The Honorable Traitors

by John Lutz

  “About the empty crates at Tinian. I heard about them years ago, from a former director of Central Intelligence. Late at night, just the two of us, and he was drunk on his ass. I didn’t take him seriously. I thought next he was going to tell me we had a jail at Area 51, full of alien UFO pilots.”

  “He was telling the truth,” Laker said. “Bobby Soxer disappeared in transit.”

  Mason was silent for a long time. His fingers fumbled a chip out of the slot and began to tap it on the table. Laker’d never seen a nervous tic in Mason before. Didn’t think he was capable of nervousness.

  “And this was the work of Hirochi Ryo’s agents?” he said at last.

  Ava and Laker nodded.

  “The biggest heist in history. How come it wasn’t followed by the biggest manhunt in history?”

  “Somebody at Tinian kept a cool head. Clamped a lid tight on the fiasco. Ignored the chain of command and reported straight to Truman himself,” Laker replied.

  “That must have been a swell phone call to get,” said Mason. “Did Truman figure it was a Soviet op?”

  “Yes,” said Laker. “It fitted their MO. Their nuclear program was way behind. Spying and looting were their way of catching up. When the Red Army invaded Germany, they started grabbing Hitler’s scientists, disassembling whole labs and factories and putting them on eastbound trains. Stealing Bobby Soxer was just one step beyond.”

  “With the side benefit that being in possession of the world’s only ready-to-use A-bomb gave Stalin the window of opportunity he needed to complete his East Asian land grab,” Ava said.

  “It couldn’t have been long till our next bomb was ready.”

  “Only a few weeks. But that was enough.”

  “Truman,” Mason said. “That poor bastard. Everybody says the toughest choice he had to make was to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But this one—”

  “He knew that if he ordered an investigation, the whole thing was going to leak out. And he knew where the trail was going to lead.”

  “Straight to the Kremlin,” said Mason. “Who’d respond with angry denials and countercharges, of course.”

  “Things were already tense,” said Laker. “There’d been incidents in occupied Germany, American and Russian troops shooting at each other. Patton wanted to turn his tanks east and head for Moscow. There were people who agreed with him.”

  “Only a few hotheads,” Ava clarified. “The bloodiest war in history was coming to an end. Most people just wanted the troops to come home. And Truman was war weary too—he didn’t say it publicly, but he was sickened by the slaughter at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

  Mason looked down. Seemed to notice for the first time that he was fidgeting with the chip. He put it back in its slot. “So what Truman decided to do was—nothing.”

  “The alternative was World War III,” Ava said.

  “But he had to let the traitors get away,” Mason said. “American officers who’d done Stalin’s bidding. The assholes.”

  “Give them their due,” Laker said. “Ingenious and courageous assholes.”

  34

  The Shapeshifter turned into Mason’s street. What an odd country America was. The chief of one of its most secret agencies lived in a modest Virginia subdivision. Built in the 1950s, the brick and wood houses stood on rather small lots. Their lawns, of an unnatural greenness and density thanks to chemical treatments, ran into one another. No walls or fences between them, nor along the street.

  He brought the car to a stop in front of Mason’s split-level. There was a car parked in the driveway, a plain four-door sedan like the one he was driving, probably also a rental. The license plate was out of state. Orange. Was that New York? It didn’t matter. The car had to be Laker’s. He and the woman were in the house.

  A cement path ran from the street right to the front door. An ordinary door, wood with glass panels on either side. The Shapeshifter’s Heckler & Koch MP was in the glove compartment. He was afire to grab it, run up the path, kick the door in. The exhilaration of his assault on the Outfit came back to him, the hot weapon in his hands, the smell of cordite, the pouring blood and falling bodies,

  Never underestimate the enemy, he told himself again.

  He sat still and surveyed the street. As usual in the American suburbs on a weekday morning, there were not many people around. An AT&T van was parked two houses away, and the repairman was up a telephone pole, leaning back against his safety strap as he worked. Two kids were playing basketball in the driveway next to him. Across the street, a housewife was busy in her front garden, showing him a broad, jeans-clad rump as she knelt and bent over with her clippers.

