Voloshin thought about it, seeing the trap. Such an offer, if taken, would have to be reciprocated, because that was the way things were. To call Ritter’s hand on this would commit his own government to something, and Voloshin didn’t want to do that without guidance. Besides, it would be madness for CIA to lie in a case like this. Those prisoners could always be made to disappear. Only the goodwill of the Soviet Union could save them, and only the continuance of that goodwill would keep them healthy.
“I will take you at your word, Mister—”
“Ritter, Bob Ritter.”
“Ah! Budapest.”
Ritter grinned rather sheepishly. Well, after all he’d done to get his agent out, it was clear that he’d never go back into the field again, at least not in any place that mattered—which for Ritter started at the River Elbe. The Russian poked him in the chest.
“You did well getting your man out. I commend you on your loyalty to your agent.” Most of all Voloshin respected him for the risk he’d taken, something not possible in the KGB.
“Thank you, General. And thank you for responding to my proposal. When can I call you?”
“I’ll need two days ... shall I call you?”
“Forty-eight hours from now. I’ll make the call.”
“Very well. Good day.” They shook hands like the professionals they were. Voloshin walked back to his driver /bodyguard and headed back to the car. Their walk had ended up at the enclosure for the Kodiak bear, large, brown, and powerful. Had that been an accident? Ritter wondered.
On the walk back to his car he realized that the whole thing had been an accident of sorts. On the strength of this play, Ritter would become a section chief. Failed rescue mission or not, he’d just negotiated an important concession with the Russians, and it had all happened because of the presence of mind of a man younger than himself, scared and on the run, who’d taken the time to think. He wanted people like that in the Agency, and now he had the clout to bring him in. Kelly had demurred and temporized on the flight back from Hawaii. Okay, so he’d need a little convincing. He’d have to work with Jim Greer on that, but Ritter decided on the spot that his next mission was to bring Kelly in from the cold, or the heat, or whatever you called it.
“How well do you know Mrs. O’Toole?” Ryan asked.
“Her husband’s dead,” the neighbor said. “He went to Vietnam right after they bought the house, and then he was killed. Such a nice young man, too. She’s not in any trouble, is she?”
The detective shook his head. “No, not at all. I’ve only heard good things about her.”
“It’s been awful busy over there,” the elderly lady went on. She was the perfect person to talk to, about sixty-five, a widow with nothing to do who compensated for the empty space in her life by keeping track of everyone else’s. With a little reassurance that she wasn’t hurting anyone, she’d relate everything she knew.
“What do you mean?”
“I think she had a houseguest a while back. She sure was shopping a lot more than usual. She’s such a nice, pretty girl. It’s so sad about her husband. She really ought to start dating again. I’d like to tell her, but I don’t want her to think I’m nosy. Anyway, she was shopping a lot, and somebody else came almost every day, stayed overnight a lot, even.”
“Who was that?” Ryan asked, sipping his iced tea.
“A woman, short like me, but heavier, messy hair. She drove a big car, a red Buick, I think, and it had a sticker-thing on the windshield. Oh! That’s right!”
“What’s that?” Ryan asked.
“I was out with my roses when the girl came out, that’s when I saw the sticker-thing.”
“Girl?” Ryan asked innocently.
“That’s who she was shopping for!” the elderly lady said, pleased with herself for the sudden discovery. “She bought clothes for her, I bet. I remember the Hecht Company bags.”
“Can you tell me what the girl looked like?”
“Young, like nineteen or twenty, dark hair. Kinda pale, like she was sick. They drove away, when was that ... ? Oh, I remember. It’s the day my new roses came from the nursery. The eleventh. The truck came very early because I don’t like the heat, and I was out there working when they came out. I waved at Sandy. She’s such a nice girl. I don’t talk to her very much, but when I do she always has a kind word. She’s a nurse, you know, she works at Johns Hopkins, and—”
Ryan finished off his tea without letting his satisfaction show. Doris Brown had returned home to Pittsburgh on the afternoon of the eleventh. Sarah Rosen drove a Buick, and it undoubtedly had a parking sticker in the window. Sam Rosen, Sarah Rosen, Sandra O’Toole. They had treated Miss Brown. Two of them had also treated Miss Madden. They had also treated Mr. Kelly. After months of frustration, Lieutenant Emmet Ryan had a case.
