Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  “Robocall.”

  Henry saw the light flashing on the message machine and gestured toward it.

  “Probably more of the same, but you never know.”

  She frowned and pressed the button.

  There were three messages. The first was from Stu Wilgus, whose voice Henry recognized right away. He offered his condolences, then asked whether her parents would have wanted flowers or a memorial donation. Henry guessed that what he’d really wanted was gossip from the scene of the crime. The second message was dead air. The third one got their attention.

  “Hi, this is Douglas Hatcher. I’m a claims administrator for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, and I’m calling for Mr. Tarrant Shoat, or for the next of kin of the late Helen Abell Shoat, or any surviving heirs or assigns, with regard to the final settlement of her severance agreement. So if whoever gets this message could please call me back at my office in Silver Spring, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  He left a phone number.

  “That’s odd,” Anna said. “Do you think it’s a scam?”

  “No idea. Who did your mother used to work for?”

  “Nobody. Except years ago, when she was a paralegal for some real estate lawyer in Easton. It’s how she met Dad. She drew up the settlement papers when he bought this property.”

  “Well, his title sounded official enough.”

  “Unless he was really calling from some phone bank in India.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  She grabbed a pencil and pad from a basket on the kitchen counter and played the message back, this time writing down the number. Then she called it while motioning Henry closer, angling the receiver so he could listen in. Douglas Hatcher picked up on the second ring.

  “Yes, hi. I’m Anna Shoat, returning your call. My mother was Helen Abell Shoat, and you left a message for my father, but he’s also deceased.”

  “Oh. Sorry for your loss.”

  “And who do you work for again?”

  “The Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor. And you’re Helen Shoat’s daughter?”

  “I am. Your message said this was about some kind of severance agreement?”

  They heard him moving a pile of papers, and he spoke the next words as if reading from a script.

  “Yes. Under the terms of your mother’s federal severance package, I have a check to administer to the relevant beneficiary, which seems to be you.”

  “Her federal severance package? From what?”

  “Her term of federal employment.”

  “Are you sure you have the right Helen Shoat?”

  “Perhaps you could give me the last four digits of her Social Security number, then we’ll know for sure.”

  “Just a second.” She grabbed her handbag from another counter, reached inside for some folded documents, and rifled through them. “Here we go.”

  She read the numbers aloud.

  “Yes, that’s correct. Full name, Helen Abell Shoat?”

  “Correct. And she was employed by the government?”

  “For two years only, and it was quite a while ago, from 1977 to 1979. Not long enough to vest for a pension, but apparently there was a severance agreement, and the terms of its fulfillment call for a check to be issued to her closest surviving relative on the event of her death.”

  “What department was this?”

  “Labor, the Employee Benefits Security Administration.”

  “No, I mean my mother. Who did she work for?”

  “Oh.” More rustling of papers. “This doesn’t say. But it indicates that her final place of employment was abroad. The United States consular office in Berlin.”

  “Berlin as in Germany?”

  “Yes. So she was probably working for the Department of State.”

  “Probably?”

  “Like I said, none of the paperwork says for sure. Is that important?”

  “Kind of. It would be nice to know.”

  “Well, somewhere in the file is a contact name, probably for whoever sent over the documentation.”

  “Do you think you could find it for me?”

  A sigh.

  “Give me a second.”

  The receiver thudded on a desk. They heard some banging around, a file drawer opening and shutting, more shuffling of paper. Telephones were ringing in the background. Then, a muffled sound, followed by:

  “Got a name and number for you. Ready?”

  “Please.”

  “Wallace Barringer.” He spelled the last name and rattled off a phone number with a 703 area code, followed by a four-digit extension. “He’s probably in Human Resources. A benefits administrator, if I had to guess.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and your check. I’m going to mail you a few forms, which you’ll need to fill out in order to prove your relationship to the deceased. We’ll also need documentation that you’re the closest surviving next of kin, plus a copy of your mother’s death certificate, some proof of your own citizenship, that sort of thing. Once we’ve received everything, you should have the check within four to six weeks.”

  “Goodness. And all because Mom worked two years for the government?”

  “As I said, it was a severance agreement. They aren’t customary, but they’re not unheard of.”

  “Can you tell me the amount?”

  “Sure. Let’s see. There was an initial payment in 1979 of seventy-five thousand dollars, which, as stipulated by the terms of the agreement, was deposited into an interest-bearing account, compounding annually at a rate of four percent, leaving a current value of $295,956.67.”

  Anna’s mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked quickly at Henry, who felt like they’d just moved closer to the heart of something—not the information Anna wanted, but the kind that Mitch was after.

  “Wow. Okay, then. Why don’t you send the paperwork to this address, since I’ll be checking by here pretty regularly.”

  “Would that be the one on Willow Street in Poston, Maryland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. This will go out today. I’ll send it by Express Mail, so you might even receive it tomorrow.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  She hung up.

