Hopscotch

— 3 -

The security man gave Leonard Ross a vague smile of recognition; all the same Ross had to run his card through the ID machine before it granted him the dubious asylum of the fourth floor.

As always Ross found it discomfiting. Myerson’s outer sanctum was as forbidding as a penitentiary: not the clean chill of sterile modernity but the grey austere drabness of nineteen-fiftyish technocracy, The chairs were tubular steel affairs with seats padded in Naugahyde and they looked civilized enough but there was no way to relax in them. Ross sat rigidly upright, buoyed a little by the fact that he was the only visitor waiting to see Myerson-perhaps he wouldn’t have to cool his heels too long.

The secretary opened the inner door. “Mr. Myerson will see you now.” The doctor will see you now-he went in as if to a dentist’s chair. The secretary preceded him, swinging smartly with a high-hipped stride; Ross hadn’t met her often enough to know her name although if she’d been ten years younger he’d have made a point of it. She rapped out a discreet code on Myerson’s door and pushed it open. Ross tried to march right in with some show of confidence but he wasn’t sure it was convincing. Myerson was in charge of his department but Myerson was also the Agency’s hatchet man. You were never quite sure that a summons to the fourth floor wasn’t going to be your last one.

Myerson was rummaging in a four-drawer cabinet built into the wall. “Sit down, Ross.”

The chairs had been arranged-two leather armchairs drawn up to make a triangle with the desk. So there was to be a third party to the meeting. Ross sat.

The file drawer slid shut like something in the morgue. Myerson brought a Top Secret folder to the desk, pulled his chair out, sat down and crossed his plump legs. He was twenty pounds overweight, a big-hipped man with the attitude of command, His pale tan suit nicely set off the mahogany sunlamp tan of his bald head. “We’re waiting for Cutter.”

“I thought he was in Kuwait?”

“Aden. I’ve pulled him out. He’ll have landed at Dulles by now-he should have been here. It may be the traffic. While we’re waiting for him have a look at this.”

It was a copystat, something typed, fourteen double-spaced pages. Conspiracy of Killers, it was headed. By Miles Kendig. He looked up and Myerson was smiling, anger bubbling visibly beneath it. “Go ahead-read it.”

He was on the fifth page when Cutter came into the office. Ross got to his feet. They’d never met but he’d heard a great deal; Cutter was a man who trailed legends.

Cutter’s handshake was quick and dry. He would remember Ross’s face twenty years from now. He had cunning eyes and a cynical mouth. He ran to a physical type: narrow and vain-dark, trim, long angular face, graceful. He had tiny teeth and beautiful dark womanly eyes: he looked the sort who’d race stock cars on dirt ovals in Appalachia. He was no rustic but he had that aura of raw primitive machismo.

Myerson wasn’t a man for polite preambles. “Take your coat off, sit down, read this. Then we’ll talk.”

Cutter absorbed the fourteen pages in the time it took Ross to read the last nine. Then Cutter sailed it onto the desk. It indicated something about him: he wouldn’t have to look at it again, he’d committed it to memory. “Where’s the original?”

“I imagine Kendig’s still got it.”

“Then where’d this come from?” The chilly precision of Cutter’s voice disquieted Ross.

Myerson reached for the big glass ashtray. It was the first time Ross had noticed the cigar. While they’d been reading Myerson had chewed it to shreds; he dumped the remains in the ashtray and licked his teeth distastefully. “It came from Bois Blanc in Paris.”

Cutter said drily, “Well then he’s picked the right publisher for it.”

“Can we stop them from publishing it?” Ross asked.

“Wouldn’t help,” Myerson said. “He went hog-wild on the Xerox machine. At least fourteen publishers in as many countries have received copies of this thing. Or at least that’s what Kendig claims in his covering letter to Desrosiers.”

Desrosiers was the iconoclastic publisher of the Bois Blanc series. He’d published all the clandestine samizdat best sellers that were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Myerson said, “We don’t know who the other publishing houses are. We’ll find out in time of course but I’m not sure what good it will do us. We can’t burn them all to the ground.”

“We might persuade them not to buy it.”

“How?” Cutter shook his head. “They know it’s a multiple submission. Damned few of them will turn it down and risk missing out on their cut of the pie. It’ll sell of lot of copies.”

“Can’t we convince them he’s a crazy?” Ross insisted.

“Desrosiers knows Kendig,” Myerson said. “They’ve known each other for thirty years. Kendig brought him Medvedev’s first manuscript.”

