The Spy

by Garbo Norman

  “Hey!” She suddenly sat up, the ritual over.

  “Hey, what?”

  “I’m going to call in sick tomorrow and stay home and take care of you.” She saw him about to protest. “And if you dare say one word about getting out of this bed and going home tonight, I swear I’ll shoot you in the other arm myself.”

  Lying back, Burke grinned at her, feeling like a happy idiot, knowing he was going to remember the way her face looked then. — anxious, warm, and loving as she sat on the bed beside him — remember for as long as he was able.

  Chapter 19

  Lilly had dreamed up the entire plan herself. She had not even told Burke about it. What would have been the point? she thought. He only would have thrown cold water on the whole idea. When it was over, and she had been proven right and he wrong, she would make him eat every one of his dumb, cynical judgments without salt.

  The advance arrangements were simple enough and involved just Frank and herself. She simply told the agent that Burke had agreed to see him. “He’ll meet us in the parking lot of the Fountainhead Diner in Syosset on Wednesday night,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Sure, I’ve stopped there on the way to the beach. What time?”

  “1:00 A.M.”

  He kissed her. “You’re sensational.”

  Forty-eight hours later, Frank picked her up at the theatre after her performance and they drove over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and onto the Long Island Expressway. She sat close to him and they listened to soft radio music and did little talking. With some surprise, she found her palms wet. “My God, I’m nervous.”

  He touched her arm. “There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

  “What if your people are following us?”

  “Do you think you’re dealing with an amateur?” He grinned, showing strong, even teeth in a wide mouth. “I made sure we had no tail even before we crossed the bridge.”

  “What would they do if they caught you?” she said, somehow finding it easier while she was talking.

  “No one’s going to catch me.”

  “You once said this would be treason. What do they to do you for treason?”

  “First or second degree?”

  “There are different degrees?”

  “Always.”

  “Which would this be?”

  “First,” he said. “Aiding and abetting a known enemy of the republic.”

  “What would they do to you for that?”

  “Cut off my right testicle.”

  She made a face. “I don’t think that’s very funny.”

  “My God, neither do I.”

  A fog had begun to roll in as they drove farther out on Long Island, and their lights shone wetly through it. Here and there the flickering neon tubes of junk-food restaurants, drive-ins, and real estate offices broke through the thickening mists and their effect was oddly foreboding in the quiet night.

  “We’re just about there,” Frank said, and moments later Lilly saw the big, red neon sign spelling Fountainhead Diner.

  They drove around to the parking lot at the rear and pulled into one of the marked-off spaces. The area was large and unlighted, with perhaps a dozen cars scattered about. Jukebox music came faintly from inside the diner, but otherwise there was no sound. Behind and along one side of the lot, there were pine woods.

  “Do you see his car?” Frank said.

  “I don’t know what he’s driving.”

  He looked at her.

  “I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. He said it would be better for me not to know.” She pretended to study the other cars in the lot. They were all empty. “I guess he’s not here yet.”

  Frank glanced at his watch. “We’re five minutes early.”

  They sat without speaking and Lilly was abruptly aware of a sharp pain in her stomach. It felt as though someone had stuck a knife in her and all the love, all the good feeling she’d ever known was draining out. Why? Touching the place, she was almost surprised at the smooth, unbroken feel of the flesh under her clothing.

  A white Thunderbird drove into the lot and she saw Frank’s’ hands tense on the wheel. But a couple, a man and woman, were in the car. They parked and got out, laughing a trifle too loudly and holding onto one another as they walked towards the front of the diner. What a luxury, Lilly thought, to have nothing more on your mind than the guy you’re with and something to eat. It seemed impossible to remember a time when things had been that simple for her, and equally impossible to imagine them ever being that way again. And it had all started because she had once gone into a hospital to have her nose and breasts done. Yet how could you look for reasons with something like this? If you tried, you could end up in a rubber room.

  A man walked around from the diner entrance and started towards his car. Frank leaned forward, studying him through the windshield, then relaxed once more in his seat.

  “How did you know that wasn’t Burke?” Lilly asked.

  “Wrong build. Burke is taller, wider across the shoulders. He can change his face, but not his body.”

  The things you had to keep in mind, thought Lilly. These were details that had never even occurred to her, yet might easily have ruined everything. And what else of significance had she overlooked?

  A big, silver-grey Mercedes rolled into the lot, paused as the driver searched out a parking space worthy of his considerable investment, then glided into a spot about thirty feet away. Lilly considered the car and the single man inside. This one seemed to meet the necessary requirements. “There he is,” she said. “That’s Burke.”

  “In the Mercedes?”

  “Yes.”

  He was out of the car before her mouth had closed on the final’s.’ Sprinting past a grey Plymouth, his fist pounded the hood and three men burst out and followed him. Lilly stared. The men had evidently been lying flat, out of sight, waiting for his signal. All four men, she saw, had pistols with attached silencers in their hands. Then there were all those soft, whooshing sounds and the Mercedes’s windshield exploded into fragments. Lilly opened her mouth to scream, but found a small part of a great horror jammed in her throat like a rock. “Oh, Lord,” she whispered.

