“You must get it for me.”
“I don’t know how. I’m not on the Need to Know list.” “You can get it, Sauer. A quarter of a million dollars says you can. That tropical paradise says you can. A whole new life of comfort and ease says you can. Okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“No. Listen. I will tell you how to get it.”
“How would you know how to get it?”
“Listen, Sauer. The human heart never changes. And neither does the human brain. Someone—maybe more than one—has a bad memory, understand? That means they will write the access code down somewhere. You look for it. Under a chair seat, you see? On the back of a clipboard. The underside of a shelf. Or they may break it up. Part in one place, part in another. You know what I mean. You must think to yourself, ‘Where would I write a number like that?’”
“I’ll try. Call me tonight.”
Gogol had to get out of his motel room. It was too confining and he was getting claustrophobic. It was the ninth inning, bases loaded, and he had to strike the side out. He had to wait more than twelve hours before he could call Sauer again.
Part Nine
Chapter 47
The head of the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago had the file on his desk waiting when Brewer arrived.
“It was just a routine check,” he protested. “For employment. We weren’t probing into the CIA or the guy’s intelligence background. Nothing sensitive or illegal.”
“Who ordered it?” Brewer asked.
“Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust in New York. We do a lot of work for them.”
“A bank is interested in hiring an intelligence agent?”
“No. The bank does it as a service for their clients—to conceal their identities.”
“How do you know it’s an employment check?” Brewer asked.
“It says so on the form.” The manager pointed at the row of boxes with X’s. “See? Purpose: employment. That tells us what kind of information to get.”
“It’s a character check,” Brewer said.
“So? We do thousands of them every year. They’re different from a regular credit check but they’re perfectly legal. If you were going to hire a guy, you’d want to know all about his past, wouldn’t you?”
Brewer shuffled the pages of the report. “You didn’t find out much about this guy Brewer,” he said.
“We never do when it’s intelligence. Government personnel policy. Yes, he’s employed here. Since this time. They’ll give you his G.S. usually. And that’s about it. His record, his performance ratings, none of that.”
“How can I find out who the actual client is that ordered the credit check?”
“You have to ask the bank. It’s their client.”
“You don’t show any record about Brewer’s divorce from his first wife.”
“We didn’t find any.”
“It was in the same city he was married in. New York. Borough of Brooklyn. Six years ago.”
The manager took out a pencil and made a note on the report. “You sure of that?”
“As sure as my name’s Brewer.”
Brewer sent a telefax to the bank in Los Angeles that Bobby English had used, requesting full data on the deposit of funds into several of the bank’s accounts. And he listed two account names that Bobby English had given him: Eureka High-Tech Enterprises and Condor Medical Software Company.
Coles’s personnel officer called him. “You asked me to call you about any credit and reference checks on our employees that come in,” she said.
“What have you got?”
“We normally don’t pay much attention to these,” she said. “We don’t even keep a record of such requests. We give out just standard information. And very little of that. With the number of employees we have, we get them every day.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I’ve been keeping tabs on them, especially for those sixteen of our people you listed. Today we got requests for credit information on two of the sixteen. Do you want them?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. One is from a credit bureau in Kansas City. And the other is from San Francisco. The only thing different about them is the cities they’re from. Normally, calls come from local Washington credit bureaus or from local banks. Kansas City and San Francisco are pretty far away.”
Brewer wrote them down. “Call me when you get others.
She called him later that day. “I have three more,” she said. “Shall I read them off to you?”
“Yes.”
She called him with two more at the end of the day. “That’s a total of seven,” she said. One of them was from the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago.
Brewer called the Eliott manager. “Where did this request come from?” he asked.
“Let me look it up.” The manager put him on hold. “Okay,” he said when he came back, “same bank.”
“Trans-Atlantic?”
“You got it,” the manager said.
Brewer called the bureau in Kansas City.
“The request came from a bank in New York City,” he was told.
“Which one?”
“Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust.”
He called San Francisco.
“The request came from Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust,” he was told.
The pattern was pretty conclusive. Gogol was shopping for information. Who in Coles’s organization was having problems? Who was desperate for money? An employee with an incurably ill parent or child? A man with five children approaching college age? Who had a prison record? Who had a bad credit rating? Who was divorcing and fighting? Who was bribable? Who black-mailable? To find out, Brewer needed copies of the reports Gogol was getting. And these were flowing to him from all over the country through the Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust in New York.
Just after five Brewer got another phone call from Coles’s personnel officer. “I think you’ll be interested in this one,” she said. “I just received a request for information from a credit company in Fort Worth, Texas. It’s on Mr. Coles himself.”
Brewer wrote it down.
“Then,” the personnel officer said, “right after that, I got a phone call from Dunn and Bradstreet. They’re doing a financial report on the whole corporation.”