Ross slapped the typed pages in his lap. “But this stuff-it’s so wild. Who’d believe it?” He turned a page and read aloud, a sarcastic tone: “‘What was Richard Nixon doing in Dallas on the day John Kennedy was assassinated there?’ I mean that’s the cheapest kind of gossip-rag innuendo. It’s nothing but an empty teaser. ‘How many tons of counterfeit North Vietnamese currency has Air America dropped on North Vietnam since the truce was signed?’ And the bit-I can’t find it now-the bit about the assassination of Duvalier.”

“Page eight,” Cutter murmured.

It flustered Ross but he went on indignantly: “Or this thing about the Soviets assassinating Nasser with a spray of prussic acid. I mean how wild can you get? And it’s all unsupported, he’s given no details. All we’ve got to do is lean on them, show them how irresponsible it would be to publish unconfirmed rubbish like this. Make Kendig out to be a paranoid idiot who’s gone around the bend. I mean that’s what he is, isn’t it? It’s got to be that.”

Myerson said, “He’s a little crazy. But not that way. You’re right about one thing-it’s a teaser, nothing more.”

“But he’s got the goods to pay it off,” Cutter said.

Myerson nodded. “That’s the thing. It’s all true, you know. And Kendig will cite chapter and verse.”

It was hard to absorb. Ross said, “It’s true?”

“Of course it is,” Cutter said. “He’s not an absolute fool.”

“But he was a field agent. He’d never have had access to anything like this.”

“After his convalescent leave he spent eight months working two doors down the hall from this office,” Myerson said. “He didn’t fit in, he couldn’t stick it out-he never had the patience to sit at a desk. We offered to move him to NSA but he gave it the back of his hand. We had no choice but to retire him.”

“And in those eight months he came across all this stuff?”

Cutter said, “He must have made a point of looking for it. To give him an arsenal against us in case he ever had to use it.”

“That’s a little fanciful.”

“He was never a man to trust anybody. He always had to have an edge. That was what made him so good at the job. He never let anybody get him into a corner. He always had the escape route staked out in advance.”

Ross stacked the pages neatly in his lap, evening up the corners. “I’ve never come across any of this stuff and I’ve worked here six years now.”

“Not on the fourth floor you haven’t,” Cutter said. “This outfit’s like the Waffen SS, it’s got a compulsion to keep records of all its crimes in quintuplicate.” He was talking to Myerson now: “I’ve bitched about that for years. Haven’t I.”

“When they move you to the fifth floor you can start making policy,” Myerson replied, unruffled. “We’ll get along faster if you stop dredging up I-told-you-so’s. Right now we’ve got a problem and I expect you to provide the solution.”

Cuter only nodded; he was deep in thought. Ross said, “What am I doing here?”

Myerson blinked. “You’ll have to ask Cutter.”

Cutter said, “I asked for you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because you’ve got a reputation for doing what you’re told without stopping to make waves.”

Myerson said, “We can’t assume anything; but we can hope he hasn’t written the rest of the book yet. If that’s the case your job is easy-just prevent him from finishing it.”

“With extreme prejudice,” Cutter said, very wry. “Personally I prefer the word ‘kill.’ It’s the goddamned euphemisms that’ll do us all in.” He snaked out his long brown hand to glance at his watch; shot his cuff and asked, “When did Desrosiers receive that?”

“Four days ago.”

“Shit. Hand delivered?”

“In the mail. It had a Paris postmark.”

“How did we get it?”

“We’ve got an editor in our pocket. Naturally Kendig knew that-that’s why he picked that publisher to send it to first. I suspect the Russians have someone there too, in view of the sort of thing Desrosiers publishes. Maybe it’s even the same editor, who knows. In any event you can be sure there’s a copy of this in Moscow by now-and I think you can be sure Kendig knows that too.”

“And they won’t like the thing any more than we do. So we’ll be tripping over the Comrades.”

Ross sat silent as if forgotten; the dialogue went on-Myerson said, “There’ll be copies surfacing in Whitehall and Bonn and the Arab capitals and God knows where else. The way he’s gone about it guarantees that. He’s trying to make the biggest noise he can.”

Ross said, “I don’t understand that. Why?”

Myerson pointed at Cutter. “You know the man. What’s your judgment?”

