Checkpoint Charlie

Charlie’s Dodge

Streaks of falling grey rain slanted across the silhouette of Sydney Harbor Bridge and when the taxi decanted me under the shelter of the porte-cochere canopy my poplin suit was still steamy from the dash at the airport. I carried my traveling bag inside the high-rise, found my way to the lifts and rode it up to the ninth floor.

The door had frosted glass and a legend: Australamerica Travel & Shipping Agency Ltd. — New York, Los Angeles, Sydney.

The girl at the reception desk sent me down a sterile hall. I could hear typewriters and Telexes in the warren of partitioned cubicles.

The conference room had wraparound plate glass; it was a corner suite. The view of the stormy city was striking.

Two men awaited me. The ash tray was a litter of butts and the styrofoam coffee cups had nothing left in them but smeared brown stains. Young Leonard Ross hurried like an officious bellboy to relieve me of the B-4 bag. “I hope you’ve got a spare suit in here. You’re drenched. How was the flight? Bill, I guess you know Charlie Dark?”

“Only by reputation.” The tall man came sinuously to shake my hand. “Good to meet you, Charlie. I’m Bill Jaeger, chief-of-station down here.”

When the amenities were out of the way and we’d sent out for sandwiches I settled my amplitude into a wooden armchair at the table. It was a bit of a squeeze. “Now what’s the flap?”

Ross said, “Didn’t Myerson brief you?”

“No.”

“That figures,” Jaeger said. “I may be stepping out of line but it baffles me how Myerson keeps his job.”

I let it lie. It wouldn’t have been useful to explain to Jaeger that Myerson keeps his job only because of me. Either Jaeger would refuse to believe it or he’d resent my conceit.

“The flap,” Ross said, “goes by the names of Myra Hilley and Iwan Stenback. They purport to be journalists.”

Jaeger made a face. “Underground press. They’re tearing our station to pieces.”

“Systematically,” Ross said. “Causing a great deal of embarrassment for both the Australians and us.” Then a wan smile: “You and I were sent in to get rid of them for Bill. Actually that’s not quite accurate. You were sent to get rid of them. I was sent to hold your coat.” With his collegiate good looks Ross was the picture of earnest innocence but I’d known him a while — sometimes he was astonishingly naïve but he was brighter than he seemed: a quick study. One day he’d be in charge of a department.

A girl brought us a tray of sandwiches and rattled something at Jaeger in ’Stryne — I didn’t get but one word in four; the accent was more impenetrable than Cockney. Jaeger said, “I’ll have to call them back later.” The girl smiled, nodded, departed, legs swishing; Ross’s eyes followed her until she was gone.

Jaeger was one of those lanky Gary Cooperish people who seem to have flexible bones rather than joints. I knew him as he knew me: by reputation. Easygoing but efficient — a good station chief, reliable, but not the sort you’d want running a vital station in a danger zone. He was a good diplomat and knew how to avoid ruffling feathers; he was the kind of executive you assigned to a friendly country rather than a potential enemy.

He said, “Iwan Stenback publishes a weekly rag called Sydney Exposed. Part soft-core porn, part yellow gossip and cheap scandal, part health food recipes and diagrams for Yoga positions, part radical-left editorializing. Until recently it didn’t have much of a circulation — mostly just freaks. Very youth-oriented. Always just skirting the libel and obscenity laws. Then a couple of months ago Stenback hired a hot new reporter by the name of Myra Hilley. Since then the circulation’s shot up like a Titan missile because the rag announced in a page-one box under Hilley’s by-line that they were going to start naming and identifying American CIA spies who were working undercover in Australia.”

Ross said, “It’s happened before, of course. In Greece that time, and—”

I cut him off. “Have they made good on the threat?”

Jaeger said in his dry way, “So far they’ve named seven of our people.”

“Accurately?”

“Yes.”

I decided I liked him. He didn’t make apologies; he didn’t waffle. He looked like a cowboy and talked with a prairie twang but I suspected there was nothing wrong with his brain.

I said, “Where’s they get the names?”

“We think one or two of our people may have been indiscreet. They aren’t all paragons, the people we buy information from. And in a country like this they’re not scared into secrecy — they don’t need to worry about jackboots in the hall at midnight, do they. In some ways it’s harder to run a secure intelligence network in a free country that it is in a dictatorship.”

“You’ve made efforts to plug the leaks?”

“Yes, sure. I think I know how it may have happened. I’m told Myra Hilley’s attractive — seductive as hell.”

“You’ve never seen her?”

