The Apocalypse Watch (72 page)

“Now you’re insulting both me
and
you. Money was made by revealing maximum-classified information from your section two nights ago, a great deal of money, and we’ve got the people who paid it. At this moment it’s merely a question of
who
got paid! So don’t give me any crap about racism. I’m looking for a leak, not a
spic
!”

“Let me tell you this,
Americano
. My people do not
pay for information, it is freely delivered. Yes, there have been times when I’ve steamed open the sealed envelopes, but only when they’ve been marked ‘Caribbean Basin.’ Why have I done this? Let me explain. I was a sixteen-year-old soldier at the Bay of Pigs and spent five years in Castro’s filthy prisons until I was exchanged for medicine. This great
Estados Unidos
talks and talks but does nothing to liberate my
Cuba
!”

“How did you get into the Agency?”

“The easiest way possible,
amigo
. It took six years, but I became a scholar, with three degrees, way overqualified for what you offered me, but I accepted what you offered me, truly believing you would see my qualifications and put me into a position where I could make a difference. You never did, for I was the spic and you gravitated to the white boys and the blacks—oh, were unqualified blacks chosen over me! You had to clean your racist slate, and they were the answer.”

“I think you’re being unfair.”

“Think what you like. I’ll be out of this house in twenty seconds and you’ll never find me!”

“
Please
, don’t do that! You’re not what or whom I’m after. I’m after
Nazis
, not you!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s too complicated,” said Sorenson calmly. “Stay on your job and do what you’re doing. You’ll get no grief from me, and I’ll make sure your superior qualifications are brought to the attention of those who should know about them.”

“How can I count on that?”

“Because I’m a fake, I’m not with the Company. I’m the director of an outside agency that frequently coordinates with the CIA at the highest levels.”

“Circles within circles,” said Vasquez-Ramirez. “Where will it ever end?”

“Probably never,” replied Sorenson. “Certainly not until people trust one another—which will be never.”

Candidate Possible

S
uddenly it occurred to the director of Consular Operations that he should follow his immediate instincts. Peter Mason Payne was out, Roland Vasquez-Ramirez barely a possible, but the craw in his throat was Bruce Withers, the man with a quick tongue and an all-too-believable saga of a destitute widow or divorcée with three children who had latched on to an overage general of the army, with all the retirement benefits that implied. It would be easy for Withers to reach the general’s wife by car telephone, if she really had spent the evening with him, or at her home.…
It’ll take her twenty—twenty-five minutes
. More than enough time for the lonely general’s wife to be given instructions. The answer might be found somewhere else. On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, perhaps, with the former wife of Bruce N.M.I. Withers.

Again Sorenson picked up his phone, hoping that Withers’s name would be listed because of his teenage daughter. It was, with an alternate name, McGraw. McGraw-Withers.

“Yes … hello,” whispered the sleepy voice on the line.

“Forgive me, Miss McGraw, for calling you at this hour, but there is an emergency.”

“Who
are
you?”

“Deputy Director Kearns of the Central Intelligence Agency. It concerns your former husband, Bruce Withers.”

“Whom did he shaft now?” asked the barely awake ex-Mrs. Withers.

“Perhaps the United States government, Miss McGraw.”

“Thanks for the Miss—I earned it. Of course, he shafted the government, why should it be any different? He’d flash his CIA badge around, not saying much, but implying he was Mr. Super Spook himself, all the while fleecing somebody.”

“He used the Agency to gain favors?”

“
Please
, Mr. Whoever-you-are, my family has connections all over Washington. When we found out he was sleeping with every secretary and bimbo tramp who worked for a defense contractor, my father said we should get rid of him, and we did.”

“He still has visitation rights to your child.”

“Under the closest supervision, I can assure you.”

“Because you fear violation?”

“Good God, no. Kimberly is probably the only person in this world that bastard can relate to.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because children don’t threaten him. Her hugs erase the terrible thing inside of him.”

“What is that terrible thing, Miss McGraw?”

“He’s the bigot of the world! He hates so many people, I can’t begin to tell you. Blacks, or as he says, those lousy niggers, and ‘Wops,’ and ‘Slopes,’—that’s Asians—the Spanish-speaking, the Jew bastards, anyone who isn’t pure white and Christian, and he’s definitely
not
Christian. He wants them all eliminated. That’s his credo.”