Cutter’s index finger flicked toward the pages he’d tossed on Myerson’s desk. “‘If the peoples of the nations concerned find out what has been done, and is being done, in their name…’” He was quoting it verbatim after the cursory reading he’d given it; Ross looked it up to make sure and Cutter had got it letter perfect.

Cutter said, “It’s got a phony ring to it. Kendig’s never suffered from the obvious brands of moral rationalizing. He never went in for sterile liberal dogmas. The only time I ever heard him get near the subject was once when Nixon was running in ’sixty-eight. He said he figured people got the kind of government they deserved. Nothing surprises him. He’s not the type to get indignant or bleat about injustice.”

“And?”

“The last I heard he was having fits of Gothic melancholia. Severe depressions. Bored to death.”

“So?”

Again Cutter pointed at the pages. “Maybe that’s his suicide note. He’s not the sleeping-pill type. He’d want to go down in flames. So he wants us to come and kill him.”

“Then you’d better do it,” Myerson said.

“He won’t sit and wait for it. He won’t make it easy.”

“I have every confidence in you.” Myerson turned a wholly fictitious smile toward Ross. “Cutter can find a man the way a dog can smell out a bitch in heat.”

Cutter raised one hand a few inches to acknowledge the tribute. “Kendig’s a professional. A professional is somebody who doesn’t make stupid mistakes. He had this planned ten moves ahead before he put that thing in the mail.”

“Don’t be defeatist.”

“I think we ought to ignore him,” Cutter said. “Why play his silly game? I doubt he’s got the patience to sit down and write the whole book. If he sees we’re not going to play with him he’ll give it up-he’ll stand in a highway somewhere and wait for a truck to run him down.”

Myerson said, “We’re not the only ones involved. If we don’t get to him somebody will. Most likely the Comrades. They’ll realize when they read this that he knows a lot more than they ever thought he knew. They’ll want him alive-at first. We don’t really want them to have him, do we.”

It was obvious Cutter didn’t like it but he had to concede the point. “Then we’ll get the son of a bitch. It’s a grisly waste, though.”

“Granted. Can’t be helped.”

“All right. The tedious details. Last known location?”

“He checked out of a hotel in Paris a week ago today. It’s all in the file. Hasn’t been seen since.”

“Anything on the type face?”

“We ran it through analysis. It’s a Smith-Corona portable. The type is called Presidential Pica. There must be a hundred thousand like it. He bought the paper and the manila mailing envelope-envelopes, actually-at a stationer in the boulevard Raspail. Three weeks ago.”

“Most recent known associates?”

“It’s all in the file. One interesting item-about a month ago Kendig had a meeting with Mikhail Yaskov in Paris. We keep tabs on Yaskov when we can.”

“A month ago. That’s before he bought the typing paper.”

“Yes.”

“Christ. There’s a connection then.”

“Maybe. Who knows. Follett interviewed him but he couldn’t get anything out of him. At any rate he hasn’t defected-we’d have known.” Myerson picked up the papers Cutter had tossed on his desk; he straightened them and put them into the file folder along with the thick sheafs that were already in it. Then he proffered it and Cutter got up to take it. It was evident the interview had ended; Ross got to his feet.

Ross’s office was a third-floor cubicle. They used it because Cutter, a field man, had no office of his own. Ross waited just inside the door, uncertain of his priorities. Cutter settled it for him by walking around behind the desk and occupying the position.

They shared out the contents of the file and read it. Ross felt useless in the knowledge that he wasn’t absorbing a fifth as much as Cutter was taking in. And for the last forty-five minutes Cutter leaned back in the tilt chair steepling his fingers and inquiring of the ceiling while Ross finished reading it all.

Then Cutter said, “Notice anything interesting?”

“Sure. He’s a hell of an odd bird.”

“About the file itself, I mean.”

“Oh that. You mean the absence of photographs and fingerprints.”

Cutter nodded slowly and gave him a brief glance that might have been approval. “He’s always had an allergy to cameras. We’ve got a few shots of the back of his head. That’s one reason Myerson put your name forward-you’ve met Kendig.”

“Only a few times-casual, around the building.”

“But you remember what he looks like, don’t you?”

“I’d know him if I saw him.”

“There you are, then.”

“I thought you said you were the one who asked for me.”

“I asked for a gopher. Myerson suggested your name. I agreed with him.”

“Am I supposed to be flattered?”

“No. I’ll run your ass ragged.”

“It’ll be a change at least.”

“Hold onto that thought when it gets dicey. Now you’d better know about the fingerprints. We haven’t got Kendig’s.”

