The D.O. had hauled Worboys in at six in the morning. Cursing, Young Worboys had done his best to contain matters. Now, at ten thirty, there was a gathering in the Chief’s office. Worboys, Arthur Railton and a tall, leggy, very desirable but tough silken blonde lady called Pucky Curtiss (Patricia Ursula Curtiss: the initials made into Puc during schooldays, from thence to Puck and onwards to Pucky).

  Ms. Curtiss, who was clad in a blue dress that swirled around her body in an overstated sexual manner, was the Office’s highly efficient liaison with the U.S. CIA Resident in Grosvenor Square. For Grosvenor Square read U.S. Embassy. Now she was holding forth in the Chief’s office, pacing the floor like a prosecuting attorney in an American law court drama.

  “I have to tell him something, for Chrissake.” She turned her large brown eyes on the Chief, who saw in them the possible germ of murder. “What do I tell him? That we have no control over Kruger? That we have no idea how, or why, he’s done it? I do have to give the man answers.” The “man” was Dan Hochella, the current Resident at Grosvenor Square, known, predictably, to all as “Desperate Dan,” an apt description, for Mr. Hochella was subject to moments of profound gloom. He also had a way with the ladies, which was one of the reasons Ms. Curtiss had been given the job. Sources had it that Pucky had kneed him in the groin during their first meeting.