The Sandler Inquiry

by Noel Hynd

  Hunter nodded soberly.

  Whiteside allowed himself a slight smile.

  "As I suspected," he intoned softly. He looked back to Thomas. I "I'm not at all surprised that he subdued you. Mr. Hunter was always a bit of an athlete.

  Tried out as a mid fielder in 1952 for, which was it, Arsenal or Sunderland?"

  "Southampton" mumbled Hunter with obvious satisfaction.

  – They're all the' same' snorted Whiteside.

  "Maybe he should have tried as a defender," offered Grover, slipping into an impeccably working-class accent from northern England.

  "For Newcastle. Or maybe Leeds United" Grover broke into a genuine laugh as Hunte'r shot him a half annoyed glare.

  "For Christ's sake," snapped Thomas angrily and in confusion, 'what the hell are you talking about?"

  The room was quickly silent as the three men knew Thomas was not thinking properly and able to reason.

  "You don't understand our terms, is that it?" asked Whiteside.

  "No.

  "Well," he answered expansively, drawing out the word, 'in point of fact, that's why you're here." He rose from where he was sitting and explained further.

  "Terms," he said.

  "Terms " "Trash collection" said Whiteside.

  "You know all about it. Except what it is" Thomas eyed each of the three men.

  "And how about your dad?" asked Hunter.

  "The 'recruiting sergeant'?" There was a trace of hostility in his voice.

  Thomas looked at the three men suspiciously. He answered in a calm even voice.

  "I don't even know what you're talking about' "Well then," said Whiteside, his voice now barely above a whisper.

  "It's high time you learned." Whiteside turned his graying head and addressed Grover.

  "Tell us, Mr. Grover," he said, 'take us back to 1938. When exactly did you go into trash collecting?"

  "It was that year," said Grover.

  "Maybe you could give our friend here a few of the details,"

  Whiteside suggested easing himself back into his chair.

  "Bring him up to date " Grover looked at Thomas with some surprise.

  "You don't know this story, huh?" he asked.

  "How would I know anything about you?" answered Thomas huffily.

  "Your old man" said Grover, speaking again in an American accent, this time almost with New York street intonations.

  "He sure kept his lips tight " "What's trash collection?" Thomas asked.

  "Disposal of waste material," said Grover.

  "Getting rid of the garbage. Human garbage. Got it yet?"

  "Not quite."

  "From the start, Mr. Grover," said Whiteside in civilized tones.

  "Briefly, but from the start."

  Hunter leaned back in his chair, tilting back on the chair's two rear legs. His thick arms were folded across his barrel chest. He alternated his gaze back and forth between his captive, Thomas and his associate, Grover, who was starting to speak.

  "I'd had trouble with the law off and on through 1938 and 1939," said Grover.

  "Small stuff. Checks. Bank books. Shit like that."

  "Mr. Grover was a forger, Mr. Daniels. A very good one As you know," commented Whiteside.

  Thomas nodded.

  "I don't like to be boastful," said Grover humbly, 'but-' "But he could look at a signature once and reproduce it" said Whiteside.

  "The endowments of an artist, in a sense " "I know about his criminal career," said Thomas.

  "What's it have to do with garbage?"

  "Trash," Grover corrected him, quickly and gleefully.

  "Trash collection. You see, in 1940 I was in trouble. Very serious trouble with the United States government over a bit of artwork I was doing:' "Forgery?"

  "Certain signatures," said Grover innocently.

  "On a set of Treasury bills He shrugged.

  "The signatures themselves were perfectly done. Using the wrong name did me in."

  "What did it have to do with Sandler?" asked Thomas.

  Grover smiled.

  "Very good" he complimented the younger man.

  "You figured that right away." He paused, glancing at Whiteside.

  "I was a forger, not an engraver. Does that answer it? It should."

  Thomas assessed him coldly, wondering what was within or outside of the bounds of credibility.

  "But Sandler could engrave," he suggested, half a question, half a statement.