“At all?”

“At some point he got into his own file. Removed the mug shots and dental records and substituted a phony fingerprint card. We didn’t get onto it until after he’d left us. Then I made a point of tracking it down-I’m not sure why. They belonged to a waiter in a dump out in Alexandria. Kendig paid him twenty dollars to put his fingerprints on the card.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“He’s never trusted anybody. He’s pathological about it.”

“Why?”

“You’ve read the backgrounding.”

It was phrased in dry officialese and you had to have a talent for deciphering that sort of thing. It had left Ross with quick impressions: Kendig’s search all through the 1940s for his father-trying to find out who his father had been. Gradually accruing a picture of a sad old man, a pessimist who’d tried to love everything, hated violence, had a kind word for the worst of men. Gentle, loving, a hapless hard-drinking drifter with a social worker’s illogical faith in goodness: the need to trust everyone, yet the knowledge that savagery was the nature of man. Kendig evidently had spent important chunks of his youth trying to track down the old man. Then he’d caught up. On a nightmare binge one morning in the fall of 1949 the old man had leapt from bed screaming and fled in panic from the monsters that swooped in his alcohol-invested sleep: he had shut his eyes and lept past the ring of monsters through a window, nine stories to his death. Miles Kendig had met him for the first time at the morgue. According to the psychiatrist’s report it had been the beginning of the great void in Kendig’s life.

“I’m not sure I believe too much of that psychological horse shit,” Ross said. “It’s always too pat. Do you buy it?”

“Until a better explanation comes along.” Cutter examined his fingertips. He seldom looked at the person he was talking to; Ross was learning that about him. Cutter’s eyes fixed themselves on a third person-he’d stared at Ross half the time he’d been talking to Myerson upstairs-or on an inanimate object.

It was said Cutter had a wife and sent her money at regular intervals but hadn’t seen her in years. It was said he was a loner, an old-fashioned derring-do type from the cloak-and-dagger tradition; but he couldn’t be more than thirty-eight or forty at the outside. The dimmer wits on the third floor had nicknamed him 007.

Still looking at his fingers Cutter said, “It’s something you learn when you’re in the field. Whenever you pick up a drinking glass or a piece of paper, whatever, you twist your fingers to smudge the prints. Kendig hasn’t left a clear print on anything he’s touched in the past thirty years. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t think anybody’s tracked down a man on the basis of fingerprints since Sherlock Holmes.”

“Okay,” Ross said. “We haven’t got his prints and we haven’t got a photograph and we don’t know where he is. Where do we start?”

“Stop clutching that file as if there was something in it that might help-that’s the first thing.”

“It’s the only record we’ve got on him, isn’t it?”

“Except what’s in our heads. But records won’t do this job. You’re one of those eager beavers, aren’t you-the new breed that’s weaned on the theory that if our computer keeps better records than the other side’s then we’re bound to win out. You’re going to have to forget that shit for a while. Nobody’s ever taped Kendig. For one thing when Kendig got into this busines you still had to be a bit of an adolescent to want to do it in the first place-immature enough to be attracted by the risks. You understand? He was always the fastest driver I ever rode with. Sometimes he’d put himself in a position where he had to fall off. It was just to prove he could land on his feet.”

Ross watched him bite the words off with his even white teeth and it occurred to him that Cutter might just as well have been talking about himself.

“Kendig was my Control for seven years,” Cutter said. “He ran me in Laos and Indonesia and out in the Balkans.”

“Then you were friends-that’s why Myerson gave this one to you.”

“No, we weren’t friends. He was the teacher and I was the student. He knew I had the makings of a professional. But I don’t think he liked me.”

“Did you like him?”

“Not very often,” Cutter said. “But I suppose I was jealous of him.”

“I still don’t really understand this. If you’ve figured it right it looks to me like a hell of a complicated way to commit suicide.”

“It’s the way he is. He could have been a grand master at chess.”

“That’s part and parcel of all this messing with the files, is it? I mean phonying up his own file. And stealing all that top secret material he’s using in his book.”

“He didn’t steal the documents,” Cutter said, “He memorized them. You’d better remember that.”

“It’s the same thing.”

Cutter gave him a glance. “The hell it is.”

“So what do we do?”

“Cast a fly.”

“How?”

Cutter looked at his watch. “It’s still business hours in Paris. Let’s put through a phone call to Desrosiers. I have a feeling Kendig’s waiting to hear from us.”