COPS SPIES & PI'S: The Four Novel Box Set

by David Wind

  “Chapin is in Geneva,” said the section chief from Geneva.

  “You’re certain, Talbot?” the general asked. Since the KGB agent’s death in Salzburg, the DD had been getting all sorts of reports of Chapin’s whereabouts. None were confirmed.

  “Positive. Carl Haldenstein made him at the train station. Chapin took a taxi to the St. Moritz. He’s in his room now.” The general rubbed the corners of his eyes between thumb and forefinger. Something formed in his throat, he swallowed hard. “Take him out, tonight.”

  The general hung up and turned to the man in his office. “Talbot reports that Chapin is in Geneva. I don’t understand that move.”

  “Maybe he wants to be caught.”

  “A psychological thing? No, not Chapin.”

  The DCI—Director of Central Intelligence—shrugged. “Whatever the reason, we’ve got to stop him. We can’t afford more problems with the Soviets. Not now. Word from the Hill is that the Soviets are already getting nervous that they’ll have to deal with Etheridge and Mathews for the next four years. They’re worried.”

  <><><>

  Chapin’s wrist alarm went off at five. He woke, instantly alert. Today would be crucial. He had a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.

  After showering and dressing, he left the hotel room, caught a bus a block from the hotel, and crossed Geneva while the sky went from black to dark gray.

  When he reached his destination, Chapin left the bus and crossed the street to the small and unimposing apartment building. He looked up at the windows and saw no lights.

  He went to the front door and studied the lock. It was old-fashioned, at least twenty years old. He was inside seven seconds after using a credit card.

  The small entrance lobby smelled of age and mold. Chapin went to the mailboxes and read the names. He found the one he was looking for and nodded. His target had not moved.

  There were two apartments per floor. Chapin went to the front apartment on the fourth floor. This time he found shiny and very modern locks. A credit card would not work.

  Chapin rubbed a hand across his eyes. He had to leave his message with both sides, not just the Soviets. He stepped back, drew his weapon, and rang the doorbell.

  He pressed the button several times, urgently. It took a half minute before he heard Talbot ask whom it was. Chapin disguised his voice and, as he spoke, scratched on the door.

  “Jesus, Talbot, it’s me. Help me.”

  “Rowan?”

  “Yeah,” Chapin said, coughing as he spoke the single word.

  Chapin stared at the brass of the doorknob. He heard three locks click. He tensed. His hand tightened around the Beretta. He held his breath in anticipation.

  The door opened a fraction of an inch. Chapin exhaled sharply, raised his foot, and kicked with all his power.

  The door flew inward with a crash, the wood hitting the man behind it, sending him falling backward. Chapin was inside instantly, his pistol extended, moving toward the man on the floor.

  He spotted the thirty-eight auto-mag on the floor and kicked it away before Section Chief Talbot could reach it with his left foot; he kicked the remnants of the door closed.

  Then he smiled at the man sprawled on the floor. His white boxer shorts were in stark contrast to his ebony skin. “Hello, Talbot.”

  “You are out of your fucking mind,” Talbot said.

  “I know,” Chapin agreed, and saw the fear grow in Talbot’s eyes. The black section chief was thirty-two years old and thought of himself as hot shit. He was good, Chapin reminded himself, but nowhere near as good as he thought.

  “Your boys missed me tonight.” When he saw Talbot’s eyes widen, he knew he had been right in leaving the room at the St. Moritz.

  “I was just following orders, Chapin. You know there wasn’t anything personal. Are they…”

  “I didn’t hurt them,” Chapin said truthfully. He laughed inside. They were most likely in his room now, waiting for him to come back.

  “What do you want?” Talbot asked.

  “I want a message delivered to the general.”

  Talbot frowned. “You know the number.”

  Chapin shook his head. “I want you to call him tomorrow. I want you to tell him about tonight. I want you to tell him that he’s playing their game, exactly the way they’ve scripted it. You have that?”

