Agent in Place

by Helen Macinnes

  The telephone rang—the desk in the lobby announcing Chuck’s arrival. Dorothea packed the portable typewriter into its case. Tom had already opened the door and was waiting in the corridor, no doubt to tip Chuck off about the guests inside.

  Chuck entered, his arm round Tom’s shoulder. “Really sorry,” he was explaining, “but I’ve got a rush job to finish. You know what deadlines are like, Tom.” He relaxed as he saw that everyone—even Thea, or rather Dorothea: Thea was Tom’s privilege, she insisted on that—accepted his explanation. He looked tired enough, God knew. And it was a relief to find others here: he could beg off staying for a twenty-minute chat. With this group there would be no chance for a tête-à-tête with Tom. He gave Dorothea a brief kiss on her cheek and one of his best smiles. A polite nod to the Englishman, a small word or two to Brad Gillon whom he remembered from Washington days, and he had the typewriter in his hand and an apology on his lips. “No, I won’t sit down—I might not get up again for another hour. Besides, I have a feeling that I’m interrupting a good party. When do you get back from Paris, Tom?” He was already moving to the door.

  “Sunday. A week from tomorrow.”

  “I’ll see you then. Come and stay at my place—I’ve a couch that makes into a fairly good bed.”

  “I may do that.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Dorothea said, “By the way, Chuck, you’d better clean the type. Some letters are a little blurred with ink and gunk. I meant to do that yesterday, but—”

  “It works, doesn’t it? Which is more than can be said for my machine. Thanks, Tom. Thanks a million. And I’ll have it back tomorrow morning. Okay? I’ll drop it off on my way to Shandon.”

  “Sunday on the job?” Tom asked. “You really are in a bind.”

  “It happens, every now and again.”

  “Doesn’t it, though?” Brad agreed. “Bye, Chuck.” Goodbyes from Tom and Dorothea, too. Tony Lawton smiled and nodded. The door closed and Chuck was on his way.

  Throughout the brief visit, Tony had said nothing at all. His interest in Chuck had been politely disguised. “Now,” he said, as he stopped examining his drink, “So that is one of Shandon’s bright young men.”

  “Never met anyone from there before?” Brad asked. “If you like, I’ll introduce you to Paul Krantz, the director. He’s an old friend of—”

  “A waste of his time. And of mine: Shandon isn’t laying down a cellar of French wines, is it?”

  “Hardly,” said Tom. “At lunch, I hear, they are more apt to grab a ham on rye with a gallon of coffee.”

  “Then I’ll stick to our customers in Washington. That,” he said to Dorothea, “is where I am bound now. You’d be surprised how many embassy cellars need replenishing.”

  “I’ll take the hint and replenish you.” Tom reached for their glasses. And there’s a gentle hint for Tony, he thought. “And then Thea and I are leaving for dinner. That mention of ham and rye made me remember my own lunch today.”

  “Go right ahead,” Tony said easily. “I’d like to stay for a few moments with Brad, and dig into that memory of his. Nice to have a friend who goes back a long way.”

  Tom stared at him, said briskly, “Come on, Thea, we’ll leave them to it. Get your wrap. We’ll eat downstairs, make it an early evening.” He looked pointedly at Tony, as Dorothea left for the bedroom to collect scarf and bag.

  “We’ll be away from here long before that,” Tony promised. “Where are you staying in Brussels? The old hangout? I’ll look you up if I’m around.”

  As he would be. “Do that,” Tom said. “And don’t make all your nice little news items off the record. Give me something I can write up. Here’s the key to this room. Lock up tightly, will you?”

  “That’s Brad’s department.”

  “Oh, I forgot, he’s the one who will be dropping it at the desk. Exits must match entrances.”

  “Always kidding,” Tony smiled blandly.

  Brad laid the key well in view beside his drink. “We’ll talk about the book when next we meet,” he said apologetically. “How is it coming?” His rule with authors was never to press them, never harry or hurry.

  “Needs some spare time, but I think I may get that.”

