The Talbot Odyssey

8

Katherine Kimberly read:

Colonel Randolph Carbury stroked his white mustache pensively as he regarded the attractive woman sitting at her desk. She was, he thought, a remarkable American specimen; nearly forty, as he knew, but looking closer to thirty. Her long hair was a light blond color, her pale skin slightly freckled with a spring tan. He was told she was a runner and he could believe it from the looks of her trim body and well-shaped legs.

She looked up from the letter and met the eyes of the Englishman sitting across from her.

He inclined his head toward the letter. “Please continue.”

Katherine stared down at the gold-embossed letterhead: Lady Eleanor Wingate, Brompton Hall, Tongate, Kent. The letter was handwritten with black ink in what Katherine thought was a script so perfect it could have been copperplate. She looked up at Carbury. His face was taut, almost grim, she thought. “Would you like a drink?” She indicated a sideboard and Carbury rose wordlessly and walked toward it. She continued to read.

Katherine paused in her reading. This was really too much to assimilate, she thought. Yet, it was not entirely unexpected. Eleanor Wingate was a name dimly remembered from her childhood, though she couldn’t recall the context. Now the memory and the context were clearer. And Randolph Carbury’s visit was not unexpected either, though he had been totally unknown to her fifteen minutes ago. She had known that some day Carbury, or someone like him, would appear out of the blue. It was inevitable that the ghost of her father would reach out to her. She read on:

Katherine looked at Carbury and said softly, “Talbot?”

Carbury’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes. Talbot and Wolfbane. I didn’t realize you knew. How much do you know?”

“Not enough.” She turned the page of the letter and continued.

Katherine stayed silent for some time, then said, “Why didn’t you go directly to my sister?”

“She’s not easy to locate, is she?”

“No, she’s not.”

“Given the choice, I’d still prefer dealing with you.”

“Why?”

“Because, as Lady Wingate indicated, and as we both know, your firm takes more than a nostalgic interest in affairs such as this. It’s in your hands now. Distribute the information as you see fit. But please be cautious.”

“Should I ask Mr. O’Brien to join us?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Nearly all of us from that time and that profession are automatically suspect. Including myself, of course.”

Katherine stood and looked out from the forty-fourth-floor window of her office. Across Fifth Avenue, the intricate gray masonry of St. Patrick’s Cathedral spread out in the shape of a Latin cross. In the café below, the two dozen or so tables were empty. It was an unusually raw and overcast May afternoon, a day of gray vapor plumes and long gray shadows.

Colonel Carbury stood also and followed her gaze. “This view has changed considerably since these were the offices of British Security Coordination. I last stood at this very window in 1945. Yet, you know, the major landmarks are still standing — the Waldorf, Saks, St. Patrick’s, the St. Regis — and I fancy it is 1945 again, and I see myself down there, a younger man dashing across the avenue… ”

He turned from the window. “I see myself in this office again with my American associates — General Donovan, the Dulleses, Clare Boothe Luce, and your employer, Patrick O’Brien, who never arrived at a meeting without a few bottles of liberated spirits. Algerian wine in the beginning, then some Corvo from Sicily, and, finally, champagne… I met your father here one Sunday. He had a little girl with him, but that must have been your sister, Ann. You would have been an infant.”

“Yes, my sister,” Katherine said.

Carbury nodded. His eyes passed over a wall where vintage black-and-white photographs hung. “What brave and pure lads and lasses we were. What a war it was. What a time it was.” He glanced at her. “It was, Miss Kimberly, perhaps the one moment in history when all the best and the brightest were within the government, unified in purpose, with no distinctions of class or politics… or so we thought.”

Katherine listened as Carbury reminisced, knowing he was not deviating from his point or his purpose, only taking the longer route to get there.

Carbury looked directly at her. “The past comes back to haunt us because it was an imperfect past, a shaky foundation upon which we’ve built so much.”

Katherine moved away from the window. “You have my father’s diary?”

Colonel Carbury walked to the center of the room. “Not with me. I only brought the letter for now.” He nodded toward the three sheets of cream-colored vellum stationery on Katherine’s desk. His eyes met hers and he seemed to appreciate her wariness. He spoke softly. “It is not pure chance, as you know, that the law firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose occupies the same offices my people occupied during the war. It was Patrick O’Brien’s decision, I believe, to move his firm here. Nostalgia, continuity… karma, if you will.” He smiled. “I spent some time in India.”

Carbury seemed suddenly tired and sat back down in the chair beside her desk. “Do you mind?” He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke drift upward. “It’s difficult to explain to someone so young what a marvel these buildings were in 1940. Futuristic design, air conditioning, high-speed elevators, restaurants with decent food. We English treated ourselves rather well, I can tell you. But it was not much fun, really, for we were all painfully aware of what our island was going through.”

“I think I can appreciate what you’re saying.”

Carbury nodded absently. “Yet, we knew that our mission in America was the single most important contribution to the war effort. We came to New York, over a thousand strong, to fight a different kind of war.” He looked around the large office as though trying to recall how it looked then. “To get America into the war, actually. To raise money and arms, to collect intelligence, to lobby, to plead, to beg… We were in a rather bad way. Whisky warriors, some called us. And I suppose we did drink a bit much… ” He shrugged.

Katherine said, “History has recorded your contribution.”

“Yes, only recently. I’ve lived long enough to see that. Most didn’t. That’s the nature of clandestine work.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “It is a lonely and frustrating way to serve one’s country. Don’t you find that so?”

“I’m a lawyer. My sister, Ann, is the one in intelligence.”

“Yes, of course.” Carbury stared off into space for some time, and Katherine could see that beneath the composed exterior was a man burning with emotion.

“When will I see the contents of the dispatch case?” she said.

“This evening.”

“I have an appointment this evening.”

“Yes, I know. The Seventh Regiment Armory. Table fourteen. I’m at table thirty-one with some compatriots of mine.”

She nodded.

“I’ll arrange the details of the transfer with you at that time.”

“Where are you staying, Colonel?”

“My old hotel — the Ritz-Carlton.”

“The Ritz-Carlton has been torn down.”

“Has it?” He rose. “I’ll have to find another place.” He extended his hand, and she took it. Carbury said, “I’ve read the diary, of course, and this is most serious. We’ll discuss how to proceed tonight.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“It was my pleasure. You’re as beautiful as your mother”—he nodded toward a picture on the wall—“and I suspect as intelligent as your father. Thank you for the drink, and again please forgive me for not making an appointment. I came from the airport straightaway.”

As she walked toward the door, Katherine wondered what he had done with his luggage. “How can I reach you between now and this evening?”

“I’m afraid you can’t. Sounds a bit paranoid, but I’m being rather cautious.”

“So am I.”

“Good.” He turned and stepped up to the window again, focusing on the scene below. He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “Things may not always be as they appear, but there is a logical explanation for everything. Not always a reassuring explanation, but always logical. We should keep that in mind over the coming days.”

Katherine opened the door, and Carbury stepped up to it. He said, “Please consider yourself operational now. Security, discretion, and extreme personal caution.”

Katherine replied, “If you are who you say you are, and the letter is what it purports to be, then thank you, Colonel. If you are not who you seem, then be extremely careful yourself.”

Carbury smiled. “Good day.” He left.

Katherine walked to her desk and pressed her intercom. “Mr. Abrams, will you come in here? Immediately, please.”

She folded the Wingate letter and slid it into the pocket of her wool blazer.

Tony Abrams opened the door between her office and the library. Katherine looked at him, framed in the doorway against the brighter lights of the library. He was a tall man, with dusky skin, black hair, and deep-set dark eyes. He did not affect what she called the Brooks Brothers — attorney costume. He seemed to own only dark suits and white shirts, all of which were remarkably alike. The ties — and there were a good number of them — were always colorful, as though he were trying to avoid being taken for a funeral director. His movements were slow and easy, and his manner was taciturn. They exchanged barely a dozen words at a time, but somehow they had developed a good working relationship.

She nodded toward the door. “An Englishman, name of Carbury.” She handed Carbury’s card to Abrams. “Just left. Tall, thin, white mustache, about seventy years old. He’ll be asking the receptionist for his coat. Follow him, please, to find out where he’s staying. Call me.”

Abrams handed back the card and without a word turned and left.

Katherine walked slowly to the sideboard. She looked at a picture framed in old silver: Major Henry Kimberly, dressed in officer’s tans, without a cap, so that his light hair fell boyishly over his forehead. It was an outdoor shot, in sepia tones. In the background was the blurry suggestion of a stone wall, which as a child she had imagined to be a fort. Now she wondered if it was Brompton Hall.