“No. Not many people have, evidently. I’m sure she goes under a variety of cover identities. After all, if her face were known people wouldn’t talk to her.”

“Is ‘Myra Hilley’ a pen name?”

“No.” Jaeger deferred to Ross.

“Born in Australia but schooled in England and Switzerland.” Ross was reading from his notebook. “Myra Elizabeth Hilley’s her real name. She’s twenty-seven. The Berne file suggests she may have had contact with members of the Baader-Meinhof gang. In any case she returned to Australia a year ago with a head full of radical revolutionary anti-capitalist theory.”

Jaeger said, “Typical immature anti-establishment anti-American notions. Australia already has a socialist government but that doesn’t seem to satisfy these idiots. They want blood. Preferably blue. It doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick heads that this capitalist free enterprise system they hate so much has graduated more people out of poverty than any other system in history.”

“Still,” I said, wanting to get him off his political stump, “for an idiot she seems to have done a capable professional espionage job against us.”

“Every week,” Ross said, “the name of another of our agents appears in Sydney Exposed. They promise to keep doing it until they’ve named every last American spy in Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea.”

“Can they make good on the threat?”

Jaeger smiled. “We don’t know. But they’ve done it so far.”

Ross said, “We’re working with the Australians on this — they don’t like it any better than we do. It embarrasses them as much as it does us. After all, the Australian government knows we’re here. But they can’t be seen to infringe the freedom of the press, and obviously Washington can’t be seen to bully the press of an independent nation. It’s got to be handled in such a way that it doesn’t look like official repression. That’s why you’re here, Charlie. To think of something clever.”

“At least Myerson hasn’t lost faith in my ability to work miracles,” I remarked. I brooded at Ross, then at Jaeger. They seemed to be waiting for me to provide an instantaneous solution to their difficulty. “My problem,” I confessed, “is a deep-down fanaticism in behalf of absolute freedom of the press. Wherever censorship begins, that’s where tyranny begins.”

“I agree,” said Jaeger, “but the Australian press tends to be a bit lurid anyway, and this particular rag goes far beyond the limits of responsible journalism.”

That was putting it diplomatically. The real issue was the fact that Sydney Exposed was blowing the covers off our agents. When you expose an agent you render him inoperable. The newspaper was systematically closing down our network. Given the premise that the survival of nations depends on the accuracy of their intelligence, we had no choice but to stop publication of these revelations. Yet I could not bring myself to think in terms of strong-arm methods. There has to be a difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

I said, “Has anyone tried to reason with them?”

Jaeger said, “I had a talk with Stenback. He listened politely and laughed in my face.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Sort of a guru type. Brown scraggly beard shot with grey. Wears his hair in a ponytail. Ross has the official details.”

Ross turned a page in his notebook. “Thirty-four years old. Born in Sweden. Was a lieutenant in the Swedish army — a crack shot, by the way. Immigrated here five years ago. Naturalized Australian citizen. Background reports indicate he used to hang out with American Vietnam draft-dodgers in Sweden. Earlier, his father was a quisling in Norway during the War, which may explain why Stenback grew up with a chip on his shoulder. Before he came down here he worked a while as a leg man on a few of the cheap London tabloids, publishing cheap filthy innuendos about prominent Members of Parliament and the like. Digging up dirt seems to be his mission in life — the worse it smells the better he likes it.”

Ross closed the notebook. “Myerson would prefer it if you arranged a fatal accident for them, Charlie.”

“I don’t much care what he prefers. I don’t kill people, Ross, it’s not my style. Any fool can kill people.”

“Maybe this time you haven’t got a choice. How else can you stop them publishing this stuff?”

We sat in a four-door Humber across the street from the shopfront office of Sydney Exposed. It was a shabby old part of the city — cheap flats, a boarded-up cinema, rubbish in the gutters. In the newspaper’s windows the lights burned late — tomorrow was this week’s publication day and Stenback was in there with his staff composing the late pages. “She never comes to the office personally?”

“Apparently not,” Ross said. “We’ve had it staked out for ten days. If she’s set foot in the place we’re not aware of it. Of course we’re not sure what she looks like. The last available photograph is from nine years ago when she was eighteen. Blonde hair, gorgeous face and figure — the beach beauty type. You know these athletic Australian girls. But who knows. Maybe she’s gained weight, changed her hair, whatever. She could be any one of a dozen women who’ve wandered in and out of there.”

I said, “Assuming she doesn’t report in person to the office, it follows she must send her copy in. Not by the post; I think she’d be too paranoid to entrust her copy to government mails. Her articles would be hand delivered.”

