Allerton rubbed his face. “I saw that radio message, and I knew of Talbot… but, by God, I never made the connection… I was a lousy spy.”
Abrams wondered. His experience with codes was almost nil, but that particular line had struck him when West first read it. First-letter codes were rudimentary, the sort of thing children or lovers do in letters. It was hard to believe that neither Allerton nor O’Brien had picked it up forty years ago. Abrams concluded that they had but neither had mentioned it to the other. Interesting.
West produced a briar pipe and a pouch of tobacco. He said, “None of this is what we would call most immediate intelligence, except that”—he lit his pipe and recited from Eleanor Wingate’s letter—“‘the diary, which names people who may still be with your government or who are highly placed in American society… At least one of those named is a well-known man who is close to your President.’” West looked up.
O’Brien turned to Abrams. “What do you think up to this point?”
Abrams thought the clues were old, the trail cold, the evidence circumstantial, and the theories stretched; as a criminal case, it was a bust. The culprit had escaped detection at the time and, even if he were exposed, would never be tried. But as a personal vendetta, it had possibilities, though this group would not use the word vendetta. That was a word whose meaning and substance he had come to appreciate in Bensonhurst and on the force. Long memories, long grudges. But O’Brien and Allerton would put it more delicately. The result, however, was the same. He remembered the silver bullet.
“Mr. Abrams?”
“I think you will find your man this time.”
O’Brien leaned forward. “Why?”
“Because he knows you’ve picked up the scent again and he’s running. He’s killed Carbury. To use the favored analogy, the forest is smaller and thinner than it was forty years ago. The number of animals inhabiting it are diminished. The wolf — the werewolf — leaves a clear trail now. I think, too, he will kill again.”
O’Brien stared off into the darkness of the huge room. The fire caused shadows to leap around the walls intermittently, illuminating the running frieze, giving the warriors the impression of movement. O’Brien said, “Yes, he will kill again. He has to.”
24
The long limousine pulled away from the darkened armory, made a U-turn, and headed south on Park Avenue. Peter Thorpe, sitting in a jump seat, lit a cigarette and said to West, “I have the impression, Nick, you’ve been working on this problem for some time. Long before the appearance — and disappearance — of Colonel Carbury. However, I don’t recall your mentioning it in any previous conversations of our group.”
West, in the second jump seat, fidgeted with his pipe. “The nature of the problem… the implications of the Talbot profile… would suggest that any of the old OSS hands, in or out of the CIA, or the government, could be… the wrong person with whom to discuss this… ”
Thorpe smiled at O’Brien and Allerton sitting facing him at the left end of the long wraparound seat in the rear. He said to West, “Present company excluded, of course.”
West avoided everyone’s eyes. “Included, of course.” He nodded toward Abrams and Katherine sitting on the right end of the wraparound seat. “Except you, Kate, and Mr. Abrams.”
Thorpe smiled slowly. “Why do we always underestimate you, Nick?”
West continued, “Ann is the only one I’ve discussed it with. In fact… it was how we met.” He relit his pipe.
Tony Abrams watched him closely. West, he thought, was a man who could easily be underestimated. His size, his manner, his whole being, judged by the primitive instincts of his fellow man, signaled a non-threat. But by the standards of late-twentieth-century cerebral man, West’s mind was a danger; a danger to traitors and bullshitters, and to people with nerve and flair but with average minds, like Peter Thorpe. Intuitively, Abrams knew that Thorpe was afraid of West.
The limousine moved slowly through the Friday-night traffic. There was a silence until O’Brien said, “It’s totally impossible that the American government, intelligence services, and military, which are the three highest targets of the KGB in that order, have not been penetrated. Damn it, half the people in the armory tonight, including two past CIA directors and the present director, could conceivably fit Eleanor Wingate’s description.” O’Brien looked around. “Do I sound paranoid?”
Katherine marveled at how O’Brien could manufacture evidence, then agonize over it as though it were real. But, she thought, though the evidence was fake, the actions and reactions of the people whom O’Brien was studying would be real. Carbury’s death or disappearance was real, and the deaths at Brompton Hall were real. O’Brien was a master of illusion, and she regarded him with equal parts of admiration and anxiety.
West said, “The important questions are, how high up do these Soviet penetrations go, and what would be the objective of these penetrations… if they existed?”
O’Brien shook his head. “I can only tell you that something ominous is in the air. I believe the Russians have discovered a way to achieve their ultimate objective.”
Thorpe said, “You mean a nuclear strike?”
“No.” O’Brien waved his hand in a motion of dismissal. “That is not and never was one of their options any more than it is one of ours.”
“Then what?” asked Katherine. “Biological? Chemical?”
O’Brien did not respond.
Katherine said, “How do Colonel Carbury and the Wingate letter relate to any of that?”
O’Brien replied, “As it relates at all, it would have to be that the person or persons revealed in the diary as possible moles are somehow necessary to the Soviet plan.” O’Brien shrugged. “We need more facts. Let’s table it for now.”
Abrams could not help making the comparison between O’Brien’s heavy-handed hints at Armageddon and the police game of telling a suspect they knew all about him and his accomplices, then letting the guy walk so they could see where he went. It followed that O’Brien really suspected that someone in this car was a conduit whose opening flowed into Moscow. Yet Abrams couldn’t help thinking that Patrick O’Brien was a little too good to be true. Too glib. Too many answers to unasked questions. Too unruffled by the suggestion that he might be Talbot.
Incredible, Abrams thought. This was really happening. Abrams felt he’d walked into a tornado that afternoon and landed in Oz. He thought if he went home and slept, when he awoke, the tuxedo wouldn’t be on the floor beside his bed. There’d be no hangover, and he’d go to work Tuesday and Katherine Kimberly would hand him a summons to serve on some poor schnook who had run afoul of an O’Brien client, and life would go on in its slightly tedious way. That’s what he thought, except it wasn’t true.
What was true was that he was involved in ways he could not even have imagined at lunchtime. What was also true was that the car reeked of conspiracy, suspicion, and fear. Professionally, one might speak of fear for the life of one’s country, but, notwithstanding this low-key, genteel conversation, Abrams sensed the more fundamental fear these people had for their own lives.
Abrams could almost hear his father’s voice. “Don’t join anything. Don’t carry anybody’s card. It’s nothing but misery. I know.”
Or his mother’s more basic advice. “When you see people whispering, run the other way. Only you and God should whisper to each other.”
Expected advice from Communists turned Zionists, he thought. Good advice. It was too bad, he reflected, he never listened to it. He was, after all, the son of famous conspirators. They didn’t take their own advice until they were in their fifties. He had some years to go. Unless O’Brien was right, in which case he and everyone might only have weeks or months.