Candidate Accepted

It was four o’clock in the afternoon Paris time, the hour noted by the low, echoing chimes of a mantel clock in Ambassador Daniel Courtland’s living quarters at the American Embassy. The ambassador, coatless, the bandages across his chest and left shoulder visible beneath his open blue Oxford shirt, sat at an antique table that served as a desk, talking quietly on the telephone. Across the large, ornate room, Drew Latham and Karin de Vries were sitting opposite each other in brocaded armchairs, also speaking softly.

“How’s the hand?” asked Drew.

“It’s fine; it’s my feet, they still hurt,” answered Karin, laughing quietly.

“I told you to take off your shoes.”

“Then the soles of both feet would be scraped, my dear. How long did we walk from the Lacoste until you reached Claude to send transportation? Nearly forty minutes, I think.”

“I couldn’t call Durbane. Even now we don’t know where he stands, and Moreau was busy with our Nazi minister.”

“We saw three separate police cars. I’m sure any one of them would have accommodated us.”

“No, Witkowski was right about that. There were five of us, which would have meant two of those small cars or a wagon. Then there was the problem of convincing them to take us to the embassy and not to a police station, a request they’d damn well refuse considering one of the neos was wounded. Even Claude was grateful that we waited for him. As he put it, ‘There are already too many cooks in the kitchen.’ We didn’t need police reports or the Sûreté.”

“And the Deuxième found no one at the Château de Vincennes?”

“Nobody with a weapon, and they swept the park clean.”

“It’s surprising,” said De Vries, frowning. “I was sure that’s where the killing would take place.”

“You’re sure and I can confirm it, straight from Koenig’s mouth. It’s the scenario he described.”

“I wonder what happened.”

“It’s pretty obvious. They never got the final go-ahead, so the kill was aborted.”

“Do you realize we’re talking about our own lives?”

“I’m trying to keep it clinical.”

“You’re devastatingly effective.”

The doorbell of the main entrance to the living quarters rang. Latham rose from the chair and glanced at Courtland, who nodded, still on the phone. Drew crossed to the door, opened it, and admitted Stanley Witkowski. “Any progress?” asked Drew.

“We think so,” replied the colonel. “I’ll wait till the ambassador’s off the horn. He has to hear it. Did either of you get any rest?”

“I did, Stanley,” answered Karin from the chair. “Ambassador Courtland was kind enough to let us use the guest rooms. I fell right to sleep, but my friend here couldn’t stay off the phone.”

“Only after you swore it was sterile,” added Drew.

“No phone up here could be tapped by Swie’ty Piotr himself, as my dear departed mother used to call him. Whom did you reach,
chłopak
?”

“Back and forth with Sorenson. He’s made progress too.”

“Any word on the Virginia assassin?”

“He’s nailed him. That son of a bitch can’t go to the toilet without being heard.”

Daniel Courtland hung up the telephone, awkwardly turning in his chair, wincing in pain as he greeted Witkowski. “Hello, Colonel, what happened at the hospital?”

“It’s in the hands of British MI-Five, sir. A pulmonologist named Woodward from the Royal College of Surgeons showed up, claiming the Foreign Office had asked him to fly over and examine Mrs. Courtland—at your request. They’re looking into it.”

“I made no such request,” said the ambassador. “I don’t know any Dr. Woodward, much less the Royal College of Surgeons.”

“We know that,” said Witkowski. “Our French-American unit at the hospital stopped him just before he was about to inject the false Mrs. Courtland with strychnine.”

“A brave woman. What’s her name?”

“Moskowitz, sir. From New York. Her late husband was a French rabbi. She volunteered for the assignment.”

“Then we must volunteer compensation. Perhaps a month’s vacation, all expenses paid.”

“I’ll forward the offer, sir.… And how are you feeling?”

“I’ll be fine. Just a little torn skin, nothing serious. I was a lucky man.”

“You weren’t the target, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Courtland quietly. “So let’s all get current, okay?”

“Mrs. de Vries just told me how much they appreciate your inviting them to stay up here.”

“Considering what they’ve been through, they’re quarantined up here for the duration if need be. I assume your full security’s in place.”

“Practically a complete platoon of marines, sir. They hear a footstep or a sneeze, their weapons are drawn.”

“Good. Sit down, fellas, we have to recap. You go first, Stanley. Where are we?”

