Authors: Eric Ambler
After nearly an hour, negative reports began to come in. The PO box number in Miami did not exist. The FBI had no record of any Zander. Shortly afterwards, Captain Boyle sent for me so that I could hear the bomb-squad report.
The man in charge of the squad was Detective First-Grade Lampeter. A tall, black, melancholy man, he nodded in a perfunctory way when Boyle introduced us. He was holding an X-ray picture by a pair of clips and seemed to be as disgusted with himself as he was bored by the rest of us. I wondered if that could be a state of mind that went with his job. He had a white partner whose name I didn’t catch.
‘There’s your bomb, Mr Halliday,’ Boyle said with a wave at the picture.
All I could see on the X-ray was a lot of grey fuzz, a slightly darker rectangular shadow and something that looked like the silhouette of an old-fashioned mouse-trap.
‘Was there any explosive in it?’ I asked.
Lampeter pointed to the dark rectangle. ‘Regular dynamite,’ he said, ‘the sort farmers use for clearing tree stumps. Six sticks taped together. No fingerprints on the tape or anywhere else. Standard blasting caps. It’s a highly professional job done by, or on the instructions of, someone who knows about bomb-disposal techniques. See that?’ He tapped the mouse-trap shape.
‘Looks like a mouse-trap.’
‘It is, more or less. The idea is that when the package
arrives the person it’s addressed to opens it up by tearing off the wrapping. That takes the pressure off the piece of cardboard holding the spring down underneath. So, snap it goes like any other mouse-trap. Only what it snaps into isn’t a mouse but a detonator. So, bang, you’ve lost both arms and an eye or worse. So, the moment we see an X-ray with that sort of break-back gadget showing, we know how to open the package and render it harmless. We do it like this. Excuse me, Captain.’
He took a law book out of the case behind the Captain’s chair and put it on the edge of the desk.
‘That’s the package, say. Now, I put the flat of my left hand right on top of the place where I know the break-back spring is and I press down firmly. Then, with my right hand, I take a knife with a sharpened hook at the end, like you can buy for cutting linoleum or shoe-leather, and I slit open the package around the edges of the long narrow side. Then, I can gradually slide out what’s inside while continuing to maintain pressure on the break-back to stop it flipping over. When it’s far enough out for me to see, I can get hold of the break-back itself. Then, all I have to do is remove the detonator. When we had that miners’ union trouble and people were sending package bombs to each other by every mail, we dealt that way with a dozen or more in a week.’
‘So that’s how you dealt with this one, eh?’ Captain Boyle had been fidgeting and now seemed ready to skip any further instruction in the rudiments of bomb disposal.
Lampeter shook his head emphatically. ‘No, Captain, that’s how I was
allowed
to deal with this one by the son-of-a-bitch who sent it or arranged for it to be sent. I told you it was put together by someone who knows the score, someone who knew that it would be X-rayed and opened up like I’ve shown you with a hooked knife. So, what he does is put in a little extra gizmo to fool me. In the army, where I was trained, that was standard operating procedure with stuff like mines and delayed-action bombs. As soon as the guy who’d designed one of those items had figured, or been
told by Intelligence, that the enemy knew how to defuse it, he put in a modification. As a result, the next time some smart-ass enemy tried defusing it by the book he blew his stupid head off.’
‘You look all right to me, Lampeter,’ said Captain Boyle. ‘I take it you spotted the modification.’
‘No, Captain, I missed it completely. What he’s done is put in an electric detonator as well as the regular one. It doesn’t show in the X-ray because it’s in there behind the main spring of the break-back. The wiring from the little pen-light battery runs around the outside edge of the whole package. When I put the knife in and started cutting the side open, that should have set it off by shorting the twin flex he used, either straight away or when I began to pull the hook along.’
‘Why didn’t it? Luck? Some defect?’
Lampeter breathed in deeply before answering. ‘No, Captain. No luck and no defect. The bomb-maker had the detonator connections neatly taped back out of the way so that I should know that this time he was just kidding. He could have blown my head off, but he didn’t. He’s a sweetheart. The FBI lab people are going to love him too.’
The white bomb-squad man spoke for the first time. ‘If I ever get my hands on the mother,’ he said quietly, ‘I swear to God I’ll kill him.’
