Hot Red Money

by Baynard Kendrick

  “I suppose you ate alone, poor boy.” She was watching him over the edge of her glass.

  “No, I didn’t eat alone. I ate with Ray Lindeman, upstairs in the old man’s dining-room.” He had to keep Lycoming out of this. He plunged on wildly. “I happen to have a job, Anne, and we’re damn near in the middle of a war. Hal Gow gave me an assignment.”

  “He usually does,” Anne said. “I suppose they’ve made you foreign correspondent in Beirut.”

  “It might as well have been,” Maury told her morosely. “That’s why I talked it over with Lindeman. It means my being away for a week—maybe ten days. You can believe me or not—it’s something I didn’t want to do.”

  “Oh, you marvelous hard-working man.” Anne’s laugh was as false as a Halloween mask. “How I’ve watched you suffer for eighteen years, disappearing out of my life and leaving me here to sit on my rumpus while you did all those horrible things you didn’t want to do.”

  “Anne, I’ve never looked at another woman.”

  “No, you just let their big cow eyes feast on you.”

  Maury stood up suddenly. “Now listen, Anne, I’m not going to fight with you. I don’t know what sort of lies and poison that skunk, Erick Sorenson, has been feeding you. He’s the only one who could know anything about Dr. Marian Rheinemann. She’s nothing more than another character in a story I’m trying very hard to break.”

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “There’s no use getting sarcastic. It’s getting more obvious every day that you’ll take anybody’s word against mine—even a jerk like Sorenson. Now I have to catch a midnight train for Washington. I already have my reservations and I’ve got my packing to do. You can come up to the station with me if you want to and see that I leave alone.”

  “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.” Anne finished her drink and stood up. She came closer to him and put her hands on his shoulders, not to draw him near but to hold him away while she studied him. “Eighteen years,” she said, “and this is as close as I’ve ever gotten to you—arms’ length—Maury, Maury, why can’t we live like other people?”

  “Anne, we live exactly like other people. They have their trials and troubles, too.”

  “Yes, I guess they do.” She let her hands fall helplessly. “Where are you going after Washington?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Maury said truthfully enough. “I’m checking into the Syndicate office there for further instructions.”

  “Maybe you can tell me what you’re supposed to do.”

  “I don’t know that either. It depends on how things break in the Mid-East, Anne. Hal’s given me an assignment to cover half a dozen or more of our principal defense installations and tie them up into a bundle in a story on exactly how we stand.”

  “I’d find that very interesting,” Anne said, “to know exactly how we stand—the world, the country, me and you. Get your shaving things out of the bathroom. I’ll go start your packing.” She turned and walked into the bedroom.

  Maury went in the bath and immediately remembered that he was on his last blade, and only that morning he’d noticed that his pressure can of instant lather was nearly empty. He’d never become inured to an electric razor. It was only a block up Hudson street to the drugstore where he could get a new supply of blades and shaving cream. Anne already had his suitcase open on the bed. He told her where he was going, and was back in ten minutes.

  He stopped in surprise at the bedroom door. Anne had two suitcases of her own open on the bed, and was methodically packing her own belongings. “Anne, as much as I’d love to, I can’t take you with me.”

  She straightened up, white-faced and hard-eyed. “I didn’t ask you to, Maury. I’m going back to California. I’m stopping off at Reno en route, to get a divorce. As you’ve pounded into me so many times, there’s no use fighting. I’ve taken all I can possibly stand, and you’ve lied to me for the very last time. Now you go your way and I’ll go mine. I just telephoned Hal Gow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Washington was a bake oven. Maury came out of the bookstore onto 9th Street, N.W. carrying the volume of The Enemy Camp tucked under his arm.

  He stepped into a pool of visible heat waves that scorched his legs and ankles. He walked down slowly toward Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped at the corner to wait for a light.

  Glancing, inadvertently, across the broad street, he began to wonder. Were the Soviets fearless or reckless? Were they smart or careless?

  That was hard to answer. Right across the street, towering above him, granite and impregnable, stood the building that housed the controls of the nation’s security.