“There she is now,” the lady said, startling him out of his private thoughts. Ryan turned and looked to see an attractive young lady, on the tall side. carrying a bag of groceries.
“I wonder who that man was?”
“What man?”
“He was there last night. Maybe she has a boyfriend after all. Tall, like you, dark hair—big.”
“How do you mean?”
“Like a football player, you know, big. He must be nice, though. I saw her hug him. That was just last night.”
Thank God, Ryan thought, for people who don’t watch TV.
For his long gun, Kelly had selected a bolt-action .22, a Savage Model 54, the lightweight version of that company’s Anschutz match weapon. It was expensive enough at a hundred fifty dollars with tax. Almost as costly were the Leupold scope and mounts. The rifle was almost too good for its purpose, which was the hunting of small game, and had a particularly fine walnut stock. It was a shame that he’d have to scar it up. It would have been more of a shame to waste the lesson from that chief machinist’s mate, however.
The one bad thing about the demise of Eddie Morello was that sweetening the deal had required the loss of a large quantity of pure, uncut heroin, a six-kilogram donation to the police evidence locker. That had to be made up. Philadelphia was hungry for more, and his New York connections were showing increasing interest now that they’d had their first taste. He’d do one last batch on the ship. Now he could change over again. Tony was setting up a secure lab that was easier to reach, more in keeping with the burgeoning success he was enjoying, but until that was ready, one more time the old way. He wouldn’t make the trip himself.
“How soon?” Burt asked.
“Tonight.”
“Fair enough, boss. Who goes with me?”
“Phil and Mike.” The two new ones were from Tony’s organization, young, bright, ambitious. They didn’t know Henry yet, and would not be part of his local distribution network, but they could handle out-of-town deliveries and were willing to do the menial work that was part of this business, mixing and packaging. They saw it, not inaccurately, as a rite of passage, a starting place from which their status and responsibility would grow. Tony guaranteed their reliability. Henry accepted that. He and Tony were bound now, bound in business, bound in blood. He’d accept Tony’s counsel now that he trusted him. He’d rebuild his distribution network, removing the need for his female couriers, and with the removal of the need for them, so would end the reason for their lives. It was too bad, but with three defections, it was plain that they were becoming dangerous. A useful part of his operation in the growth phase, perhaps, but now a liability.
But one thing at a time.
“How much?” Burt asked.
“Enough to keep you busy for a while.” Henry waved to the beer coolers. There wasn’t room for much beer in them now, but that was as it should be. Burt carried them out to his car, not casual, but not tense. Businesslike, the way things should be. Perhaps Burt would become his principal lieutenant. He was loyal, respectful, tough when he had to be, far more dependable than Billy or Rick, and a brother. It was funny, really. Billy and Rick had been necessary at the beginning since
the major distributors were always white, and he’d taken them on as tokens. Well, fate had settled that. Now the white boys were coming to him, weren’t they?
“Take Xantha with you.”
“Boss, we’re going to be busy,” Burt objected.
“You can leave her there when you’re done.” Perhaps one at a time was the best way to do it.
Patience never came easy. It was a virtue he’d learned, after a fashion, but only from necessity. Activity helped. He set the gun barrel in the vise, damaging the finish even before he started to do anything substantive. Setting the milling machine on high-speed, rotating the control wheel, he started drilling a series of holes at regular intervals in the outermost six inches of the barrel. An hour later he had a steel can-body affixed over it, and the telescopic sight attached. The rifle, as modified, proved to be quite accurate, Kelly thought.
“Tough one, Dad?”
“Eleven months’ worth, Jack,” Emmet admitted over dinner. He was home on time for once, to his wife’s pleasure—almost.
“That awful one?” his wife asked.
