by Gil Hogg
“It can be traced.”
“My mobile will be in the river the next morning. You dispose of yours. Look, if this cracks up, it mightn’t be good for you.”
Even in the poor light I could see the tension in his features. He knew that a likely consequence of failure would be to crucify him. My mind was calculating the extreme risks in the plan, and trying to find alternatives, when a torch beam lit us both from ten yards away.
“Police! Stand still! Get your arms up! Don’t move or you’ll get a bullet.”
I heard the informer groan quietly. Swaying toward us behind the blinding light, I could vaguely make out a uniformed deputy sheriff in a broad-brimmed stetson.
“What are you guys doing there under the trees in the dark outside this lavatory, huh?” he said, waving his Colt 38.
“Nothing, sheriff,” I said. “We’re just finishing off a business discussion.”
“Oh, yeah? In the dark? I think somethin’ homosexshool outside the lavatories.”
He had advanced to within six feet, pushing away the branches of the maple, and he pointedly flashed the beam of the torch over each of our pelvic areas, but found no disturbing signs.
“Look sheriff, we were talking business. We’re about to go home, but we wanted to cut out a guy with us, so we came over here,” I replied, and the informer chimed his agreement.
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I got to y’ before y’ got y’ dicks out, didden I?”
I made another quiet denial and I could feel the resolve of the informer weakening. He was all but quaking in fear.
“I oughta take you guys in for immoral behaviour in a public place, and I damn well will if I see your asses anywhere around here agin. Now git!”
As we came out from under the maple tree on to the path, the deputy noticed the knapsack I had handed to the informer.
“Whoa, you two. Whaddya got there in that bag?”
“As I said, sheriff, we were talking business.”
“I wanna see the business, sir, outside a lavatory in the dark.”
The informer turned and held the bag open. The deputy flashed his torch over the contents, then put his hand in, picked up a couple of the packs, and dropped them back.
“Shee-it! Empty that bag on the ground, sir.”
The informer poured the packets of hundred dollar bills on to the path.
“Jeez. That is one helluva lot a’ green.”
“This is our property, sheriff, part of a legitimate business deal,” I said. I was very calm, but I could see this deputy cocking up Operation Screwdriver.
“Yeah, maybe and maybe not. Where’s the coke?”
“This isn’t drug money,” I protested.
“We’ll sort it out at the station. I’m takin’ you two guys in on suspicion of immoral behaviour and drug dealin’.”
Operation Screwdriver was coming unscrewed. It occurred to me that the deputy might change his mind for ten grand – just one of the packets. I tried to get the beat of the man. It could make things worse if I tried to bribe him and he refused. He was in his thirties, but going to seed. His gut hung over his belt. He had a childish look about his features, and dark, thick eyebrows which met between his eyes. He struck me as a kid who had memorised police manuals. I decided against offering a bribe.
We were handcuffed and bundled into the back of his cruiser. In Rockville, it was the sheriff who questioned us. We both gave our names and occupations. We both had cover names and jobs which would stand an enquiry. My name was Robert Courtley. I was an insurance assessor. The sheriff knew he had a couple of smart, educated men to deal with, and a strange situation which he could not understand, and was loth to let go.
“Sheriff, please,” I pleaded. “There isn’t the slightest evidence of any wrongdoing. I am not a homosexual, and neither is Mr Appleyard.”
“Doing a legitimate deal you say, a fifty thousand dollar deal, outside a public toilet, in the dark, Mr Courtley? We gotta run you through the computers.”
At last he agreed to let me make a call to my lawyer.
In fact I called Yarham, who was enjoying the conjugal delights of his small apartment. I explained what had happened and he listened raptly.
“Herbert, I am being held on suspicion of immoral behaviour and drug dealing.” I guess I sounded plaintive.
Yarham made a noise as though he was choking and said, “Oh, I’d say about nine out of ten for this one, Captain. Drug dealing and rumpy-tumpty! Very hard to beat. Nice one, sir. Very nice!”