Gogol was doing a full-court press.
A telefax reply from the Los Angeles bank arrived the next morning. It listed more than a dozen deposits of money into the two Bobby English accounts: Eureka High-Tech Enterprises and Condor Medical Software Company. All deposits had come from one bank: Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust.
Brewer called Margie at Langley.
“Are we still an item?” she asked.
“Are you coming back?”
“I need some information.”
“Widowed,” she said. “One hundred ten pounds in the bathing-suit season, thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five. Good cook. Very agreeable disposition. Excellent family background. Excellent credit references. And you can put your slippers under my bed anytime you say.”
“I need information on a bank in New York City.”
“We are all business today, are we? Do you miss me?”
“No.”
“Did you know that Irish-Catholic girls from Boston make the best wives?”
“That’s not what the girls in Brooklyn say.”
“Ha. What’s the name of the bank?”
“Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust.”
“Sounds like an excellent bank to open a joint checking account in.”
“What else?”
“I’ll call you back. In fact, why don’t you come around tonight and we can discuss it over some hot mulled wine?”
“Call me back,” Brewer said.
“Sissy.”
Margie called him back an hour later. “You’d better meet me. I don’t want to put this on the wire.”
“Where?”
“You like the Ambassador Bar?”
“In an hour?”
“I’ll
be wearing a black suit and a white blouse with a string of pearls. You’ll be able to identify me because I’ll easily be the prettiest girl there. How will I identify you?”
“I’ll be wearing a lonely face,” he said.
“You’re supposed to look lonely,” she said. “Pale. And wan. Underweight. Pining away. Instead you look wonderful.”
“You look wonderful,” he said.
“That’s the best you can do, Brewer? Use your imagination. You need a Cyrano de Bergerac to write some lines for you. How about, ‘I’d tell you how lovely you are, except that I’m so blinded by your beauty I can’t see you.’ Do you kiss girls in public?”
He looked solemnly at her then touched her hand. “Soon. Soon,” he said.
“Oh dear,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Steady, girl. Switch the conversation to banks.” She cleared her throat. “Have you seen any good banks, lately?”
“You look wonderful,” he said again.
“The information you want,” she said as she leaned closer to him, “is very confidential. Okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That bank is on the Infected List.”
“Oh?”
“It may be owned by fronts for Moscow.”
“Why would Moscow want to have a New York bank?”
“My dear sir,” she said. “Banks are tremendous sources of financial information. They can examine the deposits and checks of customers and of corporations and reconstruct the most personal and most confidential information. Imagine checks to and from governmental bodies. Payroll information. Taxes and tax exemptions. They can tell what companies are purchasing, what kind of sensitive materials and from whom and for how much. It’s just the kind of information Moscow would love to have.”
“Go on.”
“This bank has been aggressively seeking new accounts. And I mean aggressively. It has been offering terrific deals to companies in sensitive industries—defense and high tech. It has been offering loans to them at less than prime rate, and making across-the-board deals for the personal accounts of the executives of those companies as part of the package. Suddenly, this bank is in possession of very sensitive and detailed information about important companies in key industries and their executives.”
“Who are the fronts?” Brewer asked.
“Two slippery pickles. With a background of insider trading. Hostile takeovers. A couple of all-American boys who were in trouble up to their lips. Suddenly the waters parted, and we have blue skies and sunny days. Soviet money probably did it, coming through the banking systems of Europe.”
So that’s how Gogol put it to Bobby English and the others. The bank fed him the information list of ready-made vulnerable targets. It was probably a credit check by the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago that turned up Bobby English in Gogol’s net. Who would he pick this time?
“Did you call her?” Margie asked.
“No.”
Limoges called Brewer.
“Got another one for you,” he said.
“Who?”
“Personnel has just informed me that someone is very interested in Sauer.”
“A retail credit company?”
“How did you know? It’s a company in Philadelphia.”
“By request of his wife,” the Philadelphia office manager said. “Mrs. Margaret Sauer.”
“Wife?” Brewer asked.
“Ex-wife.”
“What did you find out?”
“That’s confidential, sir.”
“You’ll send me a copy,” Brewer said.
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Yes, you can.”
Chapter 48
Mrs. Margaret Sauer lived outside Washington, near Vienna, Virginia. It was a garden apartment complex that spread over a number of acres. Cars, kids, cats. And mounds of dirty snow with sled tracks and small footprints all over them. Brewer made a private bet that Mrs. Margaret Sauer closely resembled Maida Conyers.
When he rang the bell, a woman opened the door. “Is it spring yet?” she asked. “Christ, I hate the cold weather.”
He was right. She had a raspy cigarette voice, a bloated face, and the remnant of what had once been a fine figure. Through the ruins he could see the resemblance to Maida Conyers.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were the delivery man.”
