Guess Who’s Coming to Kill You

Chapter 2

“A 1959 Pommard Rugiens,” Megan Jones said, holding up the bottle of red burgundy. “Pierre Poupon, you know. Let’s hope it traveled well.”

“I don’t know,” Peter Brook said. “I don’t know a damned thing about French wines. You sound like a knowledgeable broad.”

“I have my good points,” Megan said. “Do you want some of this perfect burgundy or don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call them points exactly,” Brook said critically. “No, I don’t. I prefer a Scotch and soda.”

“Square,” said Megan. “Who drinks soda any more? You’ll at least sample this? I bought it in your honor.”

“Oh, hell,” said Brook. “All right.” He took the bottle from her, and the sommelier’s corkscrew, spun the handle deftly enough, and twisted the screw in the cork. Two elegant candles burned on the small dining table. She had put some Schubert on the stero. It was satisfactory to Peter, since it was just what he would have set up for Megan in his own apartment; but there was a gleam in her eye that dampened his libido.

“You oughtn’t to waste vintage wine on me,” he said, pulling out the cork.

“It’s no waste. I’m educating you.”

“To what?” he asked cautiously.

“To the better things of life,” Megan said, presenting her glass.

“Or the worse?”

“For better or worse? Exactly.”

It confirmed his fears.

She raised the wine to her lips. They were fleshy and glistened as they parted. They reminded Brook of a silk-covered mattress. Megan was altogether a silk-mattressy sort of girl. Her face was offbeat, with a chin a little too firm, eyes a little too big — pearl gray, set wide; her nose was turned up; there was a faint constellation of freckles across the bridge. A face that looked best, he thought, in a horizontal position. As did the rest of her. There was something Minoan about her — broad shoulders, full breasts, tiny waist. The ones who jumped over bulls. All these goodies she had wrapped in a housecoat that was more like a negligee, translucent and given to parting, like a pair of theater curtains at the beginning of a performance. That there would be a performance tonight Brook was very sure. It might be dangerous. Megan wasn’t the sort, once she had her hooks in, to let go.

So he proceeded warily, smiling. Behind her, through the picture window, in the semidistance, lay the glowing dome of the Capitol. Around him the apartment, which she had done in what was supposed to be Danish modern — the phrase always made him think of pastry — rose high over a bend in the Potomac. It made for a cunning illusion of privacy far above the madding crowd that was Washington.

“You can have your Scotch and — ugh! — soda later,” Megan said. “First you drink that wine.”

“It sounds like symbolism.”

“What’s wrong with symbolism?” She sipped again, and set her glass on the table. She had cleared it in a marvel of legerdemain after the remarkable dinner she had cooked in a kitchenette no bigger than a small sloop’s galley. Obvious point: to demonstrate her housewifely efficiency. No doubt, no doubt. “Do you realize how long we’ve been getting to tonight?”

“Weeks,” Peter Brook said, shifting in the chair.

“Months,” she said severely. “One excuse after another. First your operation. Then that long trip you had to take. After that the long trip I had to take. A senator’s secretary shouldn’t have to take long trips, but my senator’s from all the way across the country.”

“I know,” said Brook. “Nothing ever quite works out in Washington.” He ran his hand down his side. It was still a little rough over the space between the ribs where the Congolese sniper’s bullet had gone in. They had flown him back after the infection set in. There seemed no doubt that Megan would get to see the scar this evening, so he would have to invent a legend for it.

She was eying him with a frown. “Why you, I wonder?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you’re attractive enough in a Madison Avenue sort of way. You dance nicely, play a good bridge game, and you hold doors open for ladies. But when you come right down to it, Peter, we haven’t a lot in common.”

This is it, Mr. Brook thought, and put down his wine. The gambit called for the automatic countermove, and he made it. He began to loosen his tie. “We’ve hardly exhausted the possibilities, Miss Jones. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

“Pig,” Megan said. “A boor as well! It just goes to show.”

“Don’t you want it?” he asked, half relieved.

“Did I say that?”

“You said—”

“I say not yet,” Megan said. “Slow is the password for tonight, buddy.” The curtains parted on cue. He could only admire the art of the scenic designer.