She picked up the picture and held it closer. Her father’s eyes, like her own, were large and very clear. She remembered the only nice thing her mother ever said about him: “He had eyes that sparkled across a room.”

She looked at the inscription: To my Little Kate, I love you, Daddy. She placed the photograph back on the sideboard. Lifting the decanter of Scotch, she poured some into a half glass of water. The neck of the decanter rattled against the lip of the glass as her hand shook.

She took the drink to the window and held it pressed against her chest. She looked out across the city and took a long, deep breath, feeling the tears forming in her eyes. The cityscape dissolved into a watery blur, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Yes, she thought, a day of long gray shadows.

9

Tony Abrams crossed the large, beige-toned reception area and saw Randolph Carbury approaching the elevator bank, pulling on a tan raincoat.

Abrams took his own coat from the closet, descended the sweeping circular staircase in the center of the reception floor, and walked to the elevators on the lower floor of the law offices. He pushed the button and waited. The elevator doors opened, and Abrams stepped in beside Carbury. They rode down to the street level.

He followed Carbury through the long, shop-lined concourse and exited with him from the east end of the RCA Building, into the damp, chilly air.

Abrams established an interval of ten yards and followed Carbury around the skating rink, through the promenade, and onto Fifth Avenue, where Carbury turned north.

As he walked, Abrams considered that he was following a man he didn’t know for a purpose he couldn’t begin to fathom. At forty-three years of age he was doing what he’d done at thirty-three as a New York City undercover cop. At least then he knew the whys and wherefores of his assignments. Now he knew very little about the tasks he was asked to perform for the firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose. Such as agreeing to go to the Russian estate on Monday, Memorial Day. But Patrick O’Brien had assured him he’d be fully briefed before he went. O’Brien’s idea of fully briefed, he suspected, did not coincide with his own.

Carbury stopped now and then, ostensibly to take in the sights. Abrams’ instincts told him that the man was a pro, a fact Katherine Kimberly had failed to mention.

Abrams stopped and looked into a bookstore window as Carbury waited for a light. Whenever he followed someone, Abrams was reminded of his mother’s sage advice: “Get an inside job.” In the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn where he’d grown up, the world was neatly divided into outside and inside jobs. Outside jobs meant pneumonia, heat stroke, and unspeakable accidents. Inside jobs of the tie-and-jacket variety were safe. Notwithstanding that admonition, he became a cop. A little inside, a little outside, once in a while a tie. His mother wasn’t altogether pleased. She’d tell her friends, “He’s a detective. An inside job. He wears a suit.”

He had graduated at the top of his class from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, then entered Fordham Law School. It was then that he’d had an occasion to see the O’Brien firm in action. He had been observing a stock-fraud case for a law class, and it seemed that the defendant had more lawyers than the district attorney had pages in his indictment. The assistant DA trying the case had been dazzled — intimidated, actually. Abrams had been impressed, both as a cop and as a law student, and some weeks later he had applied for and gotten a part-time process server job with the O’Brien firm. Then, a year ago, Patrick O’Brien offered him a full-time position and full tuition reimbursement. At the time, it seemed apparent that they wanted a house dick, someone with special police knowledge and without the encumbrances of being a sworn peace officer. Since his May Day conversation with O’Brien, he wasn’t certain anymore of what they wanted of him.

Randolph Carbury crossed the street and stopped again to watch a well-attended sidewalk game of three-card monte. Abrams suspected that Carbury was trying to determine if he had a tail. If so, he’d try to shake the tail. And in a one-on-one situation, that wouldn’t be difficult. Abrams considered the unhappy prospect of going back to Katherine Kimberly empty-handed. But he also considered that he was unhappy with the way he was usually kept guessing about these assignments.

There was something decidedly non-kosher about the prestigious firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, and Abrams had one clue: Like the law firm of the late General William Donovan, which was located a few floors below, O’Brien’s firm had national intelligence connections going back to World War II. Not only was Patrick O’Brien an ex-intelligence officer, but so had been the late Henry Kimberly. The late Jonathan Rose had been an Allen Dulles aide in Bern during the war and a John Foster Dulles aide in the State Department during the Eisenhower administration. Also, Abrams had seen a good number of intelligence men and women, who had somehow run afoul of the law, pass through the office. If there was anything irregular about this law practice, it was those connections and associations. Tonight at the dinner he might learn more.

Carbury continued north. Abrams followed. His thoughts turned back to Katherine Kimberly. There was a woman who personified sangfroid. He imagined she took cold showers in the winter and stood in front of an open window to dry off. The Ice Queen, he called her, though certainly not to her face.

Yet when she had summoned him into her office, he had been almost shocked at her appearance. She was ghostly white, very upset, and she’d barely made an effort at hiding it. There was still that ice wall between them, but it had clearly cracked, and she seemed more human and more vulnerable in those brief seconds than he could have imagined.

Obviously the interview with Carbury had precipitated some strong emotion in her. Carbury was British, a colonel, World War II vintage. His card said retired and gave no branch, but the man was decidedly not a quartermaster officer. He was more likely in intelligence or police work of some sort. Abrams, after more than twenty years, could spot the signs. This did not explain what had caused so startling a transformation in Katherine Kimberly, but it was a clue.

He thought perhaps he should have asked her if she was all right. But then she might have borne a grudge against him for noticing and commenting on it; though he wondered why he felt it mattered.

Carbury passed the Plaza Hotel and headed west on Central Park South, then turned into the St. Moritz Hotel. Abrams waited a full minute, then entered the lobby.

Carbury was at the news counter buying a copy of the Times. He walked to the desk, spoke briefly with the clerk, then walked to the elevator and took the first car up.

Abrams paused at the news counter. The Times headlined: PRESIDENT SPEAKS TONIGHT IN CITY. A subline announced: Addresses World War II Intelligence Service. The Post read simply: PRES SPEAKS TO EX-SPOOKS TONIGHT. The News reported: POSH BASH FOR CLOAK AND DAGGER BOYS. Which reminded Abrams that he hadn’t picked up his tuxedo yet. “Damn it.”

He walked across the lobby and approached the desk clerk. “Do you have a Colonel Randolph Carbury registered?”

“Yes, sir. Room 1415.”

Abrams walked toward the front doors. That was easier than he thought. Too easy? He turned and walked to the house phone. “Colonel Randolph Carbury, room 1415.”

After a pause, the operator answered, “I’m sorry, sir. Room 1415 is unoccupied.”

“Do you have a Randolph Carbury registered?”

“Hold on… No, sir, there is no one by that name here.”

Abrams’ impulse was to go back to the desk clerk and have a talk with him, but it would be better if Carbury thought he’d pulled it off.

Abrams went out and stood on the sidewalk. It was getting late, and he was becoming annoyed. The assignment was better accomplished from a telephone. If Carbury was registered anywhere in the city under his own name, Abrams could discover where within a few hours. Katherine Kimberly made easy use of his time and shoe leather.

He crossed Central Park South and entered a phone booth from which he could see the St. Moritz. A light rain began to fall.

He called a friend in the Nineteenth Precinct and gave him the information, then placed a call to Katherine Kimberly. “I’m across from the St. Moritz—”

“Is he staying there?”

“That’s what he wants me to think—”

“You mean he suspects he’s being followed?”

“If he’s trying to lose me, then he knows, doesn’t he?”

“I thought you were good at this.”

Abrams gave himself a few seconds to control his voice. “You are supposed to tell me if the man is a pro.”

“Oh… sorry.” She paused. “Does he think he lost you?”

“Maybe. Look, I can’t follow him indefinitely. I’ve got someone working on hotel registrations. I’m leaving.”

“No. Stay with him. I want you to see that he’s safely in his hotel, or wherever it is he’s staying—”

“Safely? Safely implies that someone is trying to do something unsafe to him. You’ve got a lot to learn about briefing—”

“I’m sorry. I had no time. He left me with the impression that someone may want to harm him.”

Abrams looked across the street, then scanned the park behind him. He slipped his .38 “police special” out of his shoulder holster and dropped it into his coat pocket. “He probably thinks I’m gunning for him. Christ, he’s probably called the cops. That’s all I need, to get busted for harassment—”

“We’ll represent you. No charge.”

He started to reply, then laughed.

Unexpectedly, she laughed too, a genuine laugh, light and almost girlish, and it surprised him. “Be careful,” she said. “Stay with it. All right, Mr. Abrams?”

He lit a cigarette. “All right, Miss Kimberly. But listen, I’ve decided to skip this thing tonight.”

She snapped, “You’ve got to be there,” then softened her tone. “I’m afraid that it’s a command performance.”

