“Nobody ever said. Keep their hands clean, I guess. Told me they’d asked for someone with a lot of confirmed kills.”
“You killed prisoners? Like throwing them out of helicopters?”
“No, I never did that. I wasn’t in helicopters much. Mostly Air America DC-3’s.” He clicked the cylinder around, squinting at it. “I heard of it, of course; everybody heard of it. But nobody ever ordered me to do it.”
“Would you have done it if they’d ordered you to?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
I hesitated and tried to be honest. “I don’t think I could. But then I’ve never killed anybody.”
“Yeah, you don’t know. Nobody knows till it happens.” He slid the shells methodically back into the cylinder. “If it was a direct order, I’d do it. Wouldn’t much like it, but I’d do it.”
“What if you knew he was innocent?”
“Innocent.” He sighted down the barrel at the TV set and tensed, about to deliver the ultimate Nielson rating. “Orders are orders. Besides, everybody’s innocent.
Enemy soldiers are just innocent jerks who were too dumb to stay out of the army. Like most of us.”
“Yet you don’t mind killing them?”
He set the revolver down and smiled again. “It’s a living.”
The phone rang, and I picked it up. It was Harriet Leusner, our de facto boss in the Foreign Resources Division, down at Langley. I got the scrambler out of my shaving kit and managed to get it working, then gave her a nonreport. She expressed no surprise and passed on a couple of tidbits of information.
I hung up and left the scrambler in place for the time being. “Any news?” Jefferson asked.
“That ‘cockroach’ the woman was talking to, they’ve come up with zilch. They have a tap and trace on the phone at the trade mission, of course, but the guy was talking from a pay phone in Port Authority.”
“But she called him, not the other way around.”
“Sometimes they use a series of pay phones, different ones for different times of day.”
Jefferson nodded slowly. “Well, if this cockroach is able to hang around bus stations all day, waiting for the phone to ring, he can’t be no hotshot spy, right? Just some sort of messenger, a go-between.”
“I guess. Anyhow, it seems like the day for funny code names…does ‘the Scalpel’ mean anything to you?”
“You’re the spy.”
“He’s an agent from Department Eight, Directorate S. Do you know what that—”
“Yeah. Assassination and sabotage. The ones who used to be Department Thirteen.”
“That’s right. He’s been in the country for a few days. He drove across from Mexico, they found out,
and then flew to Boston. Leusner thinks the KGB might have imported him for the Foley thing.” “He’s really bad?”
“I guess so. Been at it over twenty years; trained a lot of Bulgarians, Libyans, Lebanese, and so on. Evidently he’s the one who killed that Japanese ambassador last year. But Leusner says his specialty is getting information. Torture. Bad news for the Foley s.”
“He doesn’t torture people with a scalpel.”
“I don’t know.”
“Seriously.” He made a delicate gesture. “Like you don’t want a fighting knife to be razor-sharp; guy doesn’t even know he’s been cut. A scalpel wouldn’t hurt enough for torture. Lots of blood and shock. Guy you’re tryin’ to get to talk, he’d faint and then die.”
“But suppose you could scare him enough. Lop off a finger or something.”
“Nah. Somebody did that to me, I’d know he was goin’ to kill me sooner or later. I wouldn’t give him shit. Wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Not everyone’s like you, Jefferson. I’d probably start thinking about the other nine fingers. Not to mention noses and ears and dicks and so forth.”
“Yeah, and the Cavalry comin’ over the hill. It don’t happen, Bailey. Sooner or later your luck runs out and that’s it. That’s all she wrote.”
“That’s a funny thing for you to say. You’ve got more lives than a cat.”
He stared into his glass, swirling the ice around. “Still just a matter of time. Sooner or later she comes home.”
It was trivially easy to give myself an assignment to Boston. Jacob Bailey was told that I was a Soviet Affairs psychologist from Langley who wanted to be briefed on the Foley case, to talk informally in hopes of cross-pollination; maybe open up a new approach toward catching Foley or tracking down his captive wife.
I wanted to get a feeling for the overall operation there, since someone was obviously playing both sides. That was clear from what the Bulgarians revealed. I was sure it wasn’t Jacob, since I had asked him “under the influence”; likewise, I knew that he hadn’t suspected anyone at that time.
