Once Departed

by Mack Reynolds

  “Dead,” Mike said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Mike repeated it. “Dead. Not drunk. Murdered.”

  Quint stared at him.

  Mike said, “Uh huh.”

  Quint said, “Who’d want to kill that easy going playboy? Somebody’s husband?”

  Mike Woolman banged his newspaper against his knee in irritation. He said, “I was hoping I’d get some information out of you, instead of giving it. Didn’t you know Brett-Home was Great Britain’s top MI6 field man?”

  Wheels were beginning to turn, but Quint said, “MI6?”

  “The British equivalent of our C.I.A. International espionage, counter-espionage.”

  Some of the things Marty Dempsey had said last night came back to Quint Jones. He hadn’t believed her at the time. He said, frowning, “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Mike squirmed, uncomfortably, “Damned if I know. You didn’t meet a guy named Bartholomew Digby there, did you?”

  “You mean Bart Digby? Come to think of it, he told me that Brett-Home was to have brought him up. What about Bart?”

  “How’d he impress you?”

  Quint was becoming irritated by the other’s grasshoppering conversation. “He impressed me as some bright crewcut college man, in Europe representing I.B.M. or RCA or one of the other big business outfits currently trying to suck up to the Common Market.”

  “That’s what he’s supposed to look like. Digby was kicked out of the C.I.A. a month or so ago—or so he says.”

  Quint looked at him.

  Mike Woolman dropped his banged up newspaper long enough to start counting off his fingers, one by one. “Brett-Home was connected with MI6. Albrecht Stroehlein was formerly of the Gestapo. One of the other guests at that party was Vladimir Nuriyev, who defected from the KGB, the Komissarait Gosudarstvennoi Bezopastnotsi, or so he says.”

  Quint murmured, “Joe Garcia told me Nuriyev had been a hatchetman for the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya.”

  Woolman cocked his head to one side, and rubbed the bottom of his chin nervously. “He did, eh? How would he know? I sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that our Senor Garcia does chores for the Spanish secret police.”

  “At any rate, what are you getting at? You’ve got spies running up and down the walls.”

  Mike picked up his newspaper again and gave himself an absent minded bang on the leg. “I don’t know. I thought you might have something you noticed at the party. Something funny is going on here in Madrid. Not just this Brett-Home killing. That, at least, will come out into the open. The local cops can hardly suppress the news of the death of a foreigner. But I’ve been getting a distinct feeling…”

  “Feminine intuition, like?” Quint twisted his mouth.

  “Shut up. Something screwy is going on. The police and other authorities are holding the lid down on something.”

  Quint stood up and an expression of mock concern spread over his face. He said, “Mike, you need a long rest. Now why don’t you get the hell out of here and let me work? Go chase some spies, or something. I didn’t see anything mysterious, or even sinister going on at the Dempsey’s last night. If you ask me, some thief knocked Ronald Brett-Home over the head and…”

  “He wasn’t robbed,” Mike said disgustedly, coming to his own feet. “You’re lucky you’re a damned columnist instead of a reporter. You wouldn’t see a story if you stubbed your toe on it. Not only wasn’t he robbed, but he was all torn up as though he’d been finished off by a Bengal tiger.” He gave his leg a double bang with his paper club.

  Quint scowled. “Well… some kind of a nut got to him. A psycho…”

  Mike grunted his disgust at the other’s lack of perception. “I should’ve known better than to talk to you while you’re working. You obviously turn off your thinking machine when you work. Didn’t it get through to you? Ronald Brett-Home was a top MI6 man. Where was it you first met him?”

  “At Hideka’s karate classes over on Calle San Bernardo,” Quint said thoughtfully. “We used to work out together, from time to time.”

  “And was he any good?”

  “He held a third Dan Black Belt, now that you mention it.” Quint was scowling again.

  Mike Woolman headed for the door. “Then how the hell could some psycho take him?” he growled. “Drunk or sober, a third Dan Black Belt could take on any two or three crooks or fugitives from a nut factory, that ever lived. Shall I see you for lunch at the Hoger Gallego?”

