Agent in Place (9 page)

“That’s obvious. Too deep for any of us.” Rick was hearing an early-warning signal from Mischa: in America, you’ll make friends with all kinds of people—conservatives, liberals, even Marxists. But stick to the ideologues; avoid the anarchist groups, the activists. Even if they are far to the left, they can’t be trusted. They need a tight control, and you haven’t got the capacity to do that: you can’t supply them with money or weapons or training. You have no hold over them. Therefore, for you and your work, they are dangerous. They will involve you in trouble you can’t handle. Keep clear of them and attract no suspicion.

Rick locked his bag.

“She needs someone,” Chuck insisted.

Rick carried his bag into the hall, placed his coat and scarf on top of it.

Getting ready for a quick exit, Chuck thought. “Why don’t you call her father, at least?”

Rick looked at his watch. “Almost eleven o’clock.” He sat down to wait for Holzheimer. Mischa, he was thinking again, where was Mischa now? And how was he? Any use telephoning the nearest police-station, keeping everything anonymous, just an inquiry about a missing friend?

“Why not call her father? Or someone? She has a sister—”

“Married to a State Department man. And one brother who is a Wall Street banker, and an uncle who owns a newspaper chain. What do you think they could do? Argue. How far has that ever got them with Katie?”

“Well, they were just letting her have her little games. No one took her seriously. You didn’t, did you? You never knew she was in so deep. It must be recent, though. Wouldn’t you say?” Chuck looked over at the marble-topped table, and remembered the hard sullen glares from three pairs of cold eyes. “Rick, you can’t just leave her to those people. She’ll—”

“She’s a spoiled brat.”

“She always was. That didn’t keep you from shacking up with her for two years. Look—if you don’t stay around to persuade her out of this mess, I will.”

“Will you? Then you are a god-damned fool.” More of a fool than I had even guessed, Rick thought. “Those who want to dig their own graves, supply the measurements.”

“An old East German saying?” Chuck gibed angrily. It was the first time he had ever referred to Rick’s childhood. And then he felt a twinge of remorse: it had been no fault of a six-year-old, Brooklyn born, that he had been taken by his German mother to visit her parents in Leipzig once the war was over. No fault of his, either, that the two of them had been kept there until eleven years ago, when Anna Nealey had died and Rick had at last been able to escape to the West.

“No.” Rick was smiling, unperturbed. Just one of Mischa’s little bits of peasant wisdom, he recalled. He kept on smiling, said nothing more. The door-bell rang and ended the slight impasse. “I’ll introduce you as Jerry, and then I’ll slip away. No need to stay,” he told Chuck as he rose to let in their visitor. “Shall I switch on some more lights?”

“No.” Chuck pushed Katie and her friends out of his mind. “Ready,” he said.

* * *

The meeting in the semi-dark room was brief. Martin Holzheimer was a tall lank man who curled up in his armchair like a question-mark. Let’s change that attitude to an exclamation-point, Chuck decided, once his own curiosity was satisfied—Holzheimer’s never would be unless he had a three-day session of probing—and reached inside his jacket for the document. “Okay,” he said, “here it is.” He laid Part I of the NATO Memorandum on the free corner of a coffee-table laden with bric-à-brac.

“Just like that?” Holzheimer asked. “No further stipulations?” His legs had stretched straight.

“You’ve agreed to everything I’ve asked.”

Holzheimer was on his feet, reaching for the document. “As of this moment, you are privileged information. Turn on a light, will you, and let me have a look at this.”

“Read it at your desk.” Chuck was already in the hall, opening the front door. He came back into the room. “Just close the door behind you,” he said. “Good night, Mr. Holzheimer.”

Holzheimer looked at him with a suspicion of a smile. “Where can I reach you, Jerry? Here?”

“No.”

“I thought not,” Holzheimer said. Jerry’s clothes didn’t match this weird world around him. “Then where?”

“I’ll call you. Every second day, until your story is published. How’s that?”

“Not good, but not bad either.” There was nothing to be gained by staying. It could be counter-productive, in fact. Holzheimer could sense when a man was obdurate. This one was granite. “Good luck,” he said, and then wondered why that phrase had slipped out instead of “Good night.”

“And to you.” Chuck turned away. He heard Holzheimer pull the door shut. He checked the lock. And waited. Five minutes later he was back in his own small apartment. After Katie’s, it seemed spacious. And safe. The folder under the couch and rug was safe too.

