“Got rid of them how?”
“They’re on their way here,” Marianne said. “To Washington.”
“What the hell for?”
“One thing I already told you. So Khalil can try his own wings with them out of the picture. But the official reason is AUC.”
“You sound like a turkey gobbler gobbling.”
“And you sound like you haven’t read a newspaper since you got home from Motamar.”
“Been busy answering fan mail.”
“Don’t you even know what AUC is?”
I frowned. “What’s that?”
“The Association for Underdeveloped Countries,” Marianne explained. “Like so many outfits in Washington, AUC is somewhere in limbo between official and unofficial status. The money comes from private investment sources, but its use is co-ordinated by the Department of State.”
“Now I get it. Motamar qualifies for a loan because it just went through a revolution, scared or kicked out most of the foreign technicians who could have done some good, and murdered those who wouldn’t be scared out and refused to be kicked out.”
“You sound like a Midwestern Republican,” Marianne said, a little piqued.
“I’m a Maryland Independent,” I said. “But you weren’t in Motamar. I was.”
“Well, anyway, El Thomad’s heading the Motamar delegation to AUC, Baki Osman is his publicity man and Galib Azam, who of course was educated in England and can look, think and act like a Westerner, is number-three man.”
“They’ll probably have to wait in line behind the delegations from Upper Volta and Lower Kangaroo Pouch.”
“You still sound like a—”
“One little speech, Mrs. Baker,” I interrupted, “and then I promise not to talk politics. How many new alleged nations were added to the U.N.’s rolls just this year? Fifteen? Most of them with leaders who can’t tell an attaché case from a sawed-off shotgun, their only qualifications being that they galloped in off the desert or climbed down from the trees to burn houses and rape women, and have their followers queue up at the local post office to wait for this magic touchstone called freedom which, as any fool knows, comes tied in a package with a bright ribbon on it.”
I took a deep breath and went on: “In the name of freedom and independence, we are living in the generation of the con-man and the mass-murderer. Yeah, and don’t give me that line about how if we don’t get to them first with gifts, games and the key to grandma’s bank vault, the Russians will. If what I saw in Motamar is any sample, Mr. K. and company are welcome to them.”
Marianne licked the point of an imaginary pencil, poised it over an imaginary pad on her pleasantly not-imaginary lap and asked: “Does that mean, sir, that you are opposed to an AUG monetary grant to Motamar?”
“There isn’t a heck of a lot I can do about it.”
“True, but some friends of yours will be in there pitching.”
“What friends of mine?”
“View’s London stringer interviewed Samia Falcon right before she left for the States.”
“Samia? She’s here?”
“Will be tonight. To testify before the AUC. She told our stringer the first person she’ll look up is Dr. Turner Capehart. Between them, she hopes they’ll be able to stuff El Thamad’s request down his throat.”
I stood up and started pacing. Marianne said: “Whenever you wear a furrow in my priceless broadloom like that, something’s eating at you. What’s the matter, Chet?”
“Are they tired of living?” I said. “The only way they can give El Thamad a hard time is to testify how he tried to murder the king twice, once with a bomb in his plane and once on the operating table. You think maybe El Thamad will stand by grinning like a bottle of iodine and let them?”
“They wouldn’t be saying anything that twenty million View readers don’t already know,” Marianne pointed out.
“As told by Chester Drum, itinerant Private Richard.”
“Don Quixote with a Magnum .44, I like to think.”
“Okay, let’s be serious. View makes good reading, but you have been known to sensationalize things, haven’t you? Dr. Capehart’s one of the two Westerners to come out of Motamar the world will listen to. Samia Falcon’s the other—thanks to her father. Whatever happens, El Thamad won’t let them testify. He can’t. He’ll squash them like a bug.”
“Aren’t you being melodramatic? Wouldn’t the finger point straight to him if he tried anything?”
