The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

by Otto Penzler

  least twice. There are no hidden notes or journals. All his personal papers and manuscripts will be given to Cambridge University.” “Miss Barnes, the feeling is that he might have come into possession of material he could not publish under the Official Secrets Act. Do you know what he was working on at the time of his death?”

  The smile faded as she began to comprehend the people he represented. “Did that man Vestry send you?”

  “I have spoken with Harry Vestry. He did not send me.”

  “He knows my price.”

  “One million pounds is beyond our resources.”

  “Then the auction will go on as planned, even though I realize I won’t come close to that figure. Men like Vestry fought my father all his life. I owe him nothing.”

  “When I was looking over the items just now I spotted a familiar face. Simon Spalding. You certainly don’t owe him anything.”

  The news didn’t seem to bother her. “He knew my father years ago. I remember him visiting the house once around the time of Sadat’s assassination. It’s not surprising he’d be interested in the exhibition. Perhaps he might even bid on something.”

  “Has he approached you about any particular piece?”

  “No.” She stood up from the table and said, “I really must be going, Mr. Rand. We have nothing further to discuss. Tell Harry Vestry the auction will go on as planned.”

  He sighed and left the room after a few polite words. Then he went downstairs into the warm July afternoon. He’d walked about a block when someone fell into step beside him. It was the bulletheaded former assassin, Shirley Watkins. “Didn’t do so well, did you, Mr. Rand? I could have told you that. She’s the sort of woman needs a little fright before she sees reason.”

  The following morning, as she was leaving to deliver one of her summer lectures on Egyptian archaeology at Reading University, Rand told Leila he’d be going into London again. “Two days in a row?” she asked, somewhat surprised.

  “Maybe three. There’s an auction at Sotheby’s tomorrow that I should attend. It’s part of Cedric Barnes’s estate, the fellow who wrote those insider books about British Intelligence.”

  “I hope you’re not going to buy anything.”

  “I’ll try not to,” he said with a grin.

  This time only three of them were in the meeting room on the second floor of the Old Spies Club. Vestry and Colonel Cheever listened intently as Rand told them what had transpired the previous afternoon. “When I suggested contacting Magda Barnes I had no idea that Shirley would be dogging my steps. Did one of you send him after me?”

  “Hardly, old boy,” Cheever answered. “You know Shirley. He has a mind of his own.”

  “Look, the auction is taking place tomorrow morning. Shirley can’t stop it. You can’t allow him to threaten that woman in any manner.”

  “Nothing could be further from our minds,” Vestry assured him. “We’re out of the game now, retired. I don’t break codes anymore and Shirley Watkins doesn’t kill people. Is that understood?” Colonel Cheever snorted. “I doubt that he ever did kill people. It was probably all a scare campaign to intimidate the other side.” “Maybe he started believing the campaign himself. He spoke of Barnes’s daughter needing a little fright to see reason. I told him to leave her alone.”

  “Did you look over the auction items?” Vestry asked. “Any likely hiding places for notes or a journal?”

  “A desk or coffee table could have a hidden drawer or a false bottom. If it’s on microfilm or a microdot the possibilities are endless.” Rand decided it was time to bring things out in the open. “Look here, there’s something about this whole business you’re not telling me. You talk of spending upwards of a million pounds, of threatening Barnes’s daughter, of keeping the press away. From what? What’s in this journal that makes it so valuable?”

  Vestry maintained an uneasy silence until Colonel Cheever started to speak. Then he interrupted to say, “You might as well know, Rand. Rumor has it that Cedric Barnes once interviewed a double agent, someone working for us who was on the verge of defecting to Moscow. This was to be the man’s swan song, his public rationale for his actions, not to be published until he was safely out of the country.”

  “And — ?”

  “And at the last moment something changed. The double agent never defected, and Cedric Barnes kept his word. He never published the interview.”