  "Could?" he laughed, his eyebrows shooting skyward.

  "Could? Do the frigging birds sing in the morning? Best damned engraver who ever lived. Give him the right tools and he could reengrave Cleopatra's needle so that you couldn't tell his from the original. Hell"' he laughed, "he could reengrave Cleopatra." "So you were his associate. I already knew that. So what?"

  "Trash collection" smiled Grover, warming to his reminiscences.

  "The government arrested me for forging Treasury bills. They were all set to really stick it to me. I figured that I was ready to sit out the next twenty in the jug. But then," he added slowly, 'they offered me a deal. Mind if I smoke?"

  Grover reached to a pack of cigarettes within his pocket. No one was inclined to object.

  "The government told me there was a lot of trash in the country and abroad" he said.

  "They knew I was Italian and knew I spoke Italian fluently. Like a native. They asked me)' he said through a cloud of smoke as he looked Daniels squarely in the eye, 'how I'd feel about killing."

  "Killing who?"

  "Killing whoever they told me to' he said. He drew on the cigarette.

  "We came to an agreement. four assignments. Trash assignments, they called them, and I'd be the collector. Foreign spies against the United States, they assured me." He blew the smoke out through his nose.

  "Well, I'm as patriotic as the next guy. Even more so, if it keeps me out of prison. Capisce?"he winked, with an exaggerated gesture and an Italian-peasant accent.

  "One murder in New York, another in south Philadelphia. On the third they sent me to Calabria in 1944. I scored" Thomas wondered about the fourth assignment and was about to inquire when Whiteside spoke.

  "So there's what a trash collector is" said the Englishman.

  "Now you know."

  "Sure' said Thomas.

  "But that can't be all of it "Perceptive, perceptive," grinned Whiteside.

  "Of course there's more. How could there not be? After all, there was more than simply my friend Mr. Grover involved. There was also Arthur Sandler.

  And, of course…" He offered his hand forward expansively, soliciting the missing word from Thomas.

  "My father."

  Hunter and Grover both smiled. Whiteside eased back in his chair, apparently quite pleased.

  Chapter 29

  Whiteside spoke more rapidly now, as if to cover a great expanse of time as quickly as possible. Mr. Grover, he explained, had entered the war in Europe as a man of many principles. But the foremost principle was that of flexibility.

  Through an underground route of partisans, Grover, after assassinating a German counterspy in Calabria, was whisked by boat and railroad to Gibralter. There he contacted a man named Lester Gregory. Gregory was a captain in the British Army, stationed 'on the rock " as they called it, since Hitler was still trying to entice Franco into entering the war by attacking the British at Gibralter.

  Captain Gregory also had another function. He was one of the top M.I. 6 agents on the rock.

  Through joint Anglo-American intelligence reports, Gregory knew both the function and the assignment of the man whose real name was De Septio. Gregory, however, acting on orders from London, sought to raise Grover's self-awareness to a higher level.

  Grover, accepting cash as compensation, agreed thus to become a British operative within the United States, unknown to his American superiors.

  "Spy was too strong a word, of course," said Whiteside.

  "An 'eye and ear' man would be more like it. Nothin
g treasonous, since it concerned Allied nations. He'd just report on anything interesting he'd seen or heard."

  Thomas eyed Grover during Whiteside's explanation. The logical conclusion for wartime capitalism, he thought; allegiances bought and sold. He looked back to Whiteside.

  "So?" he asked.

  "Sol" retorted Whiteside quickly, 'there are two aspects of this for you to remember. One, Mr. Grover-niDe Septio-was a trash collector for the Americans while he was a lower-echelon informant for us. Two " he continued, 'you should have noticed a parallel between this man and his erstwhile associate, Sandler."

  "They were both recruited as spies," said Thomas.

  Whiteside fought back a smirk.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Now, in reference to whom have you used the word 'recruit' recently?"

  It took Thomas a long second and then he blanched. Recruitment. His father's involvement. The recruiting sergeant. Of course!

