Hopscotch

by Brian Garfield

  He ate something in a café and had two Remy Martins and walked all the way back to the hotel. There were no personal things in sight although he had resided in the suite for nearly two months; its occupant had kept himself hidden from it.

  The telephone.

  “M’sieur—a gentleman wishes to see you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I do not know, M’sieur.”

  “I’ll be down. Ask him to wait.” He wasn’t about to invite to his room any man who wouldn’t give his name.

  The rickety cage discharged him into the dusky lobby and he saw Glenn Follett in the reading chair in the alcove. Follett charged beaming to his feet, hearty ebullience filling his dewlapped Basset face. “Hey old buddy—long time no see, hey? How they hanging?”

  It made Kendig wince. Follett pumped his hand enthusiastically and reared back: tipped his head to one side and tucked his jowly chin in, contriving to look affectionate and conspiratorial at once. “My goodness you do look well.” He said it in the voice of a man telling a polite lie. “Life of luxury in retirement, hey?”

  “What do you want, Glenn?” It was a question to which he already knew the answer because he didn’t believe in the sort of coincidence that would drop Follett on his doorstep within hours of his meeting with Mikhail Yaskov. But he asked it anyway because it was the best way to shut off Follett’s backslapping spout of painful old-buddy pleasantries.

  Follett waved his arms around. He was utterly incapable of talking without the accompaniment of vast gestures. “What do you say we have a drink or two?”

  “I’ve already had a drink. We can talk here.”

  Follett shot a glance toward the concierge behind the desk. That was twenty feet across the lobby. Kendig said, “He’s a little deaf and he’s only got about forty words, of English. Stop looking around—the lamps aren’t bugged.”

  “Well if you say so, sure. Hell. Well then let’s have a seat, hey?” Follett led the way back into the alcove and Kendig trailed along reluctantly. Follett sat down with his elbows on his knees so he could flap his hands when he talked. “Damn good to see you again. I mean that.”

  “Come off it.”

  “Well Christ Kendig, it has been a long time, and here we are both living in the same town. I mean it’s good for old friends to get together—we ought to do it more often, you know?”

  Kendig said, “You had a tail on Yaskov today, didn’t you.”

  Follett grinned unabashedly. “Sure. Why else would I be here?”

  “All right. Get it off your chest. I haven’t got all night.”

  “The hell you haven’t. What have you got, Kendig—a vital business meeting? A hard-breathing tryst? Don’t give me no bullfeathers. You haven’t got a Goddamned thing to do except go upstairs to your little ten-by-twelve room and stare at the walls. I’d think you’d welcome some company from an old officemate.”

  Kendig just watched him. Follett made a face and dropped his voice several decibels. “All right. What was it about?”

  “What was what about?” He didn’t want to give Follett the satisfaction.

  An exasperated jerk of head, pinch of lips. “The meet with Yaskov, old buddy.”

  “Ships and shoes and sealing wax.”

  “Why are you making it so hard for me?”

  “Maybe it amuses me.”

  “Then why aren’t you smiling?” Follett flapped his palms. “Come on now. What did he want?”

  “The same as you. He thought it would be pleasant if a couple of old friends got together and reminisced about the good old days.”

  “I see.” Follett wasn’t buying it; he was just inviting added comment but Kendig didn’t make any and finally Follett said, “You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it won’t wash.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Then say what you mean, all right?”

  “What I mean,” Kendig said, “why will I have to do better than that? Why do I have to tell you anything at all? I don’t work for you people any more.”

  “Come on, Kendig, don’t force me to make threats.”

  “This conversation’s getting tedious, wouldn’t you say?”

  “We can make holy hell for you. Is that what you want?”

  “I can’t see you bothering to do that. Not with me.”

  “You’re not enjoying this. Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll go away.”

  “You’ll go away anyway. Sooner or later.”

  “You’re an exasperating son of a bitch.”

  “I know.”

  “Should I offer to buy it then?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Then tell me this. What is it you want?”

