Dragonfly
Page 19
“Too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
Sighing, Jackson said, “Do you think for a minute Rice could have gotten away with this change of face if Prescott Hennings didn't want him to get away with it?”
“You're suggesting a conspiracy?'
“Of some sort.”
“To accomplish what?”
“I dont know,” Jackson said.
McAlister nodded.
“But I'm beginning to think you know.”
Staring straight into the black man's eyes, McAlister said nothing.
Jackson said, “I'd wager that if I hustled some reporter with this stuff, Hennings would have conclusive proof that the very famous liberal Andrew Rice was not the same Andrew Rice who wrote those articles way back when. And then yours truly would be marked as a slander monger. I've got a nice job and a big earned pension that's coming to me in a few years. When it comes to my financial solvency, I'm as morally bankrupt as the next man.”
McAlister folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. “Rice isn't a very common name. Even if Hennings did have some sort of trumped-up proof, it wouldn't be believed.”
“Mr. McAlister, forgive me, but even if the proof was conclusive, Rice would remain as a Presidential aide — and I'd get bounced out of the cloakroom on my ass. Do you think all those liberals, Democrats and Republicans, who have praised Rice to the skies are suddenly just going to admit they were deceived? Do you think the President will admit Rice made a fool of him? If you think so, then you're more naïve than I would have thought. There will be a lot of somber speeches and statements about giving a man a second chance and about the marvelous capacity for change that Rice has shown. Hearts will bleed. Pity will flow like water. The conservatives won't care if Rice goes or stays. And the liberals would rather argue that a child killer can achieve sainthood even in the act of murder then admit they were wrong.
“I believe that Rice probably has taken a long-term position in order to achieve power with which he can score points for right-wing programs — while he professes liberal aims. It's an ingenious tactic. It requires consummate acting skill and monumental patience, and it's more dangerous to our system of government than any screaming, shouting frontal attack of the sort that right-wingers usually make. But it's much too complicated for most Americans to understand or worry about. They like their politics nice and simple. Actually, I'm not even sure that it's anything to worry about. I'm not so sure he can do all that much damage. If he's got to maintain his liberal image, he can hardly begin pressing for the Hitlerian laws and schemes he wrote about in those articles for Hennings' magazines.”
Getting to his feet, McAlister said, “That's quite true.”
“But now I'm not so sure,” Jackson said, standing, stretching, watching McAlister closely. “Since you came here like this, you must think Rice is involved in something very big and very dangerous.”
McAlister said, “I'd appreciate it if you kept this visit to yourself.”
“Naturally.”
“Could I have a few of those magazines?”
“Take them all,” Jackson said.
Kirkwood scooped up all eleven issues.
At the front door, as they were shaking hands, McAlister said, “Mr. Jackson, I can only repeat what I said on Wednesday: you're sure full of surprises.”
Jackson nodded and smiled and shuffled his feet, putting on a bit of that refined Stepin Fetchit routine which he used to such great effect at the White House.
“Would you and your wife consider joining Mrs. McAlister and me for dinner some evening soon?”
“I believe that would be most interesting,” Jackson said.
“I believe you're right.”
On the way down the flagstone walk to the car, neither McAlister nor Kirkwood said a word.
On all sides of them, the grass looked bluish-white, pearly in the October moonlight.
A teenage boy and a pretty blonde were leaving the house next door, just starting out on a big date.
A child's laughter came from the front porch of the house across the street.
McAlister felt as if the sky were going to collapse on him any second now. He walked with his shoulders hunched.
When they were both in the car again and the Pinkerton man had started the engine, McAlister turned to Kirkwood and said, “It was your group that got the Cofield lead.”
“That's right.”
“And the Hunter lead too.”
“Yes.”
“How are you using your investigators?”
“Some of the other teams are working a sixteen-hour day. But I've got my men divided into three different eight-hour shifts so we can pursue our leads around the clock.”