“He’s a pro,” I said. “There are ways you can kill people, and then there are ways. If worst came to worst, as Motamar’s representative to AUC, he’d have diplomatic immunity. Don’t you see, he’d have nothing to lose by trying. If he doesn’t step on Samia and Dr. Capehart, Motamar wouldn’t put a glove on the goose that lays the golden eggs. If he does and gets away with it, he flies back to Motamar a hero with a blank check. If he does and fails to get away with it, he walks off Scot free thanks to diplomatic immunity, and even if they don’t let him back in Motamar, there are maybe half a dozen other Arab countries that would bid for his services. He’ll make his move, Marianne. He’s got to.”
Marianne gave me a long, searching look. She nibbled at her lower lip. “You mean Dr. Capehart and Samia Falcon … their lives are in danger?”
I said that was what I meant.
“What are you going to do?”
“Get in touch with them. Tuck them into bed every night. Bring them their breakfast every morning.”
“Wouldn’t the police—”
“Hell,” I said, “they haven’t been threatened. The cops don’t supply bodyguard service on request.”
“And you do?”
“No request necessary. I’ve got a stake in Dr. Capehart, and I saw them butcher Samia Falcon’s old man.”
“Chet,” Marianne said, worried, “if El Thamad is as ruthless as you say—”
“It’s his middle name.”
“—didn’t it occur to you he might have your name on his list too?”
Anything I said to that would either alarm Marianne or fail to deceive her. I just shrugged.
“Please, Chet. Be careful.”
A few minutes later Mrs. Gower returned with the twins. They looked amazingly like their father. Their burgeoning two-year-old’s vocabulary now included the very important words, “Uncle Chetter.” Grinning ridiculously, and burbling baby-talk, and bouncing Wally on one knee and Chester on the other, Uncle Chetter played with them until nap-time.
Marianne walked me to the door. “Please be careful,” she said.
She didn’t have to say it. With El Thamad you were either careful or dead.
19
DURING WHAT WAS LEFT of Sunday, Dr. Capehart’s answering service told me he was out of town. I tried to reach his brother Benson, the Under-Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Same no luck. Benson had a butler, and the butler said Secretary Capehart had gone away with his brother and was not expected back until tomorrow night. I tried the Doc’s number four times, on the off-chance he’d get back a day early. He didn’t.
Marianne had agreed to track down Samia Falcon for me as soon as she arrived in D.C. That summer I was living in Georgetown about half a mile from Marianne’s place and only a little further from Benson Capehart’s town house. I ate a cold steak sandwich, telling myself I was the worst cook since a sergeant named McCullough in the army, who had damn near poisoned me and forty other O.C.S. candidates. I drank two bottles of beer in front of the TV set in my living room. On the 17-inch screen a news commentator with the patented Murrow frown and patented Murrow crack-of-doom voice brought El Thamad’s Comet IV in for a perfect landing at Washington National. They couldn’t get near the big-shots. They interviewed a nervous little man named Mustafa who looked like the hall porter in a flea-bag hotel in Casablanca or Qasr Tabuk. He lauded peace and good will and concert of nations and brotherhood and free Western mutual assistance. His Adam’s apple kept bobbing like a cork on water. Then eight or ten guys who
looked uncomfortable without Sten guns growing out of their armpits rushed three other guys whose faces you couldn’t see across the tarmac to a waiting Lincoln a little smaller than a Sherman tank. It probably had armor-plate too. Marianne’s Unholy Three had arrived.
I spent the rest of the evening cleaning and oiling my spare .44 Magnum, the one without the notches on the butt-grip.
Monday at the office in the Farrell Building on F Street, a worried Congressman from New England took forty-five minutes to tell me, in his direct fashion, that he wanted me to put a plant on his daughter’s husband, who he thought was playing around. I said I didn’t do that kind of work. I recommended the Sammy Green Agency, which did. I smoked too many cigarettes, paid too many visits to Jack Daniels in the deep drawer and kept waiting for the phone to ring.
It rang at a quarter to five.
