The Spy in a Box

by Ralph Dennis

  At the fifty-minute mark it went down. Two black sedans pulled off the road and into the Potomac’s parking lot. One peeled away and stopped directly in front of the coffee shop. The other continued and pulled into the curved drive in front of the motel’s lobby entrance. Two men in topcoats got out of the second car and entered the motel lobby at a fast walk.

  Hall did the count in his head. He reached fifty when the doors opened in the back of the first sedan that was parked facing the coffee shop. Two men scrambled out and slammed the car doors. In the bright light of the coffee shop entrance, Hall got his look at those men. One, from his build and the way he moved, was Rivers. The other, unless Hall was wrong, was the backup man he had seen with Rivers at Denise’s party in Chapel Hill that Saturday night.

  After a couple of minutes, Rivers stalked from the coffee shop and stood on the top step, looking around. Across the street, Hall wished that he had binoculars. He wanted to see the expression on Rivers’ face. The backup man followed him and touched Rivers on the shoulder. They crossed the tarmac and got into the sedan. The driver pulled away from the coffee shop and parked bumper-to-tailgate behind the other sedan.

  Another five minutes passed. The two men who had entered the motel lobby returned. One stopped at the front sedan and shook his head. The other walked to the second car and got into the back seat. After a short time, a brief meeting, the man returned to the first car and got in. Plumes of exhaust clouded the two cars as they pulled away from the curb and made a slow turn and reached the road again. After the two cars went out of sight, Hall left the window and checked the dryer. He dumped the clothing on a table and took his time folding it. When it was done, he carried it to the front window and watched the coffee shop. Another ten minutes passed. There was no sign of Franklin.

  A big zero for you, good buddy. You flunked the test.

  Not only that. Now Franklin, when he heard from Rivers, would know that it was a test. That would make him dangerous. Soured friends could hate with the best of them. If they’d ever been friends.

  Hall returned to his motel and watched TV for an hour or two. Then he slept the restless sleep of a man who couldn’t empty his mind. Anger burned the edges of him. The night seemed a week long.

  Hall was up early. He had breakfast down the street at a greasy spoon cafe before it was fully light outside. When he left the café, he carried a large takeout cup of coffee. He drove to Franklin’s townhouse. He made a pass by first, marking the position of the Subaru station wagon as he went by and looking for any evidence that the Company might have watchers on the street. He saw nothing suspicious. He circled and came back and parked half a block away, across the street from the townhouse. He sipped his coffee. The inside of the Toyota steamed closed around him. The inside of the car was cold and he stamped his feet to keep the circulation going. From time to time, he reached forward and cleared a narrow slit in the condensation on the windshield.

  Twenty minutes after Hall arrived at the townhouse, Franklin’s wife, Helen, came down the front steps with the little boy. Around the Company, they joked about the boy and called him the “heir”. The couple of times Hall met him, the boy seemed dim-witted and badly spoiled. He was, however, named for Franklin’s father and he was an only grandson. The boy, Hall didn’t remember his name, was dressed like a little man, in a tailored topcoat and white wool scarf. Under the topcoat, Hall thought, he probably wore the private school’s dark blue blazer and charcoal gray trousers.

  Helen and the boy got into the Subaru station wagon. After they drove away, Hall watched the street. He finished the last of his coffee and crumpled the cup and dropped it on the floorboards.

  He reached under the front seat and drew out the Colt Python. Three rounds in the chambers. One day or other he’d have to stop by his friendly gun shop and pick up some loads. For now, the three rounds would have to do. He jammed the Python in the right-hand pocket of the parka and decided that now was as good as any time.

  He banged the lion’s head, once, twice. He expected the long wait and the inspection through the peephole. Instead, the door opened immediately and Franklin, in a testy voice, said, “What did you forget this time, Helen?”

  That instant Franklin saw Hall and reached for the edge of the door. Hall moved first. He leaned a shoulder against the door and rammed it open. Franklin fell away. Too easily, Hall thought, as he stepped through the doorway and slammed it behind him. Then he saw Franklin heading toward the hall closet. Up there, on the top shelf, that was where he kept the house gun. High on that shelf because Helen insisted that it be kept beyond the boy’s reach.

  Hall said, “I wouldn’t do it,” and drew the Python from his pocket. The Python wasn’t pointed at Franklin, only in that general direction.

  “I’m no fool.” Franklin turned slowly and faced Hall.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What?”

  “How you’re no fool.”

  Franklin shrugged. “It’s a waste of breath.” He waved a hand toward the main part of the apartment. “I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee, Maracaibo, this time.” Franklin was a coffee nut. It was a game with him. What kind of coffee shall we have this morning? Kenya? Celebes Kalosi? Djimmah?

  “I could use another cup.” Hall circled him and backed down the hall ahead of him. He reached the kitchen and made Franklin wait while he cleared the table of everything but the sugar dish. Then, still watching Franklin, he got two cups from the cabinet above the kitchen counter and placed them on the table. The coffee grounds had settled in the filter into a hard crust. Hall removed the filter unit and placed it in the sink. He filled two cups and placed one across the table from him. “Have a seat,” he said. He lifted the other cup and backed away until he could brace a hip against the kitchen counter. He watched Franklin over the rim of the cup as he drank. The coffee was dark and rich and winy.