  She watched the rest of it as if paralyzed. Although there was not really that much more to see. Two of the men simply got into the Mercedes and drove it away, the third man took off after them in the Plymouth, and Frank walked slowly back to where she sat, waiting. The entire incident had taken no more than a minute, and no one but Lilly had seen or heard a thing.

  Frank got in beside her but she was barely aware of him. She had her eyes closed and was breathing very slowly and carefully.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She went on with her breathing.

  “It had nothing to do with us, with you, with how I feel about you. You’ve got to understand that.”

  She nodded slowly. There he was, right on cue with his dialogue. It was like a play that Burke himself had written for her, a bad play. It didn’t deserve the single performance it was getting. Next comes the part about not knowing he was going to fall in love with me, she thought.

  “It’s my job, Lilly. I make no apologies for that. I just never expected …”

  “To fall in love with me,” she finished.

  She opened her eyes then and looked at him, wondering why he didn’t look different in some way. “And your friends, Waldo and Kevin,” she said. “You didn’t really kill them the other night, did you?”

  “No.” He turned away, moving cautiously on the seat, as if fearful that any sudden movement might frighten her into leaving. “Whatever you think about Burke personally, he had this coming. He was a gun at our heads. He sold us out — you, me, the country — all of us. And for a few lousy bucks. I don’t understand a man like that. I don’t understand what goes on in his mind. Even so, there was no satisfaction in this for me tonight, Lilly. I don’t take human life lightly. Not anyone’s. And to have had to make you part of it was probably the single
toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  My poor darling, she thought wryly. If there was no satisfaction in it for him now, how was he going to feel when she really zonked him? But God Almighty! A man was dead for no better reason than that he had decided to stop for a bite to eat. And she had fingered him. Talk about insanities. Still in a state of semishock, she felt the first icy intimations of what lay ahead.

  “Frank?”

  He turned quickly, anxiously. She saw the hope in his eyes and hated knowing she was going to enjoy punishing him. “That man you and your playmates just shot up wasn’t Burke. He wasn’t anybody I even knew. He was just some poor slob who happened to run out of luck and drive in here at the wrong time.”

  Frank stared at her, “But you said …”

  “Never mind what I said. You also said.” Her eyes had gone cold and she was finally angry. “All I’m trying to tell you is that you shot the wrong guy full of holes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, you bastard!” She was well Into it now, riding it coldly. “Oh, you had me fooled, all right. You had no trouble there. I was stupid enough to believe everything you told me. Burke was where you ran into trouble. He was the one who didn’t believe you. He told me that Waldo and Kevin probably weren’t dead, that the whole thing was just a set-up to con me. But I it couldn’t buy that. So I worked out this bright idea to show him how wrong he was about you, that you meant what you said about wanting to help him, that it wasn’t just going to be a trap.” She shook her head. “Well, I showed him all right.”

  Frank said nothing. Things were happening to his face that he did not seem to know about.

  “Damn you!” she swore. “You’re unspeakable — all of you — a pack of wolves. It was bad enough I was wrong. But who expected a goddamned massacre? Who expected you to shoot some poor bastard full of holes before I could even get my mouth open?”

  He made a vague, helpless gesture. “I… we thought he was Burke.”

  “So?”

  “So you don’t just casually walk over and talk to a man in Burke’s position. If you try, you’re dead, and he’s gone.”

  In the car they sat together but were apart. Several more cars entered the lot and others left. Above the diner the neon sign added its baleful red glow to the sifting fog. Once Frank started to raise a hand to touch her, but changed his mind and let it fall.

  When he-finally spoke, his voice was low, weighted with anguish. “It’s what I do, Lilly.”

  “I know.”

  “Please don’t hate me.”

  She felt sick, almost feverish, and moved closer to him, trying to keep her nerves from fluttering..

  “We’ll be okay,” he promised.

  She groaned. “I don’t know. That poor man. What am I going to do about that poor man?”

  He misunderstood. “We’ll take care of that. Christ! Wait till they find out he’s not Burke.”

  “But I killed him. And for no reason.”

  “You didn’t know what would happen.”

  “Sure. I’ll tell him that.”

  “It’s too bad, but these things happen. I could tell you Stories…”

  “I don’t want to hear any of your dirty stories. Mine are bad enough.” She clung to him. “Hold me,” she whispered, shivering. “Please. Just hold me. I think I’m going out of my mind. All I can think of is that poor man. All I can think is that if it weren’t for my goddamned nose and tits, he’d still be alive.”

  Chapter 20

  Burke woke early, prodded by a confusing mixture of pain and expectation. The pain came from having slept with too much weight on his bad arm, in spite of almost two weeks of recuperation. The sense of expectation was more elusive, and his sleep-fogged brain groped for reasons. Then he opened his eyes and saw the four oversized reels of recording tape stacked on the floor beside his bed. “Aah …”, he sighed, and rolled over onto his back.