“Who are the federal marshals guarding your team?”
“Right now, on the four-to-midnight grind, it's a man named Bradley Hopper. Midnight to eight in the morning, it's John Morrow. During the day shift, when I'm on duty with two assistants, we've got a marshal named Carl Altmüller.”
After six months with this man as his chief investigator, McAlister was no longer in awe of Kirkwood's ability to remember every detail of his work, even the full names of the guards who were assigned to him. “Which one of them was on duty when the Potter Cofield lead began to get hot?”
Kirkwood said, “Altmüller.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much. I chatted him up when he first came on duty. Let me see…” He was quiet for a few seconds. Then: “I think he said he wasn't married. Lived in — Capitol Heights somewhere.”
“Capitol Heights, Maryland?” McAlister asked.
“Yeah.”
He turned to Burt Nolan, the Pinkerton man. “That's not very far from here, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Better get to a phone, look in the book, see if there's a full address listed for him,” McAlister said.
Nolan pulled the Mercedes away from the curb.
Leaning up from the back seat, pushing one thin hand through his bushy hair, Kirkwood said, “You think that Carl Altmüller is working for Rice?”
“Rice assigned the marshals,” McAlister said. “He chose them. And once he had a list of possibilities sent over to him from Justice, he needed six hours to call the first one of them. Now, what do you think he was doing all that time?”
Kirkwood's glasses had slid so far down his nose that they were in danger of falling off. He looked startled as McAlister pushed them in place for him. “Well… I guess he was trying to find a man — or men — he could buy. It took six hours.”
Nolan found a telephone booth at the corner of a shopping-center parking lot, and Kirkwood went in to look through the book. While he was out of the car, McAlister said, “Burt, I hope you remember that you've taken the agency's secrecy oath.”
“I haven't heard a thing,” Nolan said.
When Kirkwood came back a minute later, he said, “Altmüller is listed.” He gave Nolan the address. To McAlister he said, “Isn't it dangerous for us to walk in on him all by ourselves?”
“He won't be expecting anything,” McAlister said. “And Burt here has a gun of his own.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Nolan said, keeping his eyes on the busy highway, “but I think that you might be getting me in over my head. I'm not a public law officer. That secrecy oath didn't give me any police powers. I've been hired to protect you, but I can't go looking for trouble.”
“Then,” McAlister said, “I'll borrow your gun. Bernie and I can go it alone.”
Burt took a long moment to consider all the angles of that. He accelerated around a panel truck and pulled back into the right-hand lane. His broad face was expressionless in the lights of the oncoming cars. Finally: “I'd have to take the gun out of my holster and lay it on the seat. Why would I do that?”
“Maybe while we were parked at the telephone booth, you saw someone approaching the car, someone who looked suspicious,” McAlister suggested.
Smiling, McAlister said, “I suppose you could make a mistake like that.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Burt agreed.
Kirkwood didn't like the sound of it. He shifted nervously and said, “I think we should get some help.”
Turning around to look at the younger man once more, McAlister said, “I'd like nothing better, Bernie. But who in the hell could we trust?”
Kirkwood licked his lips and said nothing.
PEKING: SATURDAY, 1:00 P.M.
The air terminal in Peking was a hulking neo-Stalinist building with cold marble walls and floors and altogether too much gilt trim around the ceilings. Ranks of fluorescent lights cast stark shadows; but there was not a speck of dust or a smear of grease to be seen in any corner. Even on Saturday afternoon there were no more than sixty or seventy travelers using the facilities. Of these, the most eye-catching were three beautiful North Vietnamese women who were dressed in white silk trousers and brightly colored, flowered silk odais. North Vietnamese and Cambodian women, Canning thought, were among the most beautiful in the world: petite, extremely delicate and yet shapely, with very fine-boned faces, enormous dark eyes, and thick black hair. These three — as they stood waiting for cups of tea at one of the carts that dispensed free refreshments — contrasted pleasantly with the inhuman architecture and with the generally drab clothing of the Chinese around them.