  Talbot nodded.

  “Repeat it.”

  “I’m to tell the general that he’s playing their game, just the way they scripted it, right?”

  Chapin nodded. “I’m leaving Geneva today. And, Talbot, if I find you, or anyone else from The Company following me, I’ll kill you …and them.”

  He went to the door and opened it.

  “Chapin.”

  Chapin stared at the man. Talbot was still on the floor.

  Chapin raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Why, man? We all looked up to you. We all believed you. Why did you turn?”

  Chapin smiled, sadly. “You know, Talbot, that’s one of the funny things about my situation. The only people who think I’ve turned are my own people.”

  “But the Soviets...”

  “Are offering a reward for me. Use your brain, Talbot. You couldn’t have gotten this far just on minority power. Think about it. If I had turned, why am I running? If I had turned, there could have been only one of two possible reasons: One would be money; the other ideology.

  “If it was money, I’d already be wherever I’d set up my safe house, my new identity, and my new life. If it had been ideology, I’d be in Moscow living a privileged life and spilling my guts. There is so very, very much I could tell them. But, Talbot, I’m not, am I?”

  Talbot started to speak. Chapin cut him off. “One more thing. The next time you are given an order to terminate one of your own people, think about it for a little while before you just follow orders. Jesus Christ, man, haven’t your people been taking orders for a little longer than necessary?”

  Chapin left, closing the door and racing to the stairs. He went up, not down, and waited. It took ten minutes for Talbot to emerge fully dressed and go downstairs.

  Chapin tailed him, keeping back far enough not to be spotted. Talbot walked to the consulate, which was only three blocks away.

  Over his shoulder, dawn was breaking.

  Chapin stepped into the street and hailed a cab. “The airport.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Toronto, Canada

  Chapin, dressed and sitting in a large club chair by the window, took a sip from the scotch he’d poured a half hour before.

  The flight from Geneva to Toronto had been uneventful. His disguise on the trip to Toronto had been simple: He had purchased a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, an old army fatigue jacket, and a single clip-on earring had turned him into an aging hippy.

  The people watching the airport had ignored him completely. The customs agent in Toronto had sneered, but said nothing. Once again, directing the focus to himself had kept him from being recognized.

  The flight had given him a chance to think out his next steps. He knew he had to have the answers to several questions. Paramount among those questions was to find out exactly what had happened in nineteen forty-seven and why Hirshorne had not reported the birth of the twin. This fact bothered Chapin even more than the knowledge that everyone except for Bernadette Luvelle, Lorbaugh and Walter Hirshorne had died within a year of the event. It didn’t fit into his scale of probabilities.

  Before he spoke to Hirshorne, he had to speak to one other person of whom he was certain would lead him to the answer.

  He took another sip of scotch. He missed Abby. He shook his head, wondering why it was now, when he finally found someone with whom he wanted to share his life, his country and their enemies made it impossible.

  He drained the scotch, stood, and looked out the window at the black Canadian sky. Thousands of pinpricks of light were scattered in the heavens above the cold surface of the ground. He remembered a time whe
n he was young, not quite thirteen, and had looked up at the sky and wished that a spaceship would come down and take him to another planet.

  Ten years later, when he had been sloughing through a damp rainy forest, he’d remembered and laughed. His wish had come true, only instead of a starship; an air force transport had landed him on his new planet: Viet Nam.

  The knock came at exactly nine-thirty. Chapin chased away the past and went to the door. If this was whom he was expecting, she was right on time. “Yes?”

  “Brannigan.”

  Chapin opened the door and let the woman in. He looked at her, studying her even as he offered her his hand. Her grip was firm, her skin dry and cool.

  Leslie Brannigan was tall, almost as tall as Chapin, with long dark hair and deep brown eyes. Her face was oval and strong, her cheekbones well defined and prominent. Her mouth was large, well shaped, and her teeth were white and even. She looked more like a model than a researcher. She was not what he was expecting.