  No threats in sight. But the Shapeshifter reminded himself that days of planning and observation had paved the way for those minutes of pleasure at the Outfit. He watched and waited.

  One by one, he noticed the false notes. A man was sitting in the passenger seat of the phone company van. Real repairmen did not travel in pairs. The two kids shooting hoops were not teenagers but young men, and they were wearing sweatshirts on a hot day, to conceal their guns. The gardener straightened up, placing both hands against the small of her back as if it ached. She gave the briefest of glances over her shoulder. At him. She took a cell phone out of her pocket.

  A minute later, when a police car came around the corner, the Shapeshifter wasn’t surprised. The car came toward him slowly, no siren, no lights. The cop was going to park behind him, come to his window, ask him in a friendly way what his business was.

  But somebody would be aiming a gun at his head, just in case.

  The Shapeshifter started his engine and drove unhurriedly away. The cop did not follow. Mason had been clever to make his security detail unobtrusive, the Shapeshifter thought. He was all but inviting another attack, and the attacker would blunder into a trap.

  The Shapeshifter would have to find someplace else to park his car.

  And wait for Laker to come out.

  * * *

  “Tillie knew nothing about Bobby Soxer then, of course. She was the bride of a junior army officer,” Ava said. “In August 1945 they were as ignorant of what was going on as—well, the rest of the world.”

  “When did she find out?” Mason asked.

  “Nineteen fifty-six. Ephraim was well established as an adviser and fund-raiser and golfing buddy of Ike. Tillie was Washington’s most fashionable hostess. When the White House put a back-channel query about Bobby Soxer to the Kremlin, he heard about it. There was a momentary thaw on. Stalin was dead and Khrushchev had taken over. The Sputnik scare hadn’t happened yet. Even so, the White House was surprised when it got an answer. The Russians admitted the theft of Bobby Soxer was their operation. But they said it never got to Moscow. The transport problem was too much for their agents. Bobby Soxer ended up at the bottom of the sea.”

  “What do you think of that, boss?” Laker asked. “Credible?”

  Mason ignored the question. He said to Ava, “Ephraim North confided all this to Tillie. What did she do?”

  “She leveled with him. Until then she’d kept what happened to her in Honolulu before they met a secret from him. But now she told him all about Hirochi Ryo. She offered to turn the list over to him. Her statement says she’ll never forget that night. He was in his study, chain-smoking. She was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. In the morning he said he didn’t want the list.”

  Mason grunted but said nothing.

  “Tracking down and prosecuting those men would have exposed the whole scandal,” Ava said. “Set off the drumbeat for war. The problem was the same as in 1945, except both sides had more and bigger bombs. They decided to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Mason echoed, with a grim smile at Laker. “The Third Commandment of Washington.”

  Laker nodded. “After ‘Don’t rock the boat’ and ‘Cover your ass.’”

  “You’re being too easy on your grandparents, Ava,” Mason told her.

  “But the trait
ors had had eleven years to create new identities or escape overseas,” she protested. “It wasn’t worth risking nuclear war.”

  “I think the risk to themselves was what the Norths were thinking about,” Mason said. “It would’ve been damn hard to explain why she’d been given the list and sat on it all these years. Maybe she could have stayed out of jail, but her reign as Washington’s most glamorous hostess would’ve been over. Along with Ephraim’s days of golfing with Ike.”

  “Is he always this hateful?” said Ava to Laker.

  “I’m sorry,” said Laker. “But I have to agree. Power and fame and riches were just too nice to give up. So she kept the list hidden and wrote that message to you.”

  “Kick the can down the road,” said Mason bitterly. “The fourth commandment of Washington.”

  “Why did she do it?” Ava asked Laker. “That’s something I still don’t understand.”

  “You mean set up this twisting, turning breadcrumb trail that would lead you to the truth after her death?” Mason said. “That’s simple. She wasn’t sure Bobby Soxer was on the bottom of the ocean.”

