The Rhinemann Exchange (26 page)

There was none. The rear license plate was missing.

Instead, above the trunk in the oblong rear window, a face looked back at him. His shock caused him to lose
his breath. For the briefest of moments he wondered if his eyes, his senses were playing tricks on him, transporting his imagination back to Lisbon.

He started after the car, running in the street, dodging automobiles and the goddamned New Year’s Eve revelers.

The brown sedan turned north on Madison Avenue and sped off. He stood in the street, breathless.

The face in the rear window was a man he had worked with in the most classified operations out of Portugal and Spain.

Marshall. Lisbon’s master cryptographer.

The taxi driver accepted David’s challenge to get him to the Montgomery in five minutes or less. It took seven, but considering the traffic on Fifth Avenue, Spaulding gave him five dollars and raced into the lobby.

There were no messages.

He hadn’t bothered to thread his door lock; a conscious oversight, he considered. In addition to the maid service, if he could have offered an open invitation to those who had searched his room two nights ago, he would have done so. A recurrence might cause carelessness, some clues to identities.

He threw off his coat and went to his dresser, where he kept a bottle of Scotch. Two clean glasses stood on a silver tray next to the liquor. He’d take the necessary seconds to pour himself a drink before calling Fairfax.

“A very Happy New Year,” he said slowly as he lifted the glass to his lips.

He crossed to the bed, picked up the telephone and gave the Virginia number to the switchboard. The circuits to the Washington area were crowded; it would take several minutes to get through.

What in God’s name did the man mean?
Heed the lesson of Fairfax.
What the hell was he talking about? Who was Altmüller?… What was the first name?… Franz. Franz Altmüller.

Who was he?

So the Lajes Field “incident”
was
aimed at him. For Christ’s sake, what
for?

And
Marshall.
It
was
Marshall in that rear window! He
hadn’t
been mistaken!

“Field Division Headquarters” were the monotoned words from the State of Virginia, County of Fairfax.

“Colonel Edmund Pace, please.”

There was a slight pause at the other end of the line. David’s ears picked up a tiny rush of air he knew very well.

It was a telephone intercept, usually attached to a wire recorder.

“Who’s calling Colonel Pace?”

It was David’s turn to hesitate. He did so thinking that perhaps he’d missed the interceptor sound before. It was entirely possible, and Fairfax was, after all … well, Fairfax.

“Spaulding. Lieutenant Colonel David Spaulding.”

“Can I give the colonel a message, sir? He’s in conference.”

“No, you may not. You may and can give me the colonel.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Fairfax’s hesitation was now awkward. “Let me have a telephone number.…”

“Look, soldier, my name is Spaulding. My clearance is four-zero and this is a four-zero priority call. If those numbers don’t mean anything to you, ask the son of a bitch on your intercept. Now, it’s an emergency. Put me through to Colonel Pace!”

There was a loud double click on the line. A deep, hard voice came over the wire.

“And this is Colonel Barden, Colonel Spaulding. I’m also four-zero and any four-zeros will be cleared with this son of a bitch. Now, I’m in no mood for any rank horseshit. What do you want?”

“I like your directness, colonel,” said David, smiling in spite of his urgency. “Put me through to Ed. It’s really priority. It concerns Fairfax.”

“I can’t put you through, colonel. We don’t have any circuits, and I’m not trying to be funny. Ed Pace is dead. He was shot through the head an hour ago. Some goddamned son of a bitch killed him right here in the compound.”

It was four thirty in the morning when the army car carrying Spaulding reached the Fairfax gate.

The guards had been alerted; Spaulding, in civilian clothes, possessing no papers of authorization, was matched against his file photograph and waved through. David had been tempted to ask to see the photograph; to the best of his knowledge, it was four years old. Once inside, the automobile swung left and headed to the south area of the huge compound. About a half mile down the gravel road, past rows of metal Quonset huts, the car pulled up in front of a barracks structure. It was the Fairfax Administration Building.

Two corporals flanked the door. The sergeant driver climbed out of the car and signaled the noncoms to let Spaulding through; he was already in front of them.