  “To be left alone.”

  “Is that what you told Yaskov?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Everybody wants something. What do you want, Kendig?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Nuts.” Follett became still; he examined his hands. “You’re just about the most expendable human being on earth right now, I suppose you realize that. You’re no good to anybody, not even yourself; I don’t think there’s anybody in the whole world who’d ever miss you. Except maybe Mikhail Yaskov. What kind of deal did you make with him?”

  “I didn’t make any deal with him, Glenn.”

  “Then why not tell me what he wanted?”

  “Because it’s your job to find that out. Not mine, any more.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Ask Yaskov?”

  “Why don’t you? It might be fun.”

  Follett put his hands on his knees preparatory to rising. “It’s not smart to alienate your friends. You might need us some day.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I’ll have to report back to Langley. They’ll have to decide what to do about you. If they think you’ve made some tie-up with the other side they’ll probably cut orders to have you terminated. Although I wouldn’t recommend it, frankly. I don’t think you’d be worth the trouble. You don’t matter any more, Kendig. You’re washed up.” With an expansive gesture of dismissal and disgust Follett lurched from the chair and plodded away. Kendig got up and watched him go out to the street. Then he went over to the lift and returned to his room.

  He got into bed and lay half-dresed staring at the ceiling. Everybody wants something. What do you want, Kendig? You’re no good to anybody. You don’t matter any more. You’re washed up.

  Something was taking shape: an elusive thought, an unfamiliar emotion.

  After a long while he dozed. When he came awake he found he had his arms around one of the pillows. He put it back where it belonged and switched off the light.

  They’d got some mileage out of him and thrown him out like a used car. Yaskov had come along and kicked his tires and made an offer but when Yaskov had tried the ignition the key wouldn’t turn. Then Follett had come along and loked at the dilapidated rusty hulk and sneered: All used up. Throw it on the junk heap.

  He drowsed but something kept him from falling asleep. He kept shifting position; he had to wipe the sweat off his face with the hem of the sheet.

  Everybody wants something. What do you want, Kendig?

  My dear Miles, I’m offering to put you back in the game. Back into action. Isn’t it what you want?

  Isn’t it what you want?

  Unfamiliar sensations rubbed against him. He began to descend uneasily into sleep but that was when the anger burst its housing and grenaded into him.

  He sat up, switched on the light, reached for his watch. It was three in the morning.

  Why not rub their noses in it?

  The idea was as fully shaped as Minerva from the brow of Jupiter. “Hell,” he said aloud. “Why not?”

  They’d take it to be a suicidal gesture—they’d look at the record and they’d have to reach that conclusion. It would take them a long time to realize he wasn’t inviting suicide. He was cha
llenging them to the ultimate game and he meant to win it.

  He padded to the desk and began to write quickly on the hotel stationery—a crabbed scrawl that looked like something unreeling from a seismograph.

  They’d set the hounds on him for this. They’d come after him with raging vengeance. They’d set fire to the world if they had to: they’d drop everything else in the frantic rush to nail him.

  He felt the race of his pulse and heard a sound he had forgotten: his own laughter.

  – 3 –

  THE SECURITY MAN gave Leonard Ross a vague smile of recognition; all the same Ross had to run his card through the ID machine before it granted him the dubious asylum of the fourth floor.

  As always Ross found it discomfiting. Myerson’s outer sanctum was as forbidding as a penitentiary: not the clean chill of sterile modernity but the grey austere drabness of nineteen-fiftyish technocracy, The chairs were tubular steel affairs with seats padded in Naugahyde and they looked civilized enough but there was no way to relax in them. Ross sat rigidly upright, buoyed a little by the fact that he was the only visitor waiting to see Myerson—perhaps he wouldn’t have to cool his heels too long.