Abrams drew on his cigarette and stared through the rain toward the hotel. “My tux is at the cleaners. Can’t get it while I’m doing this.”

“I’ll have it picked up and delivered to you.”

“Good. I’ll change in a phone booth.”

“Listen to me. Colonel Carbury is going where we are going tonight, so he also has to dress. Eventually he must go to his hotel—”

“You should have told me that, too. It makes a difference.”

“Now you know. So stay with him until then.”

“Do you know I live in Brooklyn?”

“Yes, and I sympathize. So you will go to the firm’s town house at 184 East Thirty-sixth Street, where your dinner jacket will be delivered. You can dress there, unless you’d prefer a telephone booth. What cleaner do you use?”

He hesitated, then mentioned a formal-wear rental shop, cursing her silently for making him reveal the fact that his wardrobe didn’t include such a thing.

She made him repeat the name of the place, and he wondered if she was enjoying herself. She said, “I’ve called the Burke Agency, and they’ve got two detectives with a radio car ready to assist you. Can they rendezvous with you now?”

“They could have if you’d mentioned it sooner. Unfortunately, Carbury has just left the hotel. I’ll call Burke’s office later.”

“Call me, too. I’ll be here until five fifteen. Then I’ll be at the Lombardy Hotel. Ask for the Thorpe suite.”

He hung up and crossed the street. Carbury headed south on Sixth Avenue. It was after 5:00 P.M. now, and rush hour traffic was getting heavier. Shop windows cast oblongs of light onto the wet sidewalks. Carbury was barely visible crossing 58th Street.

Abrams hurried to catch up. The telephone conversation had somehow taken the edge off his bad mood. He was interested again. The Lombardy Hotel. Only it wasn’t actually a hotel. Every suite above the lobby was owned by somebody who paid more money for it than it would cost to buy the entire block in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. “You travel in the right circles, Ice Queen.” The Thorpe suite. Peter Thorpe — Abrams had been introduced to him once in the office. He’d check that out too, though it was none of his business.

Carbury turned abruptly into 54th Street. Abrams followed. Carbury was moving quickly beside the long garden wall of the Museum of Modern Art. Abrams kept well behind on the opposite side of the street. Ahead, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, he saw Carbury cross to his side of the street, look up and down the crowded block, then mount the steps of a stately old granite building with a long gray awning. The University Club.

Abrams waited, giving it fifteen minutes, then proceeded to the intersection and entered a telephone booth. He called his contact at the Nineteenth Precinct. “Phil, what do you have?”

The detective told him, “Your man checked through customs at Kennedy two days ago. Gave the St. Moritz as his address, but he’s not registered there. It’s going to take time to phone every hotel in town. Besides, he could be using an alias or be staying in an apartment, a private club, or a place that isn’t required to keep registration records. If it’s urgent—”

“No. Thanks, Phil.”

“You owe me one. I want you to follow my wife.”

“She asked me to follow you.”

The man laughed. “How’s life treating you, Abrams? Got your Esquire yet?”

“Not yet.”

“What’s this all about?”

“Nothing criminal”—Abrams kept his eye on the doors of the building that Carbury had entered—“matrimonial… horseshit.”

“Well, you catch that sucker with his pants off and squeeze his nuts. Who’d travel across the Atlantic for a piece of ass these days? Christ, I wouldn’t cross the street for it.”

“Sure you would.”

“Why don’t you come around anymore? Never see you at P.J.’s.”

“Buy you one.”

“Not tonight. The President is going to be at the Seventh Armory. Secret Service and Bureau all over the fucking place. They got me on a goddamned roof. Jesus. Have to go.”

“Right. Look, don’t bother with the calls. I think I’ve got him.”

Abrams hung up and called Katherine Kimberly. He was told by her secretary that she was not available but that she expected him to call her later at the Lombardy. He called the Burke Detective Agency and told them to send the car to the northeast corner of 54th and Fifth.

Abrams crossed Fifth Avenue and stood at the appointed corner, where he had a good view of the building across the street. It had been a job well done, and he congratulated himself. He supposed that mounted police on punishment duty also congratulated themselves when they did a good job of shoveling the shit out of the stables.

He leaned against a lamppost and turned up his collar. He realized that Katherine Kimberly, if she was walking tonight, would most probably pass this way to get to the Lombardy. Why, he wondered, would he think of that?

Rush hour traffic flowed around him. He looked through the lighted windows in the building across the street. Someone may want to harm him. Very heavy stuff. Carbury thought so too. Yet apparently no one had notified the police, which was suggestive of all sorts of things.

Patrick O’Brien, Katherine Kimberly, tuxedos and town houses, tax write-offs and investment tax credits. Money, power, and status. He had discovered that lawyers almost never took the law too seriously. There was hardly a law on the books, including first-degree murder, that wasn’t open to interpretation. They understood the complex society in which they lived and manipulated it from every seat of power in the land. The rest of the nation had to get by as best they could. Or, as a police captain once said to him, “A single lawyer is a shyster, two lawyers are a law firm, three or more are a legislative body.”

Abrams’ father, a great egalitarian — a Communist, actually — used to instruct him, “We are all pilgrims on the same journey.” True, thought Abrams, but some pilgrims have better road maps.

10

Katherine Kimberly walked down a deserted corridor on the forty-fourth floor, some distance from her office. The corridor ended at a steel door marked DEAD FILES.

She pressed a buzzer. A peephole cover slid open, then the door itself opened slowly on squeaking hinges. She entered a room that was badly lit and musty.

The room was stacked high with oak file cabinets of a type not seen in many years. At the end of an aisle of cabinets there was a single window, which was grimy, as windows tend to become when they are crisscrossed with steel bars. Raindrops beat against the window of the overheated room. She heard the door close behind her and turned.

“Hello, miss.”

“Good afternoon, Arnold.” She regarded the elderly Englishman as her eyes became accustomed to the bad light.

“Just making tea, miss.”

“Fine.” Not to accept tea was to get off on the wrong foot with Arnold, as she had discovered.

Arnold busied himself with the china tea service that was laid on a khaki-painted camp table.

“Do you know a Colonel Randolph Carbury?”

Arnold nodded. He switched on an electric hot plate on which sat a copper kettle. He motioned to a shelf lined with colored tins of Twining’s. “What’s your pleasure? I’ve got a bit of Earl Grey left.”

“Fine. Is there a file on him?”

“The Earl?” He laughed at his own joke. “Oh, Carbury. Indeed there is.” He pulled up a chair, and she sat.

She watched as he spooned the loose tea into the china pot. No, she thought, it was no accident that the firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose had moved from Wall Street to this building in Rockefeller Center after the war. The wartime American intelligence organization where Patrick O’Brien had worked, the Office of Strategic Services, had kept offices in this building. And, as Carbury had reminisced, so had British Security Coordination, which had been headquartered in what was now the suite of the O’Brien firm. Nostalgia, karma, perhaps something else.

When the British had vacated their space on the forty-fourth floor, they had retained the lease on this one room. They had also left behind a good number of files and a caretaker staff, including their archivist, Sergeant Arnold Brin, who was now the sole remaining person. This room, and Arnold himself, were part of the flotsam and jetsam of a once farflung empire, left aground in the ebb tide of the realm.

Katherine once remarked to O’Brien about the expenditure for an intelligence facility that had seemingly been defunct for nearly forty years. He had replied, “It was a gift from them to us.”

“But who pays for it?”

“The monarch is given a discretionary fund by Parliament for royal functions. Some of this money finds its way into other types of functions.”

“Intelligence functions?”

“Yes.” O’Brien had smiled. “If you want to know a secret, Congress, during the Second War, set a similar precedent. They voted tens of millions of dollars in unvouchered funds to be used by General Donovan at his discretion. I’ll tell you about that some day.”

The copper kettle whistled, and Arnold poured the boiling water into the china pot. “Like it strong, do you? Give it a good five minutes.”

Katherine looked down the center aisle of the file cabinets. According to O’Brien, British intelligence occasionally paid a visit to the archives. But General Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, with whom it was intended to be shared, had been unexpectedly disbanded after the war. Nearly two years later the OSS was reborn as the Central Intelligence Agency; but lacking the continuity of the British intelligence services, the CIA had apparently overlooked this facility, or asset, as they termed it. Patrick O’Brien and his OSS veteran friends, however, had not forgotten the British legacy and had inherited it by default — or by design. She was not certain which.

She also knew that many of the OSS’s own files had never passed to the CIA but were still in this building some floors below.

Arnold set a large teacup on the camp table. He produced a napkin and a teaspoon. “No sugar, no cream.” He poured the tea through a strainer.

