by Walter Wager
“No way,” Merlin announced. “This man isn’t violent, and there’s no way you’re going to knot him up in that jacket.”
“He’s homicidal,” the senior security man insisted.
“Only if you’re a Nazi war criminal. Just hold it right here, sonny, while I call Lomas.”
It was while Merlin was in the phone booth that the annoyed security agent spoke to Cavaliere.
“Does he always make scenes?”
“Almost always. He shoots people too.”
“What’s his name?”
“He’s got lots of names,” Cavaliere replied, “but I call him Merlin.”
The reception team was plainly stunned. They knew.
“Holy shit!” two of the agents said in unison.
Merlin used even cruder language to Lomas, ordering him to “Get your animals out of here or I’ll send them out in your goddam ambulance. You know what hell this guy’s gone through since he was three fucking years old?”
“Take it easy,” Lomas urged without much hope.
“Up yours. Hope your tape’s rolling. Up yours—sideways. Beller’s going to Walter Reed with me, in a taxi. No straitjacket. He’s going with dignity. In a couple of days we’ll move him up to a good private hospital in New York where his aunt and uncle can visit.”
A private hospital would save the government money, Lomas reasoned, and he didn’t want any more trouble with Merlin right now. He might need Merlin’s unique talents again.
“Put Maloney on the phone, please.”
Merlin stepped out of the booth, gestured. “It’s the Boston Strangler—for you.”
After they left Beller at Walter Reed Hospital, Merlin drove to the apartment of a beautiful and intelligent black woman in Georgetown—and he was not disappointed. Despite all she’d said, there were fresh sheets and much warmth and mutual appreciation. She wasn’t disappointed either. It was two days before she tenderly reminded him that he ought to check in at the agency.
On the next afternoon, several excellent doctors at the Columbia-Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute overlooking the Hudson River began to “work up” the case of Ernest Beller. Everyone gets good care up there, but the nephew of a noted psychoanalyst receives even better treatment. For seven months they gave him their best shot, top people and latest methods and newest drugs.
Good results. Seven months and three days after Ernest Beller was admitted, a team of four of the best therapists in New York congratulated each other on the splendid achievement and agreed with Dr. Naiman’s report that all traces of homicidal tendencies were gone, the rage was drastically reduced and the patient had achieved a “good social adjustment.” Dr. Judith Temchin—who had a $400,000 federal research grant and a body that still caused a lot of eyestrain at Fire Island every summer—predicted that, barring regression, the patient would be back at work in the medical examiner’s office in nine or ten weeks.
Upstairs in his twelfth-floor room, Dr. Ernest Beller said good-bye to his aunt and uncle and leaned back in the easy chair to read the fat Friday edition of the New York Times. He was feeling a lot better. Anna would arrive next week and Uncle Martin’s speech was almost back to normal, and everything was going to be all right. Ernest Beller was flipping through the bulky paper for the crossword puzzle when he spotted the small item on page twenty-eight.
Dateline: Bonn.
The notorious “Butcher of Breslau” had been sentenced to twenty years for World War II atrocities, and would serve his time at the new prison in Essen. Dr. Beller smiled as he tore out the article and carefully put it in the pocket of his pajama jacket.
He found the crossword puzzle on the next page.
It was easy.
More from Walter Wager
Sledgehammer
THE DIRTY DOZEN have nothing on this unit of soldiers, hand-picked for a mission behind enemy lines that none of them are expected to survive.
Sledgehammer is the code name for the operation of an elite OSS unit behind German lines during World War II. Five experts in guerrilla warfare are concealed under identities as a crusading journalist, a Hollywood stuntman, a professor of psychology, a money man for a major casino, and a billionaire bachelor. Their mission is clear. Their training has prepared them for anything. But when the journalist is murdered, his four friends change the plan to one single purpose: get revenge.
Telefon
This edgy Cold War thriller, perfect for fans of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and other terrifying conspiracy novels, is now available in eBook for the first time!
The Russians called the project TELEFON.
Collect four hundred and thirty first-class English speakers who'd never left the country. Drill them in every detail of American life and then hand-pick the top students for drug-assisted hypnosis. Every one of them believes he is the American whose papers he carried, and every one of them has been programmed to destroy a target in the U.S.A. The trigger is a coded phone message.
It was a brilliant plan. But now, at the wrong time, it was being executed by the wrong man and the Russians must stop TELEFON by dispatching their own special agents to the United States.
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
No one writes a political thriller like Walter Wager. No one writes a psychological thriller like Walter Wager. In TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, he checks both boxes, and the result will keep you reading through to sunrise.
A retired general takes over a missile silo in the Badlands. His threat is to provoke a World War, launching deadly ordnance, unless the President is willing to reveal everything about a secret meeting he had during the Vietnam War.
The situation is explosive, and so is the truth. Before the day is done, one man has his only shot at redemption—and countless lives hang in the balance.
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