  The secretary opened the inner door. “Mr. Myerson will see you now.” The doctor will see you now—he went in as if to a dentist’s chair. The secretary preceded him, swinging smartly with a high-hipped stride; Ross hadn’t met her often enough to know her name although if she’d been ten years younger he’d have made a point of it. She rapped out a discreet code on Myerson’s door and pushed it open. Ross tried to march right in with some show of confidence but he wasn’t sure it was convincing. Myerson was in charge of his department but Myerson was also the Agency’s hatchet man. You were never quite sure that a summons to the fourth floor wasn’t going to be your last one.

  Myerson was rummaging in a four-drawer cabinet built into the wall. “Sit down, Ross.”

  The chairs had been arranged—two leather armchairs drawn up to make a triangle with the desk. So there was to be a third party to the meeting. Ross sat.

  The file drawer slid shut like something in the morgue. Myerson brought a Top Secret folder to the desk, pulled his chair out, sat down and crossed his plump legs. He was twenty pounds overweight, a big-hipped man with the attitude of command, His pale tan suit nicely set off the mahogany sunlamp tan of his bald head. “We’re waiting for Cutter.”

  “I thought he was in Kuwait?”

  “Aden. I’ve pulled him out. He’ll have landed at Dulles by now—he should have been here. It may be the traffic. While we’re waiting for him have a look at this.”

  It was a copystat, something typed, fourteen double-spaced pages. Conspiracy of Killers, it was headed. By Miles Kendig. He looked up and Myerson was smiling, anger bubbling visibly beneath it. “Go ahead—read it.”

  He was on the fifth page when Cutter came into the office. Ross got to his feet. They’d never met but he’d heard a great deal; Cutter was a man who trailed legends.

  Cutter’s handshake was quick and dry. He would remember Ross’s face twenty years from now. He had cunning eyes and a cynical mouth. He ran to a physical type: narrow and vain—dark, trim, long angular face, graceful. He had tiny teeth and beautiful dark womanly eyes: he looked the sort who’d race stock cars on dirt ovals in Appalachia. He was no rustic but he had that aura of raw primitive machismo.

  Myerson wasn’t a man for polite preambles. “Take your coat off, sit down, read this. Then we’ll talk.”

  Cutter absorbed the fourteen pages in the time it took Ross to read the last nine. Then Cutter sailed it onto the desk. It indicated something about him: he wouldn’t have to look at it again, he’d committed it to memory. “Where’s the original?”

  “I imagine Kendig’s still got it.”

  “Then where’d this come from?” The chilly precision of Cutter’s voice disquieted Ross.

  Myerson reached for the big glass ashtray. It was the first time Ross had noticed the cigar. While they’d been reading Myerson had chewed it to shreds; he dumped the remains in the ashtray and licked his teeth distastefully. “It came from Bois Blanc in Paris.”

  Cutter said drily, “Well then he’s picked the right publisher for it.”

  “Can we stop them from publishing it?” Ross asked.

  “Wouldn’t help,” Myerson said. “He went hog-wild on the Xerox machine. At least fourteen publishers in as many countries have received copies of this thing. Or at least that’s what Kendig claims in his covering letter to Desrosiers.”

  Desrosiers was the iconoclastic publisher of the Bois Blanc series. He’d published all the clandestine samizdat best sellers that were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Myerson said, “We don’t know who the other publishing houses are. We’ll find out in time of course but I’m not sure what good it will do us. We can’t burn them all to the ground.”

  “We might persuade them not to buy it.”

  “How?” Cutter shook his head. “They know it’s a multiple submission. Damned few of them will turn it down and risk missing out on their cut of the pie. It’ll sell of lot of copies.”

  “Can’t we convince them he’s a crazy?” Ross insisted.

  “Desrosiers knows Kendig,” Myerson said. “They’ve known each other for thirty years. Kendig brought him Medvedev’s first manuscript.”

  Ross slapped the typed pages in his lap. “But this stuff—it’s so wild. Who’d believe it?” He turned a page and read aloud, a sarcastic tone: “‘What was Richard Nixon doing in Dallas on the day John Kennedy was assassinated there?’ I mean that’s the cheapest kind of gossip-rag innuendo. It’s nothing but an empty teaser. ‘How many tons of counterfeit North Vietnamese currency has Air America dropped on North Vietnam since the truce was signed?’ And the bit—I can’t find it now—the bit about the assassination of Duvalier.”