“I need a moment of your time, Mrs. Sauer,” he said.
“I got more than a minute, if you want it, honey. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about the credit report you ordered on your husband.”
“Me? Credit? You got the wrong girl. Are you sure you want me? Margaret Sauer?”
“Somebody ordered it,” Brewer said.
“Honey, the last thing I want or need is a credit report on my ex. We are quits, and I have no claim on him or his money.”
“What about the alimony?” he asked.
“That’s strictly voluntary on his part. I didn’t ask for a penny. And I have no beef if he stops it.”
“Perhaps it’s one of your children.”
“Beats me. None of them mentioned it to me.”
“Well, thank you.” Brewer stepped away.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Who?”
“My ex. What a nerd. You know what happens when someone forgives you?” She stepped back behind her door, drank from a glass, then put her head back out again. “It destroys you. That bastard is destroying me. Every month the check comes like a another note of forgiveness. Wait a minute.” She leaned back in and got a smoking cigarette and an ashtray. “It’s my last one. Do you have any?”
“No.”
“You know what would make me happy?”
“No.”
“If that nerd would only come around here and wreck the joint and chew me out and tell me what a bitch I am. You know what I did to him?”
“No.”
“Awful. And he never once criticized me. He’d put things back together and we’d start off again. And I’d go do it again. And he’d forgive me again. I diddled him in every car, every hotel room, every doorway in Washington. And every time he forgave me, it would make it worse. You know what made me stop? When he stopped. When we finally broke up. You sure you don’t have any cigarettes until the delivery man comes?”
“No.”
“Well, put that in your credit report. He gets credit for being a nerd. N-E-R-D. Nerd.” She shut her door.
Brewer called the credit-check company in Philadelphia. “You told me that Mrs. Margaret Sauer ordered that character check on her husband. Will you confirm that please? I’d also like to know who paid for it.”
The office manager had him on hold for a long time. He was making phone calls, Brewer decided.
“Sir,” the manager said at last.
“You just checked my credentials,” Brewer said.
“Ah, that’s right, I did. And you checked out. So I can tell you the report on Sauer went to Mrs. Margaret Sauer.”
“In Vienna, Virginia?”
“No, sir. In New York City. Care of, let’s see, Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust Company. And they’re the ones who paid for it.”
With the persistence of a bill collector, Limoges contacted Brewer. By telephone. Always now by telephone.
“Where’s the quarry?” he demanded.
“He hasn’t shown his nose.”
“Do you know how much pressure there is on me, Brewer?”
Brewah.
“As soon as he makes his move—”
“Enough! Enough!” Limoges hung up.
Brewer went out and shot some solitary pool. He was getting no closer to locating Gogol; time was slipping by; Limoges was becoming more insistent; and his own position was becoming more vulnerable each hour. He had to find some way to get past the bank. He had to find some way to find Gogol. At last he had it. As Harry Graybill used to say, “If you want to find a mousetrap, follow a mouse.”
Brewer went out and called Margie.
<
br /> “Do something for me,” he said.
“Yes. What?”
“Contact a credit company.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to tell them about my prison record.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Once Eliott uncovers my prison record they’re going to have to send a revised report with that information to Gogol. All we have to do is follow the messenger to Gogol.”
“Oh. Okay. When? Now?”
“Yes. How about from a pay phone at the Ambassador Bar?”
“After work?”
“Yes. That’ll be fine. There’s an hour’s difference between here and Chicago.”
With Brewer standing beside her, Margie called the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago and got the office manager.
“I’m calling about the Brewer character report you did,” she said.
“What about it? Who is this?”
“It isn’t even half complete. You’re going to end up with egg on your face.”
“Who is this? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Brewer has a prison record. And you don’t mention it.”
“How could he have a record? He’s a secret agent of some kind.”
“It’s a matter of public record.”
“Jesus.”
“He did a term for selling arms illegally.”
“How do you know this? Can you prove it?”
“Why don’t you ask around Washington? It’s common knowledge. Why don’t you start with his old office in the State Department? There’s a man there by the name of Borden. Ask him. And you might check into Brewer’s record for smuggling contraband into Iran.”
“Iran? Jesus.”
She hung up then looked at Brewer. “Now what?”
“We wait for some action.”
A messenger hunted Brewer down early in the afternoon and handed him a small envelope. “You never saw me and I never saw you and this meeting never took place.”
The envelope contained an audio cassette. The first voice he heard he recognized immediately. It was the manager of the Eliott Credit Bureau in Chicago, asking for the credit-report manager of Trans-Atlantic Bank and Trust in New York.
“I’m calling about that report we filed the other day,” the Eliott manager said. “The one on Charles Brewer.”
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