A Death in Geneva

by A. Denis Clift

  “A message, ‘Shattered Flag,’ coming across from Mr. Bromberger, Mr. Sweetman.” Harold Fisker’s small orange head had appeared in the doorway.

  “Fisker, you’d make a lousy lay, know that?” The orange head had already disappeared. Sweetman shouted after him. “The hell with Pierce. Any word from the son of a bitch Lancaster?” He had busted his butt for the director, pulled together an update on the Burdette case as soon as he had arrived from London. And, Lancaster had told him to stand by, keep himself available . . . and, he was standing by. Sweetman pulled on a pair of pants, left the belt hanging loose, the fly open, and moved into the communications center.

  “Buddy Pierce wasn’t too happy with me, Harold. What’s he got?”

  “Second section coming off.” Fisker stripped the emerging message from the machine, gave the original to Sweetman. The director’s line lit. The little man jumped to take the call. “Mr. Sweetman, Langley’s patching through a call from Mr. Bromberger—for you—he’s on!”

  “Pierce, Hanspeter. Yeah . . . what’s churning?”

  “Have you received my message?”

  “It’s coming across right now, important? What the hell time is it over there?”

  “Midnight, after midnight—damned important, couldn’t risk a transmission foul-up. The woman, the diver’s daughter you had me running a line on, apparently is with the ambassador’s brother, Burdette’s brother Thomas Starring—”

  “For Christ’s sake! . . .”

  “With him right now, do you hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah, keep going.”

  “There are two men with her, don’t know much, one apparently blond, English-speaking . . .”

  “Christ, Grabner’s boy?”

  “Could be . . .” The voice faded on the overseas circuit, came back in. . . .

  “Pierce, Pierce, you dropped on me. I missed your last—English-speaking, and . . .?

  “Right, one blond, English, the other, possible Maltese, Italian; can’t confirm. The three of them were living aboard a yacht in Malta. I just went through the boat—message spells it out, Hanspeter.”

  “You’re coming in strong. Go ahead.”

  “Piece of packing crate in cabin . . . I checked with Rome before message to you . . . serial numbers are part of that NATO Navy Naples munitions heist the GIS just scored on in Italy—Navy swimmer mines—confirmed that—”

  “Those mines, for Christ’s sake?”

  “You got it. There was nothing else—boat clean. Now listen. The woman, the daughter Renfro—”

  “Go ahead, I’m reading while you talk.”

  “She and the two males are reported to have shipped two weeks ago from Malta, bound for the United States on the Towerpoint flagship, with Starring, Burdette’s brother, aboard.”

  “Right.”

  “Ship’s name, Towerpoint Octagon. That’s it—you celebrating with Fisker?”

  “Yeah, eight-forty-five on the Fourth; Harold and I are going strong. Pierce . . . I feel a jolt, think you may have sprung the lid . . .”

  “Only a crack, but it’s a goddamned crack running straight in one direction. Find out where that ship is, what the hell they’re up to . . . for all I know, she may have said that’s for the ride, and is on her way to Toledo . . .”

  “Like hell Toledo; I’m signing off.”

  “I’ll be working the Rome end through the night.”

  Sweetman’s powerful arm slammed the phone down. “One clean chip off the falcon, Fisker; we’ve spotted the jewels. Get Coast Guard Ops on the line, run a line on that ship”—his finger ran along the message—“the Towerpoint Octagon. Tell ’em I want to patch through to Starring.”

  Fisker slipped a cough drop into his mouth, took his seat at the console, worked swiftly, placed his hand over his receiver. “They have me holding. Coast Guard’s checking with the Towerpoint Corporations Ops Center in New York. I should mention, Mr. Sweetman, Coast Guard Ops records these calls—”

  “We’re all big boys, Harold.”

  Fisker was on the line again. “Yes, do, very important. . . . The ship apparently is nearby, at anchor somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay. Coast Guard is patching us through to her now. . . . Hello, Special Agent Sweetman, Washington, calling Mr. Thomas Starring. Hello?” Fisker repeated his words. “I have someone in ship’s communications, Mr. Sweetman; Mr. Starring is not aboard.”