  “Tell me about it. Waste some breath.”

  “Last night?” After a swallow of coffee Franklin placed his hands on the table top. “You played a game with me, friend.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And even this morning it doesn’t look that bad either.”

  “And if I’d gone there?” Franklin said.

  “You’d have found me.”

  “That true?”

  Hall nodded. “I was there.”

  “Oh, shit.” Franklin’s face flushed. The cold was almost gone. The flush to his face was shame. “They’ve got my tail in a crack.”

  “Write the letter,” Hall said. “Look in my file and use my letter as the pattern.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Give them the fucking resignation. Move to your farm in Virginia and spend the spring counting your money.”

  “I can’t go out that way. Not after the Ottawa mess.”

  “Why not?”

  “Family pride,” Franklin said.

  That translated: my father knows about it. The old man was in a position to follow his son’s career. It was the old man’s family pride that Franklin was talking about. So much pride that he wouldn’t stand for his son to leave the Company with a blot on his copybook. Failure wasn’t something the old man understood or tolerated.

  Hall nodded. “I guess that explains last night. You wanted to make points with Rivers. “He took another gulp of the Maracaibo. “Rivers is happy with you again and you get to march around in the field and redeem yourself. Then, with your Dad’s blessing, you can graduate with honors.” Hall finished his coffee and placed the cup in the sink “That explains you. Now, all I want is some explanation of what’s happening to me.”

  Franklin shook his head.

  “Make a guess. You’ve got all that fancy education your Daddy paid for.”

  “Somebody is gutting the Company.”

  “Why?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. Franklin pushed his cup toward the center of the table and nodded down at it. Hall, still careful, filled it and backed away. “Take the mess in
Canada. It was handled right. Not a flaw. And the blowup didn’t come from the Soviet we’d trapped. It doesn’t work that way with them. With us, if we’re trapped, we head right for the station chief. It might mean you never work abroad again or that you retire fast. You don’t get killed. That Soviet, as soon as he got back to Moscow, got the only hearing he was ever going to have. That was a round in the back of his head. So, he had too much to risk to blow it. And I swear we didn’t make a mistake. It was slick as hot goose grease one day and there was sand in the Vaseline the next. And the product …” Franklin pounded a fist into an open hand. “You wouldn’t believe how good it was. Right up to the minute we had to run for the border to keep our tails from being kicked.”

  “Tell me how I fit in this.”

  “Another way to discredit the Company? All that speculation about the way it was handled in Costa Verde wasn’t worth the ink and the paper it was written on. The Company doesn’t answer fools, does it? And then an ex-field man named William Keith Hall writes the definitive account of the games the Company played down there, including an account of the Company involvement in the murder of Marcos.”

  “I’ve read the article. It’s not definitive. The writer missed a couple of points. He didn’t know I was there, across the street, when Marcos was killed. And I didn’t just happen to be at the military air base when the Team passed through. I was there because Valdez tried to play a word game with me and I got suspicious.”

  “That’s your proof you didn’t write the article? Man, you’re still in trouble. Those two examples wouldn’t help you at all. They’re additional evidence and about as damaging as the article itself.”

  True. Point taken.

  “I think I understand last night. My last time through Washington …”

  “Rivers had you figured. The disconnect order for the phone didn’t fool him. He checked the power company. You see, he has a prediction table on you. When you left Blowing Rock, you’d head for Washington or New York. For Washington, Bilbo is listed as closest friend. I was at the head of the list too. If you reached Washington, you’d contact Bilbo or you’d call me.” Franklin grinned. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “He says the ninja wasn’t his.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “It burned his ass you thought the ninja was his. He said if it had been one of his, you’d never have got past him. And he was put out that you had the Company do the housecleaning.”

  Hall laughed.

  “He was English. At least he was on an English passport. He’d flown into New York five days earlier. The day you arrived in Washington; he flew in on the shuttle.”

  “How’d Rivers get all this?”

  “A check of all the cars around the Madison Hill Bar. He had to get there somehow and he had to plan on a way to leave. A walkaround crew found a car on the side street near the entrance to the alley that leads to the parking behind the Madison Hill. What caught their attention was a trench coat and a pair of foul weather boots on the front seat. And it was a rental car.”

  Hall nodded.

  “He got a name and an address from the car rental agency. A motel. There he found luggage and the Brit passport.”

  “The ninja have a name?”

  “Can we go into the living room?”

  “Alright.” Hall watched Franklin get to his feet. Not a false move. Hall kept his distance. They reached the living room. Franklin stopped in the center and pointed at the telephone table.

  “The back page of the phone book.”

  Hall flipped the heavy phone book and opened the back cover. It was there, written in light pencil. So that it could be erased later, Hall thought.

  There was a pad on the phone table. Hall tore off a sheet and used the pen from the holder. Winford Boyle. That and an address on Tedworth Square. “What’s Tedworth Square?”

  “I checked it. It’s in Chelsea. A couple of blocks off King’s Road.”