  “Page eight,” Cutter murmured.

  It flustered Ross but he went on indignantly: “Or this thing about the Soviets assassinating Nasser with a spray of prussic acid. I mean how wild can you get? And it’s all unsupported, he’s given no details. All we’ve got to do is lean on them, show them how irresponsible it would be to publish unconfirmed rubbish like this. Make Kendig out to be a paranoid idiot who’s gone around the bend. I mean that’s what he is, isn’t it? It’s got to be that.”

  Myerson said, “He’s a little crazy. But not that way. You’re right about one thing—it’s a teaser, nothing more.”

  “But he’s got the goods to pay it off,” Cutter said.

  Myerson nodded. “That’s the thing. It’s all true, you know. And Kendig will cite chapter and verse.”

  It was hard to absorb. Ross said, “It’s true?”

  “Of course it is,” Cutter said. “He’s not an absolute fool.”

  “But he was a field agent. He’d never have had access to anything like this.”

  “After his convalescent leave he spent eight months working two doors down the hall from this office,” Myerson said. “He didn’t fit in, he couldn’t stick it out—he never had the patience to sit at a desk. We offered to move him to NSA but he gave it the back of his hand. We had no choice but to retire him.”

  “And in those eight months he came across all this stuff?”

  Cutter said, “He must have made a point of looking for it. To give him an arsenal against us in case he ever had to use it.”

  “That’s a little fanciful.”

  “He was never a man to trust anybody. He always had to have an edge. That was what made him so good at the job. He never let anybody get him into a corner. He always had the escape route staked out in advance.”

  Ross stacked the pages neatly in his lap, evening up the corners. “I’ve never come across any of this stuff and I’ve worked here six years now.”

  “Not on the fourth floor you haven’t,” Cutter said. “This outfit’s like the Waffen SS, it’s got a compulsion to keep records of all its crimes in quintuplicate.” He was talking to Myerson now: “I’ve bitched a
bout that for years. Haven’t I.”

  “When they move you to the fifth floor you can start making policy,” Myerson replied, unruffled. “We’ll get along faster if you stop dredging up I-told-you-so’s. Right now we’ve got a problem and I expect you to provide the solution.”

  Cuter only nodded; he was deep in thought. Ross said, “What am I doing here?”

  Myerson blinked. “You’ll have to ask Cutter.”

  Cutter said, “I asked for you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’ve got a reputation for doing what you’re told without stopping to make waves.”

  Myerson said, “We can’t assume anything; but we can hope he hasn’t written the rest of the book yet. If that’s the case your job is easy—just prevent him from finishing it.”

  “With extreme prejudice,” Cutter said, very wry. “Personally I prefer the word ‘kill.’ It’s the goddamned euphemisms that’ll do us all in.” He snaked out his long brown hand to glance at his watch; shot his cuff and asked, “When did Desrosiers receive that?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Shit. Hand delivered?”

  “In the mail. It had a Paris postmark.”

  “How did we get it?”

  “We’ve got an editor in our pocket. Naturally Kendig knew that—that’s why he picked that publisher to send it to first. I suspect the Russians have someone there too, in view of the sort of thing Desrosiers publishes. Maybe it’s even the same editor, who knows. In any event you can be sure there’s a copy of this in Moscow by now—and I think you can be sure Kendig knows that too.”

  “And they won’t like the thing any more than we do. So we’ll be tripping over the Comrades.”

  Ross sat silent as if forgotten; the dialogue went on—Myerson said, “There’ll be copies surfacing in Whitehall and Bonn and the Arab capitals and God knows where else. The way he’s gone about it guarantees that. He’s trying to make the biggest noise he can.”

  Ross said, “I don’t understand that. Why?”

  Myerson pointed at Cutter. “You know the man. What’s your judgment?”