“Herbert, please…”
10
Yarham, through Gerry Clark, engineered a call from the state attorney general’s office to the sheriff’s department which secured our release in three hours, but I had to face the withering contempt of Clark the next day. “You were supposed to meet the contact, not to fuck him!” he spat.
It was fortunately two days before Harold Kershaw could hop into the office on crutches, by which time the joke was stale, but my face was still red and I vowed to be ruthless on the break-in.
The night for the hit was close. At Kershaw’s request, I opened my desk drawer and displayed for him the neat packets of residual dollar bills. He gave me the leering grin which dislocated his face and jaw, selected two five-thousand dollar packets, and pushed them across the table toward me. The remainder he scooped out of the draw and dropped in a plastic bag. He hopped out of the room without a word.
Yarham and I had another Wisconsin Avenue session to discuss.
“Skimming, I think it’s called,” Yarham said.
“Why let us in on it?”
“He didn’t have an alternative. The hit had been set up and he’d requisitioned the funds.”
“I suppose if Screwdriver is as important as Clark says it is, then it’s running to a strict timetable, broken ankles or broken necks.”
“And fingers in the honeypot on all appropriate occasions, Captain.”
“I wonder if Kershaw’s engaging in a departmental practice, to which we would have been introduced sooner or later anyway.”
“Lovely, I’ll pay off my mortgage more quickly,” Yarham said.
“Kershaw was pretty cool. No explanation. What shall we do with the ten grand?”
“At the moment the money’s hot and dangerous, Captain.”
“You mean they could be trying us out?”
“Sure. Safest would be to let it cool, in the office, in the packets with Kershaw’s prints on them.”
“Yes… good point, Yarham. It might give us an edge, if ever we need one, with friend Harold.”
At the office, Yarham placed the packets carefully in a file, with a note detailing their origin and checked them into the safe registry under the codename ‘Grease’.
Carol Clark was as good as her word about the apartment. She came round alone and had a look on a Saturday afternoon. She was wearing a thin cotton sweater, a tight pair of designer jeans and soft white leather moccasins. Her blonde hair had been dressed to frame her face in curls. She looked a very appetising woman.
I was more interested in her than the decorating suggestions she was making, and I was quite comfortable at the Sheraton. In Britain I wouldn’t be able to stay in a decent hotel, let alone be free of a get-out date. I wasn’t anxious to complete the decoration process which Laurie had already offered to help me with and I could foresee a possible conflict here. But Carol took me out shopping in Georgetown, and we marched through a selection of small and exclusive shops. She consulted me casually, but determinedly purchased mats, linen, towels, vases, lamps, prints, materials for curtains, even a dining room suite, with frightening speed. She wielded a credit card, explaining it was a departmental cost and simpler that way. Then, in a daze, I was in Bloomingdale’s examining a king-sized pneumatic bed. We sat on it together. Her shoulder was pressing against mine. She turned to me and I could smell her peppermint breath.
“I think it’ll be just fine, don’t you?” she said.
I nodded agreement,
knowing we had sat there a moment too long to be selecting a bed solely for me.
Two days later, on a sunny afternoon, we were in the apartment drinking vodka tonic with ice and examining the purchases which had now been delivered. When it came to the bed we both tried the mattress, laughing, bouncing around.
“Do you think you might want to sleep here, rather than the hotel, before you complete the furnishing?” she asked seriously.
“I might,” I said, although I had no such intention.
“We could hook a piece of material over the window until you get the curtains up. That would give you enough privacy.”
“Let’s do that,” I said, and tacked a new terracotta coloured sheet over the panes.
When my temporary bedroom had been prepared it was early afternoon and perfectly natural for us to come together in the mellow light of the room. Carol sighed as she came into my arms, and I held my finger to my lips – it seemed to be a common gesture in my business. I pointed at the light fitting and shrugged. Yarham hadn’t been called in yet to do a sweep, but I had to be cautious. Carol immediately understood what I meant as the well-trained wife of an intelligence agent. She had no difficulty believing that I might be under surveillance.