  Sweetman grabbed a second phone. “This is Sweetman. We’re dealing with an emergency. I want to speak to the ship’s captain, now!” A voice started at the other end of the patch . . .

  “I don’t give a damn, even if he’s shaving his goddamned legs,” Sweetman burst back, “tell him to get his butt to this phone now, you simple son of a bitch. Coast Guard put this call through, didn’t they? Tell him if he doesn’t believe we both got a problem, he will when he’s fired! . . .”

  “Let me know when he’s on the line, Fisker.” Sweetman slammed his receiver down, went through Bromberger’s message line by line.

  “On!”

  “Captain, sorry to trouble you. Two questions. Where can I reach your boss? Yeah, Starring, absolutely vital. . . . Fisker, you got that? Go ahead, Captain . . . okay, okay, I read you. That number’s the hotel. Second . . . What?” Sweetman clamped his hand over the phone, still listening. “Get this down, Harold; you’re recording, make sure . . .” He was listening intently to the Octagon’s captain. “No response? . . . I get you . . . just discovered them, one dead, one wounded. Can you put him on? . . . Still below, too weak to move, barely conscious. I read you. Okay! . . . Captain, you’ve got a woman, Renfro, yeah, two men . . . She left with Starring! . . . One dead, one missing! . . . Christ! Captain, I’m ordering a cutter out to your ship. You have? Okay. . . . These people have ordnance. When the other shows, hang on to him. I’ll leave it to you. We have some questions for him. Okay? Keep him under guard. The Coast Guard will be there to lend you a hand.”

  Fisker was speaking to him as he ended the call, took the receiver from his ear. “Mr. Starring’s secretary, a Mrs. Sullivan—”

  “Right.”

  “Line three.”

  “Mrs. Sullivan, Muriel, hello? Hello, Hanspeter Sweetman. You cleared me into TOPIC London, yeah. I need to talk to your boss, Starring, immediately; literally life and death . . . where?” Sweetman slammed his hand against the wall. “Christ; you’ve got to be kidding. What’s that address?” Fisker was on an extension, taking down her response. “You’ve got Renfro with you, right? . . . She’s not there? Okay! I hear you. I hear you. He doesn’t want interruptions. He may have some. I’ll be in touch.”

  Fisker ran after him into the lounge. Sweetman’s shirt was already half buttoned; he was kicking around for the rest of his clothes. “Harold! One, get back to Coast Guard Ops. Get the cutter out there. Two, need both pieces; where the hell are they? Ankle and shoul—you got ’em . . . God bless your little orange head. Three, wheels outside?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Four, this has the makings of a miserable goddamned mess”—Sweetman inspected the pistols, strapped the first to his leg, grunted as he pulled the boot on—“so get on the horn to Lancaster, direct, no flunkies. Tell him what’s going on, okay? . . . Up to speed!”

  “He will have received Mr. Bromberger’s message at the same time that we did.”

  Sweetman thought of his earlier references to the director in his exchanges of traffic with Bromberger, shot Fisker a rueful glance.

  “I’ll give him a complete report as soon as you’re on your way, Mr. Sweetman.”

  As he buckled on the shoulder holster, sweat was already seeping through his shirt. He yanked out the ASP pistol . . . loaded. The 9mm cartridges angled forward, upward, visible through the slotted sides of the seven-round magazine and the clear plastic grips of the pistol.

  Fisker was back at the console with the Coast Guard, on the line when Sweetman raced through the communications center. “Your driver’s standing by!” The words c
hased the big man through the opening in the wall. Fisker’s hands flipped the switches activating the outer doors.

  The cab pulled through a squealing U-turn, ran two red lights on Eleventh Street, near-empty southbound.

  “What have we got?”

  “Only ten blocks”—the instructions had already been passed over radio by Fisker—“but tonight . . . going to be tough!”

  Sweetman’s eyes were with the Agency driver’s, trained on the police barricade ahead. The avenue was blocked at Fourteenth Street. He strained to recall the details of the girl, Renfro, the scraps he had assembled in Yarmouth. People, thousands of them, were coming into view on the far side of the police line. His ID was already thrust out the window. “Put the light on the roof, damn it,” he snapped at the driver as the cab nosed to a stop.