  Was it some sort of deliberate insult to America’s intelligence that the communists had picked a site for their underground drop in the shadow of the headquarters of the FBI?

  Maury hailed a cab and drove back to the Union Station where he had checked his bag. On the way he opened the book to page 123.

  The instructions were lucid and short: “There are reservations for Cyrus Adam at the airport office of American Airlines, on the 2:22 flight for Knoxville, Tenn. Please pick them up as close to noon as possible.”

  So his contact name was “Adam.” They didn’t give you time to think. Perhaps that was right. The really smart thing to do. So he didn’t want to think. The hell with Old Man Jeffers and Lindeman and Hal Gow! Maury still had a few thousand in war bonds salted away. It was Anne’s white face and accusing eyes that would haunt him for years, if he took time to think. He loved her. You couldn’t run eighteen years of marriage on the rocks, watch it sink, and forget it in a lifetime, let alone in a day.

  He tore out the single small sheet of paper stuck in the book with a tiny strip of Scotch Tape, shredded it and let the pieces flutter out of the window.

  At the station he retrieved his bag, then caught another taxi and drove to the International Airport in Virginia. He was standing in line in front of the American Airlines counter at five minutes to twelve.

  When he got to the clerk, Maury said: “I want to pick up the reservations for Mr. Cyrus Adam on the two-twenty-two flight to Knoxville, Tennessee.”

  The clerk consulted a sheet and did some phoning, then started to fill out a ticket book.

  “How much is that?”

  “Thirty-three ninety-four, including tax, one way.”

  Maury reached in his pants pocket and took out some bills to pay.

  In back of him, a gray-haired woman exquisitely dressed bent over and straightened up again. “I think you dropped this Mr. Adam.” She handed Maury a two-dollar bill and smiled.

  Maury took the bill (he had not seen one for a long time) and said, “Thank you ever so much. Have we met before? I couldn’t help wondering how you knew my name.”

  “Oh, I happened to overhear it when you asked for your ticket.”

  “Well, thanks again.”

  He waited until the woman took his place and made some trivial inquiry about an incoming plane.

  He had two hours to kill. He found a porter to put his bag in the checkroom, then went upstairs to the restaurant to get some lunch. He wasn’t hungry, but he ordered a sandwich and a bottle of beer. He put the two-dollar bill in a separate compartment in his wallet.

  Invisible ink? Intricate dottings in the design? Minute writing that would reveal itself, or that could be photographed under some special kind of light?

  He didn’t know.

  He did know that when properly processed that innocent two dollars would reveal top-secret details of some rocket, missile, ship, or jet plane.

  They’d put out two thousand bucks for what he was about to collect! Still, they weren’t cheap. They just knew all the answers: that you started in trying to alleviate human suffering, and by the time you’d found out you were on the wrong train, you were doing exactly what you were told to do because they’d milked out every corpuscle of your brain.

  At 2:22 he took off for Knoxville, but he couldn’t read and he couldn’t sleep. Pictures
of Anne kept rushing in to fill the vacuum in his skull. Brother, they sure did rob you of your brain!

  Knoxville, 3:40.

  Twice as hot as Washington. The loudspeaker blaring: “Will passenger C. Adam please come to the reservation desk.”

  It took three calls before Maury snapped himself alive enough to recognize his contact name.

  “Mr. Cyrus Adam?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We have your reservation to Los Angeles on Capital night flight, leaving here tonight at eleven. There’ll be some changes en route. You arrive in Los Angeles, tomorrow, Saturday, at eleven-thirty-five, Pacific daylight saving time. Your friend, Mr. Yates, asked us to tell you that he would meet you in the lobby of the President Johnson Hotel. Since you’re leaving tonight, perhaps you would rather check your luggage here.”

  “I’ll check it here, and I might as well pick up my tickets now.”

  An interminable drive through the Tennessee heat with The Eneny Camp clutched under his arm.

  Yates, who looked like a banker on a holiday in his cool palm-beach suit, rushing up in the lobby at the sight of the book. He gave a delighted sigh: “Cy Adam!” He pumped Maury’s arm. “We’ve got to hurry if we make it on time!”

