Carbon Copy

by Ian McKercher

  “Well now,” said Frances, “Orinoco did not order up dinner for Rodriguez and Mofongo. Who was his date?”

  Scobie sighed. “God. This case is a festering can of worms. I think I’ll go back to traffic patrol.”

  “Another thing. Orinoco told me that he did not go into the apartment on Murray Street because he saw Mofongo casing it. When I told him someone had entered the apartment, he looked surprised, and then his eyes had a little ‘aha!’ moment. I pressed him, but he pretended to be confused.”

  “Well, the pretending days of Carlos Orinoco are over,” said Scobie. “Let me tell ya’, he’s not pretending to be dead.”

  “Could it have been Commander Evans? Dressed as a Sally Ann officer?”

  “We’re out of suspects. Who else could it have been?”

  “It’s not that all leads point to Evans,” said Frances. “It’s just that no leads point anywhere else. Maybe it’s time for a little chat with the commander.”

  “Too late, I’m afraid,” said the inspector. “Captain Quigley called me yesterday afternoon to meet for dinner on short notice. I couldn’t because of this Scottish Rites commitment, so he suggested a quick drink at the Army Officers’ Mess. Over I went to find him tossing back double Scotches with Commander Evans. A hasty farewell party. Evans has been ordered back to England. They’re short-staffed at headquarters.

  “He was going to take a sleeper out late last night to New York. Has meetings there today with the British Special Ops people — then he’s flying straight up to Gander to catch the Lancaster shuttle at midnight.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They build Lancaster bombers at the Avro plant in Malton. When five or six are flight-ready, they muster at Gander and fly to the UK in a convoy. Lannies carry a crew of seven, but they ferry over empty except for the pilot, so there’s room for passengers. Noisy and not comfortable, but quick.

  “There’s more. I checked my office for messages on my way here. Tobin-Sorley in MI5 telegrammed. Guess what? MI5, the British internal security agency, handles all intelligence work in the entire British Commonwealth.”

  “Canada is ‘internal’?’

  “Yes.”

  “So you sent an inquiry about Evans to his own department?”

  “Yes. Tobin-Sorley thought it quite humorous. Said his colleagues had a good laugh about it over tea.”

  “Oh-oh. Did somebody tip off Evans that questions were being asked about him here and warn him to scram fast?”

  “The good questions continue, Miss McFadden. Another item. We were out on the street lighting our pipes, gloved and scarfed against the stormy February blast. Quigley and I exchanged a final handshake with Evans and bade our adieus. When I got home, my wife, who has the nose of a bloodhound, said, ‘What’s that awful smell coming off you?’ She sniffed my coat and hat and then my gloves on the hall stand. She held my right glove up to my nose. Chloroform.”

  “And I did a bad thing.” The inspector faked a guilty look. “At the officers’ mess, I excused myself to use the washroom. When I passed the commander’s cashmere coat hanging in the cloakroom, I liberated a few threads from his sleeve. After breakfast, I’m taking them down to Doc Thompson to compare with the threads found under Cat Courchene’s fingernails. Care to join me?”

  It was Dr. Cornell’s last day in her morgue rotation. “We were able to diagnose Señor Orinoco’s cause of death very quickly,” she said, while Dr. Thompson put the threads under his lab microscope. “Major trauma of the vital organs.”

  “No hemlock this time?”

  “Nope.” She smiled. “I enjoyed morgue work more than I expected. It’s an interesting side of medicine that I’d never given much thought to.”

  “Have you ever seen The Paddington Mystery?” asked Scobie. “All about a crusading coroner. Great movie.”

  “What’s next for you?” asked Frances.

  “Psychiatry.”

  “The nut house?” said Scobie.

  “I know it’ll be challenging. I was a nurse for ten years before I went back for my medical degree. We know so little about how the brain works or what derails ‘normal behaviour.’”

  “Why’d you give up nursing?”

  “Nurses are treated like handmaids. When there’s a debate about a medical diagnosis, the doctor is always deferred to.”

