by John Gardner
“Y’all leavin’ us, Mz Cummings?” the girl at reception had asked when she paid her bill, and the manner of asking barely hid an unfeigned dismay. “You’ve only been here a couple of days.” As though the girl were genuinely sorry to see her leave.
Pucky had said she had to get back—“I must be in Washington tonight,” she had lied, against the unlikely possibility of anyone questioning hotel staff about her movements. In the ultimate paranoia of all field agents she had the mental vision of hard-faced men showing her photograph to frightened reception girls.
After lunch, she overtipped and then wondered why. It was something Pucky Curtiss would never have done in England.
She stood for a moment in the doorway of The Boar’s Head Inn, looking out across the parking lot with its colorful backdrop of flowers and grassy banks. She turned her head slightly at the sound of a car door closing and saw, to her great consternation, two men standing by a white Chevy. The driver had his back to her as he bent to lock the door, but his passenger’s face was clear at fifty yards.
With mounting anxiety, and a fair proportion of disbelief, Pucky saw Desperate Dan Hochella, late of Grosvenor Square, talking across the car roof to whoever it was who had brought him to The Boar’s Head Inn, Charlottesville, just in time to see her, and, presumably, start every alarm bell ringing from here to Washington and back to London.
He was the last person she needed, and about the only person she knew who could blow her cover in the U.S.A.
(17)
IN SITUATIONS SUCH AS this, never move quickly or erratically, they had taught during those endless fieldcraft and tradecraft sessions at Warminster. When she had listened, learned and played the little secret war games, Pucky had thought of this kind of thing possibly coming up in Eastern Europe, if at all. Now, with the collapse of communism, all that appeared to have gone. What had occurred in the last few days seemed to have removed the rug under everyone’s feet. So why had she come? Why was everyone making such a fuss over one old man who might, and again might not, have been a World War II agent, and a Moscow Center asset during the big freeze? It made no sense.
Pucky, a high achiever since kindergarten, thought she would always remain on the administrative level. She even fantasized about becoming the first female CSIS, after many years of running people from desks. Rarely had Ms. Curtiss seen herself as a modern-day Mata Hari in the field. Not that Mata Hari was historically acceptable as a role model.
Do not panic, she told herself, turning lazily, lifting her right hand to brush some of her glorious blonde hair out of her eyes—a gesture, she realized too late, which was characteristic and might just alert Desperate Dan to her presence.
She kept her strides long, but languid, back into the main lobby. Take a left and head for the ladies’ room, the instructor’s voice in her head had a nervous edge. At least he cannot follow you in there. Want to bet?
She stopped at the thought. Already she was assuming that Dan Hochella was actually looking for her. If he was, then she had hit big trouble.
She locked the cubicle door, then gave herself five minutes by the Cartier watch Mummy and Daddy—the general and his lady—had given her last Christmas. For a second she wondered where she would be this Christmas. If Dan was in the lobby when she came out, which she figured was unlikely, she would have to play it by ear. Brazen it out, get a message to Kruger telling him the jig was up, run for it. Jesus, the game’s afoot, Watson. This was the kind of rubbish you were supposed to cut your teeth on.
She walked out exactly on the five-minute mark. No Dan Hochella in the reception area, or outside. Willing herself to abide by the rules they had taught, she went to her car, which started at the first twist of the ignition. Ten minutes later, she was on 29 North, heading towards Washington.
She went through all the precautions, watching for a tail, sweeping the rear mirror regularly. No odd traffic patterns appeared, so she reckoned that they were not on to her. Never assume anything. She had seen that on a bumper as she left Charlottesville, and knew it to be true. Art Railton had gone through all the emergency procedures with her before she left London, and he had also said it—“Pucky, old love, it’s the first golden rule. Never assume anything.” So, she acted as if they were on to her, even though she picked up nothing in the sensors of her eyes, ears and brain.
