The Spy

by Garbo Norman

  Burke braked as the car bounced and splashed through some ruts. He loves this girl, he thought with vague surprise. He’s proud as hell of her and he absolutely adores her. Somehow, this cheered Burke inordinately.

  “How long do we have to stay on this lousy road?” David asked.

  “Only a few more miles,” Burke said. “It feeds right into Route 103. From there, we’ll go west to Route 9, then north to Dobbs Ferry, where I’ll leave you. Then you two can take off on your own. Are you tired?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think you’d be better off driving straight through the night Let Dolores spell you at the wheel if you get sleepy, but put as many miles behind you as you can before morning. You have a full tank, so you won’t need to stop for gas before you’re well into Pennsylvania. Just don’t get picked up for speeding or anything else. Once you’re out of the state, there’s no need to rush anyway. Take your time. Stay off toll roads and turnpikes wherever you can. It’s a big, beautiful country. Enjoy yourselves.” Burke smiled a bit ruefully. “I envy you both.”

  Steering with one hand, Burke took out an envelope with the other and handed it across the girl to David. “Here’s your driver’s license and car ownership. Your new name is Jimmy Cooper. I hope you won’t have to keep it too long.”

  “Thanks. How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean nothing? The car alone must have cost almost five thousand bucks.”

  “It’s a going-away present for you and Dolores.”

  “No!” David exploded. “No presents. There’s no reason for any goddamned presents. I …” He stopped himself as Burke glanced at him. “I appreciate it, but I’ve got plenty of money and I…”

  ”Please, David. Money happens to be the least of my problems right now. So it’s only a small thing, really. I’m just trying to say thanks for all you’ve done. Consider it my need, not yours. Okay?”

  David turned to Dolores for support, but found none. Looking ahead through the headlights’ beam, she might have been trying to count the trees along the trail. Her lips were pursed in concentration, and her face carried a delicate expression of cool reserve. At that moment she did not look nearly so young. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks. But what about you? What are you going to be doing?”

  “More of the same — trying to find out why they want my head. Then the thought of Tom Ludlow suddenly intruded and Burke fell silent. More frustration. Now he had to sweat out Ludlow’s return from a much publicized conference in Paris. And until the man did get back, there was nothing he could do but alternately brood and hope. “Anyway,” he went on, “watch the personal notices in the San Francisco Chronicle. If I want to get in touch with you, my message will be addressed to Jimmy Cooper. And if you have to reach me for any reason, address your notice to Arthur Radin in the New York Times. You got that straight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s just one other thing,” Burke said. “If they do pick me up — or if anything happens to me — it’s important that you know. Once they’re finished with me, you’ll be all right. I don’t want you having to hide indefinitely. So I’ve worked something out. I’m going to leave a prepaid notice at the Chronicle with special instructions. They’ll get a call from me every two weeks telling them not to run the notice. If ever I don’t call for four weeks in a row, they’re to automatically run the notice on the fifth week. It will say, ‘Jimmy, come home. All is forgiven.’ If you see that, you’ll know it’s over for me and you’re in the clear.”

  “Did David tell you I was a hooker?” Delores broke in hurriedly.

  ‘Yes.”

  “But not anymore, not since I went to live with him. Now all I do is cook and clean and screw just for fun. I even read books. David gave me A Farewell to Arms. It’s by Ernest Hemingway. Did you ever read it?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “You remember how it ends?”

  “Don’t tell her,” David cut in. “I’m trying to teach her to read the right way — front to back.”

  Dolores giggled.

  “That was sneaky,” David told her. “And you promised.”

  “I only promised not to look at the back of the book.”

  David started to say something more, but Burke did not hear him. He was leaning forward in his seat, staring through the windshield. “I don’t believe it…” he said softly.

  Coming around a sharp curve, the headlights had suddenly picked out four men standing behind a car that was parked sideways across the road. The men had guns pointing straight at them. They were no more than twenty yards away. Without warning they opened fire.

  Burke swore and gunned the motor as the car lurched forward, wheels spinning wildly in the mud. “Hold on and get down. We’re going through.”

  “Wait!” David yelled. He made a grab for Dolores, but was jolted back against the door. Shots were exploding in bursts of automatic fire. Then they crashed into the front end of the other car and David’s head went into the windshield. Burke swung the wheel, cut it back, and swung it again. He felt the car shudder, hesitate, then leap forward once more as it tore clear. Shots were going off all over the place now and he heard glass shattering. A moment later they were on Route 103 and speeding west. Burke glanced at his passengers. David was leaning against the door. His arms were around Dolores, clutching her tightly. They both seemed to be unconscious. Burke kept driving.

  Parked in a small clearing, surrounded by darkness and trees, Burke pulled at David’s arms.

  “David, let go.”

  David opened his eyes. “What?” he mumbled.

  “Let go of her.”

  “Who?”

  “Dolores.”

  David glanced down and looked at the girl in his arms. Dolores’s head was resting against his chest and he looked at it long and carefully. Then he turned and looked at the holes in the windshield. No lights were on and it was hard for him to see. He blinked, then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “I think I’m bleeding.”