‘Aren’t you gentlemen taking this a little personally?’ I asked. ‘After all, I’m the nearly injured party. The bomb
was
sent to me. I’m delighted he was kidding.’
Lampeter’s melancholy eyes took me to pieces for a moment before he answered. ‘You’re a civilian, Mr Halliday, and he hasn’t made a monkey out of
you
. They tell me you’re a writer. Movie stars’ biographies they say. Right?’
‘Among other things.’
‘Yeah. I think I’ve seen your name on drugstore bookstands. All that “truth-about” stuff. In that line of work you must have gotten to know where quite a lot of bodies are buried. And I’ll bet you’ve made quite a lot of enemies too.’
‘The sender of this bomb says it’s a friendly gesture. He wants to convince me of his personal integrity.’
‘Ah, shit.’
‘It’s true, Lampeter,’ said Boyle.
‘You said he’d had a threatening letter, Captain. It told him to call in the bomb-squad. Received Monday. Right?’
‘Right, but I didn’t get a chance to show you the actual letter. You were already all suited-up for the bomb when Halliday brought them both in. But it’s like he says. Look.’
He had the photocopy of Zander’s letter in a plastic folder and pushed it across the desk. Both bomb-squad men read it together. When Lampeter had finished he looked almost cheerful.
‘Well, Captain,’ he said, ‘sooner you than us. When you said threatening letter I thought you meant one of the normal kind. What you’ve gotten here is a nut-case. And a nut-case who can package bombs as good as this should be able to give you and the Postal Service a whole lot of trouble.’ As he got up to go he showed me a friendlier face. ‘Know what I’d do in your place, Mr Halliday? For the next six months I wouldn’t open any mail at all that I can’t see through when I hold it up to the light. And, if the Captain here would let me, I’d take a long vacation as far away from home as possible. Been nice meeting you. Captain, that package is defused and safe now. Do you still want us to deliver to the FBI or will one of your men take care of that?’
When the business was finished and they had gone, Captain Boyle looked at me again.
‘Think of taking some of that advice he gave you, Mr Halliday?’
‘About taking a vacation?’
‘I’d prefer that you didn’t take it so far away that we couldn’t reach you by phone. The FBI just might want to talk to you so that they have their own record of what you’ve already told me, and they can turn sour if witnesses aren’t always there at the ready. Naturally, you’ll be careful to look at mail before you open it. You have a secretary I suppose.’
‘Part-time. She gave me your name as a matter of fact.’
‘That so? Well, you’ll warn her, I guess. Although the Postal Service will be running a check for a while on all packages addressed to you. Did you notice, by the way, that this Zander says parcel when he means package? That’s British usage.’
‘Yes, I’d noticed.’
‘You’ll be letting me have the original of this letter, eh Mr Halliday? There’s always a chance that the forensic lab people may come up with something we didn’t know already.’
‘I’ll put it in the mail to you.’
He was re-reading the photocopy. ‘What’s your thinking about this last paragraph?’ he asked. ‘He knows you’re a newspaper man. Have you followed up on his suggestion about newspaper morgues?’
It was simple enough to lie. ‘I used to be a newspaper man, yes, but I’m out of touch these days. I’ll probably call around, but if the FBI say they don’t know this Zander it’s unlikely that I’m going to be able to come up with anything.’
‘But you’ll try all the same?’ he persisted.
‘Oh sure.’
‘And be letting us know when Zander makes the next approach?’
Captain Boyle was a big, handsome man with an old-style politician’s smile. It had been a mistake on my part to underestimate his intelligence.
‘I see that you don’t accept the nut-case diagnosis, Captain.’
‘Of course I accept it. Anyone who sends bombs through the mail has to be some kind of nut. But in this case, I think, not Lampeter’s kind. What do you think?
‘I agree. This bomb is a one-off, a show of muscle if you like. I don’t think he’s going to send any more. Dammit, I don’t even think he sent this one, I mean not with his own hands. I’m inclined to think, as you seem to, that the writer of that letter means exactly what he says. He wants something
done. He thinks I can do it, that it’s something that would specially appeal to me. He just has a funny way of asking.’