  “I’m rich,” she said. “By my standards, anyway. Is it wrong to be excited about that?”

  “Not at all. And your mom worked in Berlin?”

  “So it seems. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “She never mentioned it?”

  “Not once! I never even knew she worked for the government, much less overseas. The only job she ever talked about was the one in Easton, which she hated. I wonder if Dad even knew. I guess he would’ve had to have known, right?”

  Henry shrugged. The ground rules of marriage were a mystery to him.

  “I wonder why she was there? She would’ve been, well, let me think…about twenty-three or -four. Six, seven years younger than me. Almost the same age as Willard.”

  “You know,” Henry said, “with that kind of money you could afford a pretty good PI, a professional.”

  She shook her head.

  “Too late. You’re the man now, the way I see it. And the meter’s already running, seventy-five bucks and counting, so let’s keep moving.”

  “You should call that number he gave you.”

  She punched it into the phone, again angling the receiver so he could listen. Henry leaned closer, heard two rings and then the click of the receiver and a woman’s voice:

  “CIA, Human Resources.”

  They looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths open. Anna answered in a rush.

  “Sorry. Wrong number.”

  She practically slammed down the receiver, and then clapped one hand to her heart and the other
to her mouth.

  “Oh my God. The CIA?” She took a step backward, as if to regain her balance. “No wonder she never talked about it. Do you think my mom was a freaking spy?”

  But Henry was already thinking of Mitch, and of whoever in Washington had put him here and was paying his salary, renting the house, reading his dull and news-less reports—some nameless bureaucrat who was still seeking information on this poor woman who was no longer living. Give us all of it, Mitch had said—recent or ancient. And now, having tugged on the first available thread, it had unraveled from a surprising connection deep in Helen Shoat’s past. Surprising to him, anyway, and to Anna. No wonder they’d hired him. He found himself reassessing his own ignorance in this affair, an ignorance which suddenly felt like a foolish liability.

  “What’s wrong?” Anna said.

  “Nothing. It’s just strange, that’s all. We should leave now if we’re going to make your nine-thirty appointment.”

  “Okay. But don’t you think it’s weird? Maybe even a little funny?”

  Henry forced a smile on her behalf.

  “Absolutely. Let’s come back later. Maybe we’ll find more answers in all those papers of hers.”

  “Oh, definitely. After that little bombshell, we’re going through all of Mom’s stuff with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “So you truly had no idea? She never said a word, not even about Europe?”

  “My mother wasn’t the type to drop hints. She either told you something or she didn’t. And when it came to any kind of information about herself, she mostly didn’t.”

  “Do you think your dad knew?”

  Anna shrugged.

  “Dad never talked about the past, his own or anyone else’s. He was too busy worrying about the weather, or the price of corn, or the latest marching orders from Washam Poultry. When you’re a farmer, that’s how you have to be.”

  They walked out to her car in the driveway to set out for the county jail. Turning from Willow onto Highway 53, Henry, for all his misgivings, was now glad she’d hired him. He, too, wanted to know what was going on.

  As they drove out of town he reflexively glanced over his shoulder, back toward the scattered homes and storefronts of Poston, where every blank window now looked like a lens, following their progress.

  9

  Berlin, 1979

  Ladd Herrington pushed his reading glasses down to the end of his nose and peered at Helen above the frames. He leaned back in his swivel chair, arms crossed, a pose of distance and disdain.

  It was nearly noon, but Helen was still waiting for the caffeine to kick in from her belated first cup of coffee. The station chief had summoned her to his office the moment she got to work.

  “Robert was in here earlier about you,” Herrington began.

  “Gilley, you mean? Kevin Gilley?”

  Herrington snatched off his glasses and leaned forward, palms flat on the blotter, a lumpy old toad poised to spring across the desk.

  “You’ll refer to him as Robert, if you please. You’re not even cleared for that information!”

  Helen shrugged, already regretting that by sleeping late she’d let Gilley get the jump on her, although she was shocked he’d chosen to mention it at all. But if that’s how he wanted to play it, fine. She had the ammo to outlast him. The tape, for starters, her very own nuclear option if push came to shove. But, like all nuclear options, it offered the possibility of mutually assured destruction, so she would first appeal to reason. The challenge would be controlling her temper.

  “He said you behaved most inappropriately last night,” Herrington continued. “Violated your own rules, introduced yourself to an agent without authorization, and interrupted a sensitive meeting between a case officer and a contact.”

  “Sensitive meeting? Is that how he described trying to fuck one of his agents? And I mean that literally. The figurative sense applies only to what he’s trying to do to me.”

  This momentarily put the brakes on Herrington’s offensive. He frowned, backed off a bit, and shoved his specs to the side of the desk. The chair creaked beneath him.

  “What are you saying, exactly, Miss Abell?”