  Burke had stopped pulling at his arms. “You went into the windshield. It’s not bad. Just a few cuts.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Off Route 9, somewhere near Dobbs Ferry.”

  David nodded consideringly. As if just discovering his hands, he moved them across Dolores’s back. “You got away from them, huh?”

  “At least for now.”’ “Good. I’m glad.”

  Burke was silent.

  “It was me who set you up. I told Ellman where we were meeting: the time, the exact spot, everything.”

  Burke still said nothing.

  David began rocking gently with Dolores. “It was the only way he’d let us out. He said he’d bury us if I didn’t cooperate. And when I found how you’d lied to me, I guess I went a little crazy.”

  “I never lied to you, David.”

  “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Ellman said you’d sold out, that you were a double agent, working for the Russians. He said that was why they were after you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  David closed his eyes. Still rocking, he pressed his cheek to Dolores’s hair. “He showed me pictures,” he said tiredly. “He had it all on film. You and a Colonel Igronsky. You were getting paid off. He showed me how you changed attache cases at Heathrow Airport in London.”

  “Ah, David.” Burke shook his head. “I’m afraid he just turned that one around for you. It was Igronsky who was the double agent for us. It was I who was paying him.”

  David rocked in the darkness. “Well…” Delicately, one hand patted Dolores’s shoulder. “Well, what do you -know. I mean, that’s really funny, isn’t it?”

  “David …”

  “Ellman promised you’d get a fair trial. He said there’d be no shooting. The bastard. They started shooting the minute they saw the car. They never gave you a chance.”

  Burke watched
him. The rain made a hollow, metallic sound against the roof of the car. Overhead, a plane’s engines struggled through the weather.

  “They never planned on any trial, did they?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “There was no way for you to know.”

  David rocked with Dolores, an old Orthodox Jew lost in his evening devotions. After awhile, he started to cry. He wept without sound and the tears ran down his cheeks and mixed with the blood.

  Burke studied him with great care. He might have been researching a monograph on grief. He refused to look anywhere else.

  “In the head…” David said softly. “She weighs a hundred and three pounds and they had to go and shoot her in the goddamned head. They’re inconceivable. They knew she was in the car.” He began to rock harder. “In the goddamned head. I mean, did you see what they went and did to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay .. . okay. So where’s the sense to it?”

  “There is no sense to it,” Burke said gently, accepting his assigned dialogue without question.

  “What kind of enemy was she of the fucking Republic? I mean, where was the threat?”

  Burke said nothing.

  “A hundred-and-three-pound, nineteen-year-old ex-hooker and the sons-of-bitches had to go and …”

  He broke off. Burke sat stiffly behind the wheel and waited. From a long way off, he had suddenly remembered an even younger girl.

  “I beg your pardon,” David said with quiet dignity. “I’m sorry. I know this is real heavy. It must be very embarrassing for you to have to sit and listen to this kind of shit”

  “No, no …”

  David absently stroked the girl’s hair. His hand was dark and slippery with blood. When he spoke again, he had stopped weeping and his voice was more controlled. “Okay. So who’s neck do I hang it on?”

  “That won’t help her.”

  “No. But it’ll sure help me.”

  “David, listen …”

  “I don’t want to listen. I’ve already listened my girl right into a hole in her head.”

  Burke saw how it was going to be.

  “It’s got to be Ellman, of course,” David rushed on. “My own fucking yiddishe landsman. My good old Uncle Louie. He’s the one who lied to me about you. He’s the one who baited me into setting you up. He’s the one who promised there’d be no shooting. So even if he didn’t actually pull the trigger himself, he’s the one who really killed her. Right?”

  But Burke chose to reject this particular part of his assigned dialogue.

  “So what am I going to do about him?”

  “Please. Haven’t you had trouble enough? Forget about him, will you.”

  “You forget about him. I’ll forget about him when I’m dead.”

  “If you start pushing this,” Burke said wearily, “I’m sure he can arrange that for you too.”

  “You mean you won’t help me?” David’s voice had gone all fuzzy around the edges again. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  Burke measured the younger man’s mood and condition. “I’m saying don’t act like a suicidal idiot. We both need time on this. You won’t do anyone any good by screaming for instant vengeance. In time maybe you’ll get your payment — if that’s what you still want. But you’re crazy to personalize something like this. A lot more than just Ellman is involved. He didn’t kill Dolores. He’s just following orders. Which might not make you feel any better, but happens to be the way it is.”

  But David seemed to have lost interest in anything Burke had to say on the subject. Rocking the dead girl once more, he stared off into the night.

  Burke touched his arm. “David, did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m great.”

  “There are a couple of things I’m going to have to tell you to do.”

  “Go ahead. Tell me. That’s what I’m best at, doing what other people tell me to do. That’s how I ended up getting a bullet into my girl’s head.”

  Burke waited.

  “All right,” David said. “I’m listening.”

