The Spy
Page 22
The redheaded madame ran to Scully’s couch. “Come with me!”
She pulled Scully through another curtain as the cops stormed in swinging their clubs and shouting threats. Scully saw no door in the near darkness, but when she shoved on the wall a narrow panel swung open. They went through, and she hinged it closed and threw heavy bolts shut at the top and bottom. “Quickly!”
She led him down a steep and narrow stairway barely wide enough for the detective to squeeze his bulk through. At each landing was another narrow door, which she opened, closed, and bolted behind them.
“Where are we going?” asked Scully.
“The tunnel.”
She unlocked a door with a key. Here was the tunnel, low-ceiled, narrow, and damp. It stretched into darkness. She took a battery light from a hole in the wall and by its flashing beam led them underground for what felt to Scully to be a distance of two city blocks. By the twists and turns and breaks in the walls, he surmised it was actually a right-of-way constructed through a series of connected cellars.
She unlocked another door, took his hand again, and led him up two flights of stairs into the conventionally furnished parlor of an apartment with high windows that offered views of the Chatham Square El station flooded in sunlight.
Scully had been in the dark so long, he found it hard to believe that daylight still existed.
“Thanks for the rescue, ma’am.”
“My name is Katy. Sit down. Relax.”
“Jasper,” said Scully. “Jasper Smith.”
Katy threw down her bag, reached up, and began removing hatpins.
Scully watched avidly. She was even prettier in the daylight. “You know,” he laughed. “If I carried a knife as long as your hatpins, the police would arrest me as a dangerous character.”
She gave him a cute pout. “A girl can’t wear her chapeau all crooked.”
“It doesn’t seem to matter if a girl wears a cartwheel or a little ding-dong affair, she always nails it down with hatpins long as her arm. I see you are a fellow Republican.”
“Where’d you get that idea?”
Scully reached for the ten-inch steel pin she was removing and held it to the light. The decorative bronze head depicted a possum holding a golf club. “ ‘Billy Possum.’ That’s what we call William Howard Taft.”
“They’re trying to make a possum like a teddy bear. But everyone knows that Taft is no Roosevelt.”
She stuck all four pins in a sofa cushion and tossed her hat beside them. Then she struck a pose, with her strong hands on her slim hips. “Opium is the one pleasure I can’t offer you here. Would you settle for a Scotch highball?”
“Among other things,” Scully grinned back.
He watched her mix Scotch and water in tall glasses. Then he clinked his to hers, took a sip, and leaned closer to kiss her on the mouth. She stepped back. “Let me get comfortable. I’ve been in these clothes all day.”
Scully searched the room quickly, thoroughly, and silently. He was looking for a rent bill or gas bill that would show whose apartment it was. He had to stop when the El clattered by because he couldn’t hear her coming back from the bedroom. It passed, and he looked some more.
“Say, how you doing in there?” he called.
“Hold your horses.”
Scully looked some more. Nothing. Drawers and cabinets were bare as a hotel room. He cast a look down the hall, and opened her purse. Just as he heard the door open, he hit the jackpot. Two railroad tickets for tomorrow’s three-thirty p.m. 20th Century Limited—the eighteen-hour excess-fare flyer to Chicago—with connections through to San Francisco. Tickets for Katy and whom? The boss? The Hip Sing boyfriend?
WHEN SHE FOUND the little thirteen-ounce .25 holstered in the small of his back, she wanted to know what it was doing there.
“Got robbed once carrying the payroll for my clerks. It ain’t gonna happen again.”
She seemed to believe him. At least it didn’t get in the way of the proceedings. Not until he saw her add the knockout drops to his second highball.
Scully felt suddenly old and blue.
She was so very good at it. She had the patience to wait to dress the second drink so he’d be less likely to taste the bitter chloral hydrate flavor. She hid the vial expertly between the crease of her palm and the fleshy part of her thumb. She crossed her legs as she did it, with a distracting flash of snow-white thighs. Her only failing was her youth. He was too old to be buncoed by a kid.
