Foxcatcher

by William H Hallahan

  He lit the cigar, then surveyed all the papers that were carefully arranged around the room. On the couch in a neat row was a series of photographs of the Hotel Royal Nile in Cairo. On the Fifteenth of July Street. Beside them rested a schematic plan of the buildings on either side of the hotel and the adjacent streets.

  On the floor before the couch was another row of photographs: interior shots of the hotel lobby and many more of the conference room, which was on the third floor, street side.

  Rock took from a large manila envelope a packet of 3x5 color prints. Additional close-up photographs of the conference room. He could see the air-intake vents, the air-conditioning ducts, the control panel for the room’s lighting, the screen for films and slides, and the closets and service pantry adjacent.

  The fee he had extorted from Rumbh was most reassuring. No one could possibly want to kill Rock badly enough to pay such a fee just to get him to Cairo. It would have been far cheaper to send a grunt after him. The key word in the transaction was guarantee. Guaranteed delivery. And performance.

  Rock had to devise an authentic bombing effort that was so arranged that it would most assuredly be discovered before it went off. He lit a cigar and almost hugged himself. His idea was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. This was panache; this was high style.

  Rock looked down at the photos and the schematics of the Hotel Royal Nile. Then he looked at her photograph. The coast is clear. Soon. Soon.

  Peno Rus fussed with the agenda. Each speaker had to be flawless. Rus insisted on rehearsals. There were slides and films, and maps and pieces of equipment. There were the coffee breaks and afternoon teas to be reviewed with the hotel staff. And the evening meals—each a masterpiece.

  Nothing was to be left to chance. Rus was determined that this seminar would be the talk of the arms world. He had winnowed the number of attendees down to twenty. Twenty of the major arms buyers in the world. The aristocracy of arms customers. It would be a status symbol in future to have attended a Rus arms seminar.

  Rus was making a fortune. But he was spending a fortune.

  He nearly drove Major Mudd round the bend. Checking and rechecking every detail, calling him at the arsenal, at the office, at home, all hours night and day. And as the opening day drew closer, the frenzy grew worse. Rus flogged and bullied and berated, roared and shouted, flung papers, pounded tables, and walked about with his face an apoplectic purple.

  Major Mudd carried one picture in his mind. That large teddy bear’s body capped by that Mongol face with the small black eyes squeezed by the high cheekbones—and the open mouth screaming all the way down to the bottom of the shaft. It would make a boom not heard in London since the days of the Hitler raids.

  November 26: independence day for Major Mudd.

  McCall had begun to feel like the protagonist in a Greek play caught up in the toils of ineluctable Destiny. Messengers were arriving from all over his kingdom bearing news of disasters.

  The moment he returned from Paris, Borden told him about the successful heist of the ANAC parts from Prysbyl. “The stolen van was finally found in a motel but the guy was gone by then. Like the earth swallowed him.”

  “With the chips?”

  “A hundred forty-four.”

  McCall shook his head wryly. The joy in Iran must be unbounded. Those 144 chips were equal to a major victory on the battle field. The Iranians had decked the United States once again.

  “How about the motel registration records?” he asked.

  Borden shrugged. “It’s a hot-sheet operation. Dozens and dozens of guys in and out of there every week with women—rent a room for an hour or two and gone. All phony names, phony license plate numbers.”

  McCall grunted. “A guy steals a couple of authorization forms and blows away Prysbyl’s whole bloody security system. A fortune in security hardware. That’s a new wrinkle.”

  “That’s chutzpah,” Borden said. “We’re up against one smart cookie.”

  “Yes, but who? Who?” McCall chewed a knuckle.

  “We’ll find him.”

  “Will you, Borden? When?”

  Borden looked away and cleared his throat.

  “An End User’s Certificate,” McCall said, reaching in his desk drawer. He threw the Iranian parts list on the desk. “Even if this guy is Houdini, he’s going to have to get an End User’s Certificate to get all this junk out of the country. That’s where we’ll have to nail him.”