Jacob and his bodyguard, Sergeant Jefferson, picked me up at the airport and installed me in a modest hotel next to the library downtown, saying we’d get together in a couple of hours for dinner. They said Tuesday would be better than today for
meeting the staff; most of them were gone on a four-day weekend, taking advantage of a package deal at a New Hampshire ski lodge. So I walked around the library for a while, feeling nostalgic, and returned to the hotel restaurant one minute early. They were waiting.
Jefferson turned out to be a more interesting man than one would expect from his profession. He’d been to a lot of the world and kept his eyes open. Those eyes had a sadness and hardness that I could identify with.
I had enjoyed Jacob’s company in our previous incarnation, so perhaps I can be forgiven a large mistake. I excused myself to go to the men’s room and thought nothing of it when he followed me.
We were the only ones in the facility. I was standing in a vulnerable position when I felt the cold circle of a gun muzzle against the back of my neck.
“I know that you’re Foley,” he said.
My heart stumbled, restarted. “Me? Foley?”
“Come on, don’t be cute. Whatever you did to me in Paris, you’re not going to do here. At this range even I can’t miss.” Through the cool metal I could feel him trembling.
“Look… let me take you to a doctor. The strain—”
“It’s not gonna work, Foley. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you, but I do. Put your hands up, slowly.”
“Let me zip up first.” In the process I turned on the watch. “Give the pistol to me.” He handed it over, a pearl-handled chrome-plated .25-caliber Beretta Bantam; what we used to call a “ladies’ gun” in the bad old sexist days. I gave it back. “Put this away and don’t ever point a gun at me again.” He dropped it in the side pocket of his jacket. I wondered whether Jefferson had noticed he was armed.
“Do you usually carry a gun?”
“No, it stays in the desk drawer at home. I was afraid that you would give me trouble.”
“Is this conversation being recorded or monitored?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How could you remember who I was?”
“It was study, not memory. There’s a lot less flesh on your face, but your bone structure’s the same. And your eyes, except for the colored contacts. The contacts are pretty obvious if you’re looking for them.”
“Have you discussed this with anyone?”
“No. It was my own little project. Besides, I’m afraid that my section has been compromised.”
“Do you think anyone else is following your line of investigation?”
“I doubt it. It takes an artist’s instinct—I’ve been an amateur artist since grade school. In the past couple of months I’ve drawn and painted dozens of pictures, trying to guess what you might look like without the beard, or with a trimmed one. Studied hundreds of photographs. Every picture Valerie kept in her scrapbooks.”
“Are those photographs in your possession now, at home?”
“No. The FBI loaned them to us; we have file copies that I borrow over the weekends.”
“The paintings and drawings, are they all at home?”
“Yes, in a file folder.”
“Tonight I want you to throw them all away. Forget you ever did them… instead, you’ll remember having spent the time watching television. And you will never draw or paint a picture of me again.”
“Okay.”
“You will forget that you ever suspected I was
Foley. If anyone else suspects that while I’m here, you will tell me immediately. And not let the other person know you’ve told me.” He nodded. “You will follow these commands without remembering that I gave them to you. You came to the men’s room because you had to urinate. After I count to three, you will use the urinal and then return to our table with me. You will remember nothing of our conversation. One… two…”
“Wait.” He had a pained look.
“Yes?”
“I-I’m confused. It’s as if… it’s like I have to do anything you say.”
“That’s right.”
“But why?”
“Three.” He turned to the urinal and used it while I waited at the door. Walking back to the table, he looked puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Fugue state, I guess. Like my brain put in the clutch for a minute.” Nervous laugh. “This Foley business, I guess. It’s getting to me.”
The next morning I showed up at the office at nine and met all the staff as they reported to work. One by one, I managed to get them alone and ask, with the aid of the watch, whether they passed information on to the KGB. The third, Roberta Bender, said yes. I asked her to come up to my hotel room after work, giving her the number of the extra room I’d arranged for, in case I had to talk to someone in private. I didn’t think the CIA routinely bugged the rooms of visiting firemen, but this was far from being a routine case.
She knocked on the door promptly at 5:30. She was a single woman in her forties, figure well cared for, face handsome but hard under too much well-applied
makeup. I had a vague sense that I’d seen her before, but wasn’t sure where. She had probably picked up one of my dead drops.