  “What?” Brannigan asked after releasing his hand and standing still for several more seconds.

  “You don’t look like a researcher.”

  “You don’t look like a murderer and a spy. Does that make us even?”

  Chapin stared at her and then laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  “Good. My first name is Leslie. You can use that, or you can call me Brannigan, I really don’t care. Have you eaten yet?”

  “No, I was waiting for you.”

  “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

  As they took the elevator downstairs, Chapin couldn’t help but think that Leslie Brannigan was a breath of fresh air.

  “I think working with you is going to be interesting,” he said.

  Brannigan hit the stop button. The elevator came to an abrupt halt. The alarm bell rang. She ignored the bell, turned to face him, and leaned slightly forward. Her eyes were narrowed and angry. “Let’s get something straight right from the start. I’m not a yes person, and before I would let Ed send me here, I made him tell me about you.

  “Just so that you understand, the only reason I’m here is because of Joel Blair. I don’t like what you represent or what you do for a living. In fact, I despise it. But I want the bastard who killed Joel, and I want to expose whatever the hell is happening in our government. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Chapin said without letting anything show on his face. “Now, can we go to the dining room?”

  Brannigan released the elevator. The bell stopped ringing and the elevator descended.

  When they reached the lobby, they ignored the inquisitive glances from the people waiting and walked casually to the dining room, where they took a table near the rear. Chapin sat facing the door, his back was to the wall.

  The captain brought the menus and asked about drinks. Brannigan declined as did Chapin. When the he left, Chapin said, “Tell me what you have on Hirshorne and on Mathews.”

  “Nothing. Mathews is so damned clean it’s pathetic. I could only go so far with Hirshorne. The bio I compiled on Hirshorne is in my room.”

  Chapin nodded. “What is Mathews up to now?”

  “No post-election break,” Brannigan said. “He’ll be making the rounds for the next few weeks, giving speeches and such. He’ll take a vacation after that.”

  “I need to see him. Soon. And Hirshorne as well. Can you make the arrangements for us to cover him as press?”

  “I’ll call Ed. He’ll take care of it.” Brannigan opened the menu and their waiter appeared.

  Chapin ordered a steak; Leslie Brannigan ordered swordfish. After the waiter collected the menus and left, Brannigan looked at him. Her expression was puzzled.

  “Ed said you were the best in the world at what you did. He told me a little about Viet Nam.”

  Chapin studied Brannigan. “You were a child then,” Chapin said aloud. It was almost as if he couldn’t believe it himself.

  Brannigan nodded once. “I was eight when Nixon pulled the plug. I don’t remember much about it, but I did a lot of research on it.”

  Chapin continued to gaze at her. “I did what I had to do to stay alive. After the war, I joined the CIA. I’ve always thought I was helping the world.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now?”

  Chapin took in a deep breath. “Contrary to what he’s told you, Ed Kline has absolutely no idea of what I’m doing. Joel Blair stumbled onto something that in most probability, he did not comprehend. He most likely would have, as time went on, but he was murdered before he could put his facts together—except for the tape on the Mathews family killings.

  “Blair’s death is directly involved in something so secret that only four people in the free world know about it. Two of those people believe it, one doesn’t; the third accepts it because she loves me.”

  “What?” Brannigan asked, her face expectant.

  Chapin shook his head. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to take my word for it, but the situation I am in the midst of involves Joel Blair’s death as well as the elections.”

  At first Chapin was surprised when Brannigan said nothing. Then he realized there wasn’t much she could say. He’d told her what was necessary, and now it was up to her to accept him or not. Either way, he understood, she was here because of two things: Ed Kline had sent her; and she wanted to find out who killed Joel Blair.

  “You were in love with him, weren’t you?” he asked suddenly.

  He saw her features go defensive. “That’s none of your damn business.”

