The Enemy Inside

FORTY-FIVE

By the time Harry and I get home I find a message left on my phone at the house from Herman down in Mexico. Something has happened. He doesn’t say what. He tells me they’re both fine. Then something about a charter flight and Tampico. Says he’ll call back from there.

I listen to it again, this time taking notes, but before I can finish, the phone rings.

It’s Harry. “I got a message from Herman.”

“So did I.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Well, they’re alive. At least they were when he called. Did you get a time and date?”

“Sorry,” he says. “I never set the feature on my phone.”

“Same here.” The fact is my telephone system at the house is so old it probably wasn’t available on the handset when I bought it. It’s a relic I brought with me from Capitol City on the move when I came south almost twenty years ago.

“They must have found them.” Harry means the people chasing Alex.

“Sounds like it.”

“Did you catch the part about the courier?”

“I was about to when you called.”

“Says it’s compromised. No more messages.”

Harry is thinking the same thing I am, but he doesn’t want to say it over the phone. This is probably how they found them.

“The place they went,” he says. “Do you know it?”

Harry means Tampico. “No. Never been near the town. I don’t have a clue as to where they might go. Herman has contacts in Mexico but I don’t have any names, numbers, nothing. They’re off the edge of the earth for all I know.” If anyone is listening I want to get this part crystal clear.

“The phones are back up and working at the office,” he says. “I just called. Told them we’re back in town. Why don’t we meet up there, say in an hour?”

I look at my watch. It’s ten thirty in the morning. We flew standby, a red-eye out of Amsterdam, chasing the sun across the Atlantic. It lapped us and won. “What day is it?”

“Friday,” says Harry. “Least that’s what the calendar in front of me says.”

Even with some pretty good winks on the plane, I’m dead. “Let me take a shower, get some coffee,” I tell him. “Gimme an hour and a half.”

When I get to the office Harry is already there. There’re a handful of messages waiting for me in the little carousel on the reception counter. There would have been more, I’m sure, except the phones were down.

Sally, the receptionist, hands me another one. “This guy’s called three times in the last two days. Says it’s important.”

I take the slip and look at it. “Clete Proffit.” The pillar of the bar who had me followed to Graves’s office in D.C. He wants me to call him back. I’m wondering what he wants.

I check the other messages. Nothing from Herman.

Sally is back talking on the headset, taking a call. I whisper over the counter, “Did Mr. Diggs call by any chance?”

She shakes her head.

“If he does, put him through immediately. Even if I’m on the phone.”

She nods. Gives me the big OK circle, finger to thumb.

I head to my office. When I pass Harry’s open door I see him sitting behind his desk swung around in his chair with his back to me. At first I think he’s laughing. Then I realize Harry is crying. Sobbing like a baby.

“What’s wrong?”

He turns and looks at me, his face all red. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s nothing.” He grabs some Kleenex from a box on the credenza behind his desk.

I close the door so that no one else can see. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, wipes his eyes, puts his hand out, like maybe I should go away. “It’s nothing,” he says.

“It must be something,” I tell him. I’ve never seen Harry cry before. This is a first.

“I guess. . I don’t know. I guess it’s just everything,” he says. “All of a sudden it’s just catching up with me. The other night. The old man.”

He’s talking about Korff. His body by the bridge. Harry is suffering a delayed reaction. Post trauma. “Listen, why don’t you go home and get some sleep? We’re both tired. That’s where I’m going in just a few minutes. As soon as I check my desk and take care of a few messages.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” says Harry.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Wasn’t able to sleep at all on the plane.”

I sit down in one of the chairs across the desk from him. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“What’s to tell? You were there. You know,” he says.

“Sometimes things affect people in different ways. Tell me.”

“Jeez,” says Harry. “You’re gonna make me say it?” He lifts his shoulders. When he drops them he starts crying again. “We got him drunk!” says Harry. “I can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t kept pouring, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead. Don’t you get it?”

“No! No, you have to stop thinking like that. He didn’t die of alcohol poisoning. He died because somebody murdered him. Giving him beer had nothing to do with it. We tried to put him in a taxi. We offered to take him home. Don’t you remember? He said no. He wouldn’t hear of it.”

“I know,” says Harry. “But I still can’t help thinking. .”

“He told us he’d take a cab. We both saw him. He walked to the counter and hit the bell. What were we supposed to think?”

Harry nods.

“Besides, the man had a tolerance for beer. I’m not saying he wasn’t drunk. But if you or I had consumed anything near what he had, we wouldn’t have had to worry about a taxi. They would have taken us away in an ambulance.”

Harry looks at me red-faced and laughs. He wipes his nose.

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened. Sometimes it’s just fate. If JFK had been ten minutes earlier in Dealey Plaza he probably would have served out his term and, who knows, done another four years. If Lennon had come home an hour later at the Dakota, maybe he’d still be making music. And if Korff had gotten into a taxi at the front door, outside that hotel, my guess is they would have never even seen him,” I tell him.

“You think so?”

“The fact they killed him on the far side of the bridge tells me they were probably waiting for him there.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Nobody in their right mind is going to want to track Korff across that bridge under all those lights. He was a big man. And if he turned to fight maybe they get trapped out there.”

Harry nods.

“So try not to think about it. We did everything we could.”

“Yeah, but if we’d known. .”

“But we didn’t. We took him at his word. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”

“Still,” he says. “We should have thought about it. I mean after the girl and Graves.”

“We did think about it. That’s why we told him to take the cab. It wasn’t just because he was drunk.”

“Yeah. I suppose.”

“He knew that Serna didn’t die in an accident. We told him as much. He was well aware of the dangers. He had to be. He knew more about what was going on than we did.”

Harry nods. “You’re right.”

“Listen. Tell you what, when we’re done here, why don’t you follow me to the house. We’ll sit and talk,” I tell him. “We need to relax and unwind. A lot of stress.”

“Yeah, I’m OK. Go do what you have to do.”

“I will. But not until you give me that rusted piece of crap in your center drawer,” I tell him.

“What were you doing in my drawer?”

“If you must know, I was looking for drugs.”

“And you saw the gun?”

“You bet I did. How could I miss something like that?”

“What do you think, I’m gonna. .”

“Not at all,” I tell him. “I’m just worried that if you go and pull the trigger with the corroded bullets you’ve got, it’s gonna blow up and take your hand off. I don’t want you running around the office trying to hit the keyboard with a stump. That’s all.”

“Get out of here,” says Harry. “Go make your phone calls.”

I smile.

He looks at me and winks.

I head to my office.