“Loud and clear.”
“Good. “
“What about everybody else?”
“Everybody who could be lied to, was. Lucy Rutherfurd, the cousins, that painter and the photo guy, the President’s domestic staff, even the Marines. They’ve all been told you were chasing off what you figured was an intruder on the Little White House grounds, firing in the air. You were some local cop, that’s all, with a letter from Mrs. Beach to help out on occasion. No explanation beyond that. As for the maid Desiree, the line on her is she got spooked when Roosevelt keeled over, and ran off. She had a police record and didn’t want to be around when the cops showed up. She’s gone; it’s that simple. The doctors who were at the Little White House and examined the President got roughly the same speech you’ve been given. Oh, and the flatfoot Massachusetts cop Hewitt sends his regards. Says with the war over he’s going to go to college and join the Secret Service. How ‘bout that?”
“You’ve always been persuasive, Dag. What about the poison? Cyanide?”
“Bingo. Just like you figured. In the mush Roosevelt ate before lunch.”
Dag offered his hand. After a moment, Lammeck shook it. The two got out of the Packard. Dag retrieved Lammeck’s duffel from the trunk. A hundred yards away on the tarmac, a silver Lockheed glinted, waiting. Lammeck looked at a windsock blowing his direction, east across the Atlantic.
Lammeck grabbed the bag. Dag walked beside him a few steps, then stopped. He raised his voice above the spinning propellers.
“I’d like to say I’ll see you again. But it’s not something you’d want to hear. Because, Mikhal, if I do see you again—”
Lammeck interrupted him. “I know, Dag. I won’t see you.”
Dag winked and turned away first. Lammeck watched him go only a few strides, then headed for the plane.
* * * *
May 20
St. Andrews, Scotland
A STIFF BREEZE OFF St. Andrews Bay clipped at Lammeck’s back. Across the campus, university pennants and Union Jacks billowed from their cleats against every school building wall, against the castle ruins on its spit beside the water, and from the cathedral tower at the east edge of town. The wind rippled the crimson capes of students returning from Sunday services, exam studies in the library, or the many medieval crannies of the town. Lammeck walked with the wind, aimless, with nothing to do but amble the cobbled streets amid green lawns.
The University had preserved his office and his position. He was welcome to stay and teach in the upcoming academic year. With the war in Europe over, and the one in the Pacific drawing to a close, the school braced to swell with returning servicemen and women. For the present, Lammeck had no official duties. The training of the Jeds in the western hills had shut down while he was in America. The Assassins Gallery lay on his desk in his flat on Muttoes Lane. He’d spent his first week back rereading the finished chapters. He found them dull and too conclusive. His writing on the political history of assassination was steeped in study, but lacked fascination; since his return, he’d determined the subject was not so dry as he’d once imagined. Lammeck considered that he might rewrite the whole book, spice it up with some adventure and humanity, turn it into something for a wider audience than just his fellow scholars.
But this morning he could not focus on his pages. Lammeck chose instead to take a long stroll and stir up a thirst.
* * * *
SHE DID NOT SIT at his table but slid into a booth across the tavern. Lammeck made no outward reaction, though every klaxon in his mind and body went off. He forced himself to be motionless under her bemused gaze. She looked stunning under a broad-brimmed straw hat, in a white polka-dot dress, a shimmering emerald pashmina about her shoulders. She grinned at Lammeck past shifting patrons, through the smoky pub air. She let the shawl collapse down her shoulders to show her arms were tanned and bare. Her hair was longer now.
A boy, the proprietor’s lad, wiped her table with a rag. Before he could leave, she snared him by the arm. Lammeck watched her take from her purse a sheet of paper and a pen. She scrawled something, creased the page, then gave it to the boy with a coin. The lad hustled through The Cross Keys’ drinking traffic to Lammeck’s table.
“For you, sir.”
Lammeck slid a shilling across the table. The boy looked at it, frowning. “The lady gi’ me a hae’ crown.”
Lammeck reached slowly to take his shilling back. The boy snatched the coin from under his fingers, left the note, and took off.
Lammeck pulled his eyes off her long enough to unfold the page. She’d written, May I?
He flipped the sheet on its back, recognizing on it the FBI sketch of Judith.
Across the room, she waited, framed in the green curtain of the shawl, in the soft light beneath the straw hat. She raised her hands in a mock surrender. Keeping them up as though Lammeck held a gun on her, the cashmere dangling off her elbows, she rose and came to ease into his booth.
“Put your hands down.”
She dropped them. “Aren’t you going to pull out a pistol or something? I’m not sure what to say to you without a gun between us.”
“Or somebody poisoned.”
“Fair point. I’ll behave if you promise to.”
“Who are you this time?”
“Colleen Duckworth. A very rich Canadian widow.”
“My condolences. You’ve got a tan.”
“It’s warm where I live.”