  One cigarette, he promised himself, just one, and then I’ll get up and get to it. He lay there, savoring the rare luxury of these few extra moments in bed. The spartan. Usually, on normal mornings, to be awake was to be instantly out of bed, as if even the slightest delay would start him on a swift slide into decadence. But this was no normal morning. On this morning, he thought, he was entitled to his small reward. Then he wondered whether he was really rewarding himself by staying in bed or just stalling. Maybe he was simply afraid of what he might find when he got up and started to listen. Finally, he had the tapes. And he expected so much of them. What if they produced nothing? An unpleasant thought, but a definite possibility. More than a possibility. The odds actually favored his finding nothing.

  Still, he was hopeful A long time ago he had decided that hope was his natural state. Or, if not natural, then at least his chosen state. Certainly it was more pleasant to live with than despair, which might offer a ready enough cushion against disappointment but not much else. Better to soar and perhaps fall, than to crawl through tunnels of depression. He had felt exactly this way, soaring, while driving back from Washington only a few hours ago. With the tapes safely on the back seat of his car, he had the sensation of flying home. And he had no idea what he would find on the tapes. It was enough that he had managed to get them.

  Even in concept, he had found the idea exciting. Electronic surveillance had always held a special fascination for him. Its potential was awesome. And in this case, because his future might hang on its results, he could almost feel himself sliding into the metaphysical. Ten days before, he had tried explaining some of this feeling to Angela.

  “The newer techniques are fantastic,” he told her, “straight out of science fiction. No one is safe, from them. It’s like an attack by psychic particles. There’s no reasonable defense. With the right expertise and equipment, you can crawl into anyone’s life.”

  “It sounds frightening.”

  “It is.” He smiled. “Unless you happen to be using it in a good and proper cause.”

  “Which you are,” she said, “Which I am,” he agreed.

  It was the second day of his rest and rehabilitation treatment in her apartment and he had already told her the whole thing, told her all about Tom Ludlow and the hilltop and the twenty-three dead. He had told her as part of his new anti-solitary-animal-philosophy, despite its being stupidly unprofessional to share with anyone what you weren’t required to share. He had started out telling her coldly and dispassionately, but it got away from him somewhere near the end. She listened without comment and was sensitive enough to leave it alone for a few hours. When she judged the time right, she said, “You think Ludlow is involved?”

  He picked at the gauze, covering his wound. The action had become a nervous tic, a continuing need to touch, to affirm.

  “Leave that bandage alone,” she told him. “Do you want to give yourself blood poisoning?”

  “Nag, nag, nag. I might as well be married to you again.”

  “Don’t you wish.”

  He looked at her. “Of course I wish.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “What about Ludlow? What do you know about him?”

  “Only what I’ve told you. Plus what I’ve read in the papers over the years. Anything else I might feel about him is exactly that — what I feel.” His hand started towards the bandage again, but he stopped it. “From what the professor told me, Ludlow and that whole incident on the hill were evidently very much on Tony’s mind. And if an eighteen-year-old itch suddenly needs scratching, I figure there has to be a better reason for it than just nostalgia. Especially for someone like Tony.”

  “But if it does have something to do with Ludlow, why now? Why after all these years?”

  “That’s what I have to find out. I’ve just been waiting for him to come back from his Paris conference. And according to the news reports, that should be in a few days.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  He picked at his bandage. “Crawl into his lif
e.”

  Of course, it was not that simple. To begin with, his wound had taken more out of him than he had realized or was willing to admit. Hard, sustained physical action made things shake inside him. But refusing to take any more recuperative time, he brushed aside his weakness along with Angela’s concern. “The sonofabitch is back,” he told her the following week. “I have to get moving.” So he moved. Perhaps not as fast nor as vigorously as he would have liked, but at least he was taking action. Which, in this case, had to originate in Washington.

  Thomas Worthington Ludlow, lie discovered, lived in a century-old, Federalist mansion in Georgetown with his second wife (his first wife had died of cancer several years before) and a middle-aged housecouple. Consulting a recent renovation and building plan he had photocopied at the County Hall of Records, he was able to learn whatever he needed to know about the physical layout of the house. He also copied the floor plans of the houses on either side of Ludlow’s. Then he holed up in a motel room, studied what he had, and decided on the equipment he would need. Acquiring the equipment was no problem..Since he knew of every major electronics supplier in the capital area, he was able to pick up scattered pieces in a variety of places without arousing curiosity or suspicion. Even before Watergate, the town had a flourishing reputation as the bugging capital of the world. It was said that if you listened hard and carefully enough in the small hours of the night, you could literally hear the air over the city crackle with electronic devices. But the hard part was getting the equipment safely placed. To be caught or even observed in that particular act would wash out everything.

  So he watched Ludlow’s house, along with the houses on either side, almost around the clock. He saw their occupants come and go, noted their hourly and daily patterns, and weighed the possibilities open to him. It was unrelievedly hard, exhausting, and (as always) tedious work. The only time he was not bored, the only time he felt himself come alive and the adrenalin start pumping, was when he saw Ludlow leave or arrive at the house.