“Thank you.”

Arnold disappeared into the gloom of the file stacks and returned shortly with a buff-colored folder. “Carbury, Randolph, Major. Same man, new rank, I should think.” He switched on a dusty green-shaded reading lamp, then extracted from the folder a small ID photograph. “Is that the man?”

Katherine stared at the old photograph. “I have no way of identifying him.” Why, she thought, would he assume she could, unless he also assumed that she had met Carbury? She looked at Arnold, and he seemed somewhat embarrassed.

“What I meant, miss, is have you ever seen a picture of him?”

“No.” She began to wonder if Carbury had been in this room before his meeting with her. But even if that were so, there was nothing inherently suspicious about that. He could have access to the files, assuming his credentials were in order. That, according to O’Brien, was a stipulation of the legacy.

Katherine leafed through the loose pages of the thin file. It was basically a personal file, very informally arranged, unlike the thick brown dossiers on Fascist agents who had worked in America. There were no details of operations, but there were code-numbered references to those operations on which Carbury had worked. Randolph Carbury, it appeared, was no whisky warrior; he had been highly regarded and highly decorated.

Katherine came upon an encoded Western Union telegram with the decoded text written in pencil below. The decoded signature caught her eye, and she read the message, dated 12 February 1945.

Katherine reread the message. Even en clair it was obtuse, a further guard against unauthorized eyes. Hunter’s Moon, she assumed, was the name of an operation. After reading enough oblique wartime communications, one got the hang of it. She looked back at the wrinkled telegram. Light shed—a status report was required. Mars will have set—the war will have ended. Decreasing the favourable conditions—wartime powers will also end, making the hunt more difficult, or something like that. So far, so good.

A martini is needed quickly. Katherine ran her hand through her long hair and thought. The leitmotif was hunting and therefore followed throughout. Hunting and moon, with a mythological reference to Mars. Vintage Churchill.

She thought back to the Wingate letter, to Colonel Carbury’s acknowledgment that the letter had something to do with Wolfbane — the American wartime intelligence operation to expose a Soviet double agent highly placed in the OSS. It was just possible that Hunter’s Moon was the British code name for the American operation Wolfbane.

If this was true, then the last line became clearer. A martini is needed quickly was not an offhand cry of frustration, which in any case Mr. Churchill handled with brandy. It was Churchill changing metaphors based on the word Wolfbane. American slang for a martini was a silver bullet. Who was to be the recipient of the quickly needed silver bullet? It was the mythological werewolf.

Katherine took it to the next logical step: The most infamous werewolf, portrayed by Lon Chaney, Jr., in the wartime classic motion picture, was Lawrence Talbot. And Talbot was the code name for the unknown Soviet double agent who was the object of the hunt named Operation Wolfbane, or Hunter’s Moon. She nodded.

So, assuming the last line was meant literally, Churchill was giving the order to kill Talbot — if he could be found. They were not to arrest him, not to attempt to turn him, not to bring him to trial, but to kill him outright, as you would kill a wild creature. And she thought she knew why. It wasn’t petty revenge. It was because Talbot was believed to be so highly placed that his open exposure would cause irreparable damage to public confidence and morale. It was also because espionage trials of Soviet agents were not politically or diplomatically prudent in those days of the war-time alliance with Russia.

Katherine sat back and sipped her tea. Talbot had never received that silver bullet. For years after the war he had prowled the collective memories and psyches of American and British intelligence; occasionally his bloody work had been discovered: a fresh kill lying at the bottom of a ravine. Then silence. There were theories: He had died a natural death, he’d finally been killed, or perhaps he’d simply retired. Or a more unsettling theory: He had ceased taking the normal risks of the double agent and become a sleeper agent, in order to insure his continued rise in whatever career he had chosen for himself. A well-known man who is close to your President. A man who controlled his appetite for treason until he was in a position to satiate that appetite to the fullest. Grave and foreboding.

Katherine turned her attention back to the file. She leafed quickly through the thin sheaf of memos, telegrams, and notes. She saw a long memo to Carbury from William Stephenson, the head of British Security Coordination in America, the man known as Intrepid and Carbury’s wartime boss. The memo seemed pertinent, and she made a mental note to read it later.

She scanned the remainder of the file, then looked at her watch. There was more here, much more, and she’d have to spend several days with it. She finished her tea and looked at Arnold over the rim of her cup. Arnold was reading a week-old copy of the London Daily Mirror. She closed the file. “Did you know Randolph Carbury personally?”

Arnold put down his newspaper. “Knew them all. Carbury stands out because he was more interested in Reds than Nazis. Had a different sort of job, if you know what I mean.” He winked in a way meant to underscore that meaning.

Katherine regarded Arnold in the dim light. The man was more than a vestige, more than an anachronism; he was a specimen forever imprisoned in the amber of the records room. Despite forty years in America, he retained an accent and manner that she imagined was that of a British noncommissioned officer of the war years. In the past he had spoken of a wife and grown child living in New York, but he hadn’t mentioned them in some time.

The man seemed relatively simple and open on the surface, but there was a complexity and furtiveness about him. And there were moments, she thought, when he revealed a presence, a bearing, and a refinement of speech that were more the officer than the sergeant. She remembered a line spoken by an actor in an old British spy movie: “My name is Sergeant Williams. Sergeant is not my rank, Williams is not my name.”

She said, “Is there anything against Carbury?”

“Not that I know of.” His tone was suddenly sharp. “Then again, we’ve been taken in by a good damned lot of bloody traitors, haven’t we?” He pulled the folder toward him and spoke apropos of nothing. “We won’t microfilm these — or computerize them. At least not while I’m alive. Do you know why? Well, miss, there is a special sort of feeling to old dossiers — odd scraps of paper, notes scribbled here and there, underlinings and dog-ears, even coffee stains. That sort of thing. The file develops a character of its own. It tells you things that aren’t plainly written. You understand.”

Katherine nodded. “The shadow outline on some of these pages, for instance, indicating where a smaller slip of paper lay for many years — yet the paper that made the shadow is missing… ”

Arnold nodded enthusiastically. “That’s just it. You do see what I mean.”

There was a silence, and Katherine realized that nothing further was forthcoming.

Arnold picked up the folder. “Is that it, then?”

“No. Wingate. Eleanor Wingate.”

Arnold concentrated on the name.

“Brompton Hall?”

“Ah! Yes, yes… Lady Eleanor Wingate — wife… widow of a Major Lesley Wingate. Brompton Hall… American intelligence billet…” He stood and carried the file into the murkiness of the far aisles, then returned with another folder and laid it on the table.

Katherine said, “How would it be possible for someone to remove something from a folder?”

“Someone would have to authorize that.”

“Who?”

Arnold sat down and poured himself more tea. “Well, that’s very complex, miss. Very complex. You see, these are not active files, as you know. These are only historical archives, kept for purposes of scholarly research — such as you do. But on occasion a bit of something becomes of interest again, and it’s whisked off to London. Mine is not to reason why… ”

“I see. And are you certain no one could actually steal something from these files?”

“Oh, I’d be a liar if I said that. It’s just not humanly possible to avoid that here. I’m all alone, and my senses are not what they used to be.”

Katherine opened the folder marked Brompton Hall. There was a brief description of the hall and the grounds, including a reproduction of an old print. Someone had put a tick mark beside a sentence that read, “The south tower holds an unusual and interesting muniment room.”

There was also a short biography of the Wingates and the cabled result of a security check on them that seemed to consist mainly of statements of good character from their peers. Very much, Katherine thought, like the letters one needs to join a good suburban country club. And in fact, she noticed, there was a listing of the clubs to which Major Wingate had belonged.

The British system of vetting was, she reflected, still rather quixotic to most American intelligence people. She looked up. “It’s simply not possible, is it, Arnold, for a man to be concurrently a member of Boodle’s and the Communist party?”

Arnold laughed. “Ah, miss, now you’re having a bit of fun with us.”

Katherine turned the page of the file and came upon a typed list of American intelligence officers billeted at Brompton Hall. Among the names, some of them familiar, she found her father’s. A handwritten annotation read: KIA—5/?/4.5. REF: Alsos Mission; REF: Hunter’s Moon.

She had heard of the Alsos mission — the joint American and British mission to recover German atomic scientists. Hunter’s Moon, she was certain now, was Wolfbane. She closed the file and looked at Arnold. “Do you have anything on Alsos or Hunter’s Moon?”

“Not anymore, miss. That’s long gone.”

“Where would I find information on those subjects?”

Arnold looked around the room as though trying to recall if he had a file lying about. “Don’t know. Moscow, I suspect.”