  “Special agent!” He drilled the words at the officers who gave instant respect to the badge. “Going through; pull ’em aside!”

  “Can let you through, but it won’t do you any good. It’s solid a block ahead, wall-to-wall people. You couldn’t get through if you tried to ram a path!”

  The driver already had the cab in reverse, pulling back to make a run north around the crowd. The officers at the barrier shouted after them, “Don’t know where you’re headed . . . entire area’s roped off, as far north as H Street!”

  “Stop this son of a bitch!” Sweetman was out of the cab. He spun toward the driver. “New York and Eighteenth, northeast corner, right?”

  “Straight ahead, follow the curve of the fence past the White House!”

  “Goddamnit!” Sweetman vaulted the barrier, raced westward into the thickening mob flowing through the twilight to the national fireworks.

  Chapter 17

  In the twilight, the first starshells soared to their apogee above the Washington Monument and burst into red, white, and blue chrysanthemums, which dissolved into shimmering silver globes. Fifty mortar salutes tore the air. The Fourth of July crowd stopped in its tracks to watch and roar a whistling, shouting approval. Sweetman had covered only half a block, was forcing his way now at no more than a walk. With first explosions of the celebration.

  Leslie Renfro pressed against the shadow of the high brick wall bordering the rear gardens of the Octagon mansion. The fireworks flashed down through the antique glass of the windows, played through the facets of the drawing room’s Waterford chandelier, flickering pastels of reflected light around Tommie Starring.

  As a young man, Starring had felt embarrassment with his first reading of the history of his distinguished ancestor. The British had held America in such contempt, had prevailed with such arrogance in the depths of the 1812 struggle, flaunted Madison’s government, which had stumbled from one error to the next.

  Starring had pored over the maps, shocked at the ease of the two-pronged British advance, to the east overland through Benedict, Upper Marlboro, and Bladensburg, to the west, by water up the Potomac. The humiliations had piled so high, the burning of the White House, the self-destruction of Fort Washington—and, responsibility had lain, ultimately, with his forebear.

  Madison’s good qualities, his judgement, his coolness, in fact, in the midst of great crisis, his skill as a political thinker and his statesmanship had gradually moved to center stage in Starring’s mind through the years. Tonight, Starring walked alone from room to room in the mansion. His euphoria magnified the elegance of the restored interior, drove him, as he knew it would, to reflect on the history of the young nation, and of Madison—looking for the words to translate that spirit, the ultimate success of that struggle into the contributions to history that he was now making.

  Starring had eaten lightly from the food Sullivan had had catered. The shape, the theme of the message he was striving for, was starting to emerge. Heartwood—heartwood, exactly. The president’s optimism, his perspective, waving off the critics . . . the Lincoln quote played in his thoughts. He pulled the stopper from the middle crystal decanter on the sideboard, poured half a glass of sherry. Resuming his stroll, he caught his reflection in one of the gilded swan mirrors on either side of the mantle at the east end of the room. The reality threatened his inspiration. He departed the drawing room for the coolness of the circular, marble-tiled front hall. A sip of sherry rested on his tongue. His eyes followed the curve of the wooden doors.

  The architectural details were extraordinary, the rectangles branching from the circle in which he was standing, the drawing room to his right, the dining room adorned with the china and the pastels of the first owner, the hidden doorway, half open, leading to the narrow, zigzagging upward triangle of the servants’ stairway, and, in front of him, the grand sweep of the main, oval stairway.

  The rear double doors of the Octagon were open to the night. The silhouette of his armed chauffeur, the one concession he had granted his staff, was rocked back in a chair enjoying the endless succession of color bursts and the echo of the rocket shell explosions bouncing from the curved glass façade of the modern architectural headquarters towering behind the Octagon.

  Starring stepped forward into the well and gazed upward through the half-light radiating from the second floor to the glint of the single chandelier suspended in the darkness. He traced the elegant, white spindled bannister from the post at his side to the top of the third-floor landing.