David was shown to an office on the second floor. Inside were two men: Colonel Ira Barden and a doctor named McCleod, a captain. Barden was a thick, short man with the build of a football tackle and close-cropped black hair. McCleod was stooped, slender, bespectacled—the essence of the thoughtful academician.

Barden wasted the minimum time with introductions. Completed, he went immediately to the questions at hand.

“We’ve doubled patrols everywhere, put men with K-9s all along the fences. I’d like to think no one could get out. What bothers us is whether someone got out beforehand.”

“How did it happen?”

“Pace had a few people over for New Year’s. Twelve, to be exact. Four were from his own Quonset, three from
Records, the rest from Administration. Very subdued … what the hell, this is Fairfax. As near as we can determine, he went out his back door at about twenty minutes past midnight. Carrying out garbage, we think; maybe just to get some air. He didn’t come back.… A guard down the road came to the door, saying he’d heard a shot. No one else had. At least, not inside.”

“That’s unusual. These quarters are hardly soundproof.”

“Someone had turned up the phonograph.”

“I thought it was a subdued party.”

Barden looked hard at Spaulding. His glare was not anger, it was his way of telegraphing his deep concern. “That record player was turned up for no more than thirty seconds. The rifle used—and ballistics confirms this—was a training weapon, .22 caliber.”

“A sharp crack, no louder,” said David.

“Exactly. The phonograph was a signal.”

“Inside. At the party,” added Spaulding.

“Yes.… McCleod here is the base psychiatrist. We’ve been going over everyone who was inside.…”

“Psychiatrist?” David was confused. It was a security problem, not medical.

“Ed was a hardnose, you know that as well as I do. He trained you.… I looked you up, Lisbon. It’s one angle. We’re covering the others.”

“Look,” interrupted the doctor, “you two want to talk, and I’ve got files to go over. I’ll call you in the morning; later this morning, Ira. Nice to meet you, Spaulding. Wish it wasn’t this way.”

“Agreed,” said Spaulding, shaking the man’s hand.

The psychiatrist gathered up the twelve file folders on the colonel’s desk and left.

The door closed. Barden indicated a chair to Spaulding. David sat down, rubbing his eyes. “One hell of a New Year’s, isn’t it?” said Barden.

“I’ve seen better,” Spaulding replied.

“Do you want to go over what happened to you?”

“I don’t think there’s any point. I was stopped; I told you what was said. Ed Pace was obviously the ‘Fairfax lesson.’ It’s tied to a brigadier named Swanson at DW.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t.”

“It has to be.”

“Negative. Pace wasn’t involved with the DW thing. His only tie was recruiting you; a simple transfer.”

David remembered Ed Pace’s words:
I’m not cleared … how does it strike you? Have you met Swanson?
He looked at Barden. “Then someone thinks he was. Same motive. Related to the sabotage at Lajes. In the Azores.”

“How?”

“The son of a bitch said so on Fifty-second Street! Five
hours
ago.… Look, Pace is dead; that gives you certain latitude under the circumstances. I want to check Ed’s four-zero files. Everything connected to my transfer.”

“I’ve already done that. After your call there was no point in waiting for an inspector general. Ed was about my closest friend.…”

“And?”

“There are no files. Nothing.”

“There
has
to be! There’s got to be a record for Lisbon. For
me.
”

“There is. It states simple transfer to DW. No names. Just a word. A single word: ‘Tortugas.’ ”

“What about the papers you prepared? The discharge, the medical record; Fifth Army, One Hundred and Twelfth Battalion? Italy?… Those papers aren’t manufactured without a Fairfax file!”

“This is the first I’ve heard of them. There’s nothing about them in Ed’s vaults.”

“A major—Winston, I think his name is—met me at Mitchell Field. I flew in from Newfoundland on a coastal patrol. He brought me the papers.”

“He brought you a sealed envelope and gave you verbal instructions. That’s all he knows.”

“
Jesus!
What the hell happened to the so-called Fairfax efficiency?”

“You tell me. And while you’re at it, who murdered Ed Pace?”