“Ross began to smile. “Then—”

“It’ll take man-hours and leg work but let’s try to put surveillance on anyone who brings an envelope into this office.”

Through the wraparound corner windows the sky was cheerful but Jaeger was glum. “Our security’s all right — I’m pretty sure we’ve plugged all possible leaks. But it’s a case of locking the barn door after the horse thieves have made their getaway. Probably they’ve got all the names already — they’re publishing one or two a week, holding back to keep the circulation up. It’s like a week-to-week cliffhanger serial. Every week the public clamor grows — they’re starting to call for blood in Adelaide and Melbourne. Our blood. If it keeps up we’ll all find ourselves deported. It’ll be done with man-to-man shrugs and smiles and abject apologies but they’ll do it all the same — they’ll have no option if the public pressure grows bad enough. You’ll have to move fast, Charlie.”

“I’m ready to,” I said. “We’ve found Myra Hilley.”

She was clever but all the same she was an amateur and it hadn’t occurred to her that a cutout and blind drop setup can be breached. For a week we had backtracked all the messengers who had delivered envelopes to Sydney Exposed. We doubted she would use a formal messenger service; we were right.

The drop was mundane but adequate: a left-luggage locker in a railway station. But the thing about lockers is that you have to transfer the locker key from hand to hand. Once we knew the system we broke it easily. Hilley would leave the envelope in the station locker and put the key in an envelope and leave it with the landlord of a pub she frequented near the waterfront. The kid — a bearded long-haired boy in frayed denims and a patchwork jacket — would collect the key from the bar, go to the locker, retrieve the envelope and carry it by hand to Sydney Exposed. The kid, like five others who made deliveries regularly to the newspaper, was shadowed for a week and when he collected the key and opened the locker we knew we were onto Myra Hilley: we simply staked out the lockers until she arrived to deposit the next week’s copy.

She lived in a small flat on a suburban street near a shopping center. As it turned out she hadn’t resorted to any disguise. She was still blonde and gorgeous with a leggy showgirl look. Three nights in a row she emerged in evening dress, drove her white MG into the heart of Sydney and rendezvoused with a man: each night a different man, each night a different posh waterhole. Each night she and the man — two politicians, one diplomat — would repair afterward to a luxury hotel.

Ross laughed. “So that’s how she meets so many prominent guys. She’s a call girl!”

We requisitioned revolvers and special-effects equipment from Jaeger’s station. We were leaving when Jaeger met us in the corridor. He glanced at the revolvers as we fed them into our attaché cases. “Then you’re going to kill them after all.”

“Nobody gets killed on a Charlie Dark caper,” I told him.

“You want any help? I can give you a back-up squad.”

“Let’s keep it quiet,” I replied.

Ross said cheerily, “We’ll handle it, Bill.”

He was still dubious when we left.

When she answered the door I pushed the gun up under her nose and she backed away in alarm. I stepped inside and closed the door. “Stay loose, birdie. No screams, all right?”

A veil slid across her eyes. Contempt began to mix with fear. “What do you want?”

“Sit down and don’t talk. We’re waiting for somebody.”

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?”

“You’re an American.”

“Really? I thought I was doing a fair ’Stryne accent there.”

She managed a snort of contemptuous laughter. She wore a white jumpsuit with a yellow scarf at the neck — crisp, very smart. She had a tan complexion as soft and smooth as Japanese silk; she’d have inspired desire even in a jaded centerfold photographer. I had no trouble with the notion that she would be able to extract information from men.

“Come on,” she said impatiently, “what is this?”

“Sit down.” I wiggled the gun. “It’s only a .32 but they’re hollowpoint bullets — they make a terrible mess of flesh and bone.”

Making a face she took a seat on the divan and tucked her long legs under her. I crossed the room to close the drapes. It was a comfortable efficiency flat, not terribly big, the furniture a bit Bohemian: an old door on bricks served as a coffee table and the divan was one of those pull-out convertible beds. Apparently she spent most of her money on clothes.

“I suppose if I sit here long enough you’ll tell me what this is about?”

“Count on it, Myra.”

“You’re the CIA, aren’t you. Which one? Cole? Ludlow? Fortescue?”

“What’s in a name?” I sat down and rested the revolver on my knee. “Be patient, Myra.”

With enviable aplomb she rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, feigning boredom. A very tough sullen young lady. I hoped we could crack her. It wouldn’t be easy.

Ross brought Iwan Stenback into the flat at gunpoint. The Swede was a short man with a beard and long hair tied back with a rubber band. His pale eyes took in the scene quickly. “So. The CIA brings us together to murder us. I suppose you’ll give it the appearance of a lovers’ quarrel. Do you honestly think anyone will believe such a crude sham?”