Katherine studied Arnold’s face but could not tell if he was being facetious. She stood. “Can you be here tomorrow and Sunday?”

Arnold stood also. “If you require it.”

“Fine.”

“What will you be needing, miss?”

“I don’t know yet. One thing seems to lead to another, doesn’t it?”

“It’s always that way with archives, miss. You can read a file a dozen times and nothing signifies. These files have been read a hundred times each. But then a month later you read another file — or someone says something innocentlike and”—he held out his hands and brought his fingers together dovetail fashion—“it fits.”

She stared at him for some time but didn’t speak.

Arnold raised his teacup and looked thoughtfully into the dark liquid. He spoke as though to himself. “It’s the sequence of the thing more often than not. Dates, especially. Always look at dates. A man can’t be in two places at the same time, can he? And background. Pay very special attention to a man’s background. I mean his youth. A person reveals himself early on. People seem to have these conversions from one kind of politics to another, but that’s a bit of nonsense, because the boy is father to the man, if you know what I mean.”

Katherine moved toward the door. “You understand generally what I’m looking for. Gather what you can.”

Arnold stood and followed her, carrying a large black book. “Miss?”

Katherine turned and faced the open book, a blind register with strips of paper covering the preceding names. Arnold’s fingers were positioned to prevent an accidental uncovering of the signatures. She noticed that two loops of the previous signature extended onto her line and could have been the loops of the signature of Randolph Carbury. She signed the open line without making the same mistake, then added the date and time.

Arnold closed the book. “Have a good evening, miss. Bring me the guest list, if you think of it. I always enjoy reading the old names.”

He unbolted the door and opened it. “The list gets shorter each year. That’s a bit sad. Heroes shouldn’t die a natural death, should they? In hospital and all that. Nurses and doctors, and no one knowing they’re watching a hero die.”

He blinked in the brighter light of the hallway, and Katherine noticed for the first time how incredibly aged he was. Arnold was lost in thought, then said, softly, “But they weren’t all heroes, were they? A good number of traitors there were, who died natural deaths and got a good piece in the Times, military funerals, and all that. Those men and women should have ended their days on the gallows forty years ago.” He rubbed his thin hair. “There’s no statute of limitations for treason, is there?”

Katherine realized the question was rhetorical. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned and walked down the corridor. After what seemed a long time, she heard the door shut behind her. Arnold’s cryptic musings, his metaphors, and his philosophy of life were a bit heavy at times. Yet, she supposed, they came with the territory. Also, they were not entirely beside the point.

She strode down the long, empty corridor. She was more concerned, she told herself, with an ongoing act of treason than with something that had happened forty years ago. On the other hand, from what O’Brien had told her about Talbot, it was known that Talbot had sent dozens of agents to their deaths. One of those agents may have been her father.

She reached an unmarked door, the rear entrance to Patrick O’Brien’s suite, which opened directly into his private office. She stopped and raised her hand to knock, but hesitated. Security, discretion, and extreme personal caution… Everyone from that time is suspect… Distribute the information as you see fit. But be cautious. She turned and kept walking.

The seeds of distrust, sown even before she was born, grew and bore the tainted fruit of suspicion, and the fruit fell rotten to the earth and reseeded itself again and again.

She halted abruptly. “No, damn it!” She retraced her steps, knocked on O’Brien’s door, and entered.

11

Tony Abrams stood in the alcove of the Gucci shop on the corner of 54th Street and watched Katherine Kimberly make her way through the crowds on Fifth Avenue, holding her handbag and briefcase in one hand and her umbrella in the other. Her chin was tilted upward, and her stride was purposeful. It was, he thought a bearing that was both regal and slightly arrogant. She didn’t see him; he didn’t think she saw anyone. As she passed, he stepped out of the alcove. “Miss Kimberly.”

She turned, and it took her a second to recognize him. “Oh, Mr. Abrams.” A faint frown crossed her brow. “Where’s Carbury?”

Abrams nodded toward the building across the street.

She turned and looked at the squat granite mansion. “The University Club.”

“I think they have overnight accommodations.”

“Yes, they do.” She looked back at him. Rain glistened on his black hair, and rivulets of water ran over his face. She moved closer to him and raised her umbrella to bring them both under it. “Are the private detectives here?”

“They’re watching the only two doors,” he said. “Carbury’s safely tucked in. They’ll follow him to the armory.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Where should I be?”

“On Thirty-sixth Street, getting dressed for dinner. Well, it’s early yet, and as long as you’re still here… why don’t you take a look inside the club and see what you can discover?”

Abrams made an expression he hoped conveyed annoyance.

“You don’t have to… You’re probably wet and tired… ”

“Why would you think that?”

“Well, do what you think best.”

Her voice, he thought, was about as cool as the weather. She was always somewhat friendlier on the telephone. “I don’t think I’d pass for a university graduate with money and connections.”

“Bluff it.”

He didn’t reply.

“Or take the direct approach and flash your badge.”

“I like to be a little careful with the badge act.”

“I understand. But you know if anything goes wrong, we’ll take care of it.”

“So you said. I’ll think about it.”

“Fine.” She turned and took a step. “Oh, Mr. Abrams, Carbury has something important to deliver tonight. Other people may want what he has.”

“Swell.”

“Call me before seven thirty if anything comes up. See you at eight, Mr. Abrams.”

Abrams watched her continue up the block. He turned and walked across the street and into the marble-columned lobby of the University Club. He could see into an enormous high-ceilinged lounge where men sat in leather armchairs, their faces hidden by Wall Street Journals. In the rear, by the fireplace, Carbury sat, reading the London Times.

Abrams walked through a passageway in the far rear corner that led to the elevators. In an alcove sat a stock printer, long sheets of its printouts pinned to a bulletin board above it. A group of men stood silently staring at the price quotations and looking, Abrams thought, very staid. But occasionally an eye would twitch or knuckles would whiten around the handle of an attaché case. He imagined that this was how it had looked in 1929, except then the men would ride up in the elevators and come down through the windows.

Abrams explored the area, noticing a staircase and the chlorine smell from a basement swimming pool. Another flight of stairs led up to a bar and dining room. He had determined from the directory that there were seven floors, and each had a function, such as a library, squash court, or billiards room. Most floors also had guest rooms, and the only access was by these stairs and elevators.

A club employee who had tagged after him now approached. “Excuse me, sir. May I be of assistance?”

“No.” Abrams reentered the lobby. He knew he should leave before he was shown out, yet he decided he wanted to take something with him, a piece of hard information that he could carry to Katherine Kimberly later, like a good retriever laying a fat quail before its mistress. He smiled at the analogy.

“Sir, unless you’re waiting for a member, you must leave.” The employee’s voice was growing insistent.

Abrams showed his badge. “I need some information.”

The man shook his head. “You’ll have to see the club manager. Sorry, officer. Rules.”

Abrams held a twenty-dollar bill folded between his fingers. “Okay, just show me out the service entrance.”

The man hesitated, then snatched the bill in a deft movement and motioned him to follow. Abrams noticed his name tag. “Lead on, Frank.”

They passed through the corridor near the elevators and descended a half flight of stairs toward the side service entrance.

Abrams spoke as he walked. “I used to belong to a club, too. The Red Devils. We had a clubhouse in the basement of the Bari Pork Store on Eighteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst. There was a gigantic pig in the window of this store, wearing a gold crown.”

The man indicated a door that led into the alley. “Good evening, officer.”

Abrams lit a cigarette. “Are you Italian, Frank? I’m Jewish, but I had fun growing up there. Anyway, one day my mother saw me go into this pork store. She stood in front of the fat pig in the window and cried.”

The man almost smiled, then said, “Look, officer, I have to get back. What’s this all about?”

“Actually, it was a very exclusive club — like this one. No femminas, no melanzane, no Ricans. Capice? They tolerated Jews and Protestants the way we might tolerate a few Martians in the neighborhood. I learned a lot in the cellar of the pig store, Frank. I learned the difference between tough and bluff.”

The man sensed some danger and looked quickly up and down the deserted corridor. “Hey… are you a cop?”

Abrams slipped his .38 out of his pocket and pointed it at the man’s stomach. “No.”

The man’s face went pale, and he swallowed. “Hey… hey…” He stared at the muzzle of the pistol. “Hey.”

“I learned that when you want something reasonable from a man, something that is no skin off his nose, and that man is being obstinato—a stubborn jackass — then you have to take a direct approach. Look at me, Frank, don’t look at the gun. That’s right. Tell me about Colonel Randolph Carbury.”