I installed her in the easy chair and found my notebook, then sat on the bed across from her. “I’m going to ask you several questions. You will give me detailed answers. When I say, ‘Forget this,’ you will go home, have some dinner, go to bed, and sleep soundly. When you get home, you will forget having met me.” She nodded. I asked whether she was being monitored, and she said no.
“Is your KGB contact Vladimir Borachev?”
“No. I know him, of course, from the office and what Jake said about their meeting. My contact is Mr. Tarakan.”
Mister Cockroach. “—Do you speak Russian?”
“I didn’t understand that. I don’t speak Russian.”
“Do you meet with Tarakan regularly?”
“I go to the statue of Samuel Eliot Morison, on Commonwealth, every other Wednesday at noon. He is often there. We walk through the Common and talk.”
“Why do you do it?”
“They pay me the same as my salary, in cash.”
“Patriotism or love of communism doesn’t enter into it?”
“No,” she said harshly. “It’s a game.”
“Do you know what’s happened to Valerie Foley?”
“She’s being held.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Tarakan said she’s not in Boston anymore.”
“Is she all right?”
“The last I heard, she was. But now there’s this new man on her case.”
“The Scalpel.” Jefferson had told me about him.
“He wants to find Foley and send him one of her ears. That's worked before. Then another ear and so forth”
“They’re that sure Foley wouldn’t call the police?”
“They seem to be. I’m not.”
“Why so?”
“They’re acting as if Foley is a normal person. But he obviously isn’t; he’s a madman. There’s no way to tell what he might do. I think he
wants
her dead. Otherwise he would have done something with whatever that power of his is.”
That stopped me for a moment. Could there be truth in that? I changed the subject. “Do you have any idea why you report to Tarakan rather than Borachev?”
“I think they knew years ago that Borachev was unreliable. It certainly has turned out to be the case. Maybe everyone working under Borachev has a counterpart working with Tarakan. He’s implied that”
“What has Tarakan said about Foley?”
“He doesn’t say much about anything. He listens. But, let me see, he did say he expected Foley to return to Boston and that we would know when that was, unless he drives up… and he doesn’t have a license. The FBI’s watching all the airports and so forth, and we have someone pretty high up there.”
“All right. Will you be meeting Tarakan tomorrow?”
“If he comes.”
I was trying to remember what that area looked like. “After you meet him at the statue, do you go through the Public Garden on the way to the Common?”
“Yes, always.”
“I’ll meet you there. You won’t show any sign of recognizing me.” She nodded. “Forget this.” She picked up her coat and left without a word.
So it would be soon now. Time to start carrying the gun again, or guns. I still had the small automatic I’d taken from the dope dealer the night I left Boston, as well as the modified nine-millimeter Browning I’d bought in Iowa long ago. I took the shoulder harness out of my luggage and tightened up a couple of straps to make it fit my new frame. It looked disappointingly obvious with the new suit coats; I’d long since gotten rid of the one that had been tailored to conceal it. When the stores opened in the morning, I would find something.
The zippered fleece-lined jacket was bulky enough to hide two pistols and a picnic ham besides, but it was a little warm for the unseasonably pleasant weather. I’d gone to a gun shop and talked the owner out of a box of ammunition for the Browning and four spare clips, which I had secreted in various pockets. I was ready to take on all cockroaches and scalpels and whatever else.
Carrying the guns made me nervous. When I’d carried one before, it was largely a symbolic gesture. Now I might actually have to shoot someone. I’d been responsible for the deaths of many deserving people, but had never pulled the trigger myself.
Squeezed
the trigger. That was one thing I knew about this business: Make the first shot count, or you may not get a second one. I’m not an Olympic-class marksman anymore, but I could still put a bullet into someone’s eye from across a room. Right or left eye, take your pick. So long as my nerves hold. I held out my hands and regretted a slight tremor.
It was hard to concentrate on the newspaper. Sitting on the park bench feeling conspicuous, over-dressed. Hundreds of people passing by, all wondering whether I had a concealed weapon or simply a fetish for L. L. Bean clothing. Actually, I suppose if anyone gave it a thought, that thought was “My, don’t old geezers get cold easily.” You wouldn’t call me a geezer if you knew what I had under my left armpit. Where did that word come from anyway? One who geezes.