“We like to think we’re a bit more sophisticated than that,” I said. “Sit down, Stenback.”

He moved to stand beside Myra Hilley. She touched his hand possessively and not without fear. I flicked the gun in his direction and he eased past the arm of the couch and sat down next to Myra Hilley. He wasn’t a bad looking man. There was a jaded professorial cynicism about him — the kind of weltschmertz that sometimes appeals to women: they see immediately through the bitter veneer and convince themselves that beneath it is a sensitive being who needs coddling and protecting.

I said, “We need to have a little talk.”

Ross snarled. “What do you want to talk for? Let’s get it over with.” He cocked his revolver. It made a nasty sound in the room.

“Patience,” I told him. To Stenback I said, “My associate favors brute force but I suspect we’d all prefer to avoid that.”

It was the old two-cop dodge: the good cop offers you a cigarette, the bad cop slaps it out of your mouth. After a while you begin to look upon the good cop not as your jailer but as your friend.

I sat down facing them and placed my revolver on the tabletop in front of me to free my hands so that I could take out my wallet and flash it at them. “My name is Charles Dark. I’m a security officer with the United States Government.”

I heard Ross’s melodramatic sigh of exasperation.

Stenback wasn’t falling for it. “You’ve got no jurisdiction here,” he said coolly.

Myra Hilley leaned forward to read my ID laminate. “Charles Dark. A new name for our list, Iwan.” She favored me with an icy smile.

I returned it in kind. “Now that you’ve demonstrated your fearlessness shall we get down to business?”

Stenback yawned. “What business?”

“You’re an entrepreneur,” I said. “You publish at a profit. Suppose we sweeten it?”

They looked at each other with cynical amusement. It was clear there was an attachment between them — a strong sexual bond. He was one of those flagellants who prefer shopworn goods.

I said, “For every week’s issue in which you refrain from publishing names of American agents, a payment of ten thousand dollars.”

“Australian dollars?”

“American if you prefer.”

The woman laughed. “They think they can buy anyone off. Isn’t it just like them?”

I said, “How about it, Stenback?”

“I’m glad to know how much Judas money you’re willing to offer me. Of course my answer is no. Did you think I’d be that easy to bribe? I can’t compromise the people’s right to know.”

“Good for you,” Ross said. “That’s all we wanted to know, ain’t it, Charlie. Let’s get it done.”

Myra Hilley reached for Stenback’s hand.

Ross spoke again, the petulant snarl increasing. “I told you it’d be a waste of time, Charlie.”

“In conscience,” I said wearily, “we had to offer them the option.” I stood up and went over to the side of the room to get out of the line of fire; I put my back to the wall and shoved my hands in my pockets. “You can change your minds, of course. My associate — well I’m afraid he enjoys rough-and-tumble. Regrettable but there you are. We’re forced by people like you to employ people like him. Actually I detest the young oaf. I’d hoped to one-up him by denying him his pleasure.”

Ross turned angrily toward me. His revolver rode around in my direction. “You fat old bastard. I’ve had all I can take of your sanctimonious—”

It was the distraction Stenback must have been praying for. He pounced on the .32 revolver that I had left lying on the table; in an instant it was in his fist and roaring.

In that confined space the blasts were earsplitting. My jaw went agape. Deafened, I saw Ross spin wildly around and slam against the wall. The gun dropped from his fingers. He clutched at the wall and slid down, leaving a wet red smear against the plaster. His shoes drummed the floor and reflex made him curl up, foetal; then he went still.

My hand belatedly whipped out of my pocket with the flat automatic pistol I’d concealed there. I leveled it at Stenback’s profile. “Drop it. Now!”

He hesitated. His revolver was still aimed at Ross, who lay in an untidy heap. The woman sat wide-eyed, motionless.

I spoke quickly. “I won’t kill you unless you force me to defend myself.”

It wasn’t so much that he believed me; it was that I had the drop on him. By the time he could turn his gun through the ninety-degree arc toward me I could put two or three into him. He’d been a soldier; he knew that.

Slowly he lowered his arm to his side and let the revolver drop to the carpet.

“Smart,” I observed. “Kick it to me.”

When he complied I got down on one knee and picked up the .32 carefully by inserting my ballpoint pen into its muzzle. When I stood up I flapped the automatic toward him. “Sit down, sit back, relax.”

