by R.J. Ellory
And was this him? This dry and humorless man? Was he this way because of what had happened, or would he have been this way regardless of the circumstances of his childhood and teenage years? These were the very questions with which he had been challenged by the Bureau psychologist in Kansas, the very questions that they had focused on within Unit X. Was a man born with identity intact, or was he a product of his environment? That was as much a question for himself as it was a question for any of the unit’s subjects.
But now, the past aside, it was the present that needed explanation. Things had happened—strange things—and Travis knew that their explanation would somehow relate to the resolution of the homicide. They had to be connected. Understand one, and he would understand the other.
Some of those answers had to lie with Chester Greene. All of those answers had to lie with Edgar Doyle and Valeria Mironescu. This was their creation. Everything that had happened here, everything that was happening right now, lay within the province of their understanding. The half answers, the inferences and innuendos, the ever-present sense that they themselves were intentionally keeping him at arm’s length, was something of which he was certain.
It was then that Travis noticed the sheet of paper upon which he had written the name Harold Blauer. Doyle had given him that name almost as an aside, almost nonchalantly, as if it meant nothing at all. And yet Travis did not believe Doyle to be a man who did anything unless he intended it. That name had been forwarded for a reason. That name possessed significance. Bishop had told him that he was not to involve other Bureau offices in his investigation, but this now seemed ludicrous. The very least he could do was drive out to Wichita and see if this Blauer existed somewhere within the Bureau system. Travis was then struck by another thought. Was the dead man Harold Blauer? Was this whose body was found beneath the carousel, the body still residing in the Seneca Falls morgue? Blauer did not seem to be a Hungarian name, but perhaps the man had used an alias. If he was in fact some kind of assassin, then it would be routine to operate under an alias.
Travis looked at the bedside clock. It was quarter past six. He showered, dressed, was out of the hotel by seven and on the road to Wichita. He would arrive before eight, take breakfast in a local diner, and be at the office as it opened. It would take no time at all to locate Blauer on the system, if he was in fact there, and he could be back in Seneca Falls before ten to track down Doyle and Valeria.
The drive was uneventful, the highway clear of traffic, and Travis was there early. The office was unmanned as yet, so Travis walked a block and a half and found a diner. He took coffee, ate a piece of French toast and a few mouthfuls of scrambled egg.
Travis retraced his steps, waited merely a handful of minutes before Gary Delaney appeared. Delaney seemed surprised to see him again.
“I have to tell you that I received a message from Supervisor Bishop,” Delaney told him as he opened up the office.
“Advising you that I was to be afforded no significant assistance in this investigation, right?”
Delaney looked awkward. “Not in those words, exactly, but that was the basic idea, yes.”
“Well, I am not here to ask for your assistance as such, Agent Delaney. I just need to access some information that may or may not be on the system.”
“Well, we have Receive Only Model 28, so I would have to call in your request.”
“Which is what I am going to ask you to do, Agent Delaney.”
There were a few seconds of awkward silence.
“I am not so sure, Agent Travis. The message from Supervisor Bishop—”
“I am a senior special agent,” Travis said, his voice calm and unhurried. “I am pulling rank on you. I am giving you a direct and legal order. Supervisor Bishop’s message did not say that you had permission to ignore or countermand an order, did it?”
“No, sir, it didn’t.”
“So, there we are then. I am giving you an order. You are complying with that order. If it then comes back to you… well, it won’t come back to you, will it? It will be my responsibility and my responsibility alone.”
“Yes, if you put it that way.”
“And it’s a really simple thing, Agent Delaney. A request for some information regarding one person, and that’s all.”
“Their name?”
“Harold Blauer,” Travis replied.
“B-L-A-U-E-R?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“And do you know anything about him?”
“My understanding is that he was a tennis player.”
“A tennis player?”
“Yes.”
Delaney hesitated once again. “I’m sorry, Agent Travis, but there’s something about this that seems awful strange. I was puzzled when I received that message from Supervisor Bishop, and now you’re here in person asking me to assist you when I have been asked not to do so.”
Travis smiled, trying his best to put Delaney’s mind at ease. The man was doing his job, coloring inside the lines, so to speak, and was concerned that he might incur the displeasure of his seniors. How easily Travis could see himself in this man.
“I appreciate the dilemma, Agent Delaney,” Travis said. “I really do. The simple truth is that this is a test case.”
“A test case?”
“In essence, yes. I received a promotion to senior special agent, you see, and along with that increase in responsibility comes an assignment where you are required to pursue the case without external office assistance. Now, I can wait until the City Library is open and go trawl through their newspaper archives, but here we are dealing with a homicide investigation. Irrespective of whatever else might or might not be going on, we are still dealing with a homicide, and the perpetrator of that murder is unknown and on the run. Not only as a federal law enforcement official, but also as a good citizen, it seems nothing less than irresponsible not to break a little rule in order to expedite the case and bring a felon to justice.”