“You’re not really romantic, Peter. Not like me, certainly. And another thing. You can’t sing. That’s unforgiveable. Ever hear of a girl of Welsh descent falling for a man who couldn’t sing?”

“Oh, there are a few cases on record,” Brook said. “Can Richard Burton sing? If so, I never heard of it. And I am too romantic. When I’m sailing my boat I’m Jean Lafitte and Captain Kidd and every other pirate that ever lived. When are you coming sailing with me, by the way?”

“Another of those things we don’t seem to get around to.”

“That’s Washington for you.”

“Then why don’t we get out of it? Why don’t we both?”

“I don’t know about you, but as for me, I guess I like my job.”

“And that’s another thing. Why don’t you ever talk about your job? Especially when you like it so much?”

“What’s to talk about? Can you communicate a color? I’m a research analyst. Sort of high-toned bookkeeper. You have to have the soul of a bookkeeper to appreciate it.”

“Come on, Peter, it must be more important than that.”

“That’s what we keep telling ourselves,” Brook said, laughing. This time he got out of the chair and turned out two lights. That left only the dim one in the corner. He went to the door of the kitchenette, “Shall I make you a Scotch and soda, too?”

There was only a slight pause before she said, “Yes.” She said it in a murmur, as if she had never scoffed at the concoction.

Moments later they were on the sofa with Brook’s arms around Megan. He was clutching her warm body and marveling how, without actually moving, it seemed to crawl with life.

This was always the dangerous time with girls like Jones. It was not that it placed him under the shotgun of Damocles; they were both adults who knew how to take care of themselves, and Megan wasn’t the sort to scheme out a permanent arrangement via pregnancy. The thing was, he found himself liking it and yearning for more. That way loomed the license bureau. And the license bureau could have no place in his life, not if he wanted to hang onto it. A wife and kids were out of the question.

Her lips had the impact of a steam iron; the little hairs on her skin rose to his touch like flowers. She nipped his ear. “And I can cook, too,” her warm breath said, “you know I can,” and she laughed. He laughed back immediately. Laughter during love was very nearly the best part of it, because it was the safety valve that kept things under control. Brook bent to his task.

And there was an anxious little buzz that stopped them cold.

“Damn!” Peter Brook said.

“That,” Megan murmured, pushing away, “is a goddam dirty trick.”

He was glaring at his wristwatch, which was still buzzing. He pressed the button and stopped it. “Never fails to go off at the wrong time. The guy who invented the alarm watch must have thought he was doing something great.”

Megan said, “He was probably descended from the Puritans.”

Brook reached for his drink. She watched him. After a while he said, “It does knock hell out of the mood, doesn’t it?”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Megan murmured, the curtains parting again. “The other way is to have fun getting it back again.”

“Megan,” Brook said. When the buzzer sounded all things took a back seat, even sex. “How long have you known me?”

“Total time? Six months. Actual contact? About six-minutes.”

“I mean do you know me well enough to believe I have my moments?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is one of them. I want to take a walk. All of a sudden.”

“You want to what?”

“Walk in the night. Hard to explain. This damned alarm watch. Spoiled everything. I have to cool off and calm down before I can start again.”

“What are you, a human sensitive plant? My God!”

He made his nod solemn. He’d better hurry.

Megan shrugged. “Well, you’re predictable enough in most other ways. I suppose if this is a hangup, you’re entitled to it.”

“That’s what I like about democracy. Everybody’s entitled to his hangups.” Brook reached for his hat.

“To hell with democracy!” Megan said. “Go take your walk and hurry back.”

He found a drugstore nearby. In the booth he dropped a dime and dialed. The voice on the other end said, “Yes?”

“Brook,” said Brook.

“Oh, yes. Good little gadget, that buzzer.”

“You go to hell,” Brook said. “You’ll never know what you stopped.”

“Never mind that rot,” the voice said. “How soon can you get down here?”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes, but—”

“No buts,” said the voice.

“Chief—”

“If the girl gets sore, find another one.”

“Yes. But this one—”

“Priority deal,” the voice said.

Brook sighed and hung up.