  “This is straight?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to resign.” Franklin shook his head slowly side to side. “Until the pressure got to me, I was trying to help you. This is as far as I got.”

  “Call it even,” Hall said. “This against last night.”

  “It’s the nature of the business.”

  Hall folded the sheet of note paper and placed it in the left pocket of his parka. He shoved the Python in his right pocket. “This time you haven’t seen me.”

  “After last night? The way I see it, after what I did last night, you wouldn’t come within a mile of me.”

  Hall backed toward the hall. Franklin followed but kept his distance. Hall stopped one step from the front door. “Unless I wanted revenge.”

  Franklin shook his head. “Like they say, that’s a dish better eaten cold. That’s what Rivers would expect of you.”

  There was a scrape of a key. It was so sudden that Hall didn’t have a chance to step away. The door slammed into his back and threw him off balance. It was Franklin’s chance if he wanted it. Instead, hands to his sides, he backed away and shook his head.

  Helen stepped through the doorway. “Sorry, I didn’t … Will, is it you?”

  “In the warm flesh.” He bowed slightly toward Helen. “Good to see you. I just dropped by to have a coffee with Franklin.”

  “Can you stay? I can fix us a breakfast …”

  “Can’t this time.” He waved and stepped around Helen and pulled the door closed behind him. He heard Helen raise her voice in a question and he heard Franklin’s hard tone smashing at her. Then there was silence.

  After Hall checked out of the motel, he drove the rental car to New York and arrived in the middle of the afternoon. There was time to conduct some financial business with a Dime Bank where he kept an account he didn’t think the Company knew about. He turned in the rental car and took a cab to the British Airways office, where he booked a flight to London. At a pay phone down the street, he called Harker Industries. A few minutes of conversation with his uncle’s executive assistant and he was assured that a call would be made within the hour and that Ezra’s London apartment would be available to him when he arrived there the next morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was late afternoon. Hall’s body felt like it was midnight. It was his first day in London and he’d stayed at the Harker-owned apartment only long enough to shower and change clothes.

  He was on Craven Street. The building was old. There was a brass marker outside. Heinrich Heine had lived there when he was in England. The building was also the home of the Craven Club. Hall stepped into the dark hallway and climbed the stairs. The key to the second-floor door was in his pocket. He’d found the key where he’d left it, in the locked drawer in the Harker flat where he kept a few books of traveler’s checks and some stacks of English money.

  The key fitted, he turned it in the lock and pushed the door open, and he stepped inside the Craven Club. It was a private club, a way around all the odd opening and closing hours the public lounges had to follow. A private club could serve all day and half the night.

  It was early. Not much of a crowd. One couple at the bar and a blonde woman twenty years younger than the gentleman she was with nuzzled his neck at one of the low tables and chairs spaced about the room.

  Hall stood at the end of the bar until the bartender came to him. Hall gave his name. “I’ve been out of the country,” he said. “I thought I’d see if my dues are paid up.”

  He was on his second gin and tonic when the Air Vice Marshal entered. He was retired now and had been for the better part of two years. With the cutback of the Royal Air Force he’d seen the handwriting on the wall. Five years to go before retirement and with all the talent and ability in the world he’d known he’d never be promoted to Air Marshal. So, he’d put in his retirement and gone into business.

  A tall man in a well-cut suit. Gray hair and green eyes. The long bony face of a Scotsman.

  “Mac, how are you?” Hall stood and
held out his hand.

  “Willie.” Mac liked to call him Willie just to see if it would fluster him. Mac slumped into the chair next to Hall and eyed the barmaid who was walking toward their table. “Done this one yet, Willie?”

  Hall laughed. “Give me time. I just got to town.”

  Mac ordered a double of the single malt scotch and watched the barmaid’s hips. “Might not be worth the trouble,” he said.

  Over the first drink, the talk was about Mac and how his life was going. Business was good. He’d taken a good position with an electronics firm that did a lot of work with the government. Tracy was fine too, the best marriage a man could make. When they talked about Tracy, there was a hard glint in Mac’s eyes. Hall had introduced them in Washington and, half-joking, Mac used to complain that Hall had palmed off one of his old girls on him. That was before Mac loved her. After they were a pair, it didn’t matter. Still, when the mood was on him Mac liked to fall back into the posture of an injured man.

  It was Mac who’d introduced Hall to the Craven Club one afternoon and he’d vouched for Hall when he decided to join. The story Mac told, perhaps fanciful, was that the Club had been founded by some intelligence types from over on Northumberland, not far from Craven Street. They’d wanted a place where they could unwind over a few drinks without feeling they were under the public eye. Over the years, in time, the membership broadened. “Back then,” Mac said,” we called this Spook Haven.”

  In return, Mac had been introduced to the Madison Hill Bar and Bilbo by Hall. That was during the time after Mac fell in love with Tracy and he was flying the Royal mail plane from London once a week. He volunteered for the flight so he could push his courtship with Tracy.

  Over the next drink, Hall told Mac what was happening to him. Mac didn’t seem surprised. He murmured that he had heard part of it from one of his old contacts. He said he’d pooh-poohed it with the contact. Not like my American friend at all, he’d said.