“Yes, I can see that, Agent Travis, and that is why I am fighting with this,” Delaney replied, and there was a look in his eyes as if he was beginning to reconcile himself to the situation.
“But I really don’t want you to compromise your integrity on this point, Agent Delaney—”
“It is not a matter of integrity, Agent Travis,” Delaney replied, “but a matter of which is for the greater good, and I cannot see how assisting you in this small matter could be anything but positive. I understand that this case might be a test for you, but it is still a case, and—as you say—a man’s life has been taken and someone is responsible. You think that this Blauer might be involved?”
“I have no idea,” Travis said. “It is just a name that has come up in the course of the investigation, and I want to rule him in or out, one way or the other.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Delaney said. “To hell with the consequences. It doesn’t seem right to me that a federal officer should be prevented from using Bureau resources.”
“That’s very much appreciated, Agent Delaney.”
Delaney started toward an office at the rear of the building. “I’ll send the request now. It’s early, and we might be lucky. Catch them before the full day’s workload starts. Usually it takes a while to get a reply, but we’ll see, eh?”
Delaney left the room, and Travis walked to the front window of the office. He looked down the street both ways. There was very little foot or vehicle traffic, but it was Saturday, and the vast majority of citizens would be home with family. He looked at the absence then—as clear as daylight—and it struck him with some force. He had his room at the McCaffrey, not for long, but it was home until this case was complete. And once complete, he would return to Kansas, there to find his sparsely furnished apartment, his books, his neatly arranged provisions, a single houseplant on the windowsill—a cactus, simply because such a plant required no real attention o
r care. What was he doing now? Was he questioning the existence he had created for himself? Was he actually challenging the rationale of his own life?
Travis turned at the sound of Delaney returning from the back office.
“Seems we’re out of luck,” Delaney said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Classified,” Delaney said.
“Seriously?”
Delaney handed Travis a sheet of teletype paper. Across the top was printed the date, the call sign of the Wichita office, and beneath it a few lines stating that the information request could not be fulfilled due to the fact that Delaney possessed an insufficiently senior authorization grade.
“Let me use it,” Travis said.
“You’re sure?” Delaney asked.
“Not a hundred percent, but I’m going to try anyway.”
Delaney—once again visibly uncertain—showed Travis through to the back office. Travis keyed in his ID and repeated the request. As an afterthought, and to satisfy another small curiosity, he requested any information on organizations that employed a forget-me-not design as a membership symbol.
“We just have to wait,” Delaney said. “No way to tell how long it will be.”
“I understand,” Travis said. “Same system in every office. I know how it works.”
“Of course you do,” Delaney said. “I’m sorry. This just makes me a little nervous.”
“Don’t worry,” Travis said. “No one’s going to be losing their job over this.”
They returned to the front of the office. Delaney suggested he go out and get coffee.
“Good idea,” Travis said. “Black, no sugar.”
“You want anything else?”
“I’m good.”
Delaney left, was gone a good fifteen minutes, returned just as the teleprinter started chugging away in the back.
Travis walked on through. The information request had been authorized and fulfilled. There was not a great deal of text, but at least there was something.
Travis tore off the pages and sat down. Delaney brought the coffee, set it there on the desk, and though he was obviously tempted to hang over Travis’s shoulder and find out who this Harold Blauer was, he did not. He made himself scarce, and Travis appreciated this.
The brief report made no real sense to Travis.
The earliest note of Harold Blauer was in December of 1952 when Blauer—apparently depressed after a divorce—voluntarily admitted himself to the New York State Psychiatric Institute for treatment. What happened then seemed like something out of a sensationalistic dime-store novel. Blauer—seemingly consensually—agreed to be part of an experimental research program being undertaken by the US Army Chemical Corps into an untried depression medication. In fact, these medications were chemical warfare agents, and Blauer was administered a series of four injections. He protested any further injections, citing the adverse effects that he was experiencing, but he was convinced to continue, the threat of committal to Bellevue Hospital hanging over him. The fifth injection was many, many times stronger than any previous injection. Blauer suffered a series of adverse effects ranging from a stiffening of the musculature to oral foaming. Oxygen, glucose, even sodium amytal did nothing. This continued for two hours, and then Blauer lapsed into a coma and died. The certificate of death stated COD as coronary arteriosclerosis; sudden death after intravenous injection of an undisclosed substance. It appeared that all records of this event were then moved out of state by the army, despite a court order requiring the production of those documents. The report went on to state that Blauer’s last and fatal injection had been four hundred and fifty milligrams of an experimental mescaline derivative code-named EA-1298. As of that moment, the case remained closed and no further investigation into Blauer’s death was scheduled.
