Hot Red Money

by Baynard Kendrick

  By the light of the bulb Lycoming studied Seymor as he unlocked the doors of a ’53 green Chevvy that needed cleaning. Seymor wore horn-rimmed glasses with lenses for myopia. His ears were lobeless and set close to his head, but his features were good and his oval face intelligent under the flat-top cut of his hair. He had on slacks and a green-and-black short-sleeved sport shirt that revealed a pair of powerful arms.

  They got in the car and drove off in silence toward Trenton. They’d gone about a half a mile when Seymor said: “It was thought much better that we meet. Mr. Vogl hired me a week ago to take Aaron Turlock’s place as assistant production manager at Crescent Valves. I hope I’ll fill the bill.”

  “If Vogl hired you,” Lycoming said, “I’m sure you will.”

  They drove on into Trenton in silence. Seymor wound and twisted about and finally pulled in beside a tavern where several other cars were parked. The street sign said: Gus’s Bar & Grill.

  Seymor said, “I hope you don’t mind waiting. I’ll only be a minute or so. Please don’t cut the motor—it’s hard to start.”

  He got out quickly and headed for the bar. He’d scarcely vanished through the front door, letting out a blast of juke-box music, when a man got out of a nearby car, walked swiftly to the Chevvy and got in, taking Seymor’s place behind the wheel.

  Lycoming started to raise his voice in protest, then cut it off short.

  He had finally made his contact with the elusive Pringle.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They drove several blocks and were out on practically deserted road again, doing a steady forty miles an hour, before Pringle spoke. Then his words surprised Lycoming: “Nuri-as Said has been murdered in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is in revolt. Syria has been swallowed and Jordan is in a death struggle.”

  “I not only see the papers,” Lycoming said drily, “but I happen to have control of some very important interests in Lebanon, and Beirut, as well as other places.”

  “Exactly.” Pringle swung the car adroitly up a dark side road and stopped it. Headlights passed in back on the road they had just left. He waited half a minute, then backed out and headed in the opposite direction.

  “You’re nervous,” Lycoming said.

  “Extra cautious, rather, comrade. I have reason to be and so should you. The events in the Near East might not have occurred as planned if an agent named Beshara Shebab had not been removed from the picture quickly. Do you follow me?”

  “Yes, I follow you.”

  “He was killed by an insane man, Aaron Turlock, and there was nothing about it to involve me in any way. I merely pointed out to Turlock, who was out of the institution spending a weekend at home, that this Shebab had been sent here to destroy. He reacted exactly as I had expected when I furnished him with a knife. I saw him safely home, following his car.”

  “Is there need for you to tell me this?”

  “I don’t tell things where there isn’t any need, comrade.”

  “What about Turlock’s wife and child?”

  “They’re out of the country. Kamilkoff, Russia’s under-secretary, has legal authority to aid all redefectors. Opal Turlock and her child have redefected—they sailed last Wednesday on the ‘Azerbaijan.’ That is not my point. My point is this. Turlock had in his possession information which I had to have, turned over to him by me on a visit to the hospital. It was necessary not only to get that information back but, at the same time, to get Turlock out of the way. The man was a homicidal maniac—not only dangerous to all those around him, but there was no telling what he would say. So, on orders from Kamikoff, I removed him. Nevertheless, our superiors feel that my usefulness here has been endangered.”

  “You’re leaving?” Lycoming tried to keep eagerness out of his voice. He stole a sidelong glance at the man beside him—sport jacket and slacks, both of an inconspicuous tan. White shirt open at the collar and no tie. The regular features—the small tight mouth and the good chin. Stamped from a mold that had turned out millions like him. Picked and trained for that very reason—see him once or twenty times and you couldn’t describe him. Anywhere he went or no matter with what class he mingled, he could fit himself in as comfortably as an old shoe.

