Escape the Night (29 page)

Phillip looked away. “And if he does?”

“That would be unfortunate.” Almost fondly, Englehardt smiled down at Phillip Carey. “You see, I own you now.”

His superiors had been gratified beyond his best imagining.

Queried, he hid the secret of his power. “Phillip Carey,” he had answered, “is my closest friend.”

Friendless no more, he rose quickly.

He no longer felt a stray, the second son of an unloving father, but a professional. His ability to connect information in a seamless web of human motive now marked him as an instinctive intelligence analyst; his resolve to apply pure reason to his ends spurred him to plot the assassination of a nettlesome Congolese politician, secretly paid by the Soviets, with a precision that won fervent admiration. When the politician was later found stuffed in a meat locker on the outskirts of Léopoldville, Englehardt once more felt only satisfaction that
his
secrets were not known. He had purged his mind of both the acquired shackles of religion and man's instinctive fear of murder: stripped of superstition and marbled with secrets, his brain, honed on Phillip Carey, had at last brought him to power.

Phillip, and then Martin, new symbol of his willingness to kill.

They had met in 1962: for the second and last time in his life, Englehardt had the eerie sense of facing another aspect of himself.

It had been an accident; Martin's case officer caught influenza, and Englehardt was assigned to debrief this unliked field agent after a routine trip to Athens. Knowing Martin headed for the dustbin, Englehardt awaited him with mild curiosity; despite superior intelligence, Martin caused innate revulsion in those above him.

“Are you Englehardt?”

Glancing up, Englehardt recoiled inwardly: almost at once he knew that he reacted, not to the domed forehead, the splayed nose, or the grotesquely protruding underlip—although, shoved together in some brutal joke of nature, they would forever set this man apart—but to the eyes.

From the first time he had seen Phillip Carey, Englehardt knew that he could read the character of others in their eyes. In Martin's—perceptive and moistly bright—he saw the twisted sensitivity of one who spent too much time alone.

“Please sit down,” he said easily. “I'd like to hear the facts, and your impressions.”

For the next two hours, Englehardt listened and asked questions: underlying the man's slurred voice, he recognized Martin's molten need to touch those whom, before, he had only watched. A friend might win his unending gratitude.

“You've done well,” he ventured.

Above his eerie smile, Martin's eyes met Englehardt's.

Englehardt felt a stab of fear: this ugly man had read his thoughts. But no measure of perception would ever change his needs. “Yes,” he finished softly, “I see the things of which you're capable.”

“Please.” Martin's voice bore the hush of the confessional. “I need more freedom.”

Englehardt gave it to him.

In quick succession, Martin killed three Belgian double agents; the men simply disappeared.

Englehardt found a new assignment, then a better one: two more men died. Succeeding, Martin added to his luster. Englehardt alone had seen his gifts.

Only later did he guess about the women.

It was in Germany that Englehardt first saw the pattern. Three women had been stalked and killed at random; though naked and abused, none was raped; police in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt were at a loss. Englehardt did not point out to them that each woman died while Martin was in their city, that the work was too professional, that the victims were prostitutes, whom an ugly man could reach.

Given that they would not forget him, Englehardt reflected, it was well that they were dead.

When Martin returned to Washington, photos of three women were lying on his bed.

Their understanding was complete.

Martin would be cautious, for Englehardt had grown to need him.

No target would ever know his name, or look into his face.

As Martin grew still wiser and more polished, Englehardt grew in craft. They mastered the intricacies of surveillance, manipulating their targets until each target's death appeared an outgrowth of their lives. Teaching Martin the virtue of contingency planning to assure their own security, Englehardt learned with him the arcane art of converting murder into suicide: wherever possible, their work would leave no trace.

In this, they were assisted by Englehardt's passion for analysis.