“Hi,” Marianne said. “She’s at the Shoreham. Checked in around noon and wouldn’t give an interview to the ghost of Joseph Pulitzer if he came to haunt her. One funny thing, Chet. At the airport they said she looked drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“That’s what they said.”
I chewed on that and couldn’t get it down. I called the Shoreham.
“We have no Miss Falcon registered here, sir.”
“Cut it out. She won’t be incognito to me. Tell her it’s Chet Drum.”
But he was adamant. I asked: “Who’s the house-dick over there?”
“The Officer in Charge of the Hotel Security Staff,” I was told frostily, “is Captain Myrtle.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I knew him when he was bouncing lushes in the gutter outside a joint on Custer Street. Put him on—if it isn’t too early in the day for him.”
Captain Myrtle was more cooperative. “We’ve got your pigeon here,” he said. “Suite on the sixth.”
“Alone?”
“And as dry as the Sahara Desert.”
“You might as well be back on Custer Street.”
“Hey, shut up about that. They’ll stop calling me Captain.”
With Myrtle’s help, I got through to Samia Falcon.
“This is Chet Drum,” I said. “Remember?”
“Hello,” she said. “Hello there. I must say I never expected to bump into you again.”
Her voice sounded strange. Nothing you’d have a mechanic fix, but the sibilants were a shade out of alignment and the vowels had a thick, furry quality. She didn’t sound crocked. What she sounded like was a steady drinker who started with a little nip in the morning and stayed in the swim all day until it was time to brush her teeth with bonded bourbon.
“Can I see you?”
“Business or pleasure will it be?”
“You call it. When do you testify before the AUC?”
That worried her. “How did you know I was going to testify before the old AUC?”
I told her how I knew. She said: “Hearing starts Wednesday. They hope to reach me by Friday or next Monday.”
“Could I see you tonight?”
There was a silence. “All right.” Then she said: “You saw them kill my father.” It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right, Samia. I did.”
“Tonight, could you … would you …”
“You’re not going anywhere till then, are you? I want you to stay put.”
She didn’t ask me why. She only said: “Just resting.” And drinking, baby, I thought. Slowly and steadily.
“I’ll be around about seven-thirty. Dinner?”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“My father. How it … was?”
She sounded less drunk, and neither morbid nor maudlin. Her chill matter-of-factness made me feel like a drink myself. I said we could talk about it, and she hung up.
In the D.C. directory I found a listing for the Association for Underdeveloped Countries. They had an address on M Street along Embassy Row. I dialed the number and a woman’s voice said cheerfully: “Good afternoon, AUC. Every little bit helps.”
“You have somebody in charge of security there?”
“Security, sir? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
With a tag-line like “every little bit helps,” a security staff had been too much to expect. I said: “Well, can I speak to someone in charge?”
“In charge of what?”
“AUC.”
“Who is calling, please?”
“The name is Drum. I just got back from Motamar a couple of weeks ago—”
“Oh,” she chirped enthusiastically. “And you want to testify? I could let you speak to Mrs. Welcome.”
I said I would welcome a word with Mrs. Welcome. The name was familiar: Mae Welcome was the widow of a four-star general who had jumped with the 82nd Airborne in Holland during the big war and commanded the Eighth Army for a while in Korea. Hers was a name to reckon with in Washington, if your idea of reckoning was to be invited to all the right parties at all the right times.
“This is Mrs. Welcome,” a voice as soft as a featherbed informed me. “How can you help us, Mr. Drum?”
There are very few voices that can make the reverse of the expected telephone gambit sound reasonable. Mae Welcome’s was one of them.
“I’m the guy who flew to Motamar after Dr. Capehart,” I said.
“But of course,” she burbled. “The name. I should have known.” Her laughter was like eider down too. “I read about your exploits in View Magazine. I must say you have a vivid imagination.”
“I’m a private detective. When I get paid, I get paid to report facts. That gets to be a habit. Every word you read in View is true. That’s why I called.”