He sank into a chair and relaxed completely for the first time that day. He was too exhausted to go to bed. No sense of excitement, no feeling of a major victory. He couldn’t even tell if the whole damn thing had been worth it. Then a strange thought came to him as he glanced round the room—would he ever see Rick here again? Possibly not. Rick was running scared tonight, no doubt worried about what Representative Pickering would have to say if he ever found out about his bright-eyed aide’s liaison with a pretty little activist in New York. That was why Rick had cut off Katie with a karate-chop. Would he do the same to me, Chuck wondered, if and when necessary? It was a disturbing idea, so he turned away from it. Tomorrow, he preferred to think, Rick would be laughing at his attack of panic, and probably telephoning Katie, too. God, what a mess some people made of their lives. Chuck thought of Katie: all the advantages in the world, yet searching for more, and more. Strange restless ambition that drove some people. What was it that brother Tom used to say? People’s lives are shaped by the choices they make. That was Tom, all right, trusting in each person’s capacity to think and decide for himself. But what about people like Katie, all emotion and no forethought? If there was a wrong choice, pretty prattling Katie would take it.

Suddenly he went tense. What about my choice today? The right one, he told himself again, and dropped that subject. He had plenty of other things to keep his mind occupied: a typewriter to be returned; a Sunday visit to Shandon House; the memorandum to be safely filed in the security room. Yes, an early start. He rose briskly and went to bed, plunging almost at once into a sleep untroubled by doubts.

* * *

As for Rick, he had no easy night. There was no late train, no late flight to Washington. He found a room at the Statler Hilton, just across the avenue from Penn Station, for an early departure tomorrow. The sooner he was out of Fun City the better. And what could he do about Mischa? Nothing, he told himself for the hundredth time. That was Oleg’s problem. Or was it, entirely? As Alexis, Rick would have to make his weekly report on Monday. His Washington contact would call him without fail. And he would have to give an account of his meeting with Mischa. If he kept quiet about that, there could be harsh questions from the Centre in Moscow. It would be a different matter if Mischa were well and functioning: then the meeting need never be mentioned. But now? How would Oleg handle it? What would be his story? Rick had no way of knowing until Oleg met him in Washington. And would he?

No, the best thing was to make his usual report, stating he had been called to New York by Mischa. They had met in Central Park. The NATO Memorandum had been discussed, and subsequently secured. Mischa had been attacked after they left each other. Alexis had warned Oleg. He knew nothing more.

And then, he thought in alarm, in an emergency like this I must report immediately—not wait until Monday. I’ll have to call my contact tomorrow in Washington. I’ll have to give him a message to pass on to Control, then to the Resident. And let’s hope that the microfilm I have secured will stop all questions. But what would Oleg have to say to that? He was to get the film from me—so Mischa ordered. Well, let the Centre settle it: Oleg may be the one to be disciplined—and Mischa, too. After all, my first loyalty is to Moscow, not to Mischa.

But there was enough of the old loyalty to Mischa to drive him downstairs into the lobby. (He needed cigarettes anyway, he told himself.) At one of the public telephones he put in a call to the Nineteenth Precinct of the New York police department. It was in Sixty-seventh Street—he had passed it often enough—and surely it would deal with any mugging around Sixty-ninth Street area. A woman answered and passed him over to an officer at the desk.

Rick’s voice was polite and anxious. “My cousin went out for a walk on Fifth Avenue this evening and hasn’t returned. I’m worried. Perhaps he was assaulted—have you any reports about a mugging? Somewhere near Sixty-ninth Street? That’s where he lives.”

“No, sir. No report of any assault in that area, as yet.”

“Not as yet? But this was at half-past five!”

“Where was your cousin taking his walk, sir?”

“He probably went into the Park.”

“In that case, try the Central Park Precinct.”

“But don’t you know—”

“They deal with anything that happens
inside
the Park,” the officer said patiently. “We deal with
outside
the Park. You could also try Missing—” He stared at the receiver that had suddenly gone dead in his hand. He said to the sergeant, “It’s always the same. Someone goes out for a walk and doesn’t get back when he’s expected, and his relatives start thinking he’s been assaulted. What a town!” Then he added, “But how did he know the time when his cousin could have been mugged?”