“Bottoms up,” she smiled.
“Bottoms up,” Scully whispered back. “You know, I never met a girl quite like you.” Gazing soulfully into her pretty blue eyes, he reached blindly for his glass and knocked it off the table.
ISAAC BELL GOT to the Knickerbocker’s cellar bar ten minutes early. Midafternoon on a sunny day, it was largely empty, and he saw right away that Abbington-Westlake had not yet arrived. There was one man at the bar, two couples at tables, and a single slight figure seated on the banquette behind the small table where he had sat with the English Naval Attaché in the darkest corner of the room. Immaculately dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat, high-standing collar, and four-in-hand tie, he beckoned, half rising and bowing his head.
Bell approached, wondering if he could believe his eyes.
“Yamamoto Kenta, I presume?”
32
MR. BELL, ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE NAMBU TYPE B?”
“Low-quality, 7-millimeter semiautomatic pistol,” Bell answered tersely. “Most Japanese officers buy themselves a Browning.”
“I’m a sentimental patriot,” said Yamamoto. “And it is remarkably effective at a range of one small tabletop. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Bell sat down, laid his big hands on the table, one palm down, one up, and scrutinized a face that gave away nothing.
“How far do you think you will get if you shoot me in a crowded hotel?”
“Considering how far I have gotten from a dozen professional detectives for the past two weeks, pursuit by ordinary citizens drinking in a hotel bar holds few terrors for me. But surely you can guess that I did not lure you here to shoot you, which I could have done late last night as you walked home from this hotel to your club on 44th Street.”
Bell returned a grim smile. “My congratulations to the Black Ocean Society for teaching their spies the art of invisibility.”
“I accept the compliment,” Yamamoto smiled back. “In the name of the Empire of Japan.”
“Why does a patriot of the Empire of Japan become the instrument of an English spy’s revenge?”
“Don’t be put out with Abbington-Westlake. You hurt his pride, which is a dangerous thing to do to an Englishman.”
“Next time I see him, I won’t hurt his pride.”
Yamamoto smiled again. “That is between you and him. Let us remember that you and I are not enemies.”
“You murdered Arthur Langner in the Gun Factory,” Bell shot back coldly. “That makes us enemies.”
“I did not kill Arthur Langner. Someone else did. An overzealous subordinate. I’ve taken appropriate measures with him.”
Bell nodded. He saw no profit in challenging that cold-eyed lie until he learned Yamamoto’s intention. “If you didn’t murder Langner and we are not enemies, why are you pointing a gun under the table at my belly?”
“To hold your attention while I explain what is going on and what I can do to help you.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
“Because you can help me.”
“You are offering to deal.”
“I am offering to trade.”
“Trade what?”
“The spy who arranged Langner’s murder and the murder of Lakewood, the fire-control expert, and the murder of the turbine expert, MacDonald, and the murder of Gordon, the armorer in Bethlehem, and the attempt to sabotage the launch of the Michigan, which you so ably thwarted.”
“Trade for what?”
“Time for me to disappear.”
“It is more complicated than simply disappearing. I have my own responsibilities—responsibilities to my country—which have nothing to do with you because we are not enemies. I need to get clean away and leave no tracks to haunt me or embarrass my country.”
Bell thought hard. Yamamoto was confirming what he had suspected—that a spy other than he was the mastermind who had recruited not only the Japanese murderer but the German saboteur and who knew how many others.
Yamamoto spoke urgently. “Discretion is survival. Defeats, and victories, should be observed quietly, after the fact, at a distance.”
To save his own skin—and who knew for what other motives—Yamamoto would betray the mastermind. As the treacherous Abbington-Westlake had put it so cynically at this same table, “Welcome to the world of espionage, Mr. Bell.”
“How can I trust you?”
“I will explain two reasons why you should trust me. First, I have not killed you, and I could have. Agreed?”