“Not over dinner, honey, okay?” he replied, answering the question. Emmet did his best to keep that part of his life out of the house. He looked over at his son and decided to comment on a decision his son recently made. “Marines, eh?”
“Well, Dad, it pays for the last two years of school, doesn’t it?” It was like his son to worry about things like that, about the cost of education for his sister, still in high school and away at camp for the moment. And like his father, Jack craved a little adventure before settling down to whatever place life would find for him.
“My son, a jarhead,” Emmet grumbled good-naturedly. He also worried. Vietnam wasn’t over, might not be over when his son graduated, and like most fathers of his generation, he wondered why the hell he’d had to risk his life fighting Germans—so that his son might have to do the same, fighting people he’d never even heard about at his son’s age.
“What falls out of the sky, pop?” Jack asked with a college-boy grin, repeating something Marines like to say.
Such talk worried Catherine Burke Ryan, who remembered seeing Emmet off, remembered praying all day in St. Elizabeth Church on June 6, 1944, and many days thereafter despite the regular letters and assurances. She remembered the waiting. She knew this kind of talk worried Emmet too, though not quite in the same way.
Whut falls out of the sky? Trouble! the detective almost told his son, for the Airborne, too, were a proud group, but the thought stopped before it got to his lips.
Kelly. We tried calling him. We had the Coast Guard look at that island he lives on. The boat wasn’t there. The boat wasn’t anywhere. Where was he? He was back now, though, if the little old lady was right. What if he was away? But now he’s back. The killings just plain stopped after the Farmer-Grayson-Brown incident. The marina had remembered seeing the boat about that time, but he’d left in the middle of the night—that night—and just vanished. Connection. Where had the boat been? Where was it now? What falls out of the sky? Trouble. That’s exactly what had happened before. It just dropped out of the sky. Started and stopped.
His wife and son saw it again. Chewing on his food, his eyes focused on infinity, unable to turn his mind off as it churned his information over and over. Kelly’s not really all that different from what I used to be, Ryan thought. One-Oh-One, the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Infantry Division (Airborne), who still swaggered in their baggy pants. Emmet had started off as a buck private, ended up with a late-war battlefield commission to the rank he still held, lieutenant. He remembered the pride of being something very special, the sense of invincibility that strangely came arm in arm with the terror of jumping out of an aircraft, being the first on enemy territory, in the dark, carrying light weapons only. The hardest men with the hardest mission. Mission. He’d been like that once. But no one had ever killed his lady ... what might have happened, back in 1946, perhaps, if someone had done that to Catherine?
Nothing good.
He’d saved Doris Brown. He’d given her over to people he trusted. He’d seen one of them last night. He knows she’s dead. He saved Pamela Madden, she died, and he was in the hospital, and a few weeks after he got out people started dying in a very expert way. A few weeks ... to get in shape. Then the killings just stopped and Kelly was nowhere to be found.
What if he’s just been away?
He’s back now.
Something’s going to happen.
It wasn’t a thing he could take to court. The only physical evidence they had was the imprint of a shoe sole—a common brand of sneaker, of course, hundreds sold every day. Zilch. They had motive. But how many murders happened every year, and how many people followed up on it? They had opportunity. Could he account for his time in front of a jury? No one could. How, the detective thought, do you explain this to a judge—no, some judges would understand, but no jury would, not after a brand-new law-school graduate had explained a few things to them.
The case was solved, Ryan thought. He knew. But he had nothing for it but the knowledge that something was going to happen.
“Who’s that, you suppose?” Mike asked.
“Some fisherman, looks like,” Burt observed from the driver’s seat. He kept Henry’s Eighth well clear of the white cabin cruiser. Sunset was close. They were almost too late to navigate the tangled waters into their laboratory, which looked very different at night. Burt gave the white boat a look. The guy with the fishing rod waved, a gesture he returned as he turned to port—left, as he thought of it. There was a big night ahead. Xantha wouldn’t be much help. Well, maybe a little, when they broke for meals. A shame, really. Not really a bad girl, just dumb, badly spaced out. Maybe that’s how they’d do it, just give her a nice taste of real good stuff before they broke out the netting and the cement blocks. They were sitting right in the open, right in the boat, and she didn’t have a clue what they were for. Well, that wasn’t his lookout.