  Yet he had an efficiency which was chilling, as Lycoming knew. His veins were full of ammonia, and he lacked any device that could be used for defrosting. Pringle would consider reactions a weakness. He gave the impression of never having loved or laughed. It was doubtful he had ever known fear or exultation. He had been born a robot, but certainly not a moron. He was the true fanatic. His God was the State and he’d carry out its orders with religious fervor and no regrets, even if those orders were to destroy humanity, and cheat and lie and kill.

  “I’m being transferred,” Pringle said after a time, “but not right away. There’re loose ends to be gathered together quickly, and a mission I have to fulfill. It’s unfortunate that you’ve been so indiscreet and attracted the attention of the FBI.”

  “I seem to have attracted their attention all right, but I slipped them tonight, I’m sure, through the Hotel Commodore.”

  “It doesn’t matter how, so long as you are certain when you met me you were clean.”

  “Well, I’m clean enough for the moment, but what about those bugs in my hotel rooms and office?”

  “I don’t know that they’re there, but just so long as you suspect they’re there, you’re safer. I do know that our contact today was discovered somehow. An agent sent out to Jackson Heights was spotted by a rear guard comrade—a woman and her ten-year-old boy whom we had watching the drug store.”

  Lycoming said, “I can tell you some others who aren’t so clean. There was a bug in Dr. Rheinemann’s apartment. I noticed two volumes of her medical encyclopedia, 19 and 20, were inverted. They ran 18, 20, 19. When I took them out to straighten them I saw the wire that led to a bug in the radiator.”

  “Really?” Pringle gave a deprecatory chuckle. “Did you tell her?”

  “No, I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “That was very foolish. I had that apartment bugged—not the FBI. I don’t trust Dr. Rheinemann. She gives lip service, on your account and on account of her husband. Those encyclopedias were inverted purposely so that the wire behind them would be discovered. You seem to underrate not only our methods, comrade, but the cleverness of the FBI. That’s very dangerous. We wanted that wire discovered because it’s a false one, attached to a steampipe farther down in the wall—a red herring, so to speak. If you had told the doctor, or left the books so that she might discover them, she would have had the wire and the microphone removed, and thought perhaps that her apartment was clean. It’s not our habit to put in bugs where they’re quite so obvious. Neither, I presume, is it the habit of the FBI. The real bugs in Dr. Rheinemann’s apartment are between the walls where they certainly won’t meet the eye.”

  “I had no idea—”

  “Of course not,” Pringle said impatiently. “You have your field of operations and I have mine. Enough of that for now. They want you back in New York in the morning and we are limited for time. You have a part to play in the next two weeks’ plans and it must be carried out quickly.”

  “A part?”

  “A major part.” Pringle drove on for a block in silence, considering his statements. Again Lycoming felt conscious of the inhuman coldness which emanated from him, cutting through the heavy, humid night and, like a mechanical air conditioner, chilling the inside of the moving car.

  “Last night you met Maurice Morel. He came up to Dr. Rheinemann’s apartment with Max, her ex-husband, while you were there.”

  “You seem to know everything.”

  “It’s necessary for me to know everything if our plans are to go through. It’s also necessary, without interruption, for you to make a mental note of exactly what I say. You can contact Morel at any time without suspicion, even though you’re being checked by the FBI.”

  “Well, I should hope so,” Lycoming said. “He’s made his living for t
wenty-five years exposing American Communists and running the party down.”

  “The very fact that you think that, and that the rest of the country believes it, helps to confirm my personal knowledge and belief that Morel is probably the most useful and clever American Communist alive today. Not only has he been a party member for nearly thirty years, but he is one of the five anonymous members of the National Committee. Does that surprise you, Lycoming?”

  “Surprise me? I’d be doubtful if it came from anyone but you.”

  “So much the better. That he’s been able to walk the fence for this many years and dupe the imperialist press is just that much more tribute to his skill. Right now he is the only man in the United States who can do what we want done. Now here are your instructions. I want them repeated back to me for you dare not write them down.