Piece by piece, he would reconstruct his victim's inner life from every fact that Martin stole, until he saw the death suitable for each. If his understanding were exact enough, his subject might spare them any violence: an eminent British leftist, recoiling from a weakness for small children which particularly disgusted Martin, shot himself without knowing who had mailed him the pictures. At other times, he would drop clues to his victim's self-destruction stolen from a lover or psychiatrist: Martin, holding the gun so close that the entry wound seemed self-inflicted, would murder and then vanish, leaving no sign of struggle, nothing but a corpse, weary of life, which could not point to Englehardt had it risen from the dead.

Now and then, a woman died: this, too, was their unspoken secret.

But there remained one secret Martin did not share, and that was Phillip Carey.

In the middle of the night, Englehardt felt his absence like an amputated limb.

They never saw each other.

On a secure line, Englehardt would call him: briskly, he issued new instructions, then asked about Peter's memory.

Sometimes, when he could not help it, he asked how Phillip was.

He covered this with irony: he no longer
knew
, he would softly add, because he had kept his word.

For fourteen years, this bargain held: their secrecy had been so thorough that in 1974, when a wave of similar revelations forced the CIA to abandon its use of Van Dreelen & Carey, the operation never surfaced. On the telephone, he had said goodbye to Phillip Carey.

By then, John Joseph Englehardt was a powerful man, indeed.

Six years later, the last of the pitiful parade of post-Watergate CIA directors reviewed this proud career: deeming Englehardt a murderer beyond control, the director requested his retirement.

Staring into the director's blunt and stupid face, Englehardt felt a terrible panic: through the agency, and Martin, he had touched the postwar world with his mind. Now an amateur was ending this quarter century of power …

He went quickly to find Martin, and discovered that they had transferred him to Zurich.

Sequestered in his town house, Englehardt fought back a racking illness—blue and terrible as the withdrawal from a drug—and calculated his alternatives. One was to blackmail the director: he knew too much that outsiders should not know. But this would buy him only the clean desk and empty title forced on pariahs, serving out their time like the living dead. Outside, his secrets might again buy power: his only hope was to offer the keenness of his mind to those who held it.

Abruptly, he thought of Clayton Barth.

He knew Barth through his fetish for hiring ex-operatives like Martin, disaffected by the growing strictures on their work. This marked Barth as susceptible: the more his tentacles stretched worldwide, the more he could be used to gather intelligence. In an age of terrorism, industrial espionage and foreign bribery, a man like Barth, more ruthless than his government, might well come to depend on him. And then, Englehardt argued to himself, he might use the resources of Barth Industries to make the agency
his
client …

But he could not come to Barth as a mere supplicant: carefully, he must gauge his wants.

Stalking Barth in his mind, he bought drinks for former colleagues, fishing awkwardly for their gossip about Barth Industries while he tried to build a record, visiting other multinationals to suggest that his new services would be essential to their power.

But, like his superiors long before them, he found they did not know this.

From his home in Georgetown, he performed intelligence analyses for oil companies frightened of Qaddafy and surveillance sweeps for computer firms suspecting wiretaps, humiliated by the menial nature of his work and the crass successes of less gifted colleagues, who ran guns to Libya or traded secrets for the trinkets of notoriety. With chilling irony he saw that the rising desperation of his middle age was again that of his youth: he could not sell himself, and had no secrets he would sell.

Then, lunching with a former colleague at the Sans Souci, he learned of Clayton Barth's obsession with Van Dreelen & Carey.

“One two-bit publisher,” the man told him in bewilderment, “and the boss turns into Captain Ahab.”

A window opened in Englehardt's mind.

Thirty years before, John Carey had rasped at the arrogant Charles: “The only person Clayton Barth had the power to destroy was his own son.”

Barth's father had blown his brains out with a revolver: Englehardt knew this from a tape.

He said none of this to the man across the table.

His final chance was Clayton Barth, the son.

But so much depended on Peter Carey, too hauntingly like his father …

This, above all, compelled him to reach out for Martin.