  “Now, Bobby. You know what a killer of a job that is. We just can’t borrow that much manpower to check every EUC in the country. We’re talking about millions of items.”

  “He’s not going to get those parts out of the country without an EUC. And he has to file all his papers at the port he’s shipping the stuff from.”

  Borden turned away in his chair. “Oh, Jesus. We’d have to borrow all the staffs from the CIA, Military Intelligence, and the FBI.”

  McCall shook a finger at him. “No. Play the odds. Ninety-nine percent of those End User’s Certificates are open-and-shut export cases. We know what the shipment consists of and a lot of the history of the cargo. So, play the hunches, Borden. Check out just the likely suspects.”

  Borden started to object again.

  “Don’t,” McCall said. “Just do. Follow my direction and I’ll make you a legend in your own lifetime. What about Dice?”

  “No one’s seen him in a couple of weeks.”

  “Dice is involved in this, Borden. You can make book on it.”

  “We’re still looking, Bobby.”

  “Find him. Find Dice.”

  Borden got up to leave.

  “Who’s doing it, Borden?” McCall asked him.

  “What?”

  “The smuggling. Is it Rus? Slane? Rock?”

  Borden shrugged again. “Whoever he is, he really knows the ropes. I get the feeling this guy knows things even people like Rus don’t know. Like an insider.”

  “Dice,” McCall said, “is an insider.”

  “Yes. But he’s a dull-normal. The guy we’re after is a real fox. He’s as smart as Brewer.”

  Borden was hardly out of McCall’s office when he came back in.

  “Okay,” he said. “They found the Mercedes that Attashah bought.”

  “Where?”

  “Some guy in New York State. He’s a lawyer. A lot of political accounts. He’s also held a couple of political jobs on the state Republican Committee. And he’s a member of a prison parole board.”

  “Which prison?” McCall asked.

  “We’re working on it. We just got this.”

  “Not Sweetmeadow?” McCall asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Oh, Christ. Not Sweetmeadow.”

  It seemed to take Borden forever to learn what parole board the man was connected with.

  At last, McCall heard Borden’s dreadful step in the hall. Borden, the Greek messenger.

  But the man who stood in his doorway wasn’t Borden.

  “Hullo, Bobby,” said Dice. Dice, bulking in his wrinkled suit, hat in hand, visitor’s badge clipped to his lapel. And that silly expression on his face.

  “Why,” McCall asked, “am I so unhappy to see you, Dice?”

  “Got a minute, Bobby?”

  “By all means. Sit down.”

  “I want to cut a deal.” Dice sat down on the edge of the chair. “Okay?”

  “Shoot. What have you got?”

  “If the stuff is right, can I get my job back?”

  “How good’s the stuff?”

  “It’ll blow your socks off, Bobby.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “We have to cut a deal first, Bobby. I want my job back with all the perks—uninterrupted government service going back to the day I started.”

  “That’ll practically take an Act of Congress.”

  “What I have is worth it.”

  McCall took a measured look at Dice and played his hunch. “Are you going to tell me about Charlie Brewer?”

&
nbsp; “Oh. You know.”

  “Yes. We know.” And now McCall did know—and wished he didn’t.

  “Do you know everything?”

  “Probably.”

  Dice sagged in his chair. A man in despair.

  Borden appeared in the doorway.

  “Sweetmeadow?” McCall asked him.

  “Yes. There’s more.”

  “Stay there, Dice,” McCall said. He walked into the hallway with Borden.

  “Brewer’s been paroled,” Borden said.

  “I thought so. Dice was about to spill his guts.”

  “They’re together?”

  “They were, anyway.”

  “Jesus. We’re up against our own best man.”

  McCall nodded thoughtfully. “Did you ever have those days when you wished you were dead?”

  Messengers seemed to be arriving with disastrous news from every quarter now. The last man on earth that McCall ever wanted to confront was Charlie Brewer. Especially a renegade Charlie Brewer. After all those years of a close working relationship, how did they ever become adversaries?