Frank was nodding in agreement. “Sure… sure… he’s registered under Edwards… room 403… two days ago… from London… checking out Monday… That’s all I know. Okay?”

“Visitors? Women?”

The man kept nodding but answered, “Don’t think so.”

“Anything in the safe?”

“Safe…? Oh, I think there is… Yeah, I saw a briefcase that had his name on the tag… ”.

“Phone calls?”

“I don’t know… one long-distance… from London.”

“Stay in much? Go out a lot?”

“Mostly goes out, I think… ” The man knew he was talking to a professional. “Okay?”

“What’s the staff verdict?”

“Oh… nice guy. Quiet. Polite. No trouble. Likes his drink, though. Okay?”

“Okay. Let’s go to his room.”

“Hey… come on… what’s this all about?”

“I’m doing a credit check on him. Move.”

Frank turned toward the elevator. “I don’t have a key. Honest to God.”

“Sure you do.” Abrams put his revolver in his pocket. “No funny stuff, Frank, and it’s going to be all right.” They entered the elevator and rode up to the library floor, then passed through a door into a small corridor with five numbered doors.

Frank found his master key and approached 403. Abrams took his arm and held him back. There was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, and he could hear a radio playing. Abrams took the key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open a few inches. The room was lit, and a security chain was draped across the small crack.

Frank whispered urgently, “He’s inside.”

Abrams reached through the crack and knocked away the chain, which was held to the lock stud track by a piece of tape. “Old trick, Frank. Calm down.” He nudged the man inside and closed the door.

The room was furnished with good solid mahogany pieces, though rather old and scarred. Abrams said, “Stand right here.” He made a quick but thorough examination of the bedroom, closets, and bathroom, not expecting to find anything that a man like Carbury would want to conceal. The fact that Carbury had taken the trouble to make it appear someone was in the room did not mean he was hiding something. It only meant he was trying to discourage anyone from entering the room to wait for him. Standard procedure, but it showed the man was taking personal precautions. Abrams turned to Frank. “Has he ever taken that briefcase out of the safe?”

“Not that I know of.”

Abrams looked at the open closet. The tuxedo suggested that Carbury did intend to show up at the armory tonight.

Frank was becoming edgy. “Please… look… if he catches us up here, it’s my job—”

“Now you’re worried about your job. Before it was your life. Worry about your life again.”

“Right.”

Abrams looked at his watch. Carbury would be thinking about a shower by now. “Okay, Frank, let’s beat it.”

They left the room, and Abrams reached around the door and retaped the security chain. Frank relocked the door, and they took the elevator back to the ground floor.

Abrams stood at the service exit. “Thanks, Frank. Listen, do you think this will affect the committee’s decision on my membership application?”

Frank smiled gamely. “No, sir.”

“Good. Good. Don’t tell them about the basement of the pork store, okay? Or the illegal entry, or me pulling a gun on you. Capice?” He put his finger to the man’s lips. “Omerta.”

Frank nodded enthusiastically and moved off as quickly as he could without actually running.

Abrams left by the service door, and found himself in an areaway filled with trash bins. He walked down a dark alley toward the front of the building and came out through a stone arch onto 54th Street. He crossed the street and approached an unmarked van. A private detective sat in the driver’s seat. Abrams said, “Anything new?”

The detective, an ex-policeman like himself, named Walter, squinted in the bad light. “Nah. But it sounds to me like somebody wants to grease this guy Carbury, right? That could get hairy.”

Abrams lit a cigarette. “He’ll be carrying a briefcase. Keep an eye on that briefcase.”

“What’s this all about, Abrams?”

“I don’t know. But be prepared to do whatever you have to do to protect him and whatever he’s carrying. The firm is solidly behind you.”

“Yippee.”

Abrams moved away from the van and crossed Fifth Avenue, making his way through the hurrying pedestrians. He wondered if he’d overstepped himself on this assignment. It seemed, though, that Katherine Kimberly was very anxious about this, and he had only reacted accordingly. He realized that he too was anxious, not about Carbury but about Katherine Kimberly’s evaluation of his work.

But what the hell did she know about this type of work? She sat in her forty-fourth-floor ivory tower and gave him assignments with as much self-assurance as his old captain had… It never occurred to her that she should confide in him. Yet, instead of feeling resentful, he played her game and helped her understand the investigative end of the business, even covered for her a few times. This was a type of loyalty that he’d given to only a few of the very best commanders he’d worked for.

He thought perhaps he was interested in her, but he knew he couldn’t be, because nothing could come of it but pain. And no rational man wanted pain. Therefore, he was curious but not interested.

After a time he looked up and was surprised to find he had covered almost twenty blocks and was approaching the street where the town house was located. He walked up to a pay phone, thinking as he dialed the Lombardy that he had never been a guest in a town house before, and certainly never had a tuxedo delivered to one. He remembered a favorite line from Thoreau: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

12

Katherine Kimberly entered the lobby of the Lombardy Hotel. The concierge, Maurice, rushed forward with words of greeting, adding, “Monsieur Thorpe is in, madame.” Maurice took her umbrella, then escorted her to a back corner of the lobby, opened an elevator with a key, and ushered her in.

As she rode up she reflected, not for the first time, that she did not have a key to the elevator or to the apartment. Peter’s explanation had been simple and rather direct, yet whimsical, as was his manner: “My heart is yours, my possessions are yours, but the suite belongs to my father and is leased to the government for a dollar a year, as is my father himself. No one but Company people may have a key.”

The elevator stopped at the twenty-second floor, which was the first floor of the penthouse triplex. She stepped into a small mintgreen hallway.

A voice boomed out over a speaker. “Stand in front of the television camera, and put your hands on your head!”

Katherine’s face showed a mixture of impatience and amusement. “Open the damned door.”

The door buzzed and Katherine opened it, entering a large anteroom. She passed into a very long two-story-high sitting room. On opposite sides were balconies that served as hallways to the second-story rooms. The balconies were connected by a catwalk that spanned the length of the spacious room. She looked around as she dropped her bag and briefcase on the sofa, then removed her raincoat. Hidden stereo speakers were playing a medley of theme songs from James Bond movies. She smiled. “Peter! Idiot!”

She walked to the bar, where a pitcher of martinis stood alongside two chilled glasses, and poured a full glass for herself. The French doors that led to the terrace suddenly opened and a gust of cool air blew in. Through the billowing curtains walked Peter Thorpe, clad only in a pair of threadbare jeans.

She stared for some time at his muscular body silhouetted against the towering lighted buildings beyond. “Are you crazy?”

Thorpe’s blue eyes narrowed in a malevolent glare. “Sloppy tradecraft, Miss Kimberly. If you were a Red agent, you’d be dead.” He shut the French doors, then advanced toward her. “See this?” He held up a partly peeled lemon. “This is an anthrax grenade. Catch!” He threw it underhand at her. She fielded it with one hand and, in a swift motion, shot it back at him.

The lemon thumped against his bare chest. She laughed in spite of her annoyance. She said, “Why were you standing in the rain half-naked?”

“I didn’t want to get my suit wet.” He smiled and embraced her.

“You’re very strange, Peter. Must be the red hair.” She tousled his long damp hair.

Thorpe worked his hands down the back of her shirt. “Did you have a good day?”

“An interesting day.”

They kissed, then Thorpe buried his face in her neck. “Do we have time for a quick dance?”

She smiled. “No. But we’ll make time for a slow dance.”

“Good.” He kissed her neck, then took the martini tray from the sideboard.

She picked up her bag and followed him up the spiral staircase. Thorpe looked back over his shoulder. “What made the day interesting?”

She started to reply, then thought better of it. Peter was altogether too curious about what went on at O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose. She said, “Just a lot of activity over the reunion tonight. A good number of out-of-towners and foreigners dropping by.”

They reached the balcony overlooking the sitting room. Thorpe said, “There’s nothing more insufferable than ex-spies.”

“They’re interesting people. You’ll enjoy the evening.”

“Perhaps. But I get a little weary of hearing how great the OSS was, and how screwed up the CIA is.”

“No one ever said that.”

“Your nose is getting longer, Kate.” He smiled. “Maybe I’m just sensitive. My father used to bore me for hours with stories of how the OSS won the war.”

She took his arm.

He added, “My boss is an old OSS man and he’s recruited dozens of others.” He stood in front of his bedroom door. “The dining rooms at Langley serve prunes and Geritol now.” He laughed.

She said, “Experienced men and women can be useful.” She opened the door and he entered first, setting the tray on the bureau.

He said, “It’s not the experience that concerns me… some of those old OSS characters were very weird. Very strange backgrounds… ”

She looked at him. “Meaning?”