“Let’s start back at the hospital,” began Witkowski, lowering himself into a chair next to Karin. “It was a foul-up, but the British lung doctor, this Woodward,
was
cleared by the Quai d’Orsay as one of Mrs. Courtland’s physicians, only the clearance came too late. He’d already arrived.”

“That strikes me as pretty sloppy for the neos,” said Courtland.

“Paris is an hour ahead of London, sir,” offered Latham, sitting down. “It’s a common mistake, although you’re right, it was sloppy.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t,” said De Vries, and all eyes turned to her. “Is it possible we have a friend in the English neo ranks? What better way to draw attention to such a killer than by withholding clearance when it’s necessary and sending it suspiciously late?”

“That’s overcomplicated, Karin,” the colonel disagreed, “and leaves too much room for error. The link in the chain’s too weak; a mole would be traced immediately.”

“Complications are our business, Stosh, and errors are what we look for.”

“Is that a lesson from on high?”

“Come on,” persisted Drew, “she could be right.”

“Indeed, she could be; unfortunately we can’t know at this juncture.”

“Why not? We can put out a trace too. Who at the Quai d’Orsay gave Woodward clearance at the hospital even if it was late?”

“That’s why we can’t know. It came from the office of an Anatole Blanchot, a member of the Chamber of Deputies. Moreau followed it up.”

“
And?
”

“There’s nothing. This Blanchot never heard of a Dr. Woodward and there’s no record of a telephone call made from his office to the Hertford Hospital. As a matter of fact, the only time Blanchot ever called London was over a year ago on his home phone to place a bet at Ladbrokes for the Irish Sweepstakes.”

“The neos just picked a name, then.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“Amen,
chłopak
.”

“I thought you said some progress was made.”

“It was, but not with Woodward.”

“Then
where
?” Courtland broke in.

“I’m referring to Officer Latham’s package delivered to the Deuxième in the early hours of the morning, sir.”

“The Lutheran minister?” asked Karin.

“Without knowing it, Koenig’s a songbird,” said Witkowski.

“What’s the tune?” Drew leaned forward in his chair.

“It’s an aria called ‘Der Meistersinger Traupman.’ We’ve heard it before.”

“The surgeon from Nuremberg?” pressed Latham. “The big-wheel Nazi that Sorenson unearthed from—” He stopped, looking helplessly at the ambassador.

“Yes, Drew,” said Courtland quietly, “from my wife’s legal guardian in Centralia, Illinois.… I spoke with Mr. Schneider myself. He’s an old man now with many painful memories and regrets, and whatever he says, I believe he speaks the truth.”

“He’s certainly telling the truth about Traupman,” said the colonel. “Moreau met with Traupman’s former wife in Munich only a few days ago. She confirmed it in double swastikas.”

“I’m aware of that also.” The ambassador spoke again softly, nodding his head. “Traupman was instrumental in
implementing Operation Sonnenkinder all over the free world.”

“What did Claude learn about Traupman from the Lutheran priest?” asked Karin.

“Basically that Koenig and others like him in the upper levels are frightened of him, and curry favors whenever and wherever they can. Moreau understood that Traupman was a major player, but now he thinks he’s something else. He thinks Traupman has some kind of hold over the neo movement, a grip that keeps everyone where he wants them.”

“The Nazi
Rasputin
?” continued De Vries. “The untouchable figure behind the imperial throne, controlling that throne?”

“We know there’s a new
Führer
,” said Witkowski, “we just have no idea who he is.”

“But if this new Hitler is the throne—”

“
That
is where I must stop you, Karin,” Daniel Courtland interrupted, suddenly rising, slowly, painfully, from his chair behind the antique table.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Ambassador—”

“No, no, my dear, the apologies are mine, so ordered by my government.”

“What the hell are you
doing
?”

“Cool it, Drew, just
cool
it,” ordered Courtland. “It may interest you to know that I’ve been on the phone with Wesley Sorenson, who has temporarily assumed the authority of certain covert activities. I’m to neither hear nor be a party to any further conversation on this subject. However, when I have left the room, you, Officer Latham, are to call him on this scrambled telephone and hear what he has to say.… Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall retire to the library, where there is a well-stocked bar. Later, if you care to indulge in some innocuous chitchat, please join me.” The ambassador limped across the room and out an inner door, closing it firmly behind him.