  Having replenished his sherry, Starring started up the stairs, counting them in his mind . . . fourteen to the first landing, another eleven, the end of the carpeting, the hard wood of the second floor. What burdens Madison bore up these stairs, night after night . . . incredible to contemplate . . . Towerpoint today, as big as all of Madison’s America!

  The hallway flickered in the stuttering red reflections of a skyborne snaking dragon. He crossed into the Treaty of Ghent Room, the mansion’s circular study directly over the front hall. A fresh, snapping staccato of showering golds and greens commanded the sky, bounced through the glass of half-shuttered windows and played again off the polished surface of the fish-eye mirror above the white mantle.

  Starring drew back the wooden chair, took a seat at the circular wooden table, ringed with pull drawers, in the very center of the room. It was here, in the elegance of this chamber, so refined with its central chandelier, white ceiling, white ornamental cornice, green wall hangings, and golden drapes that James Madison had signed the Treaty of Ghent ending that war. Here, Madison and Monroe, comforted only by the victory at New Orleans, had weighed the balanced words crafted by the U.S. and British delegations in Ghent, carried across the Atlantic to New York, then overland to Washington, to this room, a treaty no better than the war, but a treaty that had brought that war to an end at last.

  Starring slid his hands across the smooth surface of the table, took up the text of Madison’s second inaugural address from the stack of papers assembled for the evening, and reread the principles and the course that Madison had set for his young nation once again at peace. “. . . to foster a spirit of independence . . . to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people . . .” Towerpoint, the heartwood of America. He sipped from the sherry and began to write.

  The two women had not spoken during the short ride from the White House to the hotel. In the lobby, Leslie Renfro had slipped into the first shop, until Sullivan was on her way upstairs. With the secretary out of the way, she crossed to another of the many lobby boutiques and purchased a pair of sunglasses and a fashionable straw hat, which she immediately put on. At the front desk, she obtained a street map, which she took with her into the elevator.

  In the Towerpoint suite, one of the three bedroom doors bordering the sitting room was already closed. Two dozen long-stemmed roses gave fragrance to the surroundings. The fourth side of the suite opened into an alcove with a dining table spread with trays of wine, cheeses, and a pyramidal bouquet of fresh fruits. The third bedroom, separated from Sullivan’s by the larger middle room, bore her name, Renfro. Behind the closed door, she charted her route, left the hotel to time i
t, then returned to await the evening.

  At 9:00 P.M. she departed again. In sixty minutes, the pride of his empire would be destroyed. He would be dead, and terror would strike millions. This trilogy of ordained fate drummed with the steps taking her with the flow of the last of the fireworks’ throng down Connecticut Avenue, through Farragut Square, beneath the bronze of the victorious admiral.

  The crowd was being filtered between white wooden barricades erected by the police to block auto traffic. Instinctively, she turned a block before she had planned, the alarm of the agents in the afternoon still ringing in her head. Separated now from the crowd, she glanced at the street signs, crossed, heading south on Eighteenth. Beyond Pennsylvania Avenue, the street was deserted. A police patrol car rounded the corner, headed toward her. Her eyes straight ahead, she kept her pace; the patrol rolled by.

  With the downhill slope of the final blocks, she slowed. Noise . . . a group of young people, drunk, crossed behind her. The dark gray stone of the tall building on her left gave way to a closed, heavy iron gate marking the beginning of the Octagon’s grounds. On the far side of this gate, a high brick wall ran with only one opening, a smaller, closed wooden door, to the mansion.

  The shine of the limousine caught her eyes as she dashed across the ivy border for the cover of the wall beneath the first chrysanthemum aerial display. Kneeling, she eased the machine pistol from her bag, fitted the silencer, clicked the loaded magazine home, and shifted the firing lever from safe to single shot. With the Skorpion half hidden by her shoulder bag, she eased back, studied the wall. The driveway gate was too heavy, too exposed, too distant. She returned to the wooden door. The thut of a silenced bullet bursting the light, interior padlock, was lost in the machine-gun snapping of half a dozen silver-and-crimson aerial bombshells. She slid through the door, easing it closed behind her.