  “How long ago is this supposed to have happened?” Rand asked. Harry Vestry shrugged. “In some versions it was 1985. Other

  versions have it way back in the seventies when Barnes was still a relatively young man. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “And yet the dozen men around this table yesterday all believe it happened. Not only that, they believe the interview still exists somewhere. Why would Barnes keep it all these years? Why not simply destroy it?”

  “Unfortunately, he was a newspaperman,” the slender man answered. “I imagine he kept it all these years on the off chance that the man might defect after all. The Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall came down, and still he kept it.”

  “You have no way of knowing that with any certainty,” Rand pointed out.

  “Simon Spalding knows it, and he’s after the journal.”

  Someone else knew it too, Rand suddenly realized. The man who had given the interview. Naturally he would have begged Barnes to destroy it after he decided to remain in England. Naturally he would suspect it was still in existence. He would have been most anxious to keep it out of Spalding’s hands.

  Rand found himself asking the obvious question. “Which of the club members first brought up this matter? Who was it that wanted the auction stopped?”

  Colonel Cheever answered. “We’d all heard the rumors, of course. They say Barnes dropped hints himself on nights when he’d had a few too many brandies. When the auction was announced, several of us were concerned. I suppose Harry and I took the lead in it, but it was Shirley who talked it up and arranged for the meeting. He claimed to have two dozen of the old boys, but as you saw, only half that number really appeared when the time came.”

  “Eleven of us, really,” Vestry corrected. “Rand was an addition, you’ll remember. I’d say you and I and Shirley were the organizers. The other eight were lukewarm to the idea.”

  “Could you give me a list of their names?”

  “What in heaven’s name for?” Vestry still possessed the field agent’s reluctance to commit anything to paper.

  “If there’s any truth to the rumors, the mysterious double agent could be retired now. He could even be a member of this club. If so, he would have been especially interested in attending your meeting yesterday.”

  “Nonsense!” Cheever blustered. “I’ve known these people for most of my life. I’d vouch for any of them.”

  Rand ignored him and asked Vestry, “Where can I find Shirley Watkins?”

  The slim man considered his question. “If he’s not here he’s most likely at the Moon and Stars. It’s a pub down by the river, near Canary Wharf.”

  The two worlds of Shirley Watkins were vastly different from one another. The quiet luxury of the Old Spies Club was only some eight kilometers from the Moon and Stars Pub at Canary Wharf, but they were separated by more than distance. Once a haven for seamen off the nearby docks, now it was a meeting place for office workers from the tallest building in England. Even a recent IRA bombing had done little to frighten people out of the area. On this summer Wednesday the place was crowded and the aroma of beer mixed with a haze of cigarette smoke.

  Rand spotted Shirley Watkins at once, seated in a booth with a middle-aged woman wearing too much makeup. He had on a suit and tie, and his bald bullet head seemed to reflect the overhead lights as he drank from a pint of stout. A decade or so older than the other male customers, he could still have been an executive from one of the Canary Wharf firms. When he saw Rand heading for him he told the woman, “Here’s business. I’ll talk to you later.” She gave Rand a sour look and
exited the booth.

  Rand slipped in to take her place. “I want to speak with you about the auction,” he began.

  Shirley eyed him, sizing him up. “How’d you find me?”

  “Harry Vestry said you might be here.”

  “Yeah, Harry. I think he still spies on all of us, just to keep his hand in.”

  “Did you take my advice about Magda Barnes and stay away from her?”

  He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Whatever you say is fine with me. I was always one for obeying orders.”

  Rand deliberately avoided making eye contact, fearing he might detect a touch of irony in the words. “I was talking with Vestry and the colonel this afternoon. They told me about the rumors.”

  “What rumors?”

  “The interview that Barnes is supposed to have done with a double agent before he defected.”

  “Yeah, that.” Shirley Watkins downed the rest of his pint. “Do you believe any of it?”

  “I don’t know. I heard it for the first time about an hour ago.” “Well, I’ve got my doubts, but I’ll do whatever they want.”

  Rand frowned at the words. “What do you mean by that?” he started to ask, then cut himself short. Another familiar face had just entered the Moon and Stars.