The building had the usual uniformed guard in his after-hours post at a desk in the lobby; Brook showed his I.D. and was admitted with a reluctant wave. The elevator took him to an upper floor. There was another guard here. Beyond the guard, over a set of frosted doors, was the legend: Federation for Art and Cultural Exchange. The second guard said, “Good evening, Mr. Brook,” but scrutinized his identity card even more carefully than the man downstairs. Brook started forward. “Just a moment, sir,” the guard said. “Super.”

“Duper,” Brook said.

The guard at once became bristly.

Brook grinned. “Excuse me. Not duper. Suds. Super Suds. I never could remember these damn passwords. Do I qualify for admission to the Holy of Holies?”

“I have my orders, sir,” the guard said, unsmiling, and pressed a button on his desk. A voice in the communicator said, “Yes?” and the guard said, “Peter Brook. One-nine-four-four-six-two.”

“It’s about time,” the voice said. “Let the bastard through.”

The guard pressed another button; it unlocked the frosted doors, and Brook went in. He had to go through office after empty office. Finally he came to an unmarked door. He braced himself and barged in with a show of confidence.

“My arithritic mother could have made it sooner.”

“It’s only eighteen minutes, sir—”

“Check your watch. Or your eyes. It’s been nineteen minutes thirty-five seconds. Sit down.”

Holloway was at his desk. Looking back down the years, Brook could recall no occasion when he had seen Holloway anywhere else. He could have been paralyzed from the waist down for all Brook knew. That desk was his home and his church. If he led any sort of life elsewhere, it was the best-kept secret in Washington.

In appearance he was unremarkable. He seemed to inhabit a gray area — gray hair, gray complexion, gray eyes with all the warmth of the North Atlantic, and Brook had never seen him in anything but a gray suit. His department knew nothing about their chief but the facts in his career dossier: a major in OSS during World War II in Normandy; after the war a post in State Department Security; then the Central Intelligence Agency, where he had risen to a supervisory and finally the executive level before being named Director of Operations in the Federation for Art and Cultural Exchange — FACE — which in its true function had as much to do with art and culture as the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; less. From scraps picked up here and there — not, certainly, from Holloway — his agents deduced that he had once led a peripatetic existence, unbelievable as that was: Zanzibar, Hainan, Aden, Capetown, Pnompenh were mentioned; and a dangerous one, which was not hard to believe at all; standing or seated before that wound-up spring of a man behind his desk, his people could readily credit him with his share of kills and narrow escapes; he knew everything there was to know about violent death.

Perhaps that explained his tension. He sat in his chair like a catapult about to be triggered. It made Brook think sometimes that Holloway hated his swivel chair; that he kept himself seated there only through the fiercest self-discipline, because remaining in the seat was best for FACE and the United States of America. He was hard on everyone around him. No man Brook knew loved him; no man Brook knew, including himself, would not have laid down his life at Holloway’s nod.

The Director held up a sheet of paper.

“Not again,” Brook muttered.

“Again,” Holloway said.

Brook looked at the ten telephone numbers written on the paper. Holloway held the paper up for another few seconds, then put it back on his desk face down. Brook took a breath and repeated the ten numbers.

“Good,” Holloway said. “Forgetting the basics is how agents get killed. That’s how Fred Wilkinson got it in Tokyo.”

“Wilkinson? Baldy Wilkinson?”

“You knew him?”

“I had him as an instructor in Organization when I first joined CIA. I remember looking forward to his lectures because he talked a lot about foreign women. Baldy didn’t like lecturing. Always wanted to get back in the field.”

“He went back and that’s where he got his. He let somebody get close to him while he was waiting for a meet. Something a kid fresh from Operations school wouldn’t do.” Holloway pushed a sheaf of papers across the desk. “Here’s the story.”

Brook read fast under Holloway’s eye; Holloway had instituted a rapid-reading course for all his trainees, and by now it was a habit with Brook. Fred Wilkinson, veteran security agent... trying to contact Aleksei Krylov, cultural attaché, Soviet Embassy, Tokyo... strong preliminary indications Krylov wished to defect... Wilkinson’s body found floating in moat around Emperor’s palace... cause of death, several stab wounds with icepick-like weapon...

“Bad,” Brook said, looking up.