  What a brilliant move that Attashah had made. While McCall was running around trying to nail Rus and Rock and Slane, Attashah had reached out and plucked up the one man who could beat them all. And Attashah had even got him out of a federal prison.

  McCall had only one more card to play. Brewer had the parts Iran needed. Now he was ready to smuggle them out of the country to Iran. To stop Brewer, McCall realized, he would have to have the man assassinated. But first he would have to find him. He went back into his office.

  “Okay, Dice. Where is Brewer now?”

  “I don’t know, Bobby. We split in Frisco.”

  “You know he got the ANAC bits?”

  “Holy Christ! From Prysbyl’s? I can’t believe it. Nobody can get in there. How did he do it?”

  “Dice, if you want your membership card back, you have to help us find Brewer.”

  “Jesus, Bobby. That’s a tall order. I’m out of my league with Brewer.”

  “Just find him. Let us know where he is and we’ll take it from there.”

  “And I get my stripes back?”

  “Everything I can possibly get back for you. Your job and most of the perks. I don’t know about your seniority.”

  Dice stood up. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “There’s a lot riding on it, Dice—for you and for me. You find him and you’re back in. Before you go, you see Borden and spill your guts, addresses and telephone numbers and parts numbers and every dingdong thing you can think of about Brewer’s little caper.”

  Dice stood, hulking and doubtful. “Bobby, you’re not going to catch him. You know? Brewer is the smartest man in the world.”

  Madeline Hale was alone now. And she was faced with a homicidal adversary who was restrained by no rules. And by trying to find him within the bounds of the law, she knew she was operating at a tremendous handicap. Worse, she would find no help anywhere. Brewer was gone. Her partners were no help outside of legal matters. And the police didn’t have the facilities to give more than token help. It was Hale versus Rumbh.

  She recalled Brewer’s words and decided to go underground to some extent. She packed her suitcases and closed her apartment, and one Saturday afternoon she moved into a furnished apartment in Georgetown. She didn’t use a car at all now. Instead, she did all her traveling by taxicab. It wasn’t much of a precaution but it made her feel better.

  She resumed her search for Rumbh by looking into the arsenal robbery.

  It was a tale quickly told. And it was fully documented in the transcript of Brewer’s trial, for the prosecution had made a big parade of the arsenal theft.

  A truckload of weapons and ammunition had been stolen from the Fort Benson arsenal. Among the list of items missing were twenty-four mint-condition sixty-year-old Colt .45’s.

  After generations of service as the official sidearm of the armed forces, the .45 was to be phased out of service. Orders had been issued to all bases to commence gathering every .45 for shipment to a destination to be announced later. The .45’s had been gathered from miscellaneous sources at Fort Benson and were waiting transshipment. Aside from their nominal value as military side-arms, these mint-condition .45’s were worth a fortune to gun collectors.

  No one had seen the vehicle that had carried off the weapons. It wasn’t even clear exactly when the theft had taken place. The absence of the weapons was discovered during a routine inventory procedure. So the military carried the case on their books simply as mysterious disappearance. From the day of discovery there hadn’t been the slightest clue to the theft until the .45’s turned up in the trunk of Brewer’s car. Brewer and Marvel said they had picked up the weapons at a baggage check in lower Manhattan.

  Hale called the federal attorney who had tried Brewer.

  “Is that file on the stolen weapons still open?” she asked.

  “Dambetcha,” he said. “Open forever or until all the weapons and ammo are recovered—whichever comes first.”

  “Any developments since the trial?” Hale asked.

  “Nah. We shopped hard for the rest of the stolen ordnance. Checked all the known terrorist groups and all the loonies. Whoever got them has them well under wraps.”

  “You ever hear any more about this man Rumbh?”

  “Mrs. Hale, you want my opinion? Rumbh is Charlie Brewer.”

  Next, Hale turned to Russell Pines. The police had testified that a man identifying himself as Russell Pines reported that a man named Charles Brewer was trying to sell him some .45’s. But since he suspected they were stolen, he felt the police should handle the matter. Pines had declined to give an address or a phone number.