On the final page, merely a couple of lines, Travis read that the forget-me-not had been chosen by the 1938 annual Nazi party Winterhilfswerk, a charitable foundation charged with the responsibility of collecting donations so that other state funds could be released and employed for rearmaments.
That, in essence, was the sum total of the report in Travis’s hands, and though he found the material disconcerting, if not almost unbelievable, he had no further understanding of why Edgar Doyle would have mentioned Blauer’s name, nor why he wore a badge that indicated membership of a pro-Nazi foundation. Was that what he had been doing for the last two years of the war, raising money for the Nazis? What had he said about that badge? That it was his shield against all ills, the thing that made him invincible? What could he have meant?
These were questions that could be answered by Doyle alone, and so Travis folded the report, tucked it into his pocket, thanked Delaney once again for his assistance, and left the Bureau office.
32
Arriving back in Seneca Falls, Travis drove straight to the carnival site. Even as he approached the location of the previous evening’s experiences, he realized that he’d done all he could to blanch his mind of what he’d seen and heard. There was no immediate explanation for Oscar Haynes’s ability to see cards through the eyes of another human being, and there was most definitely no explanation for Chester Greene’s ability to know what he did about peoples’ lives and past circumstances. If it was not collusion and prior arrangement with the subjects in question, then it challenged most of what Travis understood about the human mind. Perhaps it was only natural that Travis blocked these thoughts from his immediate consciousness. But what was really certain? And where was the dividing line between what was real and what was not? In fact, was there a dividing line at all?
With these questions at the forefront of his mind, he exited the Fairlane and walked to Doyle’s caravan. It was a little after eleven, and he doubted that even Doyle would still be asleep so late in the morning.
Before he reached the vehicle, the door opened. Valeria Mironescu appeared in her robe. Her feet were bare, but she seemed not the slightest bit self-conscious.
“Agent Travis,” she said, and smiled in her most engaging way.
“Miss Valeria,” Travis replied.
“You are looking for Edgar,” she said, more a statement than a question.
“I am.”
“He is here. We are just having some coffee if you would like to join us. Do you like Turkish coffee?”
“I can’t say that I have ever had it.”
“Well, then, you must try it.” She leaned back into the caravan and called out to Doyle. “Edgar, put some clothes on. We have company.”
“You rise late,” Travis said.
“Not so late if you live a predominantly nocturnal existence,” she said. She winked. “Vampires, you see, Agent Travis. Perhaps half vampires, eh? We can take the daylight, but only from lunchtime onward.”
Doyle appeared behind Valeria. He smiled at Travis, seemingly pleased to see him.
“Agent Travis,” he said. “I have been expecting you. Please, just give me a moment to throw some clothes on, and then join us for coffee, why don’t you?”
“I will, thank you,” Travis said. “I have some questions for you, if you have time.”
“Always,” Doyle replied. “I always have time for questions, Agent Travis.”
Doyle and Valeria Mironescu disappeared into the caravan. The door was closed behind them, and Travis waited no more than five minutes before it opened again and Doyle stepped out. He was lighting his pipe as he came, and then he stopped and extended his hand.
“Good morning, Agent Travis,” he said.
Travis shook the man’s hand. “Good morning, Mr. Doyle.”
“Did you come with your square head again?”
“Of course, Mr. Doyle. Can you not tell? I am beginning to believe it’s the only one that works.”
Doyle looked at Travis with an expression of patience, as if now explaining something for the seco
nd or third time to a slightly backward child. “Do you even understand what I mean when I say your square head, Agent Travis?”
“Miss Valeria made the same comment, Mr. Doyle, and yes, I know what you mean.”
“Tell me.”
“You are implying that I can look at what is happening here with all my preconceived ideas and personal certainties intact, or I can allow myself a certain degree of flexibility.”
“Complete flexibility. Complete freedom of thought. Complete absence of fixed ideas and preconceptions. That’s what I am advising, Agent Travis. When you walk down the road, you can look at your own feet, the road beneath, or you can look at the surroundings, the sky, the trees, the scenery as it unfolds, and you can trust your feet to continue taking you in the direction you’re headed.”
“I appreciate directness, Mr. Doyle. The equivocal answers, the allusions, the inferences, the open-ended statements are all so much a waste of time—”
“Well, that’s where you and I have to perhaps agree to differ once again, Agent Travis,” Doyle said. “Come. Let’s go inside, and we shall continue this overdue conversation.”
“Overdue?”
“Oh, don’t you think it’s overdue?” Doyle said, and then he walked to the caravan without waiting for a response from Travis.
Once inside, Doyle directed Travis to sit. Valeria Mironescu brought a metal coffee pot and the smallest cups Travis had ever seen.
“It is strong and bitter, and you may need sugar,” she said. “It is perhaps an acquired taste, but you cannot acquire the taste unless you try it, right?”