“You could have tried.”
“Second, here is my pistol. I am passing it to you under the table. Do what you will.”
He handed Bell the pistol, butt first.
“Is the safety on?” asked Bell.
“It is now that it’s pointed at me,” replied Yamamoto. “Now I will stand up. With your permission.”
Bell nodded.
Yamamoto stood up. Bell said, “I will trust you more after you hand me that second pistol hidden in your side pocket.”
Yamamoto smiled faintly. “Sharp eyes, Mr. Bell. But in order to deliver the goods, I may need it.”
“In that case,” said Bell, “take this one, too.”
“Thank you.”
“Good hunting.”
LATE THAT NIGHT, Yamamoto Kenta confronted the spy in his Alexandria, Virginia, waterfront warehouse. “Your plan to attack the Great White Fleet at Mare Island,” he began in the formal, measured phrases of a diplomat, “is not in the interest of my government.”
It had been raining for two days, and the Potomac River was rising, swelled by the vast watershed that drained thousands of square miles of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. The powerful current made the floor tremble. The rain drummed on the ancient roof. Leaks dripped into a helmet turned upside down on the spy’s desk, splashed on the old searchlight behind him and streamed down its lens.
The spy could not hide his astonishment. “How did you find out?”
Yamamoto smiled thinly. “Perhaps it is my ‘natural aptitude for spying, and a cunning and self-control not found in the West.’ His smile froze in a hard line, his lips so tight that the spy could see his teeth outlined against them.
“I will not permit this,” the Japanese continued. “You will drive a wedge between Japan and the United States at precisely the wrong time.”
“The wedge is already in motion,” the spy said mildly.
“What good would come of it?”
“Depends on your point of view. From the German point of view, embroiling Japan and the United States in conflict would open up opportunities in the Pacific. Nor will Great Britain mourn if the U.S. Navy is forced to concentrate its battleships on its West Coast. They might even seize the opportunity to reoccupy the West Indies.”
“It does nothing for Japan.”
“I have German and British friends willing to pay me for their opportunities.”
“You are even worse than I thought.”
The spy laughed. “Don’t you understand? The international dreadnought race presents splendiferous opportunities to a man with the intestinal fortitude to seize them. The rival nations will pay anything to stop each other. I’m a salesman in a seller’s market.”
“You are playing both ends against the middle.”
The spy laughed louder. “You underestimate me, Yamamoto. I am playing every end against the middle. I am building a fortune. What will it cost me to keep you out of my game?”
“I am not a mercenary.”
“Oh, I forgot. You’re a patriot.” Idly, he picked up a thick black towel that had been draped over the arm of his chair. “A gentleman spy with high morals. But a gentleman spy is like a pistol that shoots blanks—good for starting bicycle races, but little else.”
Yamamoto was coldly sure of his position. “I am not a gentleman spy. I am a patriot like your father, who served his Kaiser as I serve my Emperor. Neither of us would sell out our country.”
“Will you leave my poor dead father out of this?” the spy asked wearily.
“Your father would understand why I must stop you.” Yamamoto drew from his coat his Nambu semiautomatic pistol, deftly pulled the cocking knob, and pointed the short barrel at the spy’s head.
The spy looked at him with a thin smile. “Are you serious, Kenta? What are you going to do, turn me in to the U.S. Navy? They may have questions for you, too.”
“I am sure they would. Which is why I’m going to turn you over to the Van Dorn Detective Agency.”
“What for?”
“The Van Dorns will hold you until I am safely out of the country. They will turn you over to the U.S. Navy.”
The spy shut his eyes. “You’re forgetting one thing. I don’t have a country.”
“But I know where you came from, Eyes O’Shay. Mr. Brian ‘Eyes’ O’Shay.”
The spy’s eyes popped open. He stared at the towel that he had been raising to his face. It lay in his hands like an offering.
Yamamoto gloated. “Surprised?”