  An Olds convertible with the top down, picked up in the parking lot in back of the hotel. A drive through rolling farm lands of beautiful green to Sevierville. A law office on the second floor of a wooden walk-up building that smelled pre-Civil War, where Maury was given a small calendar of a local lumber company with the months torn off up to July.

  He added it in his wallet to the two-dollar bill.

  Yates was replaced by a man named Bates, whose name didn’t appear on the law office door.

  Bates, who might have been a lawyer from Sevierville, Tennessee, and probably wasn’t, drove Maury off in a ’57 Ford sedan.

  More mountain roads by a rushing stream. The Great Smoky mountains beckoning in the distance crowned with their usual haze. Dinner with Bates, on Tennessee ham, which Maury found too salty, at a tourist inn.

  Bates could talk at length on anything, but when he finished you had accumulated a lot of nothing about local scenery and the TVA.

  More mountain roads. A night ride back to the airport by a different route. At eleven, Maury enplaned, per schedule, for the West.

  Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. Always rushing. Always twisting and turning and going seemingly endless and useless miles out of his way.

  Tuesday: Miami, after a day long flight from Los Angeles.

  Heat. Sun. A business card. A page from a notebook with some meaningless address on it. A folder of matches from a Miami Beach hotel. All being added in Maury’s wallet to the two-dollar bill.

  Jacksonville.

  Atlanta.

  Cyrus Adam had collected two more mementos: A receipt from a dry cleaning establishment in Atlantic Beach, and a blank registration card from an Atlanta hotel, where Cyrus Adam hadn’t been.

  Keep them busy and on the run! Keep them confused! Not a moment to pause. Suppose somebody should sit down quietly and start to use his brain?

  Every reservation made. Every move and contact planned out ahead. Every foot of the roadway paved—the roadway to destruction. Final destination—some flaming mental hell!

  He was back in New York on Friday morning, groggy on his feet after covering six thousand miles in as many days.

  At ten o’clock, with just one fixed idea—to be rid of that book, The Enemy Camp, and the motley collection in it, transferred from his wallet, he walked into the bookstore on Fourth Avenue.

  The volume had become a part of his life, hung around his neck like an albatross. Every nerve in him was screaming to be rid of it even though it meant a meeting with the odious Sorenson. There was no other way.

  Maury’s tired eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom of the store, small relief from the sun that was battering Fourth Avenue. The place had an odor of damp musty leather, but Maury welcomed its shadows after the week of unrelenting heat he’d been subjected to.

  He finally spotted an old man with cavernous cheeks and yellowish white hair that was unkempt and tangled, bent over a book at a desk in the corner.

  Otherwise the store was vacant.

  Maury walked over and stood by the desk, but the old man neither looked up nor moved.

  “I have a book that Erick Sorenson wanted to buy.”

  “He’ll be up in a minute.” The old man’s voice was a croak. “Wait.” His hooked nose that almost touched his chin moved closer to the printed page.

  Maury looked around. There was a narrow staircase at the side of the store. Without saying anything more, Maury took the stairs and went down.

  The basement was in still greater gloom. Three inadequate forty-watt bulbs, thick with dust, hung unshaded from the ceiling. Two long tables were stacked with old books in disarray. More book filled shelves, from ceiling to floor, that lined the four walls of the room.

  There was no sign of Sorenson, or anyone. Maury tried to spot a door that might lead to a toilet, but the four solid walls of volumes were unbroken, staring back at him mutely.

  He was about to go upstairs again when dizziness overcame him. At least he thought it was dizziness, or perhaps some type of hallucination, the aftermath of too little sleep and too much travel.

  Whatever it was, he had a sensation of falling. He supported himself with a hand on one of the tables and stared, hypnotized, at the back of the room.

  There was no mistake. Bookshelves and all the back wall were slowly beginning to turn.

  When a crack at one end had widened to about three feet, Erick Sorenson slipped through with his back to Maury. Erick leaned on the books and the aperture closed.