He hesitated, then said, “You know… security risks.” He sipped on a martini. “There was a radical fringe in the OSS… they wouldn’t pass a normal security check by today’s standards. Yet they’re being brought back in on a special basis… that bothers me.”

“No more shoptalk.”

“Right.” He set his glass down and pulled off his jeans, throwing them on a chair.

Katherine began to undress.

Thorpe turned down the sheets of his double bed, then watched her hang her clothes in his closet. “We should get married.”

She turned and smiled. “You’re right. But who’d have us?”

He smiled back and lay down on the bed. “Come here. I want to show you my new decoding device.”

“I see it. Does it work well?” She approached the bed.

“It has to be turned on.”

“It looks like it just turned itself on.” She laughed and came into the bed beside him.

Katherine heard a phone ringing insistently somewhere, but she could not have cared less. There was a protracted silence, then the phone rang again. She felt the dreamy fog lifting, and her senses awakened as Peter sat up next to her in the bed. The yellow light on the telephone was blinking, indicating it was not his private number. “Switchboard call — the hell with it,” he said.

“It could be for me.”

He looked at her. “Then you answer it.”

Katherine raised herself onto her elbow and reached for the receiver. The switchboard operator said, “Mr. Abrams for Miss Kimberly.”

“All right.” There was a click, and she spoke. “Katherine Kimberly…” Her voice was husky, and she cleared her throat. “Yes?” She looked around the spacious second-floor bedroom. On the outside wall was a fireplace. The mantel clock showed they’d been asleep almost an hour.

Abrams hesitated, then said, “I took your advice and dropped in at the club.”

“Is he registered there?”

“Yes. But not officially. He’s been there since Wednesday… leaving Monday.”

Katherine watched as Thorpe got out of bed and began doing sit-ups, apparently with no interest in her conversation. But she knew him well enough to know he was listening. She spoke in a quieter voice. “All right, instruct the detectives to stay close to him until he reaches the armory.”

“I’ve done that, obviously.”

She took a few seconds to control her annoyance, then said, “Of course. See you at the armory, then.”

“Right.” He hung up.

She sat back in the bed, her long bare legs crossed.

Thorpe finished his sit-ups. “Who was that?”

“Tony Abrams.”

“Oh, super sleuth.” He rolled into a push-up position. “I met him once. Remember?”

“You were rude to him.”

“Was I?” He began his push-ups. “I’ll apologize next time I see him.”

“Good. That will be this evening.”

Thorpe stopped in mid push-up. “Oh, Christ, Kate, you didn’t invite him, did you?”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t fit. You’ll just make him unhappy to be there.”

She didn’t respond.

Thorpe balanced himself back on his shoulder blades and began a series of leg exercises.

She watched him. He had an exhibitionist streak in him, and probably a voyeuristic bent as well. Peter, she thought, was pure animal energy: his presence in a room was sometimes like that of a tame tiger cub, clawing and gnawing at a bone, threatening and potentially dangerous. Yet at other times he could be gentle and loving. He was a complex man, an intriguing man. But spies, like actors, were capable of personality metamorphoses. There were Peter Thorpes that she liked and Peter Thorpes that she didn’t like. But, she thought, he… or they… were never boring.

She drew the sheet up over her. “Are you still a member of the University Club?”

Thorpe sat on his haunches and scratched his head as though trying to remember. “I was… up until about four nights ago — Monday — you were out of town, I think… ”

“Drunk or disorderly?”

“I’m not sure. I remember trying to brush something off my face, but it was the floor.”

She smiled and glanced at the mantel clock again. “We should get moving.” She began to rise.

Thorpe stood and walked to the bed. He put his hands on either side of her and leaned over. “What’s going on, Kate?”

She ducked under his arm and got out of bed. “None of your business.”

“Can I help?”

She knelt beside the fireplace and ignited the gas jets. Blue flames curled around a log made of volcanic rock. “There’s too much light in here. Why are the lights always so bright?”

“Better to see you, my dear.” He went to the wall and turned down a rheostat. The room grew dark except for the glow of the fireplace. He changed the music on the stereo to a Willie Nelson tape, then poured two martinis and crouched beside her in front of the fire. The flame warmed their exposed skin and highlighted Katherine’s breasts and high cheekbones. Neither spoke for some time, then Katherine said, “Do you know a Colonel Carbury?”

Thorpe turned to her. “Carbury?”

Her eyes met his. “You know him?”

“Well… slightly. Friend of my father’s, Englishman, right? What is this about, Kate?”

She finished her drink, stood, and walked to the dresser. She extracted Eleanor Wingate’s letter from her bag and came back to the fireplace. She held the letter toward him but did not give it to him. “I’ll let you read this with the understanding that you are not to discuss it with anyone. Not your people, and not even your father. You’ll see why if you agree.”

He held out his hand, and she passed him the letter. Thorpe unfolded the pages and began reading by the light of the fire. He sipped his martini, but his eyes never left the letter.

He looked up and passed the pages back to her. “Where is the diary?”

“To be delivered,” she said softly. “What do you think, Peter?”

Thorpe shrugged as he got to his feet. He found a pack of cigarettes on the mantel and removed one, keeping his back to her as he spoke. “It’s worth following up.”

She moved beside him and stared at his handsome features. She thought he looked more agitated than his words revealed.

He said, “Poor Kate. This must be distressing after all these years.”

“Yes… as a personal matter, but I’m more distressed about the other implications.”

“Are you? I suppose that’s normal. You didn’t know your father.”

She put her hand on his cheek and turned his face so she could see him. “Do you know anything about this?”

“No. But did I understand from your conversation with Abrams that Carbury is to be at the armory tonight? Is that when he’s going to give you the diary?”

“Yes. He came to my office this afternoon without an appointment. Said he’d just gotten off the plane. But I guess he’s been here since Wednesday. Anyway, we spoke, and he gave me that letter. He said he’d produce the diary tonight.”

Thorpe nodded slowly. “Strange… I mean that Carbury should come to New York to see my father receive an award, and to the best of my knowledge my father doesn’t know he’s in town.”

“He may know. You two don’t exactly confide in each other.”

Thorpe seemed not to hear. He sat on the sofa and lit the cigarette, drawing on it thoughtfully.

His mood had changed markedly. Katherine would have liked to think it was because of his concern for her, but that was not characteristic of Peter Thorpe.

Thorpe said, “You did well to have him followed. Good instincts.”

Katherine accepted the rare compliment without reply. She said, “Do you feel this is serious? How did the letter go—‘grave and foreboding’?”

Thorpe walked toward the dresser. “Very possibly.” He poured another martini. “I’d like to see that diary.”

She gathered her clothing from the closet, and walked toward the door. “Did my things arrive?”

Thorpe nodded absently. “Yes… yes. Eva laid everything out in the beige room.”

Katherine stopped at the door. “Where is she?”

“Who…? Oh, Eva…” He shrugged. “Someplace. Out.”

Thorpe seemed to snap out of his inattentiveness. “By the way, I don’t like the blue dress. Icy.”

“Who asked you?” She walked out on the balcony that surrounded the living room and turned onto the connecting catwalk that was suspended above the room. Thorpe followed, carrying his drink. She stopped in the center of the walk and looked out a huge picture window that had been recently cut into the north wall. She held her clothes in front of her and watched the rain fall gently in the breezeless night. Thorpe stood beside her. He said, “Hell of a view. You like it?”

She replied, “It fascinates me — not the view, but the fact that you could talk your father into spending a small fortune to put a window into the twenty-third floor of a high-rise, contrary to the building code and over the objections of the management. That’s what fascinates me — the fact that you get what you want, no matter how trivial your whims and regardless of what it costs other people in time, money, or bother.”

“I like the view. Don’t make more of it than it is. I can see Harlem from here. See? I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight. Probably the same thing we did.”

“That’s crude, insensitive, and boorish.”

“Yes, it is… Still, I wonder… ” He sipped his drink.

“Sometimes you have no… no heart, Peter, no social conscience, no sense of propriety, no—”

“Hold on! I’m not going to be lectured to. I’m self-centered and I’m a snob. I know it. I like myself this way.”

She shrugged and headed for her room.

Thorpe called out, “Listen, I’m going to dress quickly and leave you here. I’ve got to meet someone. I’ll see you at the armory.”

She replied without turning, in a voice that was tinged with disappointment if not anger. “Don’t be late.”

“It won’t take long. You know where everything is. Let yourself out.”

She entered the guest room and closed the door behind her. There was, she reflected, nothing of hers permanently left in this huge apartment. Another woman might be suspicious of that, but this was not an apartment in the normal sense — it was a CIA safe house and domestic station, and what went on here could only be appreciated in that context.