  Quint’s scowl had deepened. He said absently, “I don’t know. I’m getting tired of sea food. Besides, I’m getting a slow start on the column. Maybe I’ll just open a can of soup here at the apartment.”

  Mike opened the door to leave. “Damn Americans,” he said. “Do all their cooking out of cans. Barbarians.”

  “You’ve been over here too long,” Quint snarled after him, but the other was gone. He looked at the door for a long moment, digesting some of the things the newspaperman had said.

  Foul it, Mike was right. Ronald Brett-Home, no matter what his air of easy goingness might be, was a top judo and karate man. Quint had thought the other followed the sport simply for exercise and fun—as Quint did himself. He hadn’t known the man was connected with British espionage. But whatever his connections, he was superbly capable of protecting himself.

  The columnist shrugged in irritation and resumed his chair before the typewriter. Confound Mike. Now he’d lost his thread of inspiration. He’d had some idea for a series of three columns. What in the devil was it?

  He stared at the paper for a moment, unseeingly.

  Then, as though not of his own volition got up again and crossed the room to his combination bar and telephone stand. It was a heavy piece of converted pseudo-Castilian furniture, its wood half a foot thick, its wrought ironwork deliberately rusted as though with centuries of age.

  He dialed absently, waited while the phone rang over and over again. He looked at his watch. It was nearly noon.

  Finally the voice came. “Good heavens, dahling, whoever you are, what possibly could you want this time of night?”

  Quint said, “Pet, it’s Quint Jones. Listen, remember last evening?”

  Her voice went wary. “Just a minute, while I take a sip of this to clear the cobwebs. Last evening, dahling? Of course—at least the early part.” She hesitated. “I think I do.”

  He made a face, but turned on oral charm. “Listen, Pet. You told me that Ronald Brett-Home had suggested the party to you. That he, more or less, set it up. Said there’d be a lot of fun. Just what kind of fun?”

  Marty Dempsey had evidently bolted back a quick one. Her voice came through more clearly. “Did I say that, dahling? Well, the wretch never even turned up.” She giggled in remembrance. “You must have left early with that nice Marylyn girl. You missed the climax of the party.”

  “Oh? What happened?” Quint grew tense.

  “Well, my dear, you know that swivel hipped Joanne Cotton girl—the one who came up from Torremolinos with the Conte…”

  Quint didn’t know who she was talking about, but he said, “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

  “Well, dahling. She was evidently looking for the little girl’s room, and walked in on Dave Shepherd and this new boy friend of…”

  Quint said wearily, “Listen, Marty, about Ronald Brett-Home and his idea for a controversial party. It was his idea that you invite Nicolas Ferencsik, wasn’t it? Why did he think that would start fireworks?”

  Even over the phone, he could detect the fact that she was pouting. But Marty wasn’t the stuffy type, especially with one of what she called her special boy friends and Quentin Jones was one of her special boy friends, usually to his dismay.

  But her voice went vague. “I… I don’t exactly know. I suppose I could ask Ferd. Ronald was awfully mysterious about it. Merely told me to throw a party with Nicolas Ferencsik as guest of honor, and then spread it around that the party was to be open house. I even had that pretty Jean Allen girl put it in t
he Guidepost.”

  The Guidepost was the little English language weekly magazine read by all Americans and British in Madrid. Jean Allen was its society editor. Quint pursed his lips. Obviously, the Englishman had been trying to lure someone to the party. Someone who ordinarily wouldn’t have come to an expatriate drunken party—hadn’t it been for the fact that the controversial Hungarian was going to be there.

  He said thoughtfully, “That German, Stroehlein. Was he invited?”

  “Who?”

  In the background, even over the phone, Quint could hear a bottle gurgle. He shook his head, wondering how the woman ever got all the way through the day. He repeated his question.

  “Never heard of him, dahling.”

  “How about Vladimir Nuriyev?”

  “Was he at the party too? Oh dear, I’m afraid I didn’t know half the people who wandered in. You know our soirees, dahling…”

  Soiree was a good word. But alcoholic blowout was more like it.