He sank onto the divan and leaned back warily. I dropped the .32 into my jacket pocket and sidled around toward Ross, keeping my automatic trained on Stenback and Myra Hilley; knelt by Ross and laid my fingers along his throat to test for a pulse. There was a good deal of blood. I removed my hand and stood, grunting with the effort. “He’s dead.”

“Self-defense,” Stenback snapped.

“Sure.” I gave him a crooked smile. “Who’s going to believe that?”

I saw realization grenade into Myra Hilley. She clutched his arm in fear.

I looked down at Ross. “Everybody knows you two had it in for the CIA. Now you’ve murdered a CIA agent. Man, you’ll be a hundred and five before they let you out into the light of day again. Both of you,” I added, looking up sharply at the woman. “It’s felony murder — she’s as guilty as you are. And I’ll testify to that.” Then I gave it a slow chilly smile. “Come to think of it you’ve done me a couple of favors. I never could stand the punk. I’m glad you’ve taken him out — they’ll never stick me with him again. And you’ve done my job for me. The assignment was to stop you from publishing the rest of those names. You can’t publish in a prison cell.”

Myra Hilley sat up straight. “But we can still talk. We can talk in court and we can talk to our lawyers and they can talk to the press. We can still make those names public. Then what happens to you, superspy? It’s a black mark on your record, isn’t it.”

I regarded her with suspicion. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the punk had a point. Maybe I’ve got no choice.” I lifted the automatic.

“Wait.” She stared at me.

Stenback seemed mesmerized by Ross’s huddled body. Then he looked up at me, at my pistol.

Myra Hilley gripped his hand tighter. He didn’t pull away. He seemed to have shrunk; it was the woman’s strength that supported both of them.

She said, “You wanted to make a deal with us. All right — we’ll take the deal.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Myra. With the evidence I’ve got now? I’ve got Stenback’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. Not to mention my own testimony.”

“But you still can’t stop us from revealing the names of your agents. Only I wan and I can do that.”

I contrived an indifferent expression. I picked up Ross’s unused revolver and dropped it in my pocket for safekeeping; it balanced the weight of the .32 in the other pocket. Then I went toward the phone, the guns dragging my jacket down.

She watched me pick up the receiver before she spoke.

“Wait a minute.”

“For what?”

“Let us go. We’ll leave the country. You’ll never hear from us again. We’ll never publish those names.”

“How do I know that, lady?”

“If we ever reveal the names,” she said shrewdly, “you’ll find us. Nobody can hide from you people. You’ll find us and kill us, or you’ll have us extradited and brought back to Australia to stand trial for murdering that man.”

I still had the phone in my hand. The dial tone buzzed at me. “It’s not my habit to trust your kind.”

Stenback said, “She’s right, Dark.” He seemed to have found his spine. “It’s the only chance you’ve got of keeping those names secret. We’re offering you the only way out. For you and for us. You let us go — we save our lives, or at least our freedom, and you get what you want. The paper stops publication.”

I spent a while thinking about it. Finally I put the phone down on its cradle. I squinted dubiously at the two of them.

I saw it when the silence began to rag their nerves. I let it grate for a bit. Then abruptly I said, “All right. Get out. I’ll give you six hours to get out of Australia before I report his death. We’ll keep the murder weapon out of it unless you double-cross me — in which case I’ll manage to ‘find’ it damn quick. You keep that in mind.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“We will,” he said.

“Get out fast now — before I change my mind.”

They fled. They looked as if they were holding their breath. I left the door open until I heard them enter the lift. Then I shut it and locked it, glanced down at Ross’s bloody body and went across to the window; I parted the drapes and watched Stenback and Myra Hilley emerge from the canopy below me. They got into her white MG and I watched it squeal away.

Then I let the drapes fall to. Turning around, I said, “They’re gone.”

Ross grunted and got to his feet.

Looking down at himself he grumbled, “Do these phony blood capsules wash out? If not I’ve just ruined a good suit. Good grief, but I’m cramped. Couldn’t you have done it faster? I think I bruised a rib when I fell. Incidentally I didn’t take kindly to you calling me ‘punk’ and ‘oaf’ and all that stuff.”

“Are you about out of complaints now?”

He grinned at me. He was an awful sight. “Why, Charlie, I’ve barely started.”

“Look at it this way, Ross. You’ve got something to tell your grandchildren about. You’ve just assisted Charlie Dark in pulling a brand new twist on the oldest con-game in the world — the blank-cartridge badger game. Now doesn’t that just fill your heart with pride and admiration?”

“I believe you are by all odds the most infuriatingly smug conceited arrogant fat old man I’ve ever met,” he said, “and I thank you for the privilege of allowing me to work with you.”