A smiling, pretty Chinese woman of about thirty-five met Lee Ann and Canning when they got off the Frenchman's jet. Her long hair hung in a single braid behind her. She wore baggy blue pants, a baggy white shirt, and shapeless khaki jacket. She was all crisp efficiency as she escorted Canning and Lee Ann through customs, gave their luggage to a baggage handler, and led them out into the terminal's great hall, where Alexander Webster, the United States' first fully accredited ambassador to the People's Republic of China, was waiting for them.
Webster-was an imposing figure. At six foot three, he was two iniches taller than Canning. He was conscious of his posture; he stood stiff and straight to emphasize his height. His neck was thick, not with fat but with muscle. His shoulders and chest were unusually broad; and although he was a bit heavy in the stomach, he managed to hold it in well. His face was like the marble bust of some famous Roman centurion: square chin, bulging jaws, firm mouth, straight nose, eyes set back like ornaments on a deep shelf, and a formidable brow. Only two things kept him from looking like a roughneck: his expensive and stylish New York suit, which he wore as if he were a model; and his wavy silver hair, which softened the sharp angles of his rather brutal face. All in all, he appeared to be a former football star who, when he had lost his physical edge, had left the game and set out upon a brand-new career as a banker.
“Welcome to Peking,” Webster said, bowing slightly to Lee Ann and shaking hands with Canning. His voice was not hard and gravelly, as Canning had expected, but soft and easy and deep and spiced with a trace of what had once been a lush Louisiana accent. “Miss Tanaka, if all CIA operatives were as lovely as you, we'd have won the espionage war decades ago. Who on earth would want to fight with you?”
“And if all our ambassadors were as gracious as you,” Lee Ann said, “we'd have no enemies.”
Outside, there was no limousine waiting for them. Webster explained that the use of “decadent forms of transportation” within the People's Republic had recently been denounced and forbidden by Party edict — although Chinese diplomats in Washington and at the UN in New York relied increasingly upon custom-ordered black Cadillacs. “Western governments don't have an exclusive right to hypocrisy,” Webster observed.
Instead of a Cadillac, there was a Chinese-made vehicle that resembled a Volkswagen microbus. Inside, behind the driver's seat, there were two benches, one along each wall. Lee Ann and Canning sat on the right and faced Webster across the narrow aisle. The seats were uncomfortable: thinly padded and upholstered in canvas. But there were windows on both sides, and they would at least be able to see the city as they passed through it.
The driver, a State Department career man whom Webster introduced as James Obin of St. Louis, finished loading their luggage aboard. Then he got behind the wheel and started the tinny engine.
As the microbus began to move, Webster said, “Security was so tight on your flight that I didn't even learn what plane you were on until it was airborne.”
“Sorry if you were inconvenienced,” Canning said. “But it was necessary.”
“There were several attempts on his life before he even got to Tokyo,” Lee Ann said.
“Well then, I can understand the tight security,” Webster said. “But what I can't understand is why you had to come all the way out from the States in the first place. McAlister could have wired me the names of these three deep-cover agents of ours. I could have worked with General Lin to locate and interrogate them.”
“I'm sure you could have handled it,” Canning said. “But if we had wired the names, General Lin's Internal Security Force would have intercepted them. No matter how complicated the code, they would have broken it — and fast.”
“But they're going to learn the names anyway, sooner or later,” Webster said.
“Perhaps they won't have to be told all of them. If we find the trigger man the first time out, we can withhold the other two names from Lin.” He quickly outlined the procedure he would insist upon for the pickup and the interrogation of the three agents.
Webster grimaced and shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “The general won't like that.”
“If he doesn't accept it, then he doesn't get any of the names. He has absolutely no choice in the matter — and I'll make that plain to him. I'm not a diplomat, so I don't have to waste time being diplomatic. It'll be your job to smooth his feathers.”