  He didn’t react; he studied her for a few moments. “You’re wrong. I have every intelligence agent of the two biggest powers in the world looking for me. One country wants me dead; the other wants me alive so they can shoot me full of dope, peel open my mind to learn everything I know. I need your help, but for that, I need to be able to trust you.”

  He fell silent, waiting for Brannigan to make up her mind. A moment later, her features relaxed.

  She nodded her head a bit reluctantly. “Yes, at one time Joel and I were together. But I learned my lesson. Joel couldn’t give all of himself to a relationship, because he gave too much of himself to his work. I needed more than that.”

  “That’s a reason to break off a relationship. It isn’t a reason to stop loving someone.”

  “What difference does it make if I loved Joel after we broke up?”

  “It tells me whether or not I can trust you.”

  “Then, you’ll have to work out the answer for yourself. Ed Kline trusts me enough to send me here. Why isn’t that enough for you?”

  “I always have doubts; which is why I’m still alive,” Chapin stated bluntly.

  <><><>

  Sokova angrily paced the confines of his office. Chapin was gone. No one knew to where. On top of it all, an international scene was building. The hotel room Chapin had registered in, right after his arrival in Geneva, had been the scene of a gunfight between three KGB and two CIA agents.

  From what Sokova had pieced together, at five-fifty a.m., two CIA agents entered Chapin’s room to terminate him The KGB agents watching Chapin and his room had followed the CIA agents in order to stop them from killing Chapin.

  The results were not good: one CIA agent dead; two of the three KGB men wounded. All for nothing: Chapin had not been in the room.

  “Damn him!” He had to find out where the man was, and he had to get him obliterated from the face of the earth. Chapin was still the only one who could interfere with the perfection of his plan. The only one!

  <><><>

  Chapin read the last page of the bio, put it down, and turned to Leslie Brannigan. “Nothing.”

  “I know,” Brannigan said.

  After dinner, they had gone to Brannigan’s room to retrieve the information she had brought for him. He had stayed in the room to read the reports. Brannigan’s information was the same as what he’d already read. No, he thought, it was much less: The public knew very little of
Walter Hirshorne’s early years as a spy.

  There were some interesting points, though, but nothing showed Hirshorne to be anything less than he supposedly was.

  Chapin closed his eyes. Why had Hirshorne lied about Robert’s kidnapping? What could have made him do that?

  Was Hirshorne the mole? If he was, then the Soviets had accomplished much more than anyone had ever given them credited for. Walter Hirshorne, as a spy, would be akin to having the head of the KGB sitting on the National Security Council.

  He reopened the file and checked Hirshorne’s address. When not living in Wyoming, he lived in Washington. Chapin memorized the address.

  “Now what?” Brannigan asked.

  “Can you get Mathews’ schedule for the next few days?”

  “Sure. So you can interview him, right?” Her words literally dripped sarcasm.

  He didn’t smile. He didn’t blink. “Exactly.”

  Brannigan’s cynical smile disappeared. Her eyes narrowed, and she stared at him. “You’re for real, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus,” she whispered. “How are you going to interview him? What are you going to do?”

  “Get answers to questions.”

  Brannigan shook her head. “Look, Ed asked me to help you. But I’ve got to be honest. You scare me. You’re supposed to be a double agent, wanted by the FBI for murder and for spying. You’re a traitor to your country. Even if I could arrange it, just how in the hell could I let you get near Mathews? You could conceivably kill him.”

  “And you could trust me,” Chapin said.

  Brannigan’s head arched back. Her lips so tightly drawn her mouth took on the appearance of a gash. “Screw you, Chapin. I trust no one who won’t trust me.”

  “Touché,” he whispered, looking at her with new respect. “All right, Brannigan, you’re a tough lady. Call Ed Kline now. Tell him what I asked you to do.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can ask to be taken off this assignment.”

  “Who would take my place?”

  “No one. I’ll do what I have to with your help or without it.”

  Brannigan held Chapin’s stare for several seconds before she picked up the phone. She dialed, and a few moments later said, “I need Mathews’ schedule for the next week.”