Manhunt Is My Mission

by Stephen Marlowe

  “They already tried that. Hard head.”

  Borah leaned back to smile at the ceiling again. “Sometimes,” he mused, “I wish I was a private man.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I like your imagination. What kind of a pipe do you smoke?”

  “Well, it was a thought,” I said. “Thanks for listening.” I went to the door. When my hand was on the knob he called me:

  “Drum? Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Home.”

  “Don’t. Check into a hotel and tell me where. Your idea is crazy. It’s nuts. A million things can go wrong with it They probably will. But I don’t want them killing you before we get a chance to try it. I’ll do it. Drop out of sight. Don’t take any chances until I give you the word. It’s crazy, but I’ll do it.”

  I drove over to the Mayflower, checked in, had breakfast and hit the sack. For the first time I felt as if I was pulling the strings, not El Thamad. That made the difference. It always does. I felt as nervous as a hippo in a mud bath.

  24

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, showered, shaved and feeling full of beans I dropped in on View Magazine’s Washington office and borrowed Marianne’s Miniphon. A Miniphon is a tape recorder about the size of this book. Marianne’s was complete with a wrist-microphone that looked like an expensive chronometer.

  She asked me why I wanted it. I said to give her another exclusive story.

  Back at the Mayflower, I called Foggy Bottom—which is where the State Department holds court. I asked for and got Jack Morley, the Assistant Chief of Protocol. Jack and I had gone through the FBI Academy together.

  “I’ll bet you saw El Thamad’s plane in the other day.”

  “You’d win your bet. Why?”

  “He knows you? And what a big wheel you are?”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Jack said. Then he asked: “What’s up?”

  I told him, in detail. He listened as noisily as Lieutenant Borah, not because he had Borah’s mine-shaft mind with a steel trap at the bottom but because he was stunned.

  “Can I be one of your pallbearers?” he said finally.

  “No. On account of I’ve got to stay alive to find you a new job after they give you your walking papers at Foggy Bottom.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “Count on you, Jack?”

  That insulted him. “What do you think?”

  I asked him if Pappy Piersall was in town. Pappy was a Virginian and another Academy alumnus who still worked for the Bureau. Jack thought he was in town. Ten minutes later I gave Pappy the same pitch.

  “Chestah,” he drawled, “only your fertile and dubious mind could concoct such hanky-panky. Ah wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Which gave me the police department and Foggy Bottom and the FBI, more or less, as partners in my con game.

  I waited for word from Borah and experimented with Marianne’s Miniphon. If I carried it in the inside breast-pocket of my jacket, I could turn it on while groping for a cigarette.

  I would be ready to smoke when El Thamad reached the breaking point.

  The word from Borah came early Wednesday morning. “I’ve got your boys at the Fourth Precinct,” he told me on the phone. “Captain there owes me a favor.”

  “All three of them?”

  “Uh-huh. We picked them up on their way to the opening session of the AUC.”

  “They mad?”

  “Indignant. They want their lawyer. I told them they don’t merit a lawyer until they’re charged and they told me they can’t be charged because they have diplomatic immunity. Ergo, I said. Then they don’t get to call their lawyer. They’re stewing.”

  When I got there, Pappy Piersall was just going in. Pappy was a deceptively plump, pink-cheeked man with guileless baby-blue eyes. “Jack here yet?” I said.

  “Ah don’t think so.”

  “Give me a minute and then go on up.”

  “Yes, suh,” Pappy said, grinning. Jack Morley would play ball, I decided, out of a sense of loyalty and friendship. But Pappy Piersall would enjoy himself.

  I showed the Fourth Precinct desk sergeant my business card. He said I was expected. I went upstairs and past the low rail-divider of the bullpen to a door with an unmarked frosted-glass panel. I was all spiffed up in my one and only Italian raw silk suit. I stood for a moment, then turned the knob suddenly and opened the door and strode in as if I owned the joint.