  “Right or wrong?”

  “Right or wrong.”

  Dr. Thompson returned holding a microscope slide. “The threads? Dead match,” he said.

  “Forget bringing him in for a chat,” said Frances. “Have Evans arrested when he changes planes tonight in Gander.”

  “Arrest an MI6 officer?” queried Inspector Hollingsworth. “Or I guess I should say ‘MI5.’ On the strength of a few coat threads and a chloroformed glove?”

  “Can’t we at least detain him for questioning when he’s back in Canada?”

  “Gander’s in Newfoundland. A Crown colony. Not Canadian territory. And, the British War Office would be in high dudgeon. One of their officers guilty of espionage or murder? They’d accuse us of undermining the war effort.”

  “Does the politics change the truth?” asked Frances.

  Frances continued to puzzle it out on the streetcar home. Once there, she made three phone calls.

  “Hi, Dr. Grace. All good?”

  “All the better to hear your voice, Frances.”

  “Quick question: You wrote a thesis for your Ph.D. Exactly what is a thesis?”

  “A thesis is . . . an assumption to be proven. In writing a dissertation, you lay out an argument and then test it against all known evidence to see if it holds true. Thinking of doing a doctoral degree?”

  “It’d be a bit of a leap for a Grade Eleven dropout.”

  “Good morning, Captain Quigley. Frances McFadden here. You heard that they found Señor Orinoco’s body this morning beside the Rideau Canal? Inspector Hollingsworth can fill you in. Question: Do you have Commander Evans’s bio on file at Military Intelligence? Good. Could you check something for me?”

  Finally, Frances called Jack Pickersgill, Prime Minister King’s assistant secretary.

  “Miss McFadden! What a delight to talk to someone rational who doesn’t want fourteen things done yesterday. Congratulations, by the way, on the Bank’s Victory Bond launch.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pickersgill, although I don’t quite own full credit. However, I do need a favour.”

  “I’m prepared to give you all the credit, Miss McFadden. I know who really carries the can at the Bank of Canada. Name your reward. Senate seat? Lieutenant-governorship?”

  “Much more modest. Question: Does our government share extensive documentation — far too lengthy to code — with the British government?”

  “Alas, we do.”

  “How is it sent to Britain?”

  “A Privy Council Office messenger takes a plane up to Gander every other day with a chock-full briefcase. He hands it directly to a ferry command pilot who flies it to Glasgow where a British PCO officer signs for it and takes it down to London.”

  “Is today an ‘every-other-day’?”

  “Let me check . . . yes. Plane leaves Rockcliffe Base at three o’clock.”

  “Could I hitch a ride up to Gander?”

  “Probably. They use a Percival Petrel four-seater for the trips. Air Vice-Marshall Gibbs superintends ferry service. I’ll call and see if there’s room. Going across to Britain?”

  “No. I’d just like a word with a passenger heading out on tonight’s Lancaster shuttle.”

  -29-

  The Long Game

  When the Percival Petrel landed at Gander at 9 p.m., Frances saw six Lancasters lined up on the runway apron set to leave for Scotland at midnight if the weather held. The flight lounge was furnished with wing chairs and reading lamps — a last touch of comfort before the trans-Atlantic trip. An untended bar worked on the honour system with a price list and a cigar box for change.

  A corner wing chair gave Frances a
sense of security. She opened The Art of War again. It was almost eleven when she heard the throttled engine roar of the New York plane landing. Commander Evans in his cashmere overcoat entered through the runway door. Frances rose to meet him. “A drink, Commander? You’ve an hour before your flight.”

  If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t let on. “Thank you, Miss McFadden. A double Scotch and soda. I just need to freshen up.”

  Frances wondered if he’d slip out the back door and make a run for it. She needn’t have worried. In Gander, in winter, where does one run to?

  He returned and sank into the chair beside her. “Heading to England with us?”

  “No.”

  A quizzical look. “Other amenities in Gander drew your interest?”

  “Only you.”