The soft voice became crisper. “If you intend to testify before the Association, I’m afraid you must come prepared to back up your allegations with facts.”
“Or back up my facts with allegations.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I won’t testify, Mrs. Welcome. You have two people who can do that much better than I could. Samia Falcon and Dr. Capehart.”
“They are free to make their statements to the Association,” she said, still more crisply. “We’ll be particularly interested in what Dr. Capehart has to say. Though as for Miss Falcon, obviously she’ll be prejudiced. After all, her father was executed as the leader of the rebels who tried to overthrow the bona fide Motamar government.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well, wasn’t he?”
“Sure,” I said. “But that’s how they would have written up George Washington if he had surrendered to Cornwallis instead of the other way around.”
“The situation is hardly analogous, Mr. Drum.”
“Don’t you ever say no?” I asked.
“I beg your pardon?” she said again.
“To underdeveloped countries?”
“Please don’t be sarcastic. They are our work. I’ll hang up.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Welcome. I guess I was out of line. But I was in Motamar.”
“Meaning I wasn’t?”
“Meaning if you really want Dr. Capehart and Samia Falcon to testify, what are you going to do to see that they stay alive until the hearings are over?”
“Surely you’re being melodramatic!” she said melodramatically. “Consul-General Smiley assures me that the de facto government of Motamar is made up of stable, level-headed people.”
“Smiley’s here?” I said.
“To testify on behalf of King Khalil’s government, yes.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I remembered what Consul Taggert had had to say about Gerald Smiley. If a pair like Mrs. Welcome and Gerald Smiley got their heads together, I’d just be straining my vocal cords. I thanked Mrs. Welcome for her time, which was the only thing I could thank her for. When I hung up, the phone rang.
“Mr. Chester Drum? I have a call for you from Fredericksburg, Virginia.”
And a moment later a hearty voice enough like Turner Capehart’s to belong to his br
other said: “Benson Capehart, Drum. I hear you called me in Georgetown.”
“That’s right, Mr. Secretary. I’d like to know your brother’s under lock and key until the hearings are over.”
“You tell him that,” Benson Capehart said. “You’re probably the only one he’d take it from.”
“Okay, I will. When can we get together?”
“Well, we’re out here at my farm outside of Fredericksburg. We just got into the lodge, where your message was waiting. Caught half a dozen bass between us. As soon as my man packs them in ice, we’ll be ready to start back for Georgetown. Be there in less than an hour and a half.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said.
I looked at my watch. It was a quarter after five, which would get them home by six-thirty or so. Time enough for a quick conference before I took Samia to dinner.
I put the phone on service, locked up, rode the elevator down and walked along F Street to the lot where I parked the Olds. Rush hour traffic flowed and clotted and flowed again. Exhaust fumes hung heavy in the hot afternoon air.
It took me twenty minutes to reach Whitehurst Freeway, and another twenty bumper-to-bumper on the elevated highway to Canal Road in Georgetown. I felt impatient for no reason I could see. I’d get there before they did, wouldn’t I?
As it turned out, it wouldn’t have helped if I’d taken a helicopter.
20
THERE ARE MILLIONAIRES and then there are millionaires.
There are Texas oilmen millionaires who can spend all their lives shuttling between Houston and the world’s watering places and still rake in two hundred thousand bucks a day, after depreciation, because they own all the right leases on all the right wells.
There are fourth-generation millionaires whose great-grandfathers started as itinerant peddlers and who own thirty-story office buildings overflowing with bright young men who spend their eight-hour days trying to figure out which charity to give which million to.
There are hard-case millionaires almost as approachable as the Abominable Snowman, and showcase millionaires almost as prodigal as the AUC; millionaires who drink and millionaires who teetotal; gentleman-farmer millionaires and slum-tenement landlord millionaires you can’t tell from their tenants without a score card; happy millionaires, sad ones, wise ones, dumb ones, shrewd ones and some who couldn’t sit down to a five-and-dime poker game at the local volunteer fire station without losing their red underwear.
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