The Folks at Fifty-Eight (47 page)

Who was the man Carpenter had spoken to in the biographies section that morning? What had they talked about? Hammond had been following Carpenter for three days. He wanted to be certain before handing him over to Zalesie, but he’d seen nothing to implicate his State Department boss, other than that one brief and possibly chance meeting in a public library. Hammond hadn’t followed the man from the library that morning. He had stayed with Carpenter, believing that to be the best course of action. Now he was beginning to question the wisdom of that decision.

He switched off the light in the lounge, moved over to the window and looked down on the street below. It was almost midnight, but the street was still busy. That was good.

He didn’t bother to scan for watchers. If they were good enough to follow him to his apartment without him seeing them, they were good enough not to be seen now. Hammond knew surveillance techniques better than most. The real pros never gave themselves away.

Hammond could spot an old friend avoiding him from three hundred yards. He could scan a sea of faces for an assassin’s mask, and be sure to find it. He could pick out a plain-clothes cop on surveillance duty among a throng of people on the busiest thoroughfare. However, if he was the subject of a major Soviet surveillance operation, there could be as many as twenty or thirty people watching him, maybe more, and they would possess a far higher level of expertise than the average plain-clothes cop or cold-eyed assassin.

He had no choice. He had to assume that Carpenter was the mole, and they were out there watching him, waiting for him to make a move. He had to assume they had wired his apartment for sound, just as he had wired Carpenter’s. There would be no physical evidence; there never was. . . No tell-tale pieces of wire left carelessly strewn, no unusual click on the line when he made a phone call, no strange interference on the radio, no sinister stranger lurking in the shadows opposite his apartment.

A voice in his head told him to call Zalesie, and then leave him and his dark-suited vigilantes to their grisly task, but he couldn’t do that. He had to know what Carpenter wanted to say. This wasn’t an official enquiry which would eventually lead to arrest and trial. He had to be certain the man was guilty of betraying his country before making the call that would undoubtedly end Davis Carpenter’s life.

As Hammond considered his predicament, he remembered the words of a former Naval Intelligence officer he had met during OSS training. They had never rung truer than now.

The hard-bitten lieutenant-commander had likened espionage to a game, played by a group of short-sighted assassins in a huge darkened room full of secrets, with each man groping in the darkness with the fingertips of one hand, and carrying a knife in the other. The trick was to keep moving and searching, quickly and quietly and cautiously, or you would give away your position to the other assassins. Whenever you found a secret, you slipped it into your pocket and moved on. Whenever you found another assassin, you killed, quickly and silently, and similarly moved on. Any hesitation or undue noise could, and more than likely would, prove fatal.

Hammond knew he had already waited too long. But then he considered the instructor’s words again, and a thought suddenly struck.

He picked up the phone and called for a cab, then headed downstairs to wait. The cab arrived within minutes. The driver was middle-aged and unshaven. He looked bored. Hammond gave him the address of the tea shop on 13
^th
Street, and then sat back, idly watching the passing streets and late-night revellers as the cab sped across town.

When they arrived at The Silver Samovar he told the driver to wait, then got out and walked over to the shop. He peered into the darkened café, but could see nothing more than a dozen or so tables with chairs stacked on top.

His gaze left the café and wandered along the tree-lined street, with his mind alert and his peripheral vision working overtime. If he was right about Carpenter, they would be watching his every move. He couldn’t allow them to realize what he was actually looking for.

It was then that he saw it; to his left, through a gap in the trees. It was a sign in an upstairs window, an advertisement in more ways than one. It could be the answer. It had to be the answer. If it was, it confirmed everything. If not, he could be in a world of trouble. Either way, he’d find out later that morning.

He climbed back into the cab and told the driver to take him to the nearest phone booth, then back to his apartment. The driver stopped on Vermont. Hammond made his call. When they got back to his apartment, he gave the driver a twenty and told him to keep the change. Then he held out a hundred.

“You wanna earn this?”

The driver rubbed a whiskered chin. His eyes widened. He suddenly didn’t look bored.

“Sure. . . How?”

“Nothing difficult. Just pick me up here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, and take me back to the same place.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. . . Just one slight difference, but nothing that should worry you.”

“What difference?

“I’ll tell you when you get here: tomorrow morning, eight-thirty.”

The driver glanced at his watch.

“You mean, this morning at eight-thirty.”

“That’s right.”

The driver shrugged and nodded. Hammond tore the bill into two pieces. He gave the driver one, and held up the other.

“You get this in eight hours. Don’t be late.”

The driver mumbled something about always being on time, and then drove off. Hammond climbed the stairs to his apartment. Once inside, he locked and bolted the door, drew the curtains, and then went looking for a street map.

“Head for the café on Thirteenth, but when you get to Logan Circle I want you to take the turning before Thirteenth; that’s north on Vermont. Once you’ve turned into Vermont put your foot down. Take a left on T and a right on Twelfth. Once you’ve turned into Twelfth,find some parked cars and pull up, but only long enough for me to jump out. Then you get lost in a hurry, and go spend your money.”

“Somebody’s gonna be following us, right?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the lights on the Eleventh crossway? That’s a bad turning.”

“Until you get to the circle there’s no problem, take your time, but after that you run every light. If they’re red, so much the better. It’s Sunday morning; the streets are quiet. Anyway, that’s why you’re getting the hundred.”

“What if whoever’s following you comes after me?”

“They won’t.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. When they get close enough to see the cab’s empty, they’ll double back and try to find me. You probably won’t notice them anyway.”

Whatever the cab driver might have thought on that particular Sunday-morning drive over to Logan Circle, he didn’t seem bored. For all of his obvious unease, he drove steadily, his eyes continually flickering between the road ahead and the rear-view mirror.