‘And what’s your reaction to it, Mr Halliday? I mean now that you know what was in the package. Are you laughing?’
‘No, Captain, I’m not. I’m as mad as Detective Lampeter. But I’m also intensely curious, and quite determined to know more. Unfortunately, that makes me even madder because curiosity and a desire to know more on my part are, I believe, among the various reactions Zander hoped to get from me. Still, if and when he makes his next approach, I won’t refuse to listen. I couldn’t.’
The Captain nodded. ‘See what you mean. Well, if you do find out more, I’m sure you’ll fill us in. I know you people have to protect your sources and all that, but here we like to close a case out whenever we can.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘One other thing, Mr Halliday. Call it friendly advice. If Lampeter says that job’s professional, I believe him. So that means this letter-writer is professional too, in his own way of course. So watch it, eh Mr Halliday? I’ve had you checked out. You’ve had bad times that you don’t like talking about. Maybe the time’s come now to forget about them altogether. No, it’s none of my business. Just friendly advice. You’re not as young as you look, and the sweet taste of some things can be bad for your health.’
I drove home from town as I had driven into it, slowly and carefully as if I still had the package in the trunk of the car. I had had a beef sandwich and several cups of coffee while I had been at the police headquarters. Now, two hours later, they began to give me indigestion.
When I opened my front door the phone was ringing. I ignored it and poured myself a drink. As soon as the ringing stopped, I sat down and wondered how best to warn my secretary and the daily not to attempt to open any packages addressed to me.
If I told them the truth they would tell their husbands, and
they, most sensibly, would instruct or advise their wives to quit working for me. I tried to invent a lie to cover the situation, but couldn’t think of one that didn’t require the dread word ‘bomb’ to make it convincing. But did I really need to warn? Boyle had said that the Postal Service would be checking all packages addressed to me. Even if Zander did send another bomb – and neither Boyle nor I really thought that he would – it would be intercepted. So what was I worrying about?
The phone rang again and this time I answered it.
Barbara was angry. ‘As you very well know, my dear, because you’re not a
stupidly
forgetful person, I promised to call Mr McGuire this morning and you promised to call me. When you fail to call and I call you, your daily woman tells me that you have suddenly driven off saying that you were going into town and that you might not be back. No reason given. Since I am doing my level best to represent you effectively in a deal with a company which I now find is a member state of the Syncom-Sentinel financial empire, I think that the least you can do, my dear, the very
least
, is to spare me enough of your time to make a single phone call.’
‘I’m sorry, Barbara. I lost a filling and had to go to a dentist, even if he wasn’t my own and forty miles away. I was in pain.
‘Does it take all day to get a tooth filled?’
‘I’ve said I’m very sorry, and I am. What’s this you say about Syncom Oil?’
‘It isn’t about their oil, it’s about their publishing interests. I find that Pacioli is a Syncom-Sentinel subsidiary. Burrowing still further on your behalf, I find out that Mr McGuire’s firm are Syncom-Sentinel’s legal representatives in all their arm’s length operations, the diversified as well as the oil interests, from the Persian Gulf to the Arctic. So, not wishing to irritate, or even slightly inconvenience, a high-powered lawyer with fifty thousand on the table and several billions more behind him, I called him back as I had promised. My story was that you were a bit unhappy about
the preliminary ground rules. Okay, you understood that the publishers wanted the matter treated confidentially, but you were at present busy completing the final editorial work on a new book. You were reluctant to break off and battle your way in from the country to New York City merely to discuss a project about which you knew less than nothing and in which you could very well have no interest at all.’
‘Beautifully put, Barbara. Superb.’
‘As a result, my dear, and after a show of reluctance on his part, I was given the following. The book – I quote – is to be in essence the history of a political movement. It will consist partly of a hitherto unpublished nineteenth-century memoir and partly of an informed commentary by a modern expert on the movement and its development over the years. Your function would be mainly editorial. The proposed title is – again I quote –
Children of the Twilight
.’
‘Doesn’t exactly grab you, does it.’
‘It may sound better in Italian. Anyway, titles can always be changed. The point is that, having screwed that concession out of him I felt bound to concede something in return.’
‘Such as what, Barbara?’