It was a question, half-amusing, half-puzzling, that made him call the Central Park Precinct some ten minutes later. “Did you hear from the joker who knew what time his cousin got mugged in the Park?... Yeah, five thirty. That’s what he said... Sixty-ninth Street entrance? Hey, he knew the place too. Somewhere near Sixty-ninth Street, he said... Yeah, sounded like a fairly young fellow. American? Sure. He was American, all right. Okay, okay. Just thought I’d let you know.”

“What’s going on?” the desk sergeant asked.

“Central Park Precinct has a John Doe problem. Unidentified victim of assault in Lenox Hill Hospital. But as soon as this cousin got the info, he hung up. Didn’t say he’d come round to identify, dodged giving his own name.”

“Could be he was in a hurry.”

“Too much of a hurry, if you ask me.”

The desk at the Nineteenth Precinct went back to its other problems. But its ’phone call hadn’t been pointless. The sergeant at the Central Park Precinct was making a note of it: any small piece of information about the unidentified victim now in Lenox Hill was worth adding to the bits and pieces of strange little items that—so far—constituted the file on this John Doe.

* * *

Rick returned to his room. Yes, the telephone calls had been well worth his while. Now he knew where Mischa was—Lenox Hill, the nearest hospital to the scene of the mugging—and that Mischa had carried no identification on him. These were two facts which would look good in his report tomorrow: he had done all he could. Oleg could have done no better.

He went to bed, only to lie staring at the ceiling. In all, he managed three hours of sleep before he rose to leave for Washington.

Oleg, along with a drift of other curious spectators, had seen the ambulance arrive and noted the name of Lenox Hill Hospital. The next thing was to find out its address. He did that from a directory in a ’phone booth. And then what? His English was good; he could pass for the John Browning of Montreal that his passport and driver’s licence said he was. Which papers, if any, had Mischa been carrying? Canadian, or American? Or none at all? (That would be best under the present circumstances.) A complete mess, Oleg decided, anger growing out of his fears. That son of a bitch Alexis, running scared, leaving everything to be cleaned up behind him.

Oleg chewed over his ideas along with a hamburger at a Madison Avenue quick-service counter. He had several options, but calling the Soviet Mission to the United Nations was not one of them. Mischa had outstepped his authority this time. Unless his own assignment that had brought him secretly to New York was fulfilled—and its results worth the risks taken—Mischa was in trouble. And so was Oleg. All for the purpose of nailing down a high-placed traitor. Exemplary, if their plan had worked: praise and promotion. But now? It would still have to work, even with this unforeseen accident. Or else...

So, first, he would have to get Mischa out of hospital before any identification became possible. Maintenance of security (and that was Oleg’s own particular field in the Executive Action branch of Disinformation) was now the primary consideration.

From the Madison Avenue coffee-shop he made his way on foot towards the Lenox Hill district. What with the surfeit of automobiles parked along the streets that crossed the various avenues, he had decided to leave his Chevrolet exactly where it was, on Sixty-ninth. Once he had scouted the hospital area, he would know whether it was easier to use a taxi rather than his rented car for Mischa’s removal. And how was that to be effected? By open legitimate means—such as a friend of the family come to take an injured man home? Or (if that was impossible) by a careful survey of the position of Mischa’s hospital room, and later, with outside help, a well-planned abduction? That would take time, and there was danger in any delay, even if there was no fear of Mischa talking. Mischa would plead amnesia if he couldn’t get away with feigning unconsciousness.

Oleg walked six blocks up Park Avenue, noting its spaciousness and its high-rising apartment houses. Against the cool blackness of night, lights seemed intensified. And there were too many of them: windows glowed with life, high overhead street-lamps cast no shadows, traffic signals—stationed along the three-mile stretch of broad pavement—sparkled bright red or green at every corner. Above all, it was too quiet for his taste; there were some pedestrians, some taxis and cars, but not enough movement to make sure of an absolutely unnoticed departure from the hospital. (There were doormen, for instance, inside every well-lighted lobby he passed.) No, Park Avenue wasn’t suitable. Madison, to the west, had been a busier place—although its small expensive shops, that reminded him of the Faubourg St Honoré, were all closed and tightly shuttered with heavy iron grilles. He cut over to Lexington Avenue, a block away to the east, and decided it was his best bet. It had a life of its own—nothing blatant, a district of neighbourhood stores, overhead apartments, cafés and bars and small restaurants. Taxis and buses, too. Enough animation for his purpose.