As they approached the circle, he asked if Hammond wanted him to go around twice. Hammond said no. He didn’t want to give them any reason to close whatever gap they considered wise. He leaned over and dropped the second half of the hundred-dollar bill on to the front passenger seat, and then told the driver to put his foot down.

A few frantic seconds of lurching and tire squealing later, the driver drew the cab to a halt on 12
^th
. Hammond slid out of the nearside door. He kept low and slammed the door shut behind him before creeping around and behind one of the half-dozen or so conveniently parked cars. The driver took off. Hammond stayed low and out of sight. He didn’t peer out to see the two cars that sped along the street a few seconds later. If it was them, he didn’t want to take any chance they might see him. If it wasn’t, it didn’t matter anyway.

He waited a few more seconds, then crossed the street and headed down the alleyway leading to 13
^th
Street.

He checked his watch. It was 8.50. He left the alleyway and crossed the patch of waste ground separating the backs of the houses on 12
^th
from those on 13
^th
. He saw them, a little farther along: two dark-suited and belligerent-looking hoods, standing by the rear door of one of the Victorian house on 13
^th
. They were smoking cigarettes, talking in muffled tones, and shuffling their feet. One of them saw Hammond. He mumbled to the other. The other looked up. Hammond nodded a greeting and kept walking towards them. When he got close to the picket fence that marked the properties’ boundary, he asked,

“Has he arrived yet?”

The man on the left looked unsure. The other shook his head.

“No, not yet. It should be soon.”

Hammond nodded and lit a cigarette, then turned his back and began looking around, as if he’d been sent to help. The trick worked, because they watched him for a few cautious moments before returning to their conversation.

When he heard them resume talking, he dropped the cigarette and pulled the HDM, then swivelled around and put two bullets into the man on the left. He realigned an inch, and put two more in the one on the right, then vaulted the fence and moved closer. They were both down and looked finished, but this wasn’t a game with rules and conventions. He made certain with one more apiece.

He knew who they were, and why they were there. He knew they were Russian, because he’d asked the question and they’d answered in that same language. And he knew why they were there; assassination squads were the same the world over.

Despite there being four rounds left, he loaded a fresh clip and then tested the door handle. It opened noiselessly. He peered around the door and then stepped inside. Another quizzical face greeted him. The man was standing by the front door, at the far end of the hallway. When he saw the silenced automatic, he reached for his. Hammond shot him twice and watched as the twin impacts sent him sprawling against the door.

A voice from the floor above called out in Russian. It asked what the hell was going on down there. Hammond answered in Russian, loudly cursing, and saying that he had tripped on the mat. The voice told him to keep the noise down, and added that it was nearly time.

Hammond took the stairs three at a time, and then moved towards the bedroom at the front of the house. A fourth gunman stood guard at the open door. His reactions were slow. Hammond shot him twice in the head at close range. A fifth man stood in the bedroom. He was looking out of the open window with his back to Hammond, and holding a Mosin-Nagant 1891/30 with scope and silencer fitted.

When he heard the commotion and spun around, Hammond could see he was a big man, muscular and thick-set, but with a surprisingly small head for such a large frame. His clothes were threadbare and dirty. His barrel chest had strained the tattered open-necked shirt to such an extent that one of the buttons hung at the end of a thin thread of cotton. Another was missing altogether. He looked warily at the levelled HDM. Hammond recalled a photograph on an FBI sheet, and recognized him immediately.

“The FBI told me you went back to Moscow.”

“They are fools. Sasha Gromyko went back to Moscow. I stayed for you.”

Demidov squeaked his contempt for Hoover’s finest. Hammond nodded and asked,

“The signal. What is it?”

Hammond watched Demidov, quietly assessing his chances of raising the rifle and getting off a shot before Hammond could pull the trigger. They were slim to none. Any chance the assassin might have had to kill him was gone. Hammond knew that, and from Demidov’s shrug of resignation, it appeared he knew it, too.

“The awning. When it is time, the café owner will raise the awning.”

Hammond glanced out of the window and looked down on the tea shop opposite. The shop’s distinctive brown and black striped canvas awning had been lowered. That was inventive. With the awning lowered, whoever sat at the table would be unable to see the upper windows of those houses on the other side of the street, which effectively hid any sniper from his target until the very last moment. With the awning raised it offered the same clear field of fire through the trees that he had seen the previous night. It also left the morning sun directly behind the shooter and directly in the eyes of his target.

“Clever.” He inclined his head in a gesture of respect for the assassin’s meticulous preparation, and then asked, “Beria’s orders. . . Was it to be only me, or both?”

“Both.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Demidov misread the signs. He showed two rows of yellow teeth as he shrugged and grinned. Hammond grinned back, and then shot him twice in the chest.

Acute shock flitted across the killer’s face as each bullet found its mark. He staggered and dropped the rifle, but didn’t go down. Instead, he snarled his hatred through the agony and moved to pick up the fallen weapon. As his eyes fixed on the rifle and his hands reached out, Hammond shot him again, this time through the top of the skull.

The assassin took one more step, his thick, blunt fingers still reaching for the rifle, but it was only gravity and the original madness that gave his corpse any momentum.

Vladimir Demidov was already dead.

By the time Hammond arrived at The Silver Samovar, it was well after nine. A smug-looking Davis Carpenter was the restaurant’s only customer. He was sitting at his regular table by the window. Hammond sat down opposite.

“Sorry I’m late. I had to meet with a contact; old friend of Alan Carlisle.”

“Who?”

“Nobody important. It turned out to be a dead-end. So what did you want to talk about?”

Carpenter eyed him cautiously for a moment. He seemed satisfied that all was well, because he smiled his usual smug smile before speaking.

“I wanted to know why you’re following me.”