“I think it’s warmer where you’ll end up.”
“Touché, Mikhal. You’re still taking shots at me. At least that one hit. But what do you say to a truce?”
They looked up at the approaching waiter.
“What are you having?” she asked Lammeck. “I’m buying.”
“Stout.”
Judith said to the waiter, “Apparently he likes his beer the way he likes his women. Dark and bitter. Two, please.”
Lammeck took in the details of her. Polished nails, stylish dress. He’d not forgotten her face but was reminded by her shoulders above the drooped shawl how muscular she was.
“What are you doing here?”
“The Scottish spring is the most beautiful in the world. I’ve been thinking about taking up golf. And I made you a promise, Mikhal. Or don’t you remember?”
Judith put her elbows on the table to set her chin in her cupped hands. “Don’t look so surprised. Surely you haven’t forgotten me.”
This is how she works, Lammeck thought, how she gets inside. She plays charming, plays stupid or smart, beautiful or dull, innocent or naive. He kept his mouth shut, glaring at her, probing for her intent, or threat.
“It’s a purely social visit.” She leaned off her hands and sat straight. “Can’t a lady drop in?”
“You murdered Roosevelt.”
“No, I didn’t. He died from a cerebral hemorrhage. It was in all the papers.”
“You killed three people in Massachusetts.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You caused the death of your accomplice, Maude King.”
“Indirectly.”
“Before Mrs. Rutherfurd, you worked as a maid for Undersecretary of the Navy Tench. You’ve been tracked back to an apartment in one of the colored alleys. There’s no proof, but—”
She interrupted him. “Yes, Mikhal, I killed poor Mrs. Pettigrew. And my landlord’s inquisitive son Josh. And the policeman hired by Mrs. Tench’s family to follow her straying husband. I never knew the cop’s name. But he followed Jacob to me.”
“And no further,” said Lammeck.
“Well put.”
“Six civilian murders and one assassination of a president.” Lammeck’s voice carried disdain. “You were a regular killing machine.”
“The civilians were regrettable, but beyond my control. You understand.”
“I understand you should get the electric chair for every one of them.”
She blinked and waited without expression, letting the notion hang between them. Then she said,
“You know I never will. And if for one moment I believed you intended to bring me before your precious justice, I’d... I didn’t come to renew old antagonisms with you, Mikhal.”
Lammeck studied her grin and stunning blue eyes, all focused on him like a Cheshire cat. ready to disappear.
Lammeck said, “I’m one of a handful of people in the world who’s aware of what you’ve done. You and I both know it’s going to stay that way. So why’d you come to Scotland? To gloat?”
Judith took off the broad-brimmed straw hat and laid it carefully on the seat beside her. She ran a hand through her hair. She smiled beguilingly. The FBI poster could never do her justice.
“For two reasons. First, just as you say, I got away with it. No one’s looking for me. There’s no bounty on my head. I’m retired, and I’m in the clear. Oh, I’d still consider doing another job if the money was ridiculously large and the target was intriguing enough. But for now, rest assured I have no reason to fear you or to hurt you. That could change, but that is entirely in your hands. Second, you had a gun on me twice, and both times you let me go. A girl gets to appreciate that sort of thing.”
Lammeck had not forgotten the sting of her parting words in the Georgia forest. History sent you to stop me, because history knew you wouldn’t. He’d stewed over this for weeks. Now, with Judith unarmed in front of him, he wanted to assault her, stand her up from her chair and slam her to the bar floor as he’d done in the woods. Then ask her to comment again what she thought he was made of.
The waiter brought the beers and left. Lammeck waited with the glasses on the table.
“Would you like to swap beers with me?” Judith asked, her eyes merry. “Shall I take a big swallow out of yours first?”
“Yes.”
She lifted her own beer. “Don’t be absurd. Drink.”
Lammeck watched her gulp and wipe foam off her lip. Only then did he lift his beer and drink.
“There, that’s better. This is what history wants. You and me sharing a pint. How’s your book going, The Assassins Gallery? Is there a chapter about me?”
“No.”
“Pity. But I didn’t think there would be. I suppose it would get you in some pretty hot water.”
“There’s no chapter because there’s no evidence. It’s all vanished. And I’m not worried about hot water.”
“What if they sent me?”
Lammeck fingered the sweaty beer glass. “You’re retired.”
“I know.” She leaned across the table. “But humor me. What if I were your hot water?”
“Then we’d both better worry.”
Judith sat up fast, clapping. “That’s better!”
“I need to know something. Then I’ll decide about the chapter.”
“These are my conditions. No questions about my past work. No questions about where I live or who I am. I will never compromise my own security. Understood?”
Lammeck cared about none of this.
“Who’d you work for?”
“Ah, that’s the big one, isn’t it? For an historian, anyway. Who wanted to change history so much they killed a president?”
“Tell me.”