  Lieutenant Borah’s balding head jerked up. He had been sitting at a battleship-gray desk with his big hands folded. Opposite him on three uncomfortable camp chairs sat El Thamad, Baki Osman and Galib Azam. When picked up, they had been on their way to the opening session of the AUC. Only Colonel Azam was in uniform. It was a good touch. He wore the uniform of the defeated Motamar Legion, as if all was still sweetness and light in the best of all possible worlds that was Motamar. El Thamad wore a light-weight, pale blue gaberdine. Baki Osman was sweating in a double-breasted chalk-stripe suit. Its lack of style was tailored to the personality the fat man wanted to convey—he was just a poor country boy trying to do his best as a public relations man among all the sharpies in Washington.

  They seemed surprised to see me. Lieutenant Borah snapped irritably: “Didn’t I tell you guys to knock before busting in here?” Then he gave me a quick, ingratiating smile and his voice became respectful. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you, Mr. Drum.”

  There was another door beyond Borah’s desk. “I’ll be inside,” I said. I didn’t even look at El Thamad and his cronies. “Keep them three hours anyway.”

  “Got you, Mr. Drum.”

  Just then there was a timid knock at the door.

  “Yeah?” Borah bellowed.

  “Piersall, FBI,” Pappy said.

  He came in. He ignored Borah and the Motamar delegation to the AUC. He came straight over to me with a shy, respectful smile plastered on his mug. “Special Agent Piersall, Mr. Drum,” he said, and didn’t quite snap to attention. “My section chief pointed you out to me the other day, sun. It’s a real pleasure.”

  “Let’s see some identification,” I said. He showed me his special agent’s card and badge. I nodded and waved them away.

  “Gonna be a pleasure to work under you, suh.”

  El Thamad and Galib Azam exchanged puzzled glances. Baki Osman mopped sweat off his forehead with a polka-dot handkerchief.

  “I don’t have to tell you what you have to do,” I said.

  “No, suh!” Pappy cried fervently, almost clicking his heels.

  Came a peremptory knock at the door. “There a Lieutenant Borah in there?” Jack Morley called.

  Borah admitted it, and Jack came stalking in. He is a tall man with a black brush-cut and shell-rimmed glasses. He looked mad. “I had a sweet time finding you,” he said. “The Bureau called to say three diplomats I’m responsible for were picked up by the police. I want to know why.”

  El Thamad smiled his death’s-head grin. Galib Azam said: “Perhaps you can explain to these people the meaning of diplomatic immunity, Mr. Morley.”

  “Don’t worry, Colonel,” Jack said. “I’ll have you out of here inside of five minutes.”

  Pappy cleared his throat. “Well now, Mr. Morrell—”

  “Morley,” Jack snapped. “Assistant Chief of Protocol, State Department.”

  “Always a pleasure to do business with Foggy Bottom,” Pappy drawlingly allowed. “But before you get on your high horse, did anyone tell you-all why these folks were picked up?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Jack said.

  “Now maybe to you it doesn’t,” Pappy said. “But me, I take orders from upstairs.”

  “You the FBI man?” Jack asked.

  “Special Agent Piersall.”

  “Where’d your orders come from?” Jack demanded.

  Pappy nodded in my direction. “This is Mr. Drum of the—”

  Jack came right in on cue. “Mr. Chester Dram? Why didn’t you say so?” His anger faded. He took
off his glasses and wiped them nervously and put them on again. In a subdued voice he said: “No one told me this was your baby, Mr. Drum.”

  “That’s all right, Morley,” I said offhandedly.

  “A natural mistake,” Pappy admitted magnanimously.

  “Then we all agree,” Lieutenant Borah demanded, “that their diplomatic immunity is not being violated if they’re brought in for questioning?”

  Jack looked at me. “Under the circumstances, sure. But I hope you don’t mind if I hang around, Mr. Drum. State will want a report.”

  “Okay, Morley,” I said. “I want to see you inside anyway.”

  Pappy jabbed a finger in El Thamad’s direction and began the interrogation: “On Monday night a British subject named Samia Falcon was almost thrown from a sixth floor window in the Shoreham hotel,” he said, and his drawl was gone. “The man who hired the killer,” he lied, “is now in custody. His name is Costain. Do you know him?”

