The Blackbird

Twelve

The monitor room was an ordinary hotel room on the Chateau Frontenac’s fifth floor, rear view, full of open suitcases packed with electronic equipment. Five men were in the room, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, and it didn’t take much conversation for Grofield to discover they were from the United States, electronics eavesdropping specialists, private detectives hired for the occasion. Grofield grinned at Vivian Kamdela and said quietly, “More patriots from south of the border.”

“One hires technicians,” she said coldly. “One doesn’t have to like one’s employees.”

“What a prig you are,” Grofield told her.

The technician he’d been talking to called him now from across the room. He went over, followed by the girl, and the technician was threading a tape onto a small Japanese tape recorder. “Noise activates the tape,” he explained. “If there’s nothing happening, the tape doesn’t run. So there might have been silent spaces in between the sounds you hear, but they won’t show up on the tape.”

“I understand.”

“Just let me find the right place on the tape.” He started the machine at Fast Forward, and for a few seconds the three of them stood there watching the reels spin around. Then he stopped it, switched to Play, and Grofield heard himself say, “Us counterspies work funny hours.”

“It’s later than that,” the technician said, unembarrassed at Grofield standing there listening to himself being eavesdropped on, and switched to Fast Forward again.

Grofield said, “That was me talking to Carlson. When I woke up this afternoon.”

“That’s right,” the technician said, and switched back to Play. This time it was Carlson’s voice, saying, “You don’t gain anything... ”

“Too far.” The technician switched to Rewind, then back to Play.

Grofield heard himself say, “But be sure the door is locked when you go out.”

Carlson’s voice said, “Certainly.” The clarity was good, a little echo, the reproduction somewhat better than that of a telephone.

“Not that it does any good,” Grofield’s voice mumbled, and a door opened and closed.

There was a click, and the technician said in a quick whisper, “That’s a jump in time.”

Grofield nodded, listening to Carlson’s voice again. “Henry here.” A click. “He seems clean. The Kamdela woman was sent by Marba, to find out what he was doing here.” A click. “Of course he’s suspicious, everybody’s suspicious. But he won’t link Grofield with us if we’re careful.” A click. “I imagine he’s trying to run out on us now. You know he knows about the transmitters.” A click. “All right. I’ll keep an eye on things at this end. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” A click. “Right.”

There was another click after that, and then a series of vaguer noises, movement, scuffing, small metallic sounds. Grofield gave the technician a puzzled look, and the technician said, “We’ve listened to this part a few times, and we think it’s somebody working on the hall door. Was the door jimmied?”

“No.”

“That’s it, then. He’s picking the lock. Listen, now.”

Grofield listened. Softly, a door closed.

The technician said, “That’s Carlson, going into either the bathroom or the closet, we don’t know which.”

“Too bad you didn’t have television,” Grofield said sarcastically.

The technician took it straight. “They didn’t give us that kind of budget,” he said. “Listen. Here’s where the intruder comes in. Hear that?”

“Yes. What’s that? He’s opening drawers?”

“Yes. He gives the room a pretty good search. As a matter of fact, we were worried for a while he’d find our equipment.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. We did a good job stashing it.”

“Where’d you put it?” Grofield asked innocently.

The technician grinned at him. “Sure,” he said.

Vivian Kamdela said coldly, “He thinks he’s clever.”

The technician looked at her in surprise, and Grofield explained, “Just a lover’s spat.”

The technician grinned again, then harked back at his tape, saying, “Any second now.”

The small sounds, like the burrowing of a pack rat in its lair, continued a few seconds longer, and then a door opened and there was a gasp, and a new voice, in heavily accented English, said, “Who are you?”

“I am Mr. Grofield,” Henry Carlson said indignantly. “And this is my room. What are you doing here?”

“You are not Grofield,” the other one said. “You better answer straight. Who are you?”

“You want to be careful with that,” Henry Carlson said. “If it goes off, we’ll have the whole hotel around our ears.”

“I don’t need this,” said the other one. “I’ve got this.”

“That must be the knife,” the technician whispered.

Grofield nodded impatiently, having already understood that. Carlson, on the tape, was saying, “So I see. Well, there’s no need to threaten me, you know. You don’t gain anything that way. We’re both interlopers, because you’re not Grofield either,”

The other one said suspiciously, “What have you got there?”

“My book,” Carlson said. “I took it in with me. Just habit. You see, there’s nothing inside it. Aya! For God’s sake... ”

The other voice, having broken into some foreign language, was apparently cursing. There were scuffling, bumping sounds, and Carlson said, “You... ” in an explanatory way. Then Carlson coughed, and there were more thumping sounds. Then a click, followed by Vivian Kamdela’s voice saying, “Carlson is dead. The other one isn’t here. There doesn’t seem... ”

The technician switched off the tape. “What we think happened,” he said, “Carlson had his book in his hand, with his finger marking the place. He was going to hold it up and open it so the other guy could see there wasn’t anything inside, but the other guy got scared by the movement and lunged forward with the knife. Carlson stuck the book up like a shield and the knife went into it. It apparently went through enough to cut him the first time, but not badly, and with the book stuck all the way onto the knife the other guy stabbed him again, this time getting in a good shot.”

“A wonderful shot,” Grofield said. “Do you have any idea what language that was?”

“Sorry. We’ve listened to it, but nobody here knows it at all.”

Grofield turned to Vivian. “You don’t know it either?”

“If I did, I would say so.”

“All right.” Grofield looked back at the technician. “Could I have a copy of the tape?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” the technician said.

“Just the part with the foreign language on it.”

The technician shook his head. “Not a chance of it.”

“Why not?”

“Is that a real question?”

“Of course.”

The technician glanced at Vivian, then looked back at Grofield. “What we have here,” he said, patting the tape machine, “is evidence in a murder case. We are suppressing that evidence, because it’s also evidence of illegal bugging and a few other breaking of laws that we’ve done. If we give you a copy of any part of this tape, you’ll have evidence that we’re suppressing evidence. Nobody likes you that much.”

“I wanted to see if I could get that language identified. I wouldn’t turn the tape over to the law.”

“The kind of life you seem to live,” the technician said, “you wouldn’t have to turn it over to anybody. All you’d have to do was carry it around for a while, and sooner or later everybody would be in trouble.”

Grofield looked suspiciously at Vivian. “Have you been talking about me behind my back?”

She gave a shrug of contempt and walked away.

The technician gestured at the tape machine. “That’s what’s been talking,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much we’ve picked up since you moved into that room.”

“No I wouldn’t. Nothing surprises me any more.”

“This isn’t your regular line, is it?”

“How’d you know?”

“You better go back to your own field,” the technician said. “Whatever it is, it’s got to be safer than this.”

“It is,” Grofield said. “Thank you for letting me listen to that.”

“Any time.”

Grofield looked around, and Vivian was over by the door. He walked over to her and said, “I’m done here.”

“Good,” she said, and looked away from him.

Grofield said, “Don’t you escort me any more?”

“You know where your room is.”

“What about Marba?”

“He told you he would be in touch with you.”

“I guess he did, at that. Have you had dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Interested in having a drink?”

She gave him a cold look. “I am not going anywhere with you,” she said. “Good-bye.”

“I don’t know why I try to be friendly with you,” he said.

“I do,” she said, and turned away, and walked off.

Grofield looked after her, and then called, “One of these times, I get the exit line.”

She didn’t bother to respond.