“Worse,” Holloway said, with his coldwater stare. “It was a foulup. I’d sent Wilkinson out of FACE last year, when it was obvious to me he was over the hill. CIA took him, and they were coordinating this. They gave Wilkinson the run. Even sent him to me for my opinion. Because he’d been one of my agents. I told them he’d had it, but they assigned him anyway under a FACE cover. Part of this is my fault. I should have put my foot down. I didn’t.”

Brook could scarcely believe his ears. Holloway confessing to human error? “Why doesn’t CIA make the run themselves?”

“It can’t be a regular agent, certainly not a resident, who contacts Krylov. With Krylov in Japan, and Japan so touchy about its Asian image, if anything should happen — if even part of the cover is blown — it has to look as if there’s no official connection. So now, after the foulup, it’s been handed over to FACE, which should have had it in the first place.”

And that was all the requiem the late Fred Wilkinson was going to get out of Holloway, Brook thought. Aloud he said, not thinking, “We’ve got it now?”

“Didn’t I just say so?” Holloway said. Brook wished he would turn the icewater off. “You’ve got it.”

“Yes, sir.” Brook sighed; and that was his requiem to Megan Jones. “Deadline?”

“Your jet leaves Washington International for Albuquerque at seven fifteen tomorrow morning. That gives you plenty of time to study the folder. You can sleep on the plane.”

“Thank you, sir,” Brook said.

“Good agents,” Holloway said, “don’t get sarcastic.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, you’re good enough, although not half as good as you think you are. At least I haven’t fired you.”

“Or kicked me upstairs.”

“The only direction a man can go in this organization, Brook, is down. Your job is to stay where you are. As long as you do, you’re good. Well, good enough.”

Coming from Holloway, that was praise indeed. FACE agents secretly thought they were the best, and secretly Holloway thought so, too. He had made quite sure of it.

They came from everywhere; Brook’s background was fairly typical.

His mother had been Swiss; his father, a foreign service officer at State, had married her and brought her to the United States. Peter Brook had been raised in a middle-sized, middle-class town. Outwardly he was the median young American at the outset of his career. But he had grown up speaking French and German as well as English, and with his home training in languages he had acquired Spanish and Italian, and even some Russian, at school. The Army had immediately placed him in intelligence. Then the CIA had recruited him, and there he had received his training and early experience in espionage. FACE pried him loose from the CIA in one of Holloway’s periodic raids on the personnel of other security organizations, who would grumble and curse in vain. FACE — Holloway — had friends in astonishing places.

Brook could understand why the official intelligence agencies looked on FACE with disapproval. FACE came in handy for the jobs they were not permitted to touch; they were professionally jealous of the freedom they believed it enjoyed as a non-governmental agency.

FACE was largely financed by foundations and corporations. On all the other floors of the building it carried out legitimate activities designed to promote international cultural exchanges and so spread about the world the more salubrious aspects of the American scene. It was a nice, gentlemanly, even humane way of fighting the Russians and the Chinese. But that was its cover. Its real purpose was the dirty fight, and the in-group of business and government leaders formed the Special Research Section of FACE, with Holloway as its director, for precisely this purpose.

Brook glanced through the folder. “Krylov is in Tokyo. Why do I take a plane to Albuquerque?”

“Because Benny Lopez will join you there,” Holloway said.

“Good enough.” Benny Lopez was a gem.

“And because Lopez will take you to see General Levashev. What do you know about Levashev?”

“Only what every Joe Blow in the trade knows. What was it the Undersecretary said? When Levashev defected it was like getting one of their rockets.”

“The Undersecretary,” Holloway said, “talks too much. Levashev is hidden away in New Mexico. No one else — but no one — except a few top-security guards knows where he is. The place has a hundred defenses, none of them visible. It would be as easy for an assassin to get to him as to the ready room at SAC.”

“But what has General Levashev to do with this Krylov business?”

“For one thing, Levashev knows Krylov, and he can fill you in on details about him; the better informed you are about this man the better prepared you’ll be to bring him over. More important, when you do bring Krylov over—” Brook noted absently that Holloway did not say “if” “—we want a confrontation. Levashev’s been out of the center of things in Moscow for over a year, and with what Krylov can tell him in bringing him up to date Levashev can put a lot of twos together for us. Need anything else?”

Brook shook his head.

Holloway immediately turned back to the pile of paper work on his desk.