  “Oh?” Brad probed gently.

  “I’ll stop in to see you at the office, on my way to Brussels. I’ll explain then. Okay?”

  “Very much so.”

  Dorothea returned, her bewilderment growing as she was led in Tom’s firm grip out of the room, her little goodbye speeches cut down to a bright smile. At a safe distance along the empty corridor, she let her feelings explode. “And what on earth is going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He calmed her with a kiss on her cheek. “They needed a place to meet. Why not in our room?”

  She dropped her voice to a whisper. “What are they plotting?”

  “It’s no conspiracy against the United States, if that’s what is worrying you,” he said with a grin. “It’s just some information that Tony wants from Brad.”

  There was no one in the elevator. Dorothea said, “But Brad isn’t with Intelligence, is he?”

  “Definitely not.” No more. Brad had resigned from that kind of work almost twelve years ago.

  “But Tony is, isn’t he?”

  “Now, what gave you that idea?”

  “Just a feeling, somehow. You know, I only remembered him tonight by his clothes. And I thought, what if Tony was dressed as a stevedore and I bumped into him on the docks—”

  “That’s a wild notion!” It amused Tom.

  “Or, if he was dressed as a pilot and I saw him on board a flight to Detroit—”

  “If my aunt had whiskers, she’d be my uncle.”

  “Some women do have whiskers,” Dorothea reminded him coldly. “All I’m trying to say is that Tony’s the kind of man I’d hardly remember unless I could place him by his clothes.”

  “Not very flattering to Tony, are you? I don’t think he’d be too amused to hear all that. In fact—” Tom was suddenly serious—“I think we should drop the whole subject right now and enjoy our dinner.”

  He steered her through the lobby into the dining-room. He wasn’t too worried. In five years of living together Thea had never repeated a confidence he had given her. Discreet. No gossiper. That was Thea. But he didn’t like the little frown shading her bright blue eyes. “We’ll talk later,” he promised.

  “It’s just that I’m so sick of the word Intelligence,” she began.

  “Later,” he said firmly. “Now, smile for the maître d’, and get us a good table.”

  “And you’ll really answer all my questions?”

  “Do my best. I’m no oracle, darling, just a newspaperman who is very very hungry.”

  She smiled then, for him entirely. They got a good table in any case.

  * * *

  In the sitting-room Brad Gillon had been listening intently to Tony. No more jokes, no more flights of fancy.

  “Come on, Brad, dig into that memory bank. You must have heard of Konov in your OSS days. That time you raced into the ruins of Hitler’s Chancellery neck and neck with Soviet Intelligence. Konov was with their team.”

  “The one that went through a mess of Hitler’s private papers, trying to find some evidence that Churchill had been conspiring with him to attack Russia?”

  “They wanted to believe it too,” Tony said, shaking his head.

  “A Soviet Intelligence officer’s dream of glory? Alone I found it.”

  “But there was nothing to find. If only Konov had been in Disinformation at that time, he would have invented a document then and there. Thank God he wasn’t. He is now.” Tony paused. “During the fifties and sixties, Konov worked in their Department for Illegals. Does that catch your memory? A lot of intelligence reports must have passed over your desk in that period.”

  “I left State by 1962,” Brad reminded him. “But just around then—yes, I begin to remember Konov.” H
is voice quickened. “There was that episode in Ottawa—left in a hurry just before the Canadians could arrest him. He was in the US too, I recall. A busy little beaver.”

  “North America was his field. Still is.”

  “Then why is NATO worrying about him—or don’t you think our intelligence agencies can cope?” Brad asked with a wry smile.

  “If they’d start co-operating with each other again—” Tony suggested but refrained from a sharp criticism of Hoover in the late sixties—“or with us. But that happy state got cut off abruptly. It’s the root reason for all their present troubles, isn’t it?”

  “Could be.” Thank God, I’m out of all that, thought Brad; but he couldn’t bury his memories, or the latest headlines either. “I’m afraid for my country, Tony. These are bad days.”