  “What’s the matter, Rand?”

  “That reporter Spalding just came in. He must have followed me.”

  “Say the word and he’ll be feeding the fishes.”

  Rand gave a dry chuckle. “Did you ever in your life really kill anyone, Shirley, or has it all been an act?”

  “I’ve done my part.”

  “Haven’t we all?” He slid out of the booth. “I’d better go talk to Spalding.”

  The columnist was nursing a half-pint, trying to avoid looking in the direction of the booth, when Rand joined him. ‘You’re Simon Spalding, aren’t you? I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced. I’m Jeffrey Rand.”

  Spalding was a slender man in his ^arly fifties with thinning brown hair and a crooked nose that might have been broken in his youth. “Oh yes. One of the retired spies. There are a great many of you around these days, aren’t there? You must have hated to see the Cold War end.”

  Rand already knew from Spalding’s columns that he didn’t particularly like the man. “I retired from the Service long before the end of the Cold War,” he said, and then asked, “Were you a friend of Cedric Barnes? I saw you at Sotheby’s yesterday.”

  Spalding shrugged. “A fellow journalist. I was interested in what was being offered. I only met him once, at some awards dinner.”

  “I suppose his daughter has already removed anything of special value.”

  He shot Rand a glance that seemed an unspoken question. “We don’t know that. Sometimes people have clever hiding places for their valuables. They even sell fake beer cans now so you can hide your money and jewelry in the fridge.”

  “Good idea, so long as the thief doesn’t have a thirst. I gather you’ll be at the auction tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure. I’d like to pick up a souvenir of the old guy.”

  “There are legends about him, about the stories he didn’t publish.”

  Simon Spalding laughed. He was warming a litde toward Rand. ‘We all have stories that don’t get published for one reason or another, same as you blokes. I remember back in nineteen eighty-one when the Speculator took me off the European desk and gave me the column to write, I passed along some great story leads to my successor but nothing ever happened.”

  “Tell me something, just between us,” Rand said with a smile. “Who are you following this evening — me or Shirley?”

  “They say that man is a government-authorized assassin.”

  “Does he look like one?”

  “Damn right he does!”

  “Then he’s probably not. Not anymore, certainly. He’s retired, same as the rest of us.”

  A sly look came over the columnist’s face. “Member of the Old Spies Club, is he?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The place on St. James’s Street where you all go. That’s what they call it, don’t they? I’d do a column about it if I wasn’t afraid of getting sued.”

  “Stick to the Royal Family,” Rand advised. “It’s safer.”

  He moved away from the bar and headed for the door, waving goodbye to Shirley Watkins.

  Rand had to catch the early train into London for the auction the following morning. He was up before Leila because he wanted to clean and oil the little Beretta pistol he hadn’t fired in years. Just seeing him with it would have upset her, he knew. But catching sight of himself in a mirror, he realized how foolish he looked. He was too old for these things. Deadly weapons were not for Sotheby’s, and certainly not for the Old Spies Club.

  The first familiar face he saw as he entered the auction house and registered for his plastic paddle was Harry Vestry, standing near the door and glancing at his watch. “I was hoping you’d be here, Rand.” He glanced at Rand’s paddle. “Number Seventy-seven! Sure to be lucky if you care to bid. If Cheever and Watkins get here too, I’d like to position us in different parts of the hall where we can keep track of the bidding. I know it’s often impossible to identify the high bidder, especially if it’s made by phone, but we can try.”

  Still playing the old spy, Rand thought. “Simon Spalding is sure to be here, bidding on something. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Good! I saw him go in a few minutes ago. He took a paddle, so he plans to bid.”

  But when Rand entered the large high-ceilinged auction room with its twin chandeliers and rows of folding chairs, the first person he saw was Magda Barnes, immaculate in a white summer suit. “We meet again, Mr. Rand.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Will you be bidding on any of my father’s items?”

  “I may.” He lifted number seventy-seven and gave it a little twirl. “Good luck! You have a nice crowd.” Then he went off to find a seat.