  “Check,” said Commander Evans, as though they were playing chess. Close to the truth.

  “Have you ever seen the movie The Roaring Twenties with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart?” Frances asked.

  “No. Any good?”

  “I saw it yesterday in Ottawa. It brought a certain Royal Navy commander to mind,” she said with a smile.

  “Really? I’m flattered. Do I remind you of Cagney or Bogart?”

  “Neither. It was the catchy tune that Priscilla Lane sings — It Had to Be You.”

  The commander sipped in silence.

  “I’ve replayed our little murder-espionage intrigue in my head dozens of times, exhausting all other options. Beyond Inspector Hollingsworth and me, you were the only one in the know.” She lifted her drink in a toast. “It had to be you.”

  “You trust Inspector Hollingsworth?”

  “Unconditionally. We go back a long way.”

  “And Quigley?”

  “Quigley didn’t know about the secret stash at the Murray Street apartment. You did.”

  “You here to arrest me?”

  Frances laughed. “No, Commander. I’m a bank clerk. Arresting people for murder and espionage is not in my job description. Anyway, as Inspector Hollingsworth reminded me, Newfoundland is conveniently beyond the jurisdiction of Canadian law.”

  “Did he believe me innocent?”

  “No, but he did feel that MI5 officers have immunity from just about anything.” She took a business-like sip of her own drink. “That doesn’t mean I’m not curious.”

  Commander Evans smiled. “You know what curiosity did for the cat?”

  “I do. That’s why I’m sitting with my back to the wall in a public place. Here’s my thesis. It goes back to our second meeting with Major Philpott. The major called Inspector Hollingsworth out to the hall for a private conversation. You opened a file and showed me some letters. Asked if they were typed by the same person on the same machine as the fake Bank of Canada letters. I gave a qualified ‘yes.’ You put them away before the others returned. It didn’t occur to me at the time that neither Philpott nor Hollingsworth knew those other letters existed.”

  “What occurs to you now?”

  “It occurs to me that you purchased them from Carlos Orinoco. You therefore realized two things immediately — that Orinoco was the source of Philpott’s trove, and that you’d been stiffed with counterfeit material. There were good reasons for you not to share that with your colleagues.”

  “And what would those reasons be?”

  “Well, you were the agent purchasing ‘secrets.’ And, if Orinoco had sold you worthless material, you might want to deal with him privately. Like out the window of room 918 at the Chateau Laurier.”

  Commander Evans’s eyes widened. “Was that Orinoco’s fate?”

  “Like you didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you choose.”

  “I believe you knocked out Cat Courchene and threw him off the Eddy Bridge into the Ottawa River.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The trace of a cryptic note: “CE 11:30 Eddy Brd” was on a pad by Cat’s phone. And Inspector Hollingsworth borrowed a few threads from your coat yesterday at the officers’ mess. They perfectly matched threads under Cat’s fingernails.

  “You were in my apartment the night of the Victory Bond gala, planting treason evidence for Major Philpott to find the next day.”

  “Think so?”

  “I do. Your goodbye handshake last night with Superintendent Hollingsworth? He nosed out the chloroform on the glove. You could have killed me. Why didn’t you?”

  Cornered, Commander Evans abandoned the cat-andmouse game with a good-natured smile. “I like you, Miss McFadden. You’re very bright. I had no wish to kill you. You earned my undying admiration at those Shefford apartment interviews, playing Major Philpott as deftly as a matador toying with an angry bull. Highly entertaining.” A hint of braggadocio slipped almost unobtrusively into his voice. “I checked out how well connected you are for a bank clerk. Your fan club extends to half of official Ottawa. A dead Frances McFadden would really have drawn the floodlights. The exact opposite of what I wanted.”

  “And what exactly did you want by framing me, Commander?”

  “Ah. You likely view my behaviour as dereliction of duty, Miss McFadden. But, you see, one can have conflicting duties that overlap.”