David looked over at Barden. The word
murder
hadn’t occurred to him. One didn’t commit
murder
; one killed, yes, that was part of it. But murder? Yet it
was
murder.

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you where to start asking questions.”

“Please do.”

“Raise Lisbon. Find out what happened to a cryptographer named Marshall.”

The news of Pace’s murder reached Alan Swanson indirectly; the effect was numbing.

He had been in Arlington, at a small New Year’s Eve dinner party given by the ranking general of Ordnance when the telephone call came. It was an emergency communication for another guest, a lieutenant general on the staff of the Joint Chiefs. Swanson had been near the library door when the man emerged; the staffer had been white, his voice incredulous.

“My God!” he had said to no one in particular. “Someone shot Pace over at Fairfax. He’s dead!”

Those few in that small gathering in Arlington comprised the highest echelons of the military; there was no need for concealing the news; they would all, sooner or later, be told.

Swanson’s hysterical first thoughts were of Buenos Aires. Was there
any possible connection?

He listened as the brigadiers and the two- and three-stars joined in controlled but excited speculations. He heard the words … 
infiltrators, hired assassins, double agents.
He was stunned by the wild theories … advanced rationally … that one of Pace’s undercover agents had to be behind the murder. Somewhere a defector had been paid to make his way back to Fairfax; somewhere there was a weak link in a chain of Intelligence that had been bought.

Pace was not just a crack Intelligence man, he was one of the best in Allied Central. So much so that he twice had requested that his brigadier star be officially recorded but not issued, thus protecting his low profile.

But the profile was not low enough. An extraordinary man like Pace would have an extraordinary price on his head. From Shanghai to Berne; with Fairfax’s rigid security the killing had to have been planned for months. Conceived as a long-range project, to be executed internally. There was no other way it could have been accomplished. And there were currently over five hundred personnel in the compound, including a rotating force of espionage units-in-training—nationals from many countries. No security
system could be that absolute under the circumstances. All that was needed was one man to slip through.

Planned for months … a defector who had made his way back to Fairfax … a double agent … a weak Intelligence link paid a fortune. Berne to Shanghai.

A long-range project!

These were the specific words and terms and judgments that Swanson heard clearly because he wanted to hear them.

They removed the motive from Buenos Aires. Pace’s death had nothing to
do
with Buenos Aires because the time element prohibited it.

The Rhinemann exchange had been conceived barely three weeks ago; it was inconceivable that Pace’s murder was related. For it to be so would mean that he, himself, had broken the silence.

No one else on earth knew of Pace’s contribution. And even Pace had known precious little.

Only fragments.

And all the background papers concerning the man in Lisbon had been removed from Pace’s vault. Only the War Department transfer remained.

A fragment.

Then Alan Swanson thought of something and he marveled at his own cold sense of the devious. In a way, it was chilling that it could escape the recesses of his mind. With Edmund Pace’s death, not even Fairfax could piece together the events leading up to Buenos Aires. The government of the United States was removed one step further.

As if abstractly seeking support, he ventured aloud to the small group of his peers that he recently had been in communication with Fairfax, with Pace as a matter of fact, over a minor matter of clearance. It was insignificant really, but he hoped to Christ …

He found his support instantly. The lieutenant general from staff, two brigs and a three-star all volunteered that they, too, had used Pace.

Frequently. Obviously more than he did.

“You could save a lot of time dealing directly with Ed,” said the staffer. “He cut tape and shot you off a clearance right away.”

One step further removed.

Once back in his Washington apartment, Swanson experienced the doubts again. Doubts and opportunities alike. Pace’s murder was potentially a problem because of the shock waves it would produce. There would be a major investigation, all avenues explored. On the other hand, the concentration would be on Fairfax. It would consume Allied Central Intelligence. At least for a while. He had to move now. Walter Kendall had to get to Buenos Aires and conclude the arrangements with Rhinemann.

The guidance designs from Peenemünde. Only the designs were important.

But first tonight, this morning. David Spaulding. It was time to give the former man in Lisbon his assignment.