I slipped away from her for a moment, turned on the ensuite bath, and left the bathroom door open. Carol was very hungry and passionate, and our muffled business was not inhibited by the bugs; if anything, the excitement of the surrepticious encounter was heightened. I thought of Gerry, as pale as a donut, and wondered what he would make of the hush and gurgle of sounds, if he was listening.
The time had come. At the Georgetown office, Yarham and I prepared for the raid on the CIA’s luxury conference and planning centre at Jermyn Place and Pennsylvania Avenue. We had bought cheap grey suits, white shirts, dark ties, and black moccasins with grippy soles. We changed into these featureless clothes. We each had an outsize woman’s black silk stocking, in case we needed to mask ourselves and a pair of latex gloves which we would don before entry. Although I had never remotely expected that my first real operation would have as its target the CIA, this was the kind of exploit I had joined the service for. It was certainly, in anticipation at least, proving to be as exhilarating as a Porsche at speed. Yarham was his usual nonchalant and cheerful self as we made ready.
Kershaw was waiting for us in the car, and on the way to Jermyn Place, he asked, “You guys carrying?”
When I said no, Kershaw reached a gloved hand into the dashboard compartment and pulled out two snub-nosed Smith & Wesson 38s. “Go on, put your gloves on and take them. They’re untraceables. Scare value, in case you need it.”
The chambers were loaded. In spite of my familiarity with weapons, I didn’t have the US preoccupation with small-arms as a means of security, but we both tucked the guns into our belts.
There was little traffic about as we coasted down Pennsylvania Avenue. Jermyn Place was a small loop of street around a grassed square of buildings, deserted at this hour. Kershaw pulled the car in and checked his watch. We had about one minute to go.
“I’ll be here or nearby when you come out, guys, rely on it.” Kershaw’s mouth opened up over his teeth in a sharkish grin.
It was no use thinking about the task. Just do it! I slid out of the car, followed by Yarham, sprinted across the grass, up the steps of the CIA building and confronted the darkened lobby. I had a pang of concern that the door would be locked, but it yielded, and we were inside. Nobody was about. We ran up three flights of stairs, seeing only a couple of people at a distance along the hallways. So simple. In a few moments, we were outside Room 4002 and the passage was empty. I tried the handle gently. It was locked.
Yarham, to whom I had entrusted the key, was ready, and he unlocked the door quietly. The room seemed shaded – not an office with somebody at work. I sidled in; it was a secretary’s office. There was a vertical yellow shaft of light on the other side of the room – the slightly open adjoining doorway to Gino Carmelli’s office. I moved closer across the carpet, able to look into a sliver of the room, across the surface of a desk, littered with papers.
Yarham and I studied each other’s faces in the half-light as we listened. The series of sounds which emerged brought a dawning of enlightenment to each of us, the reason that Gino Carmelli locked his office. The unmistakable rhythmic squeak of a couch, the chesty, male intake and exhalation of breath at regular intervals, and the lighter feminine descant, always keeping time.
I whispered to Yarham, “I’ll deal with Carmelli. You get the papers, and we’ll leave our masks off.”
I threw the door wide, and there, sunk on the leather couch, smothering the lady with his flab, was our man. He still had his shirt on, but fortunately not his trousers – he was in no position to pursue us. And by the look of the garments festooned on the chairs, the woman was in like undress.
I raised my voice, and put on my thickest US accent. “OK, Carmelli, FBI agents Docherty and Packard. You’re under arrest for breach of security!” I pointed the 38 at Carmelli’s unpleasantly hairy ass, while Yarham swept the documents from the desktop into a black briefcase.
Carmelli hunched round toward me with a groan of bewilderment, trying to get off the woman on the cramped couch. I could only see her head. She was a Latino girl, her dark hair fluffed up around her face which was very red from her exertions and Carmelli’s deadweight.
“Now listen…” Carmelli growled in a tone which combined anger with incomprehension. He could see the gun.
“No, you listen, Carmelli! Don’t move, either of you. I’m giving you a break to get decent in privacy. Then we’ll be talking turkey about your offences. I’m taking these papers into custody. We’ll be waiting outside this door. You have sixty seconds!”