  “We have a right to legal counsel,” Galib Azam said.

  “You have no rights whatever,” Borah said, “unless Mr. Drum says you have them.”

  “Do you know Costain?” Pappy asked again.

  “Or a man named Greer?” Lieutenant Borah said. “Isn’t it true you had Sailor Costain hire Greer?”

  “No,” Baki Osman said.

  El Thamad gave him a withering glance. Galib Azam said: “We refuse to answer on the grounds that our diplomatic immunity is being violated.”

  I opened the door behind the desk for Jack. “Three hours anyway, Borah. Three and a half to be on the safe side.” The first AUC session would only last till noon or one o’clock. Mrs. Welcome was the only full-time member who carried any weight. The rest of the AUC top brass had taken time off from corporate business all over the country. Their schedule was not flexible. El Thamad knew it, and I wanted him to know I knew it too. If Motamar’s three delegates could be kept away from the AUC sessions, Motamar would receive no financial aid. When the door was shut I asked Jack: “How’s it look?”

  “They’re convinced you’re the devil’s gift to Washington bureaucracy. It was a work of art.”

  “Will it get back to your section chief?”

  “Sure it will, but you’re in luck. He once served with Consul-General Smiley in Cuba. He’s convinced that what’s bad for Smiley is good for the United States. He’s with us.”

  “How long before they go over his head?”

  “The only place over his head is the Chief himself. He’s in London, Chet.” Jack lighted a cigarette and scowled through the smoke. “Assuming we can get away with it, what do you hope to gain?”

  “You,” I said, “are looking at a big-shot in a super-secret organization that makes the P.D. snap to, gets full cooperation from the FBI and, when it has a spare moment, tells the State Department which way is up.”

  “I’m with you that far. Then what?”

  “After enough of it, El Thamad gets the idea that he won’t come within shouting distance of the AUC unless I give the word. He decides on a meeting of the minds with me. He’s got to. We have what I hope will be a frank talk. I act as if my head can be turned—for a price. He opens up. I get it down on a miniature tape recorder, he gets the persona non grata boot here in Washington and his walking papers in Motamar and everybody lives happily after.”

  “Except for you and your fellow con-men.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic,” I said. “If we pull it off, we’re heroes.”

  “It’s what happens if we don’t pull it off that worries me.”

  El Thamad and his cronies were released at a quarter to one that afternoon. By two o’clock, Jack told me later, a battery of hotshot Washington lawyers trained their big guns on Foggy Bottom. Jack stalled them. The longer he could keep them away from his section chief, the more freedom of movement we had. His chief would cooperate up to a point, but Jack would cooperate beyond that point. El Thamad’s battery of lawyers wanted to know how it was a private citizen name of Chester Drum could pipe a tune for the State Department. “Drum?” Jack said, indignant. “I never heard of any Chester Drum.” That was part of the treatment. I was so super-secret, my own minions didn’t even mention my name. In top Washington circles—and to a battery of lawyers representing foreign diplomats in D.C., Jack was top Washington circles—I was the little man who wasn’t there.

  The one thing El Thamad did not expect was to be picked up again that night, so of course they picked him and Galib Azam and the fat man up at midnight and took them into the precinct house. I didn’t show up for that session. I wasn’t one of the peasants who worked nights. Thursday morning, bright, early and well-rested, I returned. The third pick-up had been made. El Thamad looked like he could have used a good night’s sleep. Baki Osman’s chalk-stripe suit was rumpled. Even Colonel Azam’s uniform had lost its knife-edge creases.

  “Good morning, Mr. Drum,” Borah said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Drum,” Jack said.

  “Good mawhnin’, suh,” Pappy said.

  I admitted it was a fine morning indeed.

  When the question and no-answer session had begun, it was Borah who joined me in the back room.

  “Their legal beagles goofed,” he said happily.

  “Goofed how? They been to see the police?”

  “Yeah. On account of they couldn’t get anywhere at Foggy Bottom.”