The drive to Dulles International should have taken two hours. Pucky made it in three, negotiating wild and erratic detours because of road work. Within six miles of the airport the traffic was backed up solidly, and that helped to slow her down, allowing her to sweep the cars behind her with more caution. Surely Dan Hochella could not have been looking for her? It did not make sense. Nobody knew. Her papers were Grade A, untraceable back to the Office. They could never make her in a thousand years.
But they had, and she knew it as she stood at the Hertz counter, returning the car. Two of them. A man and a woman, both strategically placed so there was no way out. Shit, Pucky thought. Shit on toast. Think, girl; you’re supposed to be wonder woman. You had it all nicely planned. Do something now. Who are these guys? Why?
She lugged her case up to the B.A. check-in desk, flashed her ticket and asked if they had a seat on tonight’s London flight. It did not leave until eight fifty-five and that meant nobody would start yelling until seven thirty at the earliest. She watched her case slide away through the conveyor belt’s rubber flaps and thought now I don’t even have a spare pair of drawers to my name. She was left with what she stood up in. Stone-washed Levi’s, a crisp favorite shirt, bought at Fenwicks, underwear from Marks & Spencer, loafers and her big shoulder bag which held three sets of ID., her tickets, credit cards in two names, travelers’ checks for five hundred dollars, around two hundred dollars in cash, and an assortment of junk which included two ticket stubs from last November when she had seen Les Miz for the third time with her old chum, Bitsy Williams. Fat lot of good that had done her.
The surveillance was still on her, the woman in a smart tailored suit, the man in jeans and a T-shirt with flowers and grass on the front and the legend “Compost Happens.” They had her boxed nicely; bracketed, according to all the good handbooks. “We’re not playing this game according to Mr. Hoyle, we’re playing it according to me.” Now where the hell had that come from? Was it her last lover but one who had an incredible collection of comedy on record? Yes. The Poker Game, but for the hell of it she could not remember who had done it. Phil Harris? Was it Phil Harris? And what other twenty-nine-year-old would even have heard of Phil Harris and The Poker Game? How in hell had they ferreted her out? And how in hell, Pucky, had you suddenly lost a year? She now did the only thing possible: went to a phone booth and dialed the magic number that would take her, straight and secure, to Art Railton and advice, possibly a little help as well.
THE MARKING OF Pucky Curtiss had been one of those things that happen in novels. You read it and say, “No! This guy’s playing with coincidence. That could never happen.” The problem is that even the most unlikely things happen at night and in the real world. Coincidence is always the exception that proves the rule. Take a book called Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, written by John le Carré in 1974. This fiction deals with a Russian mole, code named Gerald. Gerald’s Russian case officer turns out to be a fellow called Polyakov. Fiction. In 1989 the Soviets announced that they had arrested a long-term penetration agent—a mole, as they have been saying in the trade since Francis Bacon first mentioned moles in the seventeenth century. This 1989 mole was code named Top Hat and, guess what? His name turned out to be Polyakov. There is coincidence.
Desperate Dan Hochella had arrived back at that big complex which is so well signposted—CIA—at Langley, though the row was still going on as to whether it was really in Langley or McLean.
The Deputy Director Ops, Europe, had carpeted Hochella over his handling of matters in London: matters regarding the tip the SIS had received from Erik the Red, a.k.a. Erik Ring and Brightwater. “We know this whole thing stinks, Dan.
The Brits’re playing games and now we’ve lost their guy with our asset, Sunray—oh, what the hell, Louis Passau. You haven’t had your eye on the ball, you haven’t kept on the SIS’s case. The whole mess is slipping through our fingers.” He went on for some time, in the same vein, then told a truly desperate Dan Hochella that he would just have to study the stuff here, in the complex, then go back and try harder. “Every hour we’re out of touch with Passau is a year lost. That’s how I see it.”
“Even now, when everything’s changed?” Hochella asked, weakly.
“Believe me, especially now. This isn’t straightforward, Dan, there’s more than the file. Stuff even you should not know. Stuff, I suspect, that’s going to be locked away until Gabriel blows his horn, and then some. But at least you should be aware of what’s on file.”
He then told Dan to get down to records and use the password, Filigree, to get the up-to-date file. “Read, mark, learn and digest, Dan. London hasn’t been pulling hard enough.”