“He's not an easy man to deal with.”
Canning said, “Yes, but since he's in the counter-intelligence business himself, he ought to be able to understand my position even if he doesn't much like it. Although my primary concern is to find the trigger man and learn from him who Dragonfly is, I've a second duty nearly as important as the first. I have to keep the ISF from cracking open the agency's entire network in the People's Republic.”
“I'll do what I can to help.”
“Did the polygraph arrive safely?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Good.”
“It's quite large.”
“It's not a traditional lie detector. It's actually a portable computer that monitors and analyzes all of the subject's major reactions to the questions he's asked. The newest thing.”
“It's locked in a tamper-proof steel case,” Webster said. “I suppose you have the key?”
“Yes.” It had been in the packet of Theodore Otley identification and expense money that McAlister had given him in Washington. “When do we meet General Lin?”
“An ISF car is following us right now,” Webster said, pointing through the rear windows of the micro-bus. A jeeplike station wagon trailed them by a hundred yards. “By this time they'll have radioed the news of your arrival to the general's office. Knowing how polite and thoughtful the Chinese are, I'd say Lin will give you fifteen or twenty minutes at the embassy to freshen up before he comes knocking.”
They were now cruising along an avenue at least three times as wide as Fifth Avenue in New York. There were no automobiles and only a few trucks, vans, and buses. But there were thousands of bicycles whizzing silently in both directions. Many of the cyclists smiled and waved at Canning, Lee Ann, and the ambassador.
“Are all the streets this wide?” Lee Ann asked.
“Many but not most,” Webster said. “These ultra-wide thoroughfares are the newest streets in Peking. They were built after the revolution. Once they were completed and opened, the Party was able to classify the
old main streets — which were often very broad— as lanes and alleyways. Today, most domestic and all foreign traffic moves on these new arteries.”
“But why did they build new and bigger streets when they didn't have cars enough for the old ones?” Lee Ann asked. “Two-thirds of this avenue is empty.”
“The old streets were dotted with religious shrines and literally hundreds of magnificently ornate temples,” Webster said, enjoying his role as guide. “Some of these were destroyed in the revolution and some later, by Party edict. But the Communists realized that the temples — although they were shameful reminders of a decadent past full of excess and injustice — were priceless works of art and history. Cooler heads prevailed, thank God, and the destruction ceased. They opted for an alternate program. They built these thoroughfares, restructuring the city away from the temples. As a result, many of the old landmarks are tucked away behind fences in quiet pockets of the city where they can't have a corruptive influence on the masses.” Webster was amused by all of this, and he winked at Lee Ann as if they were adults tolerating the eccentricities of slow-witted but pleasant children.
“Incredible,” Lee Ann said.
Canning said, “Not really. We do the same thing.”
Webster frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We build and redesign our cities to hide the ghettos from ourselves, rather than the churches.”
“You know, you're right!” Lee Ann said.
“Well,” Webster said stiffly, “I don't see even the most remote similarity. And if I were you, I wouldn't express that sort of an opinion in front of someone like General Lin. He would be delighted to spread your thoughts far and wide, to the detriment of the United States' image in Asia.” He turned away from them and stared out at the hordes of cyclists.
Lee Ann glanced at Canning and raised her eyebrows.
He just shrugged.
Peking was a city of eight or nine million, capital of the largest nation on earth — yet it was more like a small town than like a metropolis that was four thousand years old. There were no neon signs. There were no skyscrapers. There was nothing that looked like a department store or theater or restaurant — although there were surely all of these things in the city, tucked away in squat and official-looking brick buildings. Beyond the broad avenues and occasionally glimpsed spires of the forbidden temples, there were tens of thousands of gray houses with gray and yellow rooftops; they stretched like a carpet of densely grown weeds over all the city's hills, encircling countless small gardens of trees and shrubbery.