  He turned around slowly, and for the first time became conscious of Maury.

  Before Maury had a chance to move or speak, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a Beretta automatic aimed unwaveringly at his middle.

  “For God’s sake, Erick,” Maury said unsteadily, “I came down here to sell you a book. On orders. Now quit playing cowboy and put up the gun.”

  Sorenson slowly and rather reluctantly lowered the pistol.

  “You had no orders to come down here, Morel. You were to contact me on the main floor.”

  “So you weren’t on the main floor, and ‘Eagle Beak’ said you were down here. I wasn’t going to hang around up there. I came down looking for you.”

  The book racks began to move again, opening cautiously. Without taking his eyes from Maury, Sorenson said, “Stay where you are until I call—and close up again!”

  Books and wall moved quickly back into place.

  Maury grinned. “What have you got in back of the books—a playroom? I’m sorry if I caught you boys with your panties down.”

  Sorenson’s mouth twisted with anger. “Maybe you’ll learn some day, Morel, that we’re not playing games. You’ll probably be dead by the time you do.”

  The anger spread from Erick Sorenson’s mouth to distort his entire face. An expression of cold-blooded murder if Maury had ever seen one.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  S.A.C. Ed Waters was mulling over a stack of reports in his office at ten o’clock on the Friday night that Maury got back from his hectic trip.

  Special Agent Monty Wells looked in: “You left word that you wanted to talk to me, Ed.”

  Waters looked at him with blue eyes that were tired. “Yes, I do, Monty. Come in.”

  Wells took a chair and threw one long leg over the arm. For a minute there was only the air-conditioner’s gentle hum.

  “I’ve been going over these reports on the Pringle spy case.”

  “Oh?” Monty lit a cigarette and said, “What’s the beef?”

  Waters gave that a little thought. “Outside of Henry Lycoming making six of our best men look like a bunch of ninnies, last Wednesday week, and the fact that we still don’t know who or what this Pringle is, I can’t think of one.”

  Wells reached o
ut, got an ashtray from the desk and put it on his knee. “You look like you’re pooped, Ed, and your voice lacks the old Waters’ lilt of gayety. You know, just as well as I do, that every now and then some fish will slip through the tightest mesh—and that we always manage to get them in the end.”

  Waters grunted. “But not the same day. We’d have had that Pringle pegged down tight, I’m certain, Monty, if Lycoming hadn’t made a getaway.”

  “I thought you had it all figured who Pringle is.”

  “Well, you’re off the beam. I told you that, assuming he’s a man, I had a hunch who he was.”

  “A reliable hunch?”

  “Some dope that came in from the C.I.A. There was another MVD Officer, Colonel Vladimir Ilyanoff, who vanished off the Soviet scene about the same time as Golikov. This Ilyanoff had the edge on Golikov in one thing—he was born here in America. A Russian father and an English mother. His mother died and the kid went back to Russia with his father when he was thirteen. That was about 1928. Does that make sense?”

  “I’ll buy it. So, if Colonel Ilyanoff is our man, and is using Pringle as a contact name—Pringle is forty-three. With additional training in Moscow, he probably speaks better English than I do, and knows New York like a book. I’ll bet he can even find his train in the mazes of the Canal Street Station.”

  “I think he lives there,” Waters said. “Can you come up with an idea?”

  “What’s the chance of tricking something out of Golikov? Planting one of our Russian speaking men with him in the Federal penitentiary?”

  Ed Waters snorted. “That old buzzard wouldn’t give his Russian-speaking grandmother the time of day—even if he thought he could get his thirty year sentence cut in half. There’s no time, anyhow, Monty.”

  Waters turned back to his papers. “Let me tell you what we have. Len Ducro finally ran down Igor Sandor’s wife and kid, Nikki. The house they occupied at Garden City, where they lived under the name of Aaron Turlock, has been deeded over to the Russian Embassy and is up for sale. With the friendly aid of Kamilkoff, one of our most obnoxious Soviet Under Secretaries, Opal Turlock and Nikki sailed for parts unknown last week on the S.S. ‘Azerbaijan.’