  “What is he saying, exactly, since he’s the one who chose to make an issue of it? Was I at the safe house unannounced? Yes. So was he. Although I was there in the course of my management duties, on a night when there was no scheduled usage by any case officer. When he and his contact arrived they were unaware of my presence upstairs, a situation I was prepared to suffer in silence, and with all due respect for their operational privacy—until it became clear from all the noise downstairs that he was forcing himself on a young female agent. At that point it became clear to me that their rendezvous had everything to do with Robert’s sexual gratification and nothing to do with Agency sources and methods.”

  Herrington opened his mouth to speak, but Helen kept going.

  “So, yes, at that point I went downstairs and introduced myself to an agent without authorization, just as he said, but only to put a stop to his misbehavior. Robert and I had a few words, and then he left. He smirked and he snarled, but he left, and he did so without his agent, who by then was in tears. And afterward it was up to me to calm the poor girl down. If anything, I limited the damage he might have caused.”

  Herrington exhaled loudly, seemingly as out of breath as Helen. He looked off to the side while fumbling distractedly with a small bronze bust of Lenin that he used as a paperweight. A shiny spot atop Lenin’s bald dome suggested that he rubbed it fairly often, just as he was doing now, either for luck or inspiration. He noticed her watching, set it aside, and glanced toward the shuttered window. She wondered if this wasn’t the first time he’d heard something like this about Kevin Gilley. How had Baucom described the man? Someone in it for himself, yet also a practitioner of the Agency’s darker arts. Sexual predation would hardly seem to be out of the question under that setup.

  “Yes, well…Robert did imply you might allege something of the sort. Predictable, I suppose, given your own tendencies.”

  “My tendencies?”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t be completely oblivious to what people say.”

  About her and Baucom, he must have meant. Had to be.

  “Last time I checked, sir, all of my intimate relations involved consenting adults, and none with subordinates or direct supervisors. Would you prefer that I sleep with some foreign national who’s never been vetted? Although I’m told that’s quite popular in our office.”

  Herrington’s mouth fell open. For a moment he was too shocked to reply. Rumor had it that his latest paramour was a typist at the French consulate.

  “Sir, he was raping her, and if you somehow find such behavior excusable in a man of his position, then at least consider the matter pragmatically. Can you imagine the unholy mess if he had been allowed to complete the act, and she had then gone to the authorities? Alleging, no less, that it had happened in one of our very own facilities?”

  By the time she finished, Herrington had collected himself for a counterattack.

  “Was Robert’s behavior unprofessional? Yes, I suppose so. Assuming you’re telling the whole truth, of course. But your use of the word ‘rape’? Come on, Helen, you know better. Or would if you actually had experience in the field. Relationships between case officers and agents are complex and multilayered. If we start telling our field men exactly how to conduct their business then we might as well shut them down.”

  “I know what I saw, sir. I know what I heard. It wasn’t consensual.”

  “It didn’t sound consensual, maybe because you’re not familiar with the context of the relationship. You may think you know what you observed, but you don’t, so I urge you to take this no further.”

  “Then exactly what did I observe, sir?”

  “You’re not cleared for that, Miss Abell. And don’t think I’
m not aware of how you must have learned Robert’s real identity.”

  “I learned it, sir, not from any pillow talk, but because this entire station leaks like a sieve.”

  Herrington reddened.

  “As for your own choice of sexual liaisons, Miss Abell, since you did ask for my preference on the matter, what I would prefer is that you were married and stable, with a home life that didn’t so obviously interfere with your official duties.”

  Helen’s first impulse was to quit on the spot. Tell him bluntly what she thought of his opinions and leave, never to return. But that was probably what he wanted. It would certainly be the easiest way to make this mess go away.

  Her second impulse was to say she’d feel more comfortable working for the Soviets than for someone as clueless and overmatched as Ladd Herrington. But he was just stupid enough to take it seriously, and so were the paranoid snoops in counterintelligence who would zero in on the statement the moment it appeared in her file.

  “Very well, sir. In that case, provided I’m able to meet your expectations for my domestic arrangements, just how would you prefer I approach the state of matrimony? Faithfully, or like you?” She stood before he could answer. “And not to worry, sir. I’m quite done with this matter. For now.”

  She let the final words hang in the air as she bustled out the door, as angry as she’d been since her arrival in Berlin. She knew it wouldn’t help to slam the door, but she slammed it all the same.

  Everyone in the office heard, and everyone saw her leave.

  10

  “What you need,” Clark Baucom said, “is a dose of forgetting. Here, drink up.”

  Helen shook her head. Strong drink sounded like the perfect prescription. But the last thing she wanted right now was to follow someone else’s orders.

  Baucom poured brandy into her glass, anyway, and she didn’t push it away. She’d get to it when she felt like it.

  They were in a narrow, gloomy bar a few blocks from Savignyplatz, a run-down place in a spiffed-up neighborhood, meaning that it was almost never crowded, and the regulars were generally too drunk to listen to a word you said. Tradecraft in drinking, if there was such a thing. Baucom had taken her there the moment he heard the news, and he’d selected a small round table in the back.