  Hale began the investigative process anew on one Russell Pines. She ordered a search of the usual laundry list of records: state driver’s license and car registration bureaus, credit cards, court orders, bankruptcies.

  Then she turned back to Rumbh. Her check of Immigration and Naturalization files had upset Rumbh no end. He had blown her car up. The logical question now was, who put the red flag on Rumbh’s Naturalization file?

  The investigative reports came in like clockwork. In all the fifty states of the Union, no one named Russell Pines drove a car, owned a car, owed money, was involved with the law courts, or had been in jail. Legally at least, Russell Pines didn’t exist.

  She now commenced a study of all the name files containing aliases, noms de plume, and a.k.a.’s. There was a long list to check through. Each state, the FBI, and the CIA biography file. She asked for a search of two names: Rumbh and Russell Pines.

  At the last minute she included Interpol on her search list.

  She had little more than a month before her departure from Washington.

  If she had ever had any doubts about it, Bradley Joyce, the senior partner, now made it clear: She was his favorite trial lawyer in the firm. And he didn’t want her to go.

  He sent her things. The classified real estate section from The Washington Post with a notice circled:

  A Bit of Vermont in Virginia. White clapboard Victorian, lovingly finished with gingerbread. Huge old windows, turrets, wraparound porch, 5brs, 4 1/2 b, lr, dr, breakfast nook, fmly rm, big ktchn, pantry, 3 acres, a/c, h.w.heat. Come see. Hurry.

  From the Law Journal he picked out an article on the growing incidence of crime in New England. A clipping on the low income of lawyers in Vermont. From The Washingtonian: Seventeen senators from various parts of the United States pick northern Virginia as the ideal for raising a family.

  His little notes were gasoline on a fire. Washington seemed more alluring every day. Vermont, in contrast, was a defeat, a turning back. But worst of all was Brewer’s voice, so positive, telling her she would never make it in Vermont.

  She wondered where he was. How he was. He didn’t answer his phone—it had been days.

  They caught her by surprise—two responses from Interpol. One was on Russell Pines. But more astonishing wa
s the other—on Rumbh.

  Interpol had a wealth of information on one Anton Rumbh. He had a long criminal record. Nationality unknown. Date of birth unknown. Education and background unknown. But his criminal performance was well documented. He had long-term connections with the Communist government in Vietnam, functioning as their agent to sell the enormous quantities of American arms left on the Vietnam battlefield. He had definite connections with a notorious Asian bandit, Ho Wat, through whom he had done a thriving business gunrunning in Malaysia. He’d flooded Asia, the Mideast, and South America with American weapons. The police in New Delhi wanted him for smuggling. Athens wanted to question him about two murders there. Malta had an arrest-on-sight writ standing, a result of an arsenal robbery there. He was cited by five intelligence groups for gunrunning in Africa, again with American arms from Vietnam. There was more, a long litany of arms trading, theft, smuggling, and troublemaking. But never once arrested. Never once photographed.

  How on earth had he obtained an American passport?

  The Interpol report on Russell Pines was almost an anticlimax.

  Russell Pines was a.k.a. Peno Rus. And his life was well documented. Born in Russian Georgia, Communist education, training as a journalist, defection, and a highly lucrative new career as an arms trader. Never arrested but ample photographs available. British citizenship.

  Hale returned to the Rumbh report. So there really was a Rumbh? And he was an arms trader. Why had he chosen to frame two American agents? And how had he obtained an American passport?

  Perhaps some of the local police had more information. She sent inquiries to Malta, Athens, and New Delhi.

  Then she took the latest real estate section sent by Bradley Joyce, decorated with red circles, and threw it in the wastebasket.

  14

  The guy went by the name of Poke, and he owned an old Super Constellation.

  He was a gypsy wandering the earth like a solitary frigate bird; an independent nonscheduled freight carrier who was always in search of payloads to carry. Price negotiable. Not very fussy about what it was or where it went. Poke periodically had his Connie grounded for FAA or customs infractions—or for bank payments. Customs men all over Europe, the United States, and Latin America frankly called Poke a smuggler.