Burt shook his head. There were more important things to consider. How would Mike and Phil feel about working under him? He’d have to be polite about it, of course. They’d understand. With the money involved, they ought to. He relaxed in his chair, sipping his beer and looking for the red marker buoy.
“Lookee, lookee,” Kelly breathed. It wasn’t hard, really. Billy had told him all he needed to know. They had a place in there. They came in the Bay side, by boat, usually at night, and usually left the following morning. Turned in at the red lighted buoy. Hard as hell to find, almost impossible in the dark. Well, probably was if you didn’t know the water. Kelly did. He reeled in the unbaited hook and lifted his binoculars. Size and color were right. Henry’s Eighth was the name. Check. He settled back, watching it move south, then turn east at the red buoy. Kelly marked his chart. Twelve hours at least. That should be plenty of time. The problem with so secure a place was that it depended absolutely on secrecy which, once blown, became a fatal liability. People never learned. One way in, one way out. Another clever way to commit suicide. He’d wait for sunset. While waiting, Kelly got out a can of spray paint and put green stripes on his dinghy. The inside he painted black.
33
Poisoned Charm
It usually took all night, Billy had told him. That gave Kelly time to eat, relax, and prepare. He moved Springer in close to the cluttered ground he would be hunting tonight and set his anchors. The meal he prepared was only sandwiches, but it was better than he’d had atop “his” hill less than a week before. God, a week ago I was on Ogden, getting ready, he thought with a rueful shake of the head. How could life be so mad as this?
His small dinghy, now camouflaged, went into the water after midnight. He’d attached a small electric trolling motor to the transom, and hoped he had enough battery power to get in and out. It couldn’t be too far. The chart showed that the area was not a large one, and the place they used had to be in the middle for maximum isolation. With darkened face and hands he moved into the maze of derelict
s, steering the dinghy with his left hand while his eyes and ears searched for something that didn’t belong. The sky helped. There was no moon, and the starlight was just enough to show him the grass and reeds that had grown in this tidal wetland that had been created when the hulks had been left there, silting up this part of the Bay and making a place that birds loved in the fall season.
It was like before. The low hum of the trolling motor was so much like that of the sled he’d used, moving him along at perhaps two knots, conserving power, guided this time by stars. The marsh grass grew to perhaps six or seven feet above the water, and it wasn’t hard to see why they didn’t navigate their way in by night. It truly was a maze if you didn’t know how. But Kelly did. He watched the stars, knowing which to follow and which to ignore as their position rotated in the arching sky. It was a matter of comfort, really. They were from the city, were not seamen as he was, and as secure as they felt in their chosen place to prepare their illicit product, they weren’t at ease here in this place of wild things and uncertain paths. Won’t you come into my parlor, Kelly told himself. He was more listening than looking now. A gentle breeze rustled through the tall grass, following the widest channel here among the silted bars; twisty as it was, it had to be the one they’d followed. The fifty-year-old hulks around him looked like ghosts of another age, as indeed they were, relics of a war that had been won, cast-offs of a much simpler time, some of them sitting at odd angles, forgotten toys of the huge child their country had been, a child now grown into a troubled adult.
A voice. Kelly stopped his motor, drifting for a few seconds, pivoting his head around to get a fix on it. He’d guessed right on the channel. It looped around to the right just ahead there, and the noise had come from the right as well. Carefully now, slowly, he came around the bend. There were three of the derelicts. Perhaps they’d been towed in together. The tugboat skippers had probably tried to leave them in a perfect line as a personal conceit. The westernmost one was sitting at a slight angle, and listed seven or eight degrees to port, resting on a shifting bottom. The profile was an old one, with a low superstructure whose tall steel funnel had long since rusted away. But there was a light where the bridge ought to be. Music, he thought, some contemporary rock from a station that tried to keep truckers awake at night.