“I am very surprised,” the spy admitted. “Brian O’Shay has not been my name for a very long time.”
“I told you, I was playing this game before you were born. Put your hands where I can see them or I’ll give the Van Dorns your corpse instead.”
The spy squeezed his eyes shut again. “You frighten me, Kenta. I am merely trying to mop the perspiration from my face.” He dabbed his forehead, then pressed the black towel as tightly as he could to his eyes. Hidden at his feet was a thick electrical cable that connected the public-utility main to a knife switch in the open position. The switch’s hinged metal lever was poised inches above its jaw. He stomped down on the lever’s insulated handle, closing the circuit. A fat blue spark cracked like a pistol shot.
From behind him, the 200,000,000-candlepower searchlight capable of illuminating enemy ships at six miles shot a beam like white fire into Yamamoto’s eyes. It was so bright that the spy could see the bones in his hands through his eyelids, the thick towel, and his skin and flesh. It seared Yamamoto’s retinas, blinding him. The Japanese spy fell backward, screaming.
The spy kicked the switch open again and waited for the light to fade before he dropped the towel and stood up, blinking at the pink circles spinning before his eyes.
“Navy captains tell me that searchlights fend off destroyers better than guns,” he said conversationally. “I can report that they work just as well on traitors.”
From his desk drawer, he took a folded copy of the Washington Post and removed from it a twelve-inch length of lead pipe. He circled the desk and stepped around the fallen chair. He was only a few inches taller than the tiny Yamamoto, who was writhing on the floor. But he was as strong as three men and he moved with the concentrated purpose of a torpedo.
He raised the lead pipe high and slammed it down on Yamamoto’s skull.
One blow was more than enough.
He felt inside Yamamoto’s pockets to make sure he carried identification and found in his wallet a letter of introduction to the Smithsonian Institution from a Japanese museum. Perfect. He rummaged about the warehouse until he found a cork lifesaving jacket. He made sure its canvas was still strong, then he worked Yamamoto’s arms into it and tied it securely.
He dragged the body to the dock side of the warehouse where the building cantilevered over the Potomac. A wooden lever that st
ood tall as his shoulders released the trap in the floor. It dropped with a loud bang. The body splashed. On a rain-lashed night like this, the river would sweep it miles away.
He was done here. It was time to leave Washington. He circled the dusty warehouse, tipping over kerosene hurricane lamps that he had placed there for his departure. He circled again, lighting matches and tossing them on the spilled kerosene, and when all was blazing bright orange flames he walked out the door and into the rain.
33
BELL WAITED ALL THE NEXT DAY FOR WORD FROM Yamamoto. Every time a telephone rang or a telegraph key clattered, he startled at his desk only to sit back disappointed. Something must have gone wrong. It made no sense that the Japanese spy would betray him. He had appeared voluntarily. He had suggested the trade. As the afternoon wore on, the phones kept ringing and ringing.
Suddenly the agent manning them signaled, and Bell raced across the room.
“Operator just called. Message from Scully.”
“What?”
“All he said was, ‘Grand Central, three-thirty p.m.’ ”
Bell grabbed his hat. Enigmatic even by Scully’s standards, it meant either that Scully turned up something of vital importance or he was in danger. “Keep listening for Yamamoto. I’ll telephone from Grand Central if I can. But soon as Yamamoto reports, send a courier to come looking for me.”
JOHN SCULLY HAD DECIDED it was time to bring in Isaac Bell. Truth be told, he admitted to himself as he hunted the public telephone pay station in Grand Central, it was past time. He couldn’t find the damned thing. The old railroad station was being torn down and replaced by a vast new terminal, and they kept moving the telephones. Where the telephones had been the last time he used them was a gaping pit that offered a view of track levels descending sixty feet into the ground. When he finally found the telephones, losing ten minutes in the process, he told the operator, “Van Dorn Detective Agency. Knickerbocker.” A uniformed attendant showed him into one of the wood-paneled booths.