He knew the risk involved: as with Barth, he could control the ugly man only through his needs. But, six months after dismissing Englehardt, the agency fired Martin, fearing that no one else could hold those needs in check. Now, no one else could give this man what Englehardt might offer …

When at last he called Martin, there was a moment of strained silence: Englehardt sensed the ugly man was weeping. When he finally answered, it was with a muffled, “Thank you,” and then Martin hung up.

The next day, he appeared at Englehardt's door.

Englehardt frowned: Martin had never visited his home. He drove him to the Ellipse. Near the Jefferson Memorial, hunched against the chill fall air, he outlined his proposal.

Martin was to strip Peter Carey of every scrap of privacy.

When Martin left to establish a base of operations in Manhattan, Englehardt reviewed his plans.

His savings were adequate: for a few months he could finance himself and Martin, securing a base and the equipment they would need. To insulate him from the surveillance of Peter Carey, Martin at first would carry it out alone; were agents needed, Martin alone would control them, so that they would never know the name John Joseph Englehardt, or look into his face. And, once Barth approached Phillip Carey, there was a sequence he could count on …

That Phillip Carey would not sell without the approval of his nephew.

That Peter Carey could be maneuvered into withholding this approval while enraging Barth.

That once this happened, Englehardt alone might give Barth what he then would want so desperately, by forcing Phillip to sell the firm.

The sole imponderable was Peter Carey.

More than anyone, he knew the risk of turning
this
nephew against
this
uncle. But he could no longer face his hollow joke of an existence, brain withering to a vestigial organ.

When Martin called, John Joseph Englehardt caught an airplane to New York, and slipped unseen into SoHo.

He arranged to live in secret.

He left SoHo only after dark, with Martin driving. Martin brought him food from elsewhere, acquired statuary under a name they had invented. The gallery delayed its opening; its loft contained no clothes with labels or books which bore his name. His identity lived on with his possessions, secreted in his Georgetown home, the refuge it had always been. At night, pacing the empty loft, he wiped it clean of fingerprints.

Within two weeks, Peter Carey had gone into analysis.

Alone, Englehardt listened to his agony on tape, sickened and enthralled. His nerves quivered at the sound of Peter's voice …

Helpless as a fly in amber, he waited for Barth and Phillip Carey to play out their first act.

At last, they did: his call to Benevides, the first showing of his hand, brought about the second act.

Now the third act was beginning.

Feeling Englehardt extend his power over others, Barth would not see his power becoming Englehardt's until he was too vulnerable to quibble at the price. The subtle art of mutual blackmail was one Englehardt had long since mastered: shunning wealth and public acclaim, he had less to lose than other men.

So many years since the eyes of two young men had locked across the table, Phillip Carey might once more prove his resurrection. His eyes shut, and he remembered …

Footsteps echoed in the barren loft, and then Martin's slurred voice interrupted him. “Excuse me,” he said softly, “but Phillip Carey is here,” and in that moment, Englehardt knew at last how much he had missed him.

Silently, the two figures stepped from the dim light of the elevator, moving through the darkness toward Englehardt's desk. Their faces appeared; as if in a time warp, he had a schizoid vision of his two selves juxtaposed, one brutal and one willowy, and then Martin receded into the shadows, and he and Phillip Carey were alone.

“How are you, Phillip?” he asked softly.

Phillip Carey looked ill. “I thought you were dead.”

Englehardt cocked his head, inspecting him. “You look older. But then it's been over twenty years, hasn't it.”

Phillip's voice was hollow. “Twenty-three.”

Slowly, Englehardt nodded. “How has it felt, then, running the firm?”

“What do you want?”

Englehardt remembered Phillip's power to wound him with no more than his voice. “You're to sell to Clayton Barth.”

Phillip stiffened. “Do you have the same arrangement?”

“That's confidential, Phillip.
Your
role is quite simple.”

“But I can't do that. I'm
trustee
.”

Englehardt's smile was fond. “You're forgetting who to fear again. But then it's hard to break the habit of a lifetime, isn't it?”