  He said softly, “Then not only Bart Digby, but Stroehlein and Nuriyev were party crashers as well, eh?”

  “I beg your pardon, dahling?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He had half a mind to ask her if any Frenchmen had been present—someone who might have been connected with the Surete. What was the French term? A mouchard. The whole thing sounded like a convention of secret agents. Mike Woolman was right, something funny had been expected to happen there at the Dempsey party. Not so funny at that The British representative of international espionage had wound up very dead.

  Marty Dempsey was giggling something into the phone that he didn’t catch, and suddenly he was weary of her meaningless voice. He said, rather abruptly, “Look Marty, the reason I called. You might read the morning papers. I suppose it’s in the papers…”

  “What’s in the papers? You mean about the party? But, dahling, they never report our…”

  “Ronald Brett-Home didn’t make it to your party, pet, because somebody killed him.”

  She gasped, and he hung up the phone. It wasn’t a matter of being either nasty, or impolite. He simply didn’t want to spend the next half hour chattering with Martha Dempsey. He stood and looked down at the instrument for a moment, then turned and looked at the bottle of Fundador which stood a foot or so to the right. He shook his head. The hell with it. He had to get to work. One drink and he’d be off. Any excuse to get out of actually sitting down to that typewriter and trying to be cynically witty for the sake of yea many millions of readers.

  When the phone started ringing, he let it ring and returned to chair and typewriter. He stared at the single line he had typed. It was obviously meant to be a title, since it was in caps. It read: It’s a Small World and I Want Off.

  He looked at it blankly. Obviously, when he had written it, he’d had something in mind. What? He couldn’t remember what he’d been doodling with when Mike Woolman’s ring at the door had come. He stared at it for a while, but nothing would evolve. He couldn’t keep his mind from Ronald Brett-Home and from the strange party at the Dempsey’s.

  Nicolas Ferencsik. The Hungarian scientist and his dream of World Government. It came back to Quentin Jones then. He had thought of doing a short series of columns on World Government. He shook his head. He wouldn’t be able to do them now. Not until this matter was cleared up. If it was cleared up.

  He’d have to get onto something else. He picked up his notebook and thumbed through it. Here was a couple of lines dealing with American dependence on the PX stores abroad. Quint Jones twisted his lips thoughtfully. And the bell rang.

  He closed his eyes in pain. “What in the hell is this, Old Home Week?” He threw his notebook to the table and made his way to the door.

  Two of them stood there. He had seen them before. Or at least their identical twins. Somehow they manage to look the same, anywhere in the world. One of them brought forth a wallet and nicked it open.

  Quint sighed. “You didn’t have to show me the buzzer,” he said. Involuntarily, he looked down at their feet. The slightly older of the two flushed angrily.

  Quint sighed. “Pardon me for a moment.” Leaving the door open he went back to the table, took up his notebook and a ball bearing pen and scribbled quickly, Humor bit: Evidently the gag about a cop having big feet is international, and cops everywhere conscious of the fact, and irritated by it.

  They had entered behind him, without invitation, and the younger closed the door behind them. They wouldn’t have done that in England or any of the Scandinavian countries, nor in Canada or the States. No, come to think of it, Quint decided, there was many a city in the States where they might. Police were known to get delusions of grandeur in the supposedly super-free America, on occasion.

  He said, motioning with his hand, “A seat, gentlemen?” He made another gesture in the direction of the bar. “Could I offer you a drink? A cognac? Beer? Scotch?”

  They shook their heads. With regret, Quint decided, when he mentioned the whisky. Scotch whisky was currently the status drink in Spain. To impress the girl friend, in a bar, you ordered Scotch, in spite of the fact that it cost a dollar a throw while good Spanish brandy cost possibly five cents, and while the Scotch was almost certainly cut to ribbons and blended with cheap alcohol to stretch it out.

  The one Quint had decided was the older said, “Senor Jones, Hablar espanol?”