“Guess.”
“Just fucking tell me.”
“Just fucking guess.”
Lammeck took another swallow. He licked his lips, and said: “It was an international action. Some nation. I don’t believe any of Roosevelt’s domestic enemies were behind it. You showed up in a sub. Industrialists and politicians have a lot of money. They don’t have subs.”
“Correct. But which country?”
“Reilly thinks it was the Germans.”
“But you don’t agree?”
“No. By the beginning of this year, the outcome in Europe was a foregone conclusion. Germany was going to lose. There were even efforts by the Nazis at high levels to negotiate some kind of peace shy of total surrender. Killing Roosevelt wouldn’t have changed the military reality on the ground, not even a little. Stalin was agitating to pastoralize Germany, take all their factories, pour concrete in their mines, to keep them from militarizing again for a long time. Churchill was against it. He wanted a rebuilt Germany, along with a strengthened France, as a buffer against a powerful postwar Soviet Union to his east. Roosevelt was on the fence. Killing Roosevelt would have just passed that decision on to Truman, and no one knows Truman any better than you and I know our waiter. And what if you’d gotten caught? Roosevelt would’ve seen to it along with Stalin that Germany didn’t have two sticks to rub together for another hundred years. That’s a big risk. With the exception of Hitler, I doubt there was any support in the German high command for taking the President down.”
“Alright. Next.”
“The Japanese.” Lammeck shook his head again. “By December last year, the Japs were on the run in Burma and the Philippines. Their navy just had its butt whipped at Leyte Gulf. Five months later, we’re island-hopping straight to Tokyo. It’s the same deal as Germany— killing Roosevelt won’t alter the inevitable. The war’s lost for the Japs. History isn’t going to change for them, no matter who’s president. So why risk it? There’s no upside in targeting Roosevelt.”
“You forget. The Japanese and Germans are vengeful people. It might have been no more than that.”
“They’re also incredibly pragmatic. I can’t see them dedicating the resources this late in the war just for revenge. And again, if they’d been caught... if you’d been caught... a vengeful Germany or Japan is nothing next to a pissed-off America. Trust me. Besides.”
“Besides what?”
“I don’t see you working for them.”
“Someone like me isn’t motivated by politics. I work for the challenge and the money. But, no, you’re correct. I wouldn’t work for Hitler or Tojo. Theirs is not the world I want to help usher in. I’m not completely amoral,”
Judith sipped her beer, eyeing Lammeck. “Then who has the upside, Mikhal?”
“The Russians. You did Krivitsky for them. So they brought you back for Roosevelt.”
“Tell me why.”
“No one else in the world right now is as strong as America except the Soviet Union. Things are shaping up to be a staring match across the globe, between communism and democracy. Stalin’s not leaving the countries his armies liberated. Neither is America. The Reds feel they won the war in Europe almost by themselves, and as far as war dead goes, they pretty much did. The estimates I’m hearing approach eight million. I think it’ll be more. With the fighting there barely over, why not upset the applecart? Rub out Roosevelt, put in the untested Truman. Take the new President to the woodshed while the taking’s good, before Truman gets his feet under him. Stalin’s never shown the slightest scruple about removing rivals, and Roosevelt was his greatest rival. All the ingredients are there. Power grab. Available resources for the job. Precedent. And most important, history changed for the better—for them.”
“True. All true.”
Judith sipped her beer, keeping her smile behind the glass.
“So why am I wrong?” Lammeck demanded.
“For the exact reasons you’re right, Mikhal. Stalin’s Red Army has grown into the largest in the world. They’ve been bloodied and they’ve won, and they are now spread all over Eastern Europe. Despite agreements, Stalin hasn’t pulled one soldier from the Balkans, Poland, or the eastern half of Germany. He’s setting up puppet governments in every nation he’s ‘liberated.’ And in Finland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, he’s got political support. Even in America there’s an active Communist party. All of this was done on the watch of one Franklin Roosevelt.”
“What are you saying?”
“That Stalin never had a better friend than Roosevelt. America was so bent on stopping the Nazis that it used Russia as proxy to fight them until she could get in on the fight, just as she did with England early on. But after the Reds won at Stalingrad, and showed the world the Germans could be halted on the steppe, Roosevelt shifted loyalties. The amount of mat
eriel the Soviets were handed dwarfs anything the English got. And the Reds made good use of it, killing nine out of ten German soldiers in the war. Now they’re putting together their own bloc of satellite nations from the ones they chased the Germans out of. At the same time, the United Nations is going to do everything it can to dismantle the old European colonial powers, while doing little to slow Russian expansion. That leaves just two superpowers. The Soviet Union is soon going to be the equal of America for world influence and prestige. And they have America to thank for that. So why would Stalin murder his American benefactor?”
The Assassins Gallery - [Dr Mikhal Lammeck 01] Page 41