  So painfully obvious all along. In retrospect so clear.

  ' "Recruiting sergeant' was a term used for a certain type of man"

  Whiteside began forcefully.

  "A man like your father. Whatever his reasons, he sought to avoid the military, to not partake in any of the actual fighting. Know how he avoided it?", "Go ahead," said Thomas, defensiveness in his voice.

  "By recruiting. As a barrister or attorney, particularly his kind, he had ties to criminal society." Such as Mr. Grover. Or the slightly more respectable criminal society, such as Arthur Sandler. He also knew an important Federal prosecutor namedMcFedrics. He used one to please the other, saving his own tail in the process. Ingenious, really. He'd take on as clients men like De Septio and Sandler who were facing extremely stiff Federal prison terms. Then he offered them up as bait. He would recruit them as U.S. spies, taking advantage of their own special skills. He would tell them it was prison or a few years in intelligence work. Wasn't much of a choice, I should think.

  The criminals got out of their jail terms, your father got out of the military, and your government got its spies."

  Thomas, almost nonplussed by Whiteside's discourse, let it sink in for a few moments.

  "Did Zenger know?" he asked finally.

  Whiteside laughed.

  "That conniving little twerp? God, yes! He was doing the same thing.

  Only not as well ' The four men sat there in rude silence, three men on one side, one on the other. None was inclined to speak. Thomas tried to measure the other three men, seeking somewhere to find a reason not to have to believe them. The trouble was that their whole story fit together so well.

  Or did it? A thought came upon him.

  "Let me ask you something totally unrelated," Thomas said.

  "Ask," said Whiteside generously.

  "What would you say if I wondered who you really were? What if I questioned whether the real Peter Whiteside were actually dead The man before him smiled.

  "I would say," said Whiteside, "that some unknown person has been filling your head with lies. Probably told you some rubbish about a plane crash leaving Caracas."

  Thomas felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, a sense of having been made very neatly into an imbecile, though he wasn't at that moment certain by whom.

  Whiteside knew he'd hit the mark.

  "Yes, of course;' he continued.

  "That impostor girl told you that, didn't she?" When Thomas gave no answer, Whiteside knew he was correct. 'I'll explain," he continued.

  "George McAdam was a'sandho@ which means he-" "I know about that part," said Thomas.

  "I know what he did "All right," said Whiteside, "old George and I were in Caracas on a little expedition. We were scheduled to leave for Miami on an Avianca flight. At the last moment we changed our plans.

  Fortuitously for us, don't you think? Well" he smiled, 'there was no reason to disappoint the folks who thought they'd blown us into the next dimension. We simply had the nice people at Avianca, after a little arm-twisting, add our names to the list of passengers. Simple, really. George and I were legally dead. Confused the living hell out of the KGB people in Venezuela" Whiteside's smile was enormous.

  "So if a little bird whispers in your ear that I'm dead," he said in conclusion, 'don't believe her."

  Grover interjected.

  "That's also why she wouldn't come into my house the other day," he said.

  "Afraid I'd call her a liar right there' "Why should I believe that?

  Maybe she wasn't in the mood to look at a petty criminal who'd been her father's partner." Thomas furrowed his brow and added anxiously,

  "Yes, how about that? When did you stop being De Septio and start being Grover?"

  "November 12, 1954," said Grover with a grin.

  "After the Sandler stand-in was taken down on Eighty-ninth Street," said Whiteside.

  "Thanks for reminding us. That's important ' important both now and twenty-two years earlier, Whiteside explained. Sandler's unorthodox actions after the war -fleeing east instead of west, staying east and then slowly coming home-had long baffled his superiors in American intelligence. But gradually the suspicions around the man grew. His revivified fortune after the war and his steady re accumulation of wealth were every bit as bizarre and perplexing as, say, his sister's doting on dogs named Andy and one-dollar bills.

  "Gradually, the conclusion became irrefutable" said Whiteside.

  "Somewhere along the line Sandler had been recruited as a Soviet agent.