  “Tomorrow afternoon Morel will finish the last of five articles he is doing on rest homes and turn them in. You will call him at the Globe-Star office at half past two and ask him to have dinner with you at seven tomorrow night at Cotti’s, an Italian restaurant on Thompson Street. You will take with you two thousand dollars in cash and give it to him at dinner.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Morel has a lot of traveling to do—six different cities, including one in California, and he has only seven days to do it in, and nobody must know where he’s going or why, except we two.”

  “What’s he going to tell the paper?”

  “You can leave that strictly up to him. This is an undercover operation and he’s made these trips before. He’ll catch a train tomorrow night for Washington. There on Friday morning at ten o’clock he will walk into a book store on northwest 9th Street and ask for a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. The answer will be: ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have it but we have a lot of first editions. Why don’t you look around.’ Morel will say: ‘I think I will, if you don’t mind.’ He will walk to the back of the store and wait until the man comes back with a copy of The Enemy Camp and asks: ‘Have you read this? It’s very good.’ He will buy the book and find further instructions in there taped to page 123. Now repeat that, please.”

  Lycoming repeated it verbatim.

  “Now there’s one thing more. Morel will return with six vital pieces of information coded on paper in various forms. He will put them all together in that copy of The Enemy Camp and take them over immediately, and that should be next Friday week, to a secondhand book store at 9th Street and 4th Avenue. He will sell the book to Comrade Erick Sorenson, whom he knows. Sorenson will have the information properly processed and will pass it on to me to make contact with Kamikoff. Now repeat that, please.”

  Lycoming did so. “Now I have a couple of questions. This Morel doesn’t sound like a man to be dictated to. Suppose he balks—says he doesn’t want to get mixed up in espionage, and refuses to go?”

  “You will remind him of ‘New Lines’ magazine and Robert Skeene,” Pringle said threateningly. “If that fails to move him, you will remind him that the Party has in its files proof of five separate contacts he made during the past ten years, and top secret information he obtained under the guise of getting news stories. It was passed on by him to Colonel Alexandrovitch Golikov. There is other information in the Party’s files that might prove just as interesting if it were leaked to the enemy.”

  “I guess he’ll go,” Lycoming said.

  “I know he’ll go,” Pringle said. “It won’t be the first time Maury Morel has played the spy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Maury left Cotti’s restaurant on Thompson Street at a quarter past eight on Thursday evening. He had two thousand dollars in an envelope in his inside jacket pocket and a ticket for Washington, with a reservation for a drawing room, on the sleeper that would leave New York at twelve-ten. They were very thorough. Lycoming hadn’t overlooked anything. The train would get him into Washington at five in the morning, but he would stay on board until seven and wouldn’t need to check into a hotel.

  The night, for July, was pleasantly cool, but inside Maury was boiling. He walked up to Washington Square, crossed it under the arch to 5th Avenue, envying happy couples and bums who dotted the benches.

  Well, maybe they had troubles but at least their lives were comparatively free from deceptions, and they had some lives they could call their own, even if they were headed for jail. Maury felt he had none. Merely a pocket full of money and tickets, and an empty head with a brain so tangled it refused to produce on order the slightest semblance of any plausible explanation for his imminent absence.

  He walked up to 8th Street and turned west, passing all the familiar places he knew: T.T.’s tobacconist, the Village Barn, the movie theatre. Sheer depression. That was the party. No warning. Leave your home, quit your wife, lose your job, get lost, drop dead, implicitly, or we’ll do them for you. God, he couldn’t even become a defector and go spill his guts to the FBI—it wasn’t only later than he thought, it was far too late for anything.

  He crossed the street and went into the drugstore at the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue, feeling as though the phone booth was the electric chair, and he’d just walked the last mile. He was sweating, and the money had bulked larger by the time he got Hal Gow on the phone.

  “Hal—Maury. What about the rest home series? Were they okay?”

  “Fine, Maury, with a little trimming. We start them Monday. But how come you left out the Amity Rest Home—that killing out there has gotten a big play.”