  “Head-rolling time,” Tony agreed. “I must say—when you Americans start swinging, you use a hatchet. Couldn’t a neat scalpel and some precision surgery do the job?”

  “You get no big headlines with a scalpel.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Look—I didn’t bring you here to depress you,” Tony said briskly. He rose and freshened their drinks. “All I want is a little help from you on the problem of Vladimir Konov.”

  “How?” Brad was wary.

  “Konov is arriving here on Tuesday. He’s with a grain-buying team meeting your agricultural experts in Washington.”

  That was a shock. “Cool customer, isn’t he? After his exit from Canada—what is he doing here, d’you think? Gathering background for future Disinformation use?”

  “He’ll sound out those who are soft and those who are tough, and no doubt he’ll go to work on the easy marks, and arrange some future approaches through his Illegals—they were his speciality during the sixties. He provided them with American passports and life-histories—sometimes belonging to real Americans, remember?”

  Brad nodded.

  “But Konov has another reason for coming here, just at this time. A reason he has been trying to keep to himself. So we’ve heard, from one of our agents in Moscow.”

  “NATO Intelligence has an agent in place? Close enough to Konov to know his plans? Pretty good. In fact, damned good.”

  “So far, yes. He and Konov are in the same Department of Disinformation. He’s actually senior to Konov, but they are rivals for the next big promotion. Tricky.”

  “That’s one of your better understatements.”

  “So here’s the set-up. Konov has suspicions—they are his meat and drink. Konov has ambitions. Konov is out gunning for our agent. And he will succeed if he can get his hands on a NATO memorandum that was sent to Washington. He knows it exists, but hasn’t the particulars so far. And that’s what he needs, to be right on target—a piece of evidence that would disclose our agent. Several others, too, but our man in Moscow would be the first casualty.”

  “What evidence? Surely NATO didn’t mention names?”

  “No, no. The evidence would be in the kind of specialised information that was sent to NATO. Konov could track the source down. At least, that’s what our agent feels. He’s jittery. No doubt about that. We had word from him yesterday.”

  “So you took the night flight out of Brussels,” Brad said thoughtfully. “Washington next?”

  Tony nodded. “I’m on convoy duty—making sure the NATO Memorandum gets safely back to Brussels, once the Pentagon releases it to me.”

  “But what help do you need from me?” Brad’s sombre face was perplexed.

  “Just sound the tocsin. Warn any of your old friends at State that Konov is in town. They’ll get in touch with the Justice Department and see that the message gets through to the right investigative agencies.”

  “What about your own CIA contacts in Washington?”

  “Paralysed at the moment. You’ve been reading the papers, haven’t you? How do you expect them to act—boldly, effectively?” Tony’s face was grim. “This is important, Brad. One good man’s life is at stake; and eight others too. And NATO is America’s business. Without it, you’d really go bust in Western Europe.”

  “The FBI have a lot on Konov—they must have.”

  “We hope,” Tony said, a trifle bitterly.

  “You have no friends there?”

  “Once upon a time. They resigned in Hoover’s latter-day period of sainthood. All communications with European Intelligence cut off. No more quiet interchange of information. Let’s wait until the dam breaks, and then we can all rush together. Hands across the sea, tra la la!”

  Brad finished his drink. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  6

  Chuck rattled off a short line of connected dashes to mark the end of the text. The typewriter sounded triumphant, but he had no sense of exultation. No excitement: not even relief that the job was over. He pulled the last page out of the machine, separated it from its carbon copy.

  “Twenty minutes past ten,” Rick said. “Not bad at all.” He placed the carbon copy with the others, studied the page for any errors. “Clean. Except for these damn letters.” The m and n were ink-blocked, the t thickened. “Pity you didn’t have any type-cleaner around. Still, it’s legible. Quite professional. I’d hire you as a secretary any day.”

  Chuck said nothing at all. He gathered up the NATO Memorandum, Part I, and opened his desk drawer. Carefully, he placed all three parts together, and began fastening them into one complete document.

  Rick spoke again. “Can’t I have a look at the two last sections?”