Carmelli’s mouth was frothing like an epileptic’s as he and the girl struggled to get up. Yarham and I stepped out of the room, closed the door and bolted.
The hallway unfortunately was not deserted when we came out of Room 4002. At the far end, a flat-capped guard in khaki was ambling toward us. Our path lay in the other direction, and the stairs were within two hundred feet. We turned our backs on the guard, and moved as naturally as we could toward the stairs. There may have been something in the tension of our postures which disturbed the guard, and he called, “Excuse me, sir!”
“Ignore him,” I hissed.
As soon as we reached the empty stairs and were out of sight of the man, we flew down the three flights, but before we reached street level, the guard was leaning over the balcony, calling “Sir! Sir! Stop!”
He must have called an alert, because there was another guard in the middle of the lobby, drawing his gun. Even in my panic I registered that their security was quite good.
I smiled at the guard, a real piano key job as I crossed the lobby, swaying in a relaxed way and keeping my gloved hands out of sight. “What’s the problem, officer?”
I could see he was confused, and not immediately hostile to me. Alerts in the dark of the night didn’t happen often, and he looked as though he was still waking up from a doze in front of the television. He didn’t raise his hand – which now contained a gun. When I was close enough to him, still mouthing amicably, I hit him with my fist, a swift clip across the jaw, just the way I’d been taught by MI6 to get maximum effect. The guard hit the floor and his gun clattered on the marble.
I had a second’s unease that the doors might be locked, but the one we had entered was still open. I could hear an alarm sounding, the clatter of feet, and muffled calls coming toward us. We were both outside in seconds, and running across the lawn in front of Jermyn Place toward the car. There was a burst of automatic rifle fire which shattered but didn’t penetrate the glass of the entrance. When we reached the car it was dark and dead. I tore open the front passenger door and shouted at the bent figure of Kershaw, “Move your butt, shitface!”
Kershaw jumped to attention and started the engine. “Jesus! You guys were quick.”
A hail of aut
omatic fire from the front steps of the building hit the car as we snarled out of Jermyn Place.
“I guess they’ll pursue,” I said.
“They surely will. With their own cars and the cops. You got the product?” Kershaw said.
I looked around at Yarham who was searching the road through the rear window. He held up the black wallet. “Sure, we’ve got it.”
Kershaw’s face broke up with pleasure as he powered the car down Pennsylvania and squealed into Seventh Street. “Like lightning, huh?”
“Every cop in DC will be after us if you go much faster,” I said.
“You whack anybody in there?” Kershaw said, slowing.
“No. I clipped a guard on the jaw.”
“Neat. Clean. Carmelli? You hypnotised him?”
“Not a mark on his mind or body.”
“Clever!” Kershaw sniffed, slewing the car dangerously. “We’ll have to hear all about it. Look, I gotta plan. I can’t move fast, see. If we stay in the car, and they run us down, it’s all over, all your good work. Here’s what we do. I bale out around Massachusetts Av with the product. You guys take the car on, have a ball, then bale out yourselves. Savvy?”
I looked around at Yarham, who was stiff-faced and I believe I saw a slight negative movement of the head. “OK, Harold. You choose the place,” I said.
“Right. Anything back there?” Kershaw asked.
“Not at the moment that I can see,” Yarham said.
“There will be.” Kershaw turned on to K Street and followed a line of traffic to Franklin Park. There were pedestrians moving around between the restaurants and hotels on the other side of the road. “This looks like it. Don’t you guys stay with this jalopy too long.” He pulled to the kerb. “Now gimme the product,” he said, turning to the back seat and reaching for his crutches.
The sirens were screaming, but there was no pursuer in sight yet. I jumped out of the car with Yarham, as Kershaw was struggling to get out.
“Where’n hell you goin’?” Kershaw yelled.
“Sorry, Harold. Change of plan. The product has to come first. Too risky to leave it with a man trying to escape from the cops on crutches. I’ll take care of it. You look after the car, or go have a cup of coffee.”