  Nobody knew when or where or by whom, but the case against him was even stronger than the one against Rudolph Abel."

  "So why wasn't he arrested?" asked Thomas.

  "Because things aren't that easy. Hard evidence, the sort admissible in an American court, was at a minimum. What we had were the account of agents, men and women whose identities could not be compromised in a trial. And," he added boldly, 'we had a perfect set of crosscurrents."

  "Crosscurrents?"

  "Yes. The British wanted him for his counterfeiting of pounds.

  The Americans wanted him for espionage. Both would be a lot happier with him dead than on trial. Add to that the situation of Mr. Grover, here," he said with a nod.

  "Grover had been arrested again.

  "Your father then began to guide the direction of the case. William Ward Daniels reminded all concerned that Grover had been a trash collector during the war. He'd made three assigned collections, but had never been assigned a fourth. Another deal was proposed.

  Sandler would be the fourth, in exchange for a new identity and immunity from all charges past and present" "I agreed quite readily," said Grover.

  "And I told them I'd do it my way, with my own assistants."

  "There were three assassins," said Thomas.

  "I learned that much myself."

  "Well," said Whiteside slowly,

  "I gave British approval from London" He paused, then said softly,

  "And I partook in it personally. I wanted to see it done."

  Thomas stared at Whiteside for several seconds.

  "Of course,"

  Thomas mumbled.

  "You would have."

  "And even then " said Whiteside,

  "I worked with my current associate." He nodded toward Hunter, who smiled broadly through his beard.

  "We put more than a dozen bullet holes in him," Hunter grunted softly.

  "You killed the wrong man'" said Thomas slowly.

  "And whose fault is that.

  "Your own."

  "Wrong!" interjected Whiteside.

  "Whose idea was it originally?

  Who did I say nurtured the plan and sold it to two intelligence services? Need I remind you?"

  Thomas was again silent, almost struck dumb by. the implication.

  "Never really had a heart-to-heart talk with your dad, did you?" chided Grover.

  "He got the wrong man killed intentionally," said Whiteside casually, though Thomas had already gotten the message.

  "He was protecting his friend an
d client, protecting him so well that for twenty-one years everyone was convinced that Sandler was dead "Then a Treasury agent came to my door one morning," said Grover.

  "He'd tracked me down. A man named Hammond. He showed me a stack of money which was indistinguishable from real U.S. currency." He shook his head.

  "Only one man who could make counterfeits like that. Only one man ' "So Mr. Grover reported back to me," said Whiteside.

  "Our old eyes-and-ears network back at work after twenty-some years. He convinced us that Sandler had to still be alive. Or at least the man last known as Sandler. In one form or another, in one identity or another."

  "Somebody, must have known where Sandler went," said Thomas.

  "Of course" said Whiteside.

  "There were four possibilities. But as the U.S. counterfeits began, the four possibilities closed. Victoria Sandler, crazy as she was, may have had an inkling. She died. Your father must have known. He died.

  His files -your files might have held certain clues. They burned ' "Forget any smokescreen about a will being destroyed" offered Grover.

  "Sandler's identity today. That's why your files burned."

  "What's the fourth? Zenger?" asked Thomas.

  "No," said Whiteside.

  "His involvement with Sandler didn't run to the level of your father's.

  The fourth possibility -and it was only that, a possibility-was the other person who would have been reviewing those files after your father's death. That person could have happened upon something."

  "Me," said Thomas softly.

  "And you were marked for death, too," said Grover.

  "Trouble is, a mistake was made. Some poor bloke named Mark Ryder happened to look like you at the precise time and date when you were supposed to be leaving your building. They bought him instead Thomas sat reflectively in silence for several moments. It was all so neat and uncomplicated once the pieces fit together. Thomas had the sense of having watched his father wear a mask for his entire lifetime, Thomas knowing the man yet not really knowing him. If these three people, confessed killers, could be believed.

  Hunter was at the window, Glover fidgeted with his fingers, and Whiteside stared relentlessly at Thomas.