Dan was at the door when he asked, “Who’s your liaison at Century House?”
“Curtiss.” Even Dan’s voice sounded faraway, plunged in the slough of despond, as John Bunyan would have said. “Pat Curtiss.”
“What’s he like? Sharp?”
“He’s a she. Pucky Curtiss.”
“Okay, I’ll pull her file as well. Maybe we should see if she has any pressure points. Leave that one to me.”
Now, came the coincidence. When Hochella had been through the printout of Filigree, committed it to memory, and thought he had a real handle on it, he returned to the office of the Deputy Director Ops, Europe.
It so happened that the DDOE, as he was known to his friends, was closeted with one of their people from Berlin, but when he was told of Dan’s presence, he said, “What the hell, send him in.”
The guy from Berlin was a Covert Action type, a singleton, as the argot had it. Singletons rarely even checked in with embassies, though quite often Embassy Residents were hauled from their beds to service them. Love was not lost between run-of-the-mill Residents and CA people. All that would change now that “The Main Target,” as they used to call the U.S.S.R. was all but neutralized. The introductions were made and the DDOE apologized to the CA man for the break in their meeting.
“I have this woman Curtiss’ file here, and she has one small pressure point. A married guy. Usual. Affair. He broke it off and went back to his wife, normal shitty treatment, but she might just be vulnerable.” He slung the file down on the desk and it flipped open at a series of surveillance photographs of Pucky. The CA type did a double take, reached for the file and said loudly, “I know her. You can’t miss her. A stunner,” or words to that effect. In fact he went on for quite a while describing Ms. Curtiss’ charms, then ended with, “I came in via London a couple of days ago. That woman was on the same flight. Know her in a Chinese whore-house at midnight.”
They put Dan on it with an officer experienced in the art of tracing foreign agents who have slipped into the U.S. of A. in a quiet, even silent, manner. A couple of days later, they picked up the trail left by Pauline Una Cummings, and set off to scour central Virginia.
FBI Counter-intelligence, the CIA’s uneasy bedfellows, led them to Charlottesville. That morning, they had done the Sheraton and the Omni. Dan was hungry when they got to The Boar’s Head Inn, so they left showing Pucky’s photograph to reception until after they had eaten; bad fieldcraft, sloppy work on the part of his companion. But they finally got around to doing it, just as Pucky, in her wild imaginings, had foreseen. The photograph, the shake of the head, then the closer look and the nod. They even had the registration of the car the lady was driving. “She told Mary she was going to Washington. Said she had to be there,” one of the girls volunteered. Hence the double act who picked her up at Dulles.
IT WAS PAST ELEVEN o’clock at night in London, when Pucky’s call was patched through, on the ultrasecure line, to Arthur Railton. It took Pucky two minutes of fast talk to give him at least a glance at the topography, if not a good thorough look at the landscape, and Art lost no time at all telling her to get the hell out, shake the leeches and call him later. He closed down on her. Lord knew what kind of monitoring devices the American Service provided for their footpads.
Pucky replaced the receiver and went down to the arrivals area, the most crowded part of the already bulging and outdated Dulles airport. She had moved very quickly, taking the stairs and not the escalator. The two watchers were, at least temporarily, left-footed.
She plunged into one of the tunnels that led from the internal flights luggage carousels out to the parking lots and pickup areas. God knew what she would do when she got to the other side, but the pair were not with her when she came out into the late afternoon sunshine. A yellow shuttle bus stood, half full, to her left, its destination showing above the windshield. It read “National Airport.” So be it, she thought, climbing aboard and taking a seat at the back. Three other people followed her, and the driver started his engine almost before the last passenger was seated.
As the bus pulled away, Pucky saw the male member of the team come out of another of the tunnel entrances, behind her. She dropped her shoulder bag, spilling some of the contents, and forcing her to scrabble around on the floor out of sight, which was just as well because, though she did not know it at the time, the female watcher had come out of another tunnel and walked the length of the shuttle, making no bones about looking for her. Full of the knowledge that their “person of interest” was not aboard the National shuttle, the female watcher gave her partner the clear sign, indicating their quarry was still in the airport complex.