  “Now that’s part of my confusion, Commander. I would have said that you gave heart and soul to the defeat of Nazi Germany. And yet, . . . ”

  He cut in. “There are many sections at MI5. The largest one is known as the ‘short game’ desk — focused on fighting Germany. I work on the ‘long game’ desk. With America in now, we will win the war. It may take two or three years, but Germany will eventually exhaust their supply of men and armaments.”

  “And after that?”

  “That is precisely what the long game desk works on.”

  Frances sipped Scotch.

  “After the disruption of war, with millions of casualties, and millions of refugees displaced, and economies destroyed, the world deck will be reshuffled.”

  “To what end?”

  “Hard to say. The long game desk prepares for any eventuality.”

  “Help me understand how my being chloroformed and arrested for treason supports the long game.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing personal. Perhaps a few days’ inconvenience for you. When Governor Towers returns from holiday, he’d have you freed in five minutes. I needed to distract Philpott until he was transferred out of Ottawa. I hoped your arrest would hold his attention until then.”

  “I did not like Philpott. He was a bully and a buffoon. What’s that to you?”

  “A buffoon and a bad short game player, Miss McFadden. He was blundering blindly towards destroying networks that we’d spent years developing. Philpott was all for ‘flower picking,’ snapping off what’s visible without a thought to the roots. ‘If so-and-so appears to be a security risk, arrest him immediately,’ he’d say. As though he wanted a medal for the most arrests.”

  “Isn’t arresting spies the goal of Military Intelligence?”

  “Not immediately. Once you’ve hooked a spy, you want to give him some line to run. Learn all you can before you reel him in. His contacts? clients? associates? His motivation — money or patriotism or blackmail? The roots stay after the flower is gone. Long game people want the roots.”

  “Another thing,” said Frances. “When Quigley left the investigation to us, you wondered out loud who put Philpott up to the search warrant for my apartment. You said Philpott wasn’t smart enough, or persuasive enough, to pursue it. This meshed exactly with Superintendent Hollingsworth’s opinion. You hypothesized that the Mountie senior command had engineered it. But you were responsible, Commander, and used that feint to direct suspicion away from yourself.”

  “Sorry. I had no notice about Philpott’s departure, nor did I know he hadn’t found the documents hidden in your apartment. How did you find them?”

  “Inspector Hollingsworth learned of the search warrant and thought it an unusual
coincidence after my apartment’s trashing. He suspected something might have been hidden. He was right. We found the letters before Philpott arrived with his search warrant.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “When I first met Major Philpott in charge of Canadian Military Intelligence, I thought he was either a brilliant actor or a complete idiot. Short exposure answered that question. Not to disparage your countryman, Miss McFadden, but Philpott lacks an inquiring mind. I actually wondered if he was assigned to this sensitive position to guarantee that his investigations went nowhere.”

  “Why would his superiors do that?”

  “To cover their long game.”

  “Were they playing?”

  “I found no proof. I overestimated the Canadian intelligence operation. Your military establishment was minuscule until the war began — a little late to set up an intelligence operation. I’ve observed that suspicion and duplicity are not natural parts of the Canadian character. Great Britain has been in the intelligence business for almost nine hundred years. We have always valued good information, of course, because British Intelligence is not the only team playing the long game.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Disciples become disenchanted. Especially the idealists. They come to our side bringing offerings.”

  “Out of patriotism?”

  “Usually they want protection. Or money.”

  “Do you provide?”

  “If we believe the information is valuable or will confirm something we suspect.”

  “I don’t quite see how the tragic life of Carlos Orinoco played into the long game. The six deaths?”

  “Tragic is a good adjective for poor Carlos. Naïve is another. He was selling anything he could get his hands on to fund his sister’s lifestyle.”

  “He loved her.”

  “That too.”

  “That too?”

  “You think that love was his only motivation for taking all those chances? Accumulating all those enemies?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “You disappoint me, Miss McFadden. Anyway, his activities were well known to us. We followed him, which was how we first learned by accident about his sister, as two agents were following him in different cities at the same time. Orinoco was in way over his head on many fronts.”