  “And?”

  “I guess the big wheel in there is desperate. Counsel tried to lean on Commissioner Mann. He is one fellow you do not lean on, which they learned. Mann called me in. He was mad. First I thought at me, but he was mad at them. They threatened to get a writ of habeas corpus. They lost their tempers when the Commish pointed out elementary law to them: their clients are not being held, just questioned. And we can question them from now till the crack of doom without there being any corpus to be habeas’d. Which, because they tried to lean on him, is just what the Commish won’t care if we do.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “I can go home now. I think I ought to. El Thamad ought to be ready for a meeting of the minds. Send him back to his hotel all sweetness and light. Don’t pick him up tonight.”

  “The carrot and the stick,” Borah said.

  “Brainwashing technique. It’s beautiful,” I said again, and it was. It was the high point.

  “Just watch yourself. If you want company, all you have to do is say so. Or a pair of plain-clothes men prowling your neighborhood.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “My boys are pretty good.”

  “El Thamad’s better. He came up the hard way as a killer for hire in half a dozen countries in the Middle East. I’m not saying your men will have two left feet, but El Thamad will play it close to his vest. If he shows up and he makes your men he’ll just wander on back to his hotel for a good night’s sleep.”

  “Sure, but what if his idea of getting together with you is to send another shotgun specialist?”

  “He’ll want to play ball. He won’t send a killer,” I said.

  “He might though.”

  Both of us were wrong.

  25

  THE FAT MAN WAS nervous, and he smelled.

  It was the kind of perfume you can buy in the bazaars in Lebanon or Motamar as a little cube in a little box, not strong for merely its own sake but strong enough to mask other odors. Every time Baki Osman moved an arm, and he was a guy who flapped his flippers when he spoke, the mingled scents of his perfume and his fear were wafted to my nostrils.

  The time was ten-forty. The place, my apartment in Georgetown Two hours earlier I had called the Shoreham. Walters had answered the phone in Samia’s suite. He seemed at home, and not guilty about it but shy about it. Samia said she was fine. One hour earlier my phone had rang. I’d picked up a connected line, but got no answer to my hello. El Thamad was checking on my whereabouts. It took him another hour to convince himself I was playing solitaire. And then Baki Osman in his chalk-stripe suit and with his smell showed up. />
  Now at ten-forty he was saying: “So I’m sure you can see, effendi, why he could not come here.”

  “You did.”

  “I?” Baki Osman said deprecatingly, and his arms waved and his smell wafted. “Of what importance am I? Merely the bearer of a message.”

  “The message being that your boss wants to see me? There’s nothing I want to see him about except the way I’ve been seeing him downtown.”

  Baki Osman smiled unctuously. “One never knows what is written on his forehead, effendi, until it has transpired.”

  “Let’s speak English,” I suggested.

  More waving and more wafting. “But such an unsubtle language! English is the language of embarrassment. You can only say precisely what you mean.”

  “Good. Precisely what does El Thamad want?”

  “To see you. Tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Effendi,” Baki Osman said chidingly. “El Thamad thinks it worth your while to find out. More I cannot say.”

  “He’s nuts if he thinks I’ll put myself in his hands. He tried to have me killed once. Let him come here.”

  “One can regret the past, it is said in my country, but not change it. In that case, why regret it?” Osman laughed.

  I didn’t laugh. I said: “El Thamad’s regretting it now.”

  “I have a car. I am alone. I will call him, using your phone. You will suggest a meeting place. Wherever it is, El Thamad will go there. If you want to be assured he is alone, I am sure you can see why he wants the same assurance. You will talk. What you have to say will be for his ears alone. What he has to say will be for your ears alone. We will be driving in a car, with only the night and the wind—”

  “No more poetry,” I said.

  Osman shrugged. “He is waiting for my call.”

  I tried one of Borah’s silences on him. Old hard-to-get Drum—with a Miniphon tape recorder burning a hole in his inside breast pocket.

  Baki Osman fidgeted. “Effendi?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Meet El Thamad and you will learn.”