  “I left a car near the train station in Dobbs Ferry this morning. We’ll drive there together now, then separate. You’ll have to drive this wreck back to New York alone. I don’t think they’ll have any roadblocks set up. There are too many directions to cover and their personnel are limited. In any case, it doesn’t really matter if you’re picked up. It’ll just save you the trouble of having to get in touch with Ellman. You did everything he told you to do, so you’re in the clear. And since you can no longer be of any use to him with me, I’m sure he’s finally finished with you.”

  “Yeah? Well I’m not finished with him.”

  Burke ignored the threat. “Now about Dolores.. ,* David stopped his rocking.

  “I think it would be best if you didn’t travel with her,” Burke said gently. “I think it would be best if you left her here and let Ellman make the necessary arrangements later tonight or in the morning.”

  David was staring at him. “You want me to leave her here alone? In the rain?”

  Burke said nothing.

  “No. I’m not leaving her.”

  “She’s dead, David.”

  David’s eyes were as black as his beard. “Didn’t you hear what I said? I said I’m not leaving her.”

  “All right,” Burke sighed. “Then let me help you put her on the back seat.”

  “I’m keeping her right here with me.”

  “David, you can’t drive with …”

  “You just shut up, damn it! Don’t you tell me what I can’t do.”

  “Then get her to Ellman as fast as you can. If someone happens to spot you with her, it could get complicated.”

  But David had already tuned him out.

  Burke headed out of the grove and ten minutes later pulled tip alongside his own car. With Dolores leaning against David’s shoulder between them, neither man had spoken during the short drive. Now, Burke said, “You know how to get back from here?”

  “I’ll take the Saw Mill River Parkway right down to the Henry Hudson.”

  Burke looked at him, once again measuring. He seemed more resigned to than satisfied with what he saw. “I’m sorry about Dolores, about everything.”

  David studied a hole in the windshield with its halo of shatter. It appeared to be the absolute focus of his concentration.

  “Please. Don’t go and try anything stupid about Ellman. Just be patient Use your head.”

  David nodded distantly.

  “You’re sure you can manage?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay in touch,” said Burke, and got out of the car, Into his own, and quickly drove away, as if to have hesitated or to have even glanced back would have made it impossible for him to leave at all.

  Chapter 18

  The message from Sally Warden (Pamela’s code name) had been clocked in at 8:42 P.M. and Burke returned it precisely three hours later from a booth on Ninth Avenue and Fifty-third Street. It was the first time that Pamela herself had called. Until now it had always been Hank. Burke had a feeling there was trouble even before he heard her voice.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t ask.” But it was only a last ditch effort at the old bravado. “Everything’s wrong. They know Hank killed that agent … Bishop.”

  “What do you mean they know? Who’s they?”

  “A man named George Reese. He’s the one who’s been working on us from the beginning — the one who cost me my job — and the one who got me out of bed at four in the morning to look at Bishop’s body in the morgue. He’s who they are.” She paused. “And the damndest part is, he always comes across as such a decent type. Do you know him?”

  li “Yes. At least, I did. And he is a decent type.”

  “Well right now I wish he were dead,” Pamela said and started to weep.

  Burke listen
ed to the small unhappy sounds coming across the wire and waited. Everybody finally cried. But this woman was the last he had expected it from.

  “Okay, tell me about it.”

  “Just give me a second.” Burke heard her blow her nose. “God, I’m a mess.”

  “Just take it easy. You’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

  “I’m okay now. Hank doesn’t even know I called you. He’d be furious if he found out. He thinks you’ve got enough problems without our adding this to them. And he’s probably right. I’m sorry.”

  “Will you cut that out. You’re only in this because of me. Now tell me what they have on Hank.”

  “That’s the real reason I called. I wanted to find out if you thought they were only bluffing. They said they found hair and blood samples on Bishop’s body that matched Hank’s. They said there was also some flesh under Bishop’s fingernails that came from the back of Hank’s hand when Bishop scratched him during the fight. They said they had enough on Hank to put him in jail for the rest of his life, and that they could put me away also as an accessory. Is that…”

  The operator signaled for more money and Burke went through his usual coin and gong ritual.

  “Do you think they’re bluffing?” Pamela asked.

  “Not if the forensic people really have what Reese says they have.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Have they arrested Hank yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Reese is trying to squeeze him into making a deal. He says he’s no cop and doesn’t want to be vindictive. He claims to understand how Hank got sucked into this whole thing, and that it’s more vital to the national security to get you than to punish Mm. He’s sure we know where you are and how to get in touch with you. He says he’ll let Hank off if he cooperates.”

  Burke stared out at the traffic moving downtown on Ninth Avenue. “What did Hank say to that?”

  “You know Hank. What do you think he said? He told him to go fuck himself.”

  “That’s my boy.”

  “Sure,” she said flatly. “Your boy’s ready for just about anything in your cause, including self-immolation.”

  Burke heard the bitterness in her voice. He did not blame her for it. She had every right to be bitter. He just wondered at its having taken so long in coming. “And you?” he said quietly. “I take it you’re less inclined to such sacrifice.”