  The auction had already started and they were on the fifth item, Rand estimated there were about a hundred and fifty people in the room. Some, apparently the high bidders, were in glass booths above floor level. They seemed to be connected by telephone to their agents on the floor. Above the stage where the auctioneer stood, a large electronic sign gave the latest bids in pounds sterling, dollars, francs, yen, and other currencies. As each item was announced for bidding it was shown on a turntable next to the auctioneer. Spotters along each side of the room watched for bids that the auctioneer might miss.

  Rand could see that the prices were running fairly high for the antique items. Personal items and office supplies brought less, although Simon Spalding, seated a few rows ahead of Rand, paid two hundred pounds for Barnes’s old manual typewriter. Rand was surprised when Colonel Cheever suddenly appeared, raising his paddle from a back row to bid on the collection of books. The bidding was lively but Cheever finally lost out.

  The canopied four-poster bed, too large for the turntable, was wheeled onto the stage. It went to a dark-complexioned man who may have been an Arab. Barnes’s writing desk fetched a good sum from a neatly dressed young couple.

  Finally Rand spotted Shirley seated On the aisle near the rear. He held a plastic paddle with the number sixty-eight on it. That probably meant he’d come in before Rand, yet Harry Vestry at the door hadn’t noticed him. It signified nothing, of course. Vestry might have stopped in the men’s room for a moment.

  The collection of Cedric Barnes’s own books, in various languages, was the last item to be auctioned. This time Colonel Cheever tried again, with better results. He took the lot for eleven hundred pounds.

  Several of the winning bidders went to the office to setde up and claim the items if they were small enough to carry. Rand was on his way out when he ran into Simon Spalding at the St. George Street entrance. “Did you bid on anything?” the columnist asked.

  “Not a thing. But I see you picked up that old typewriter.” Spalding hefted it
in its leather carrying case. “It’s worth about a tenth of what I paid, but I wanted a remembrance of the old guy. He was one of the tops in the business.”

  Rand smiled in agreement. “He certainly was that.” He glanced at his watch. “Look here, Spalding, it’s nearly one o’clock. We both could stand a spot of lunch. The Old Spies Club, as you referred to it, is only a few blocks away, just across Piccadilly. Come along with me and I’ll treat you.”

  Spalding quickly accepted. “That’s very generous of you, Rand. I’ll admit to being curious about the place.”

  As they entered the club, he suggested that Spalding might want to leave the typewriter in the checkroom, but the columnist clutched it firmly. “Oh no! This cost me two hundred pounds and I’m hanging onto it.”

  Rand chuckled and led the way into the dining room. After a luncheon of roast beef and blood pudding, topped with red wine and finished off with trifle for dessert, Spalding took out a cigar and they adjourned to the gentlemen’s smoking lounge. It was deserted at this hour of the afternoon except for one man sleeping in an armchair, his bald head visible over its top. The columnist lit his cigar, offering one to Rand, who declined. Then they settled back in the comfort of the overstuffed leather armchairs.

  “I can see why you chaps like this place,” Spalding said. “It’s a perfect setting to wile away one’s retirement.”

  Rand smiled slightly. “Now that we’re comfortable, suppose you show me the typewriter.”

  “What? This thing?”

  “The very same.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can confirm my suspicion as to the identity of the fabled double agent.”

  Simon Spalding laughed. ‘You think this old manual typewriter of Barnes’s will tell you that?”

  “I know it will, and so do you. Who ever saw a shiny plastic ribbon on a manual typewriter? They all used fabric ribbons.” He reached down and unzipped the leather carrying case. The columnist made no attempt to stop him. “It’s a bit narrower than the quarter-inch plastic ribbons that electric typewriters use. There was all this talk of a journal, but Cedric Barnes used a tape recorder for interviews, didn’t he? They even auctioned one off today.” Rand removed the ribbon from the machine. “It’s a tape, masquerading as a typewriter ribbon. The tape of Barnes’s infamous last interview with the double agent.”