“What... is that?”
“Were they shooting at me... or you?”
Chapter 7
The police bought an easy story. On three occasions in the past few months attempts had been made to burglarize Claude Boster’s premises after a news story about his exploits had been published in a technical magazine. Now it was supposed that whoever was after his material was taking more drastic measures. The slugs they recovered were .38’s and were to be sent to Washington for a ballistic check, and a uniformed police officer was assigned to cover Boster until they had the situation cleared up. I was simply a visiting friend caught in the middle and Boster went along with it, suddenly aware of the implications.
When they left I got back in the car, made no attempt to try anything fancy and deliberately left myself open for a tail. If those shots were meant for me the killer knew damn well he missed and would be making another try. I just wanted to make it easy for him.
Eau Gallie wasn’t that big to hide in. But it wasn’t that big to lay on a tail that couldn’t be spotted, either. If those slugs were meant for Boster, nobody was interested in me. If they had my name on them, then the assassin was waiting for another time and another place.
I wanted to be sure, so I made my call to Newark Control from a well lit booth adjoining a service station. I parked the car to cover me from the dark area behind the building, so if anybody took me on it would have to be where I could see them and the .45 in my hand was ready to talk.
Virgil Adams taped our conversation completely, then told me he was sending Dave Elroy down by Martin Grady’s orders to back me up. Dave was to register at an assigned motel and to stay on tap for any emergency.
“It isn’t necessary,” I told him. “I can handle it alone. Too many of our people around might cause trouble. Dave was on that narcotics bit in Hong Kong and the Soviets know him by sight.”
“Just the same,” Virgil said, “Grady wants you covered.”
“So let him come then. Anything new on Niger Hoppes from London?”
“A curious bit of ID material, not that it will do much good. Johnson has been picking up bits and pieces about the guy and the latest is that he’s a sniffer.”
“A what?”
“Those nose inhalers to clear up the sinuses. Benzedrine compounds. Excitement clogs him up so he sniffs the stuff.”
“Great, old buddy. So what do I do — check every drugstore and supermarket in the States to see who buys them? You know how many they sell every day?”
“I already checked,” he laughed back. “About fifty thousand.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“No trouble,” he told me and hung up.
When I stepped outside I lit a cigarette, deliberately making a target of myself, but ready to move if anything showed. Aside from a few cars heading in either direction and two couples going by hand-in-hand the area was empty. The shift workers from Cape Kennedy had already made their swing and it wasn’t the season for the biannual north-south flow of traffic. I took my time about getting in the car, then started up, cut out into the street and found an open diner where I grabbed a coffee while watching the windows, and when I was certain nobody was tailing me, I paid the bill and angled back to the motel.
I parked in front of the office, went in and hit the bell on the desk. The same man who had rented me my room said, “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“I’d like a room, please.”
“But...”
“No, I’ll keep the other one... I want a different one.”
“Oh, I see... you’re expecting company?”
“Not exactly. I may want to use it for a conference room later and I don’t want one all cluttered up with my personal gear.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he agreed quickly. “We don’t usually get the salesmen trade here and I almost forgot their habits.” He swung the card holder around to me. “Mind signing?”
I registered in the way I did before and paid for a day in advance. When I stuck the pen back I said, “Put any calls through to my own room, but if anybody asks where I’m staying, give them this number. I’ll leave my car parked outside it, okay?”
“Certainly, sir. Glad to be of service.”
“Fine. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
I put the car in the driveway beside the room, went in, kept the lights on about five minutes, cut them off, then eased back into the night and followed the shadows down to my original room, went in and undressed in the dark and lay back on the bed with the .45 beside my hand.
The shooters were everywhere and it was no coincidence. I went over every detail of leaving New York and convinced myself there had been no leak in security. No one but our own group had known of my leaving and no one but me knew where I was staying. Ergo... whoever shot into the door at Claude Boster’s shop was hoping to get him. But why? What did he know? Or what did they think he knew? Could it have been a warning? I took a drag on the butt, then snubbed it out in the tray on the nightstand beside the bed.
In this case you had to go on suppositions. Louis Agrounsky’s whereabouts weren’t known to the Soviets... yet. They were processing it from all angles too. His incredible defection from principles had started right here and they, like us, were working it from both ends.
My eyes started to close and I was staring blankly at the darkened wall across the room through narrow slits. Then suddenly my eyes were wide open again and I said “Damn!” softly and shook my head at my own stupidity.
How would anyone know of Agrounsky’s by-pass control?
Either he told them or they worked on it with him. Or... they could have suspected what he was up to and investigated his research enough to justify their suspicions. It was no secret that all our top priority projects were saturated with enemy agents skilled in the art of putting money to work. We used the device all the time ourselves. You could always find a price for almost anything. There was a probability that Boster or Vincent Small could unknowingly have leaked a little information on Agrounsky’s activities to someone concerned who smelled the possibility and passed it on. Damn again!
I went to sleep trying to sort the mess out in my mind, but it was still a mess when I awoke at seven, showered, dressed and went back outside to check my other room.
Nothing had been touched. The strand of fine wire I had left in the door was still in position. I shrugged, figuring I went to a lot of trouble for nothing, then unlocked the car and got in.
It’s all so automatic. You handle the everyday things until they become commonplace and you never give them a thought. You pick up a knife or fork with an unconscious gesture, flush a toilet without thinking beforehand... and those are the things they kill you with.
As I went to put the key in the ignition I remembered Caswell getting his in Trenton for not checking, and feeling a little foolish, got out and lifted the hood on the car. And I was lucky. I had gotten sloppy in my habits, but luck was there for one of the few times, nudging me with its tiny golden fingers, and made me look.
The package was a small one, but big enough to disintegrate the car and its occupants into a fine spray of metal and flesh the second the key was turned on, a taped grouping of six inch dynamite sticks artfully hidden under the transmission housing where a cursory inspection would miss them. But I saw the lead wires, followed them and cut the charge loose.
Cute, you bastards, you did a neat job. But why? Somebody was a lot more clever than I thought. Nobody tailed me so there had to be only one other way and it didn’t take me longer than five minutes to find it. The tiny oscillator that could transmit a homing signal was fastened under the gas tank and whoever wanted me could take his time until I was where I was at, feeling perfectly safe, then move in and booby trap my car.