  “You mean the Soviets lied?” Ava said.

  “They’d been known to do that,” Laker said.

  “Or it could have been a half-truth,” Mason went on. “The bomb never made it to Moscow. And that was all they knew.”

  “A loose nuke,” Laker said. “The nightmare of every intelligence chief. And there’s been one for seventy years.”

  Ava shook her head. “It couldn’t still be capable of exploding.”

  “That depends on where and how it’s been stored,” Laker said.

  “But the trigger—the plutonium. Doesn’t it have a time limit?”

  “Some plutonium has a half-life of twenty-five thousand years,” Mason replied. “Lots of people would say that’s long enough.”

  “No,” Ava said. “This is impossible. Like you said, it’s seventy years. In all the time, somebody would’ve found out about it.”

  “The Shapeshifter did,” Laker said.

  * * *

  The Shapeshifter had learned, from a map of Mason’s subdivision that he brought up on the car’s dashboard screen, that the street plan was typical of a ’50s subdivision: a cluster of intersecting loops. The entrance he had come in by was the only way for vehicles to get in or out. So he’d returned to it and parked, to wait for Laker’s car to appear. But after only a couple of minutes, he noticed something that didn’t fit. Across the four-lane road was a public school. A guard in an orange vest was standing at the crosswalk. In America crossing guards were usually senior citizens, but this man was young and fit-looking. And he was still there, even though it was mid-morning and no more children were arriving.

  Another member of Mason’s security detail. Who would spot and report him if he stayed here.

  The Shapeshifter started his engine and drove out the subdivision entrance. Which way to turn? He chose left and drove until the road curved, taking him out of the watcher’s view. Turned again, into the small parking lot of a Walgreens, and parked.

  If Laker turned right out of the subdivision, headed back to Washington, the Shapeshifter would miss him. If he turned left, headed deeper into Virginia, he would drive by the Walgreens.

  Fifty/fifty.

  The Shapeshifter thought it over but couldn’t think of any way of improving the odds. He cleared his mind of indecision and watched the road.

  * * *

  “Who’s the son of a bitch working for?” Mason asked. “We still have no idea about that.”

  “The Shapeshifter? My guess is a terrorist organization,” Laker said.

  “Or an arms dealer,” Ava said.

  The possibility interested Mason. “An international arms merchant with connections in the Russian Mafia. Whoever found out about Bobby Soxer would have to have high-level contacts in Moscow.”

  “Or in Washington.”

  Mason’s one visible eye glared at Laker. Then his anger faded and he sank back in his chair. “You’re right, goddammit. When I’m looking for a double agent in the Outfit, I can’t say it’s impossible we’re dealing with rogue agents from one of our own spy shops. Anyway there’s only one thing that matters about the Shapeshifter. That we get to Bobby Soxer before he does. Having Tillie’s list of Ryo’s agents gives us a headstart.”

  “Except that we don’t have it,” Ava said.

  “What?”

  “We can’t find it,” Laker admitted miserably.

  Mason struggled to his feet, started pacing from the poker table to the big screen TV console with slow, painful-looking steps. “For fuck’s sake,” he said. “After telling you this whole story, Tillie didn’t tell you how to find the list of agents?”

  “She set it down in great detail,” Ava replied. “She said the list was disguised as a seating chart for one of her dinner parties. What gave her the idea was the coincidence that there were fourteen agents in Ryo’s network and fourteen places at her table.”

  “Okay. And where did she put the chart?

  “In a blue folder labeled ‘seating charts’ that was kept in her social secretary’s office on the ground floor of the Chevy Chase house.”

  “What happened to those files when she moved out of the house?”

  “They came to me, along with the rest of Tillie’s records.”

  Mason lurched to a stop. Raised his one remaining eyebrow at her. “You’ve had this chart all along?”

  “No. Tillie seemed to think I had it, but I didn’t.”

  “We went to Ava’s apartment as soon as we got back to Washington,” Laker explained. “There was no file labeled ‘seating charts.’ We spent the rest of the night going through all Tillie’s papers. No luck.”