Pucky felt pleased with herself, and an hour later, she was renting a sporty little Honda from the Avis desk at National, using her panic I.D. of Patty Crawford.
So Pucky drove all the way back south to Charlottesville, incidentally passing Dan Hochella and his colleague on the way, and stopping off twice: once to make a more secure call to Art, on the magic line; and once, in Charlottesville’s Fashion Square Mall where she used Office credit cards to buy another suitcase and fill it with two changes of clothes, a froth of underwear, a whole new range of cosmetics, a Sony Walkman and a half-dozen tapes from Sam Goody, plus two overpraised paperbacks to ensure sleep.
Art had given her some fair and decisive instructions, once she had told him her side of the story. So, when she called the number Naldo had given her, using the five rings signal, Pucky was quite-clear about the message she had to bring to Blue Boy, a.k.a. Big Herbie Kruger.
She observed the correct procedure on arriving at the house, driving round to the back, parking the Honda next to Herbie’s rented silver gray Cutlass Supreme.
AS SOON AS Herbie opened the door and saw the tall, slim girl with the world-class figure and all that shiny blond hair, he knew that, should he ever be tempted to commit adultery, it would be with her, or someone quite like her.
“You are the Pucky lady?” It was not really a question, but a kind of statement.
“Pucky Curtiss. I’m traveling under a new I.D.” She gave him a rundown of what she had learned in the harsh world of secret reality that day. This made Herbie begin to fuss around her, offering food, cups of tea, strong drink, aspirin, vitamin pills, anything that came into his head. A long, gentle massage was one of the things that came into his head, though he did not mention this aloud.
She would kill for a bowl of chicken soup. Nothing easier, Herbie told her, knowing he had several tins left from the store Naldo had provided. He even had French bread in the freezer and could crisp that up in the microwave in no time. Meanwhile, he would introduce her to their guest of honor. “A tried and tested category one son of a bitch, but he’s the only one we got.” Herbie smiled, choosing his idiot incapable child version, which usually went down well with young women.
Louis Passau was, of course, full of real charm. “She’s what we need, eh, Herb? A woman about the place. Keep us cheerful. On our toes. Make us stop farting in p
ublic, huh?”
“Oh, merciful heavens,” Pucky thought.
“I swear, Maestro, I shall kill you,” thought Herbie.
Yet, when Herb returned with a tray containing a large bowl of Campbell’s chicken soup, and the best part of a French stick, there she was, having her pants charmed off by the nasty old reprobate.
“… So there she is, and you are too young, but she was a very fat prima donna. And, as you know, in the closing moments of Tosca, the diva is hysterical: with a cry of ‘Scarpia, davanti a Dio,’ she hurls herself from the battlements of the Castel Sant’ Angelo. In fact, what happens is the lady falls four feet onto a padded mattress. Well, as I told you, the stage staff were really very angry. There had been scenes, rages, demands all through the rehearsals. So, in this opening performance, very prestigious, they replace the mattress with a trampoline, and she hurls herself off, then bounces back, and again, and again, and again. I thought I would collapse there and then, right in front of everybody. She was still bouncing when the curtain came down.”
Pucky had her head thrown back in a silvery laugh, and Herbie would have given a year of his pension to kiss that throat.
“You tell the porkies again, Lou.” He stood very still.
“What are porkies, Herb?”
“I told you already, Lou. When we started our little adventure I told you the cockney rhyming slang. Porky pies equals lies.”
“When did I tell lies?”
“What happened with the trampoline in a production of Tosca. This is an old story, and it was not you conducting. This happened at New York City Center, 1960.”
“So, I am allowed some dramatic license.”
“Dramatic bullshit. Excuse me, Pucky.”
She took the tray and began to attack the food as though she had a really bad addiction problem with chicken soup.
“Your bedtime, Lou.” Herbie sounded pretty stern, like a male nurse in a mental hospital.
