Selby unwrapped the package that contained his father’s diaries and placed the weathered notebooks on a coffee table.
After explaining how they had come into his possession, he said, “As far as I know, Miss Kim, no one has seen these but my father and the lawyer in Truckee, California. I took them to Summitt City but never had a chance to show them to Jarrell. This is my part of the trade. Now here’s what I’d like in return...”
Her smooth oval face and dramatic eyes remained impassive as she listened. Then, in her incongruous idiom and accent, she said, “Hell, that’s no problem, no sweat at all, Selby. There’s nothing like a call from a senator’s office to lubricate the bureaucracy.”
Dialing Senator Lester’s office in Washington, she tapped a narrow suede pump impatiently. As she waited she told Selby the senator would be joining them later; he was flying in from Brussels and a car would pick him up at the Philadelphia airport... To someone named George in the senator’s office, she said, “Call Albany right now and get hold of Bill Touhy. He’s chief of the section that bonds and licenses private eyes, armed couriers and so forth. I want everything he’s got on two investigators. Here’s their names. Aron and Ben Cadle.” She spelled the last name carefully. “Got it? They’re believed to be in the Philadelphia area and may be undercover using aliases. Find out where they’re staying, who they’re working for, what they’re driving, leased or personal, everything. And George... tell Bill Touhy that Senator Lester is personally interested. It’s urgent.”
A knock sounded and Miss Kim opened the door to a white-jacketed waiter who pushed in a service cart. She signed the check, and when the waiter left she lifted the silver cover from the small sandwich tray, saying, “It’s Kim, or Vickie, if you like, Mr. Selby. Victoria was my grandmother’s name. She was born in Hong Kong and married a Brit who ran a souvenir shop and sold tons of Empress Victoria dolls to cockney sailors. I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and was a cheerleader at Northwestern, pom-poms and all.”
She poured their coffee, excused herself with a smile and began to look through Jonas Selby’s diaries. Her dramatic eyes reminded him of clicking camera shutters; they embraced a page at a time, apparently fixing in her mind the words with one sweeping glance.
“We’re already in the picture on a good bit of this, Mr. Selby.” She closed the books and sipped her coffee. “The major, who is George Thomson, of course, the court-martial and the chief, who was — and is — General Adam Taggart. The railroad names and songs seem like grace notes, a kind of lonely poetry but don’t mean much to us... So, why do you think the defense introduced your father’s court-martial into your daughter’s trial? That’s what our deal is about, right?”
“To influence the jury — that’s logical, isn’t it? To convince them I’m out to nail Thomson for something done to my father by his father... something that has nothing to do with the attack on my daughter.”
“But just to save Earl Thomson’s sweet buns?” Kim sipped her coffee. “Somehow I doubt it. There s an old Chinese saying, Mr. Selby, which goes... ‘If a piece of paper gets dragged into a courtroom, two teams of oxen can’t drag it out.’ ”
Frowning, she put down her cup. “So why Davic would use K.S. 36663864 still beats me. But let’s get to our deal.”
Settling back on the couch, she tucked her legs under her. “Before the senator gets here I can tell you this much from what we’ve pieced together from the records, some letters and from telephone conversations Senator Lester had with your father. Jonas Selby served his five-year sentence in Seoul, then was transferred to a rehab center in Colorado. That wasn’t done by the book. He’d received a dishonorable discharge and wasn’t entitled to further army treatment. But somebody needed to keep him under surveillance.”
“In other words, he was a prisoner those additional years.”
“Technically, yes... Please hear me out. When he left Boulder, your father moved about and finally settled in Truckee. He was married by then, Jarrell was a young child. His wife, Rita, died about thirteen years ago. Jonas Selby, ill or not, or whatever he was, saw your brother through highschool and into college.”
She studied him with her remarkably vivid eyes. “Which brings me to an important question. When were you last in touch with Jarrell?”
Selby told her about the call from the motel in Quinton, New Jersey. Kim made a note on a pad.
“But you didn’t actually talk to him?”
“No.”
“Then anyone could have called and given that message to your housekeeper?”
“That’s true.”
“She wouldn’t have recognized his voice?”
“No. But I want to know why you’re interested in my family now. You weren’t there when my father needed you. You saw that in his diaries. He wanted help the night he was killed. Where was Lester then, and the other elements that are supposed to lubricate the bureaucracy?”
“Mr. Selby, we aren’t adversaries.” She chose her words carefully. “Please believe me. But I can only tell you what I’m allowed to by security restrictions. The senator has considerably more leeway. Your father trusted Senator Lester. Jonas Selby realized, eventually, that he’d been the victim of a rigged court-martial, and the reason was that he was a cog in something too complex for him to understand. He got in touch with Senator Lester by pure coincidence, if you believe in such things. Living alone in Truckee, he happened to watch a network television show that exposed certain U.S. Army experiments with LSD on unwilling, unknowing military subjects. A black sergeant, it was demonstrated, had had his head turned into a psychedelic merry-go-round by chemicals added to his food. Your father realized then that his brain had been scrambled in some similar way in Korea, and in Colorado, accounting for his lapses of memory, his failure to defend himself, even to understand the charges. He wrote to the network. His letter was forwarded to the late Senator Mark Rowan’s committee, where it was tucked away in an inoperative file. Senator Lester didn’t see that letter, and the two that followed, until after Rowan’s death when Lester succeeded him. A secretary found the file when they were changing offices. Lester immediately phoned your father, who told him he could cite names, dates and specific instances of illegal use of drugs on captured South Korean soldiers.
“They arranged a meeting to put those charges on tape. One week before that meeting, your father was shot to death in his cabin by so-called prowlers.”
At which point in her chilling narrative Senator Lester arrived, accompanied by a bellhop toting his luggage. Tired and travel-worn, the senator looked smaller than he did on television; the camera emphasized his high coloring, his square jaws and the military brace of his shoulders. Now he seemed slight if trim alongside Selby. Strands of gray-black hair fell across his forehead. His deeply set eyes were shadowed with fatigue.
He asked Miss Kim for a Scotch and tossed his topcoat over a chair. Excusing himself, and carrying his drink, he went into the bedroom with his aide and closed the door.
When the senator returned moments later he had freshened himself, brushed his hair and changed into slippers and a loose cardigan sweater. “Fourteen hours from Brussels to London to Philadelphia. I’m beat, Mr. Selby. Jet lag is winding up with the common cold on the list of things we can’t do much about. Thanks for coming over here to talk to us. I know you’ve got demands on your own time.”
His eyes turned to the stack of diaries on the coffee table. “Your father never mentioned these to me. We’ll have a close look at them, you can be sure. In a case like this any lead can pay off. It’s pretty difficult to say in advance what a so-called reliable source will turn out to be.”