  Mason returned to the table and sank into his chair. “Tom?”

  Laker gave a start. Mason’d never called him by his first name. “Boss?”

  “There’s only one course of action open to me. Shower, shave, and report personally to the Secretary for Homeland Security. Please tell me I don’t have to report that we’ve got fuck-all.”

  “We have an idea,” Laker replied. “Or maybe it’s better to call it a hope.”

  “Erlynne Bendix,” Ava said. “My grandmother’s maid and confidante for fifty years. If anybody would know what happened to that file, she would.”

  Mason sighed. “It’s better than nothing. Fractionally. Go.”

  35

  At the Dillsworth Long Term Care Facility in Reston, Virginia, an attendant from the front desk led them to Erlynne Bendix’s room. The staff was trying hard to brighten the lives of the aged residents, Ava thought. As they passed the lunch room, she looked in the doors to see that today’s meal had a Mexican fiesta theme, with red and green streamers crisscrossing the ceiling, posters of Caribbean beaches and pueblos on the walls, and a mariachi band playing at the front of the room while a dancer stomped and swirled and clicked castanets. The blare of horns was deafening, the dancer energetic, but most of the wrinkled faces looked grim and indifferent as they chomped messily on their tacos and enchiladas.

  A comfort dog was visiting, too. In the corridor, a beautiful yellow Labrador retriever was rolling on his back, paws in the air and tongue lolling in a doggy smile. A group of residents were trying to maneuver their wheelchairs close enough to reach down and stroke his furry chest.

  Following the attendant, they cut through a spacious lounge where people on couches or in wheelchairs were facing a huge television showing a Washington Nationals game. More seemed to be dozing than watching. One corner of the lounge was occupied by a family gathering, a middle-aged couple showing pictures on their phones to their aged mother, while teenaged grandchildren were standing before cages on poles, trying to alleviate their boredom by getting the cockatiels inside to bite their fingers. But the cockatiels looked bored, too.

  They went through a doorway and were now in Mrs. Bendix’s corridor. Ava recognized it from previous visits. It was quiet except for two frai
l residents making their way along the wall slowly, hand over hand on the waist-high grab bar, and a nurse whose paunch bulged against his blue uniform. He had a patchy beard and glasses. He was wheeling a metal cart down the aisle, distributing meds to people in their rooms.

  Erlynne Bendix was in bed, a book lying open on her chest, her glasses perched atop a wave of white hair. She wasn’t asleep, but gazing out the window. The attendant waved Ava and Laker in and left. Mrs. Bendix turned to them and settled her glasses on her nose. Ava felt a twinge of her childhood shyness before her grandmother’s formidable maid.

  “Hello, Mrs. B,” she said, smiling.

  Mrs. Bendix did not smile back, but looked at her long and hard.

  “Ava,” she said at last, and her chin dipped with self-congratulation, as emphatic as a tennis champion’s fist pump, at recalling the name. Her gaze shifted to Laker. “And you’re the government man. You said I didn’t have to remember your name. But here you are, back again. You going to bother me with more questions about Miz Tillie?”

  Ava laughed nervously. She crossed the small room and pulled a chair close to the bedside. Laker remained in the doorway. “I’m afraid so, Mrs. B. There was something my grandmother meant me to have. A very important document. She wrote that it would be in her papers.”

  Mrs. Bendix shrugged her thin shoulders under her flowered nightgown. “You got all those.”

  “But we can’t find this document. Do you remember a folder called ‘seating charts’?”

  “Social secretary kept all those. It was always some pretty girl who liked to make phone calls and had good handwriting and didn’t do any real work.”

  “But you knew that grandmother kept the seating charts from her dinner parties.”

  The many lines in Mrs. Bendix’s forehead deepened as she frowned in concentration. She was silent for so long that Ava turned to Laker with a despairing glance. Mrs. B would be no help to them. But he’d turned to watch the nurse rolling the meds cart down the corridor behind him.

  Mrs. Bendix said, “Oh, yes.”

  “You do remember the seating charts?”