  Chuck went on with his job, finished it, and replaced the NATO folder in the drawer. “I’d rather we didn’t handle it any more than necessary.”

  And Rick, who had been congratulating himself on his display of complete innocence in that last question, looked suddenly startled. I didn’t wear gloves, he remembered, and his face went rigid.

  “You’d better ’phone Holzheimer.”

  Rick tried to recall whether he had really grasped the sheets of the Memorandum between thumb and forefinger: he had lifted them gingerly by the tips of his fingers, but there had been speed and pressure. No, he decided, he hadn’t left any identifiable traces of his work. But he ought to have gone downstairs to Katie and got the gloves he kept there: then he would have made sure that there were no fingerprints. He was almost certain now: what he was really nervous about was the expression on Mischa’s face if he ever heard of this carelessness. Mischa...

  “Holzheimer,” Chuck repeated sharply. “You said he would be waiting until ten thirty. It’s almost that now.”

  Rick nodded and reached for the telephone. And there went a perfectly natural excuse, he thought as he concealed his annoyance. Ten thirty had been a time that he had pulled out of the air: he hadn’t expected Chuck to finish the typing job until eleven o’clock at the earliest. Too late, he would have explained, to get in touch tonight; better leave it till tomorrow. And tomorrow could have another tomorrow...any pretence to let him delay and postpone and delay. But now he could feel Chuck’s eye on his fingers as he dialled the number, so he kept it accurate. When he got through, there was enough background noise in the news-room to give him a second chance at an excuse. “No go. I don’t think he’s at his desk. Gone home, perhaps. Or out on the town. There’s so much damned racket—”

  “But someone answered you—”

  “Sure. And left the ’phone off the hook.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “It’s the wrong time to call him. Obviously.”

  Chuck reached out and seized the receiver as Rick was about to replace it.

  “What the hell—” Rick began.

  “We’ll wait this out.” And simultaneously, a voice was saying angrily into Chuck’s ear, “Who’s this? Do you want to talk with me—or not?”

  “Martin Holzheimer?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Here’s Nealey. Hold the line.” Chuck handed the receiver back to Rick. “Tell him you’ll meet him in Katie’s apartment, as soon after eleven o’clock
as possible.”

  “What?”

  “Downstairs. Apartment 5-A.”

  “But—”

  “Tell him.”

  Rick did all that. He ended his call, and smothered his anger as he turned to face Chuck. “Just what do you think you are doing? This was my end of the business—to meet him some place where it would be safe and quiet—”

  “Katie’s apartment will be very quiet. She’s out until dawn, isn’t she?”

  “But why her place?”

  “Because it’s handy. I’ll be there, too.”

  Rick was nettled. “I thought you were going to keep clear of—”

  “I want to see this man, get a kind of feeling about him,” Chuck said.

  “Totally irrational behaviour.”

  “Possibly. Just following my instincts, I guess. I’m going to make quite sure that he won’t publish the name of Shandon House.”

  “And what about you?” Rick asked.

  “You can introduce me as the man who has access to Shandon House. That’s all. We’ll keep the Kelso name out of it.”

  Rick shook his head. “So that’s why you chose to bring him to Katie’s apartment? He will see her name on the door-plate. Not yours. And you can slip down—”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s get ready. Lock up tight. Check the windows, will you, Rick?”

  As he spoke, Chuck pulled the couch well to one side, and turned back the rug that lay underneath. Next, he was over at the desk again, lifting the folder with the precious memorandum. He laid it under the rug, which he then smoothed into place. Satisfied with the look of it, he began heaving the couch into its original position. “That should do. I won’t be gone for any length of time, but I don’t trust that desk lock; any nitwit could force it open. Windows okay? Put four records on the player. Leave a couple of lights on.” Chuck picked up Holzheimer’s copy of Part I to carry inside his jacket. His duplicate copy was shoved inside a magazine, a folded newspaper flung carelessly on top.

  “See this?” he asked as he opened the front door. “It’s said to be burglar-proof.”