  “That’s why I left it out, Hal. There’re political implications, too. Rheinemann may prove a bigger story than her Rest Home. She has connections that I’m digging into. How about shelving it for the moment?”

  “What’s the angle?”

  “Hot money.”

  “God, Maury, you’ve been on that thing long enough now.”

  “Well, put somebody else on it.”

  “Oh, don’t start acting up, Maury. What’s eating you?”

  Maury hesitated. “I’m not acting up, Hal, I’m cracking up. Look—I’ve got to get away.”

  “Well, I’ll see if I can’t arrange it,” Hal said doubtfully. “You’ve been out of the office an awful lot, Maury, but I’ll try to fast-talk Lindeman and Dupree. Ten days in September. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay. I’m leaving tonight.”

  “Tonight, Maury—you’re crazy. We need every man we’ve got—particularly you. There’s summit talks—Aid to Amman—coming up—someone’s apt to push the button any day. Now you say you’re going away.”

  “Tonight, Hal.”

  “For how long?”

  “A week. Maybe two.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not telling. I don’t want to be bombarded with telegrams and phone calls. I’m not feeling well.”

  There was a long silence while Maury fidgeted and finally asked: “Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m still here, but I’m wondering if you’re still gonna be on the payroll when you get back, Maury, if you dash off this way. You’ve gotten away with an awful lot—we talked about some of it Sunday. You know how the old man and Lindeman and Dupree feel about these mysterious take-offs of yours—”

  “What’s mysterious about them? I’m getting older and I’ve given half my life, day and night, to the damned paper. What’s mysterious about my wanting to get away?”

  “You were doing it when you were younger, Maury, from what I can hear. The double zero will come up some day. I think you’d better skip it.”

  “You can tell them anything you want to, Hal. I’m leaving tonight.”

  “No length of time you’ll be gone and nowhere we can reach you?”

  “That’s it, Hal. Do what you can.”

  “I’m afraid that’s going to be nothing.” Hal’s voice was desperate. “I’ve done everything I could already, Maury, but this looks like curtains.”

  “Then you can tell the old man and Ray and Ev, my trusting bosses, thanks for a lovely twenty-five years. I’
ve found my association with them both elevating and stimulating. You might add that there’re lots of things you can do with a newspaper besides reading it—but don’t deliver my message until you all get together and finally decide to ring the curtain down. Goodby Hal.”

  Maury went out and the heat struck him full as he left the air-conditioned drugstore. He walked through Christopher to 7th Avenue, then down to Barrow. Walking through the narrow confines of Barrow Street he let his hand trail over the top of half a dozen ash cans, partially blocking the sidewalk. They fitted in with his mood. They were symbols of what he had tried to do, or maybe it was their contents that was emblematical. He’d mixed with bad apples for too many years, until he’d rotted like all the rest of them. He’d served himself a plateful that was too much for any one man to eat—bitten off more than one man could chew. So he’d take his trip and end up in the garbage can and then he was through.

  Anne was sitting in the big chair with her feet up on the stool. She had on a white print dress that made her look extraordinarily young. She was working on a highball and Maury judged that she’d had a few. A half-finished dish of salad was still on the table.

  Anne made no move to rise or greet him. She merely glanced accusingly at the electric-clock that read twenty to nine and said: “Hello, lover boy—I certainly enjoyed our dinner at Luigi’s.”

  “I forgot it, Anne, honest injun—something came up.” He went in the kitchen and mixed himself a stiff one and then came back in the living room and sat on the divan. Everything about her had warned him to keep his distance. He couldn’t blame her for being furious.

  “So something came up. Was its name by any chance Marian Rheinemann?”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Maury swallowed half his drink and was suddenly furious, too—but not at Anne. There was only one source that could have mentioned Dr. Rheinemann to her, and that was Sorenson. Party orders, no doubt. Use jealousy as a camouflage—make her think he was chasing around with another woman—make her think anything except what was true.