  Still in English, Quint said, “Well enough for every day purposes. To ask for a second round of beers in a bodega. To order in a restaurant, or buy things in the market. To pick up a girl and argue her into my way of thinking. But not to talk to police officers about any subject more important than a parking ticket. And you gentlemen don’t look as though you’re connected with the traffic department. I’ll stick to English. If it’s important, we can go on over to the American consulate for an interpreter.”

  The older one grunted, and said in quite passable English, “You are a friend of Mr. Ronald Brett-Home.” It wasn’t exactly a question.

  “An acquaintance,” Quint told him, resuming his own chair, and shooting his typewriter a look of disgust. He might as well give up, today. It wasn’t in the cards.

  The detective’s eyebrows were raised. “We have information that you were a friend. Do you deny it?”

  “It’s according to what you mean by friend. I’ve known him for maybe as long as a year. I average seeing him once or twice a month, at a party, or some such. I’ve never been to his home, he’s never been to mine.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The detective looked at him. Both of them looked at him.

  Quint shrugged angrily. “We see each other from time to time at parties. I don’t know which one I saw him at last. We were never important to each other. We might both be at a party, or at the swimming pool at the British-American Club, or at some bar and never even speak.”

  “Perhaps you did not like Mr. Brett-Home. Perhaps you were enemies.”

  “No,” Quint sighed. A cop is a cop is a cop. “No, we weren’t enemies. I just told you. We hardly knew each other.”

  “But you fought against each other.”

  Quint looked at him blankly, then caught it. “Oh, you mean at the karate club? We both belonged to it, but usually I’d work out in the afternoon, and he’d come in later in the evening. When we occasionally were there at the same time, Hideka, the instructor, would usually pair us off. We had about the same build.”

  The detective leaned forward a bit. “He was your superior at this Japanese fighting, perhaps?”

  “We were about evenly matched.”

  “But one understands that he had won awards.”

  “He had a third Dan Black Belt which I understood he had taken the examinations for in Singapore. I’ve never had occasion to take examinations.” Quint shrugged. “I don’t know if I would if I had the opportunity. I mess around with karate for the exercise. I don’t take it seriously.”

  The detective who spoke English look
ed at him sceptically. So, okay, let him think that it was a matter of sour grapes.

  The younger detective came to his feet and strolled over to the window and stared down, as though bored at the conversation, at the traffic on Calle General Peron. There wasn’t much to see. Quint had picked the street partly because of its comparative quiet.

  The other was saying, “From your attitude I assume you have learned of Mr. Brett-Home’s, ah, tragedy.”

  “Yes.” What use was there in denying it?

  “How did you know? It has not as yet been released to the press.”

  “A friend told me.”

  “What friend?” The Spanish cop’s air was cold.

  He had just said that the news had not been released to the press. Where had Mike picked it up, then? Quint’s mind raced. Would it be a betrayal if he gave them the American reporter’s name?

  The younger cop, who had been staring gloomily out the window, had left it and strolled over to stand for a moment before a reproduction of Velazquez’ Las Meninas. He grunted and sauntered about the room as though looking for more paintings, and thus killing time. The American columnist brought his attention back to the question.

  He said, slowly, “I’m afraid I can’t reveal my source of information. I am a journalist, you know.” Calling himself a journalist was stretching a point, of course. He was a columnist, true enough, but not a newspaper man in the sense of being a reporter.

  His questioner said dangerously, “Senor Jones, we do not deal with pleasant newspaper stories about parties, and marriage and divorce, and movie stars and other celebrities. We do not even deal with politics. We are dealing with murder. Now, one would like to know who told you of Mr. Brett-Home’s death.”

  The younger cop had got to the side board and was shuffling through Quint’s morning mail.

  “Hey!” Quint was on his feet. “Quieta!”

  He came angrily up on the other, who did no more than raise a contemptuous, supercilious eyebrow at the American, continuing his inspection.

  “Drop those letters!” Quint demanded angrily.

  “My colleague doesn’t have English,” the other detective said, an undertone of both contempt and amusement in his voice.