Agents in transit sometimes slept here, as did other men and women whose status was not clear to her. On one occasion they’d debriefed a defector here, and the place had been off limits to her for over a month.

And although the decor was old-fashioned, there were high-technology refinements such as the security system and, she knew, a complete recording system. She wondered about cameras. Upstairs, on the third floor, was a great deal of electronics. She’d never seen that floor, but there were times when she could hear the humming of the machines and actually feel the vibrations.

She didn’t like it here. But this is where Peter lived when he was in New York, which was most of the time these days. And, for now, she wanted to be wherever he was.

13

Tony Abrams came to an old red-brick house on 36th Street in a block of elegant brownstones. To New Yorkers who had an appreciation of the value of midtown property, this block of private residences, sitting on some of the most valuable land in America, announced: Money. Set in Abrams’ section of Brooklyn, the narrow row houses might seem drab, he thought.

Unlike the brownstones, whose front doors were at the tops of high steps for privacy and to allow for servants’ quarters below, the door of this house was at sidewalk level. A gas lamp flickered on either side of the door, and to the left was a large multipaned window with scrolled wrought-iron bars. It was a house more reminiscent of old Philadelphia or Boston than old New York.

Abrams peered through a clear spot in the mist-covered window into a small sitting room. Logs were blazing in the fireplace, and two men and two women sat with drinks. The men were dressed in black tie, and he recognized them as George Van Dorn, a senior partner in O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, and Tom Grenville, a soon-to-be partner. The women, wearing evening dresses, were probably their wives. Suburbanites, using the company digs for a night on the town. The O’Brien firm strongly believed in taxpayer-supported perquisites.

Abrams lifted a brass knocker and brought it down on the black door three times.

An attractive young woman of about twenty-five, dressed in a black jumper and a white turtleneck sweater, opened the door. “Mr. Abrams?”

“Mr. Abrams.”

She smiled. “Please come in. You look wet. My name is Claudia.”

He stepped inside the foyer. She had, he noticed, an accent. Central European, perhaps. He handed her his coat.

“Where is your hat?”

“On the bureau of my uncle.”

She seemed uncertain, then said, “Your things are upstairs. Have you been here before?”

“In my last life.”

She laughed. “The second door on the left… Well, come, I will show you.” She draped his coat on a hook over a hissing radiator and led the way.

He passed the sitting room and followed her through the narrow low-ceilinged hallway. The stairs were tilted, as was the whole house, but in a nation of straight new houses, the tilt was somehow chic.

She opened a door off the small upper hallway and led him into a miniature room furnished in what might have been real Chippendale. His tuxedo sat in a box on a high four-poster bed. The box was marked Murray’s Formal Wear, Sales and Rentals.

The young woman said, “There is a robe on the bed. The bathroom is across the hall, and here on the dresser is all you will need for shaving and bathing. When you are dressed, you may wish to join the Van Dorns and Grenvilles for a cocktail. Is there anything else I may do for you?”

She was, Abrams saw, conversant enough with the idiom to smile at the tired old double entendre. As she pushed her long, straight auburn hair back over her shoulders, he looked at her closely. “Have I seen you at the office?”

“Perhaps. I am a client.”

“Where are you from?”

“From? Oh, I am Rumanian. I live here now. In this house.”

“As a guest?”

“I am no one’s mistress, if that’s what you mean. I’m a political refugee.”

“Me too. From Brooklyn.”

There were a few seconds of silence in which they took stock of each other. It was, Abrams thought, unmistakably lust at first sight. He took off his jacket and tie and hung them in a wardrobe cabinet. He hesitated over his shirt buttons, then looked at Claudia, who was staring at him openly. He took off his shirt and threw it on the bed. His hand went to his belt buckle. “Are you staying?”

She smiled and left the room. Abrams finished undressing and put on the robe. He took the shaving kit and went into the hall. He found the bathroom, a small room that looked as if it had once been a large closet. He shaved and showered, then returned to his room. He opened the box of clothing and began dressing, cursing the shirt studs and the tight collar. Murray had forgotten the patent leather shoes, as Abrams knew he would, and he had to wear his street shoes, which were barely passable. He looked in the full-length mirror on the door as he struggled with the bow tie. “I hope everyone else looks like this.”

Abrams went downstairs to the sitting room. Tom Grenville, a handsome man about five years younger than Abrams and about a thousand times richer, said to his wife, “Joan, Tony is studying for the bar.”

George Van Dorn answered the question the wives were thinking. “Mr. Abrams was a policeman for a long time.”

Kitty Van Dorn leaned forward in her chair. “That sounds so interesting. How did you happen to choose that career?”

Abrams looked at her. She was either much younger than her husband or she was heavily into vitamins, exercise, and plastic surgeons. He wondered about middle-aged women who still called themselves Kitty. “I always wanted to be a policeman.”

Joan Grenville, an attractive strawberry blonde with freckles, asked, “Where do you live?”

Abrams poured himself a Scotch from the sideboard. “Brooklyn.” Her voice, he noticed, was kind of breathy.

“Oh… so this is a convenience for you. Us too. We live in Scarsdale. That’s farther than Brooklyn.”

“From where?”

She smiled. “From here. The center of the universe. I want to move back to town, but Tom doesn’t.” She looked at her husband, but he turned away.

Abrams regarded her closely. She was wearing a simple white silk dress. He noticed she had her shoes off and that she didn’t wear toenail polish, or in fact much makeup at all. Healthy and wealthy, he thought. Slim and trim, pretty and preppie, and perhaps even intelligent. The nearly final stage in the evolution of the species.

Kitty Van Dorn added, “We live out on the Island. Glen Cove. George uses this place often. Don’t you, George?”

Van Dorn grunted and moved to the sideboard. Abrams could see that he’d had a few already. Van Dorn spoke as he poured a drink. “Kimberly — that is, Henry Kimberly, Senior — bought this place around the turn of the century. Paid three thousand dollars for it. Bought it from a Hamilton or a Stuyvesant… can’t remember which. Anyway, Henry Junior lived here himself for a few years after he got married. When the war started, he moved his family to Washington. Then he went overseas and got killed. Damned shame.” He raised his glass. “To Henry.” He drank.

Abrams stood by the fireplace and watched Van Dorn drain off the bourbon. Abrams said, “Henry Kimberly was an OSS officer, wasn’t he?”

“Right,” answered Van Dorn. He suppressed a belch. “Me too. What room do you have, Abrams?”

“Room? Oh, second floor, second on the left.”

“That was the nursery — Kate’s room. Henry and I used to go in there and coo coo with her. Henry loved that kid. And her sister, Ann, too.” A melancholy look passed over his ruddy face. “War is shit.”

Abrams nodded. The conversation was picking up.

Grenville said, “My father was also OSS. A whole group of the firm’s men and women were recruited by Bill Donovan. Donovan’s critics used to say OSS stood for Oh, So Social.” He smiled.

Abrams said, “Who were Donovan’s critics?”

Grenville answered, “Mostly the pinkos and J — jerks who hung around Roosevelt. Jerks.”

There was a long silence in the room, broken finally by Van Dorn, who was working on another drink. He looked over his shoulder at Abrams. “You might find this evening interesting.”

Kitty Van Dorn made a sound that suggested it wasn’t likely.

Tom Grenville stirred his drink with his finger. “You’re a friend of Kate’s, right? She called and said you’d be coming.”

“Yes.” Abrams lit a cigarette. This conversation had an unreal quality to it. Neither of these men had so much as nodded to him in the office before, yet, though both men’s attitudes were slightly condescending, they were in some undefined way tentatively friendly. It reminded him of his first interview in the basement of the Bari Pork Store when he’d been dragged in for the announced purpose of having his face broken, and had emerged a Red Devil.

Joan Grenville got out of her chair and knelt on the hearth rug, a foot from where he was standing. She took up a poker and prodded the fire, then turned her head and looked up at him. “Will you be staying here tonight, Mr. Abrams?”

“Tony.” He looked down and saw the smooth white curve of her breasts, ending in the soft pink of her nipples. “I don’t know, Mrs. Grenville. You?”

She nodded. “Yes. Please call me Joan.”

Abrams turned, avoiding Tom Grenville’s eyes, and went to the sideboard although he didn’t want another drink. “Anyone need anything?”

No one answered. George Van Dorn said, “You’re perfectly welcome to stay.”

Kitty Van Dorn added, “No one should travel on the subway to Brooklyn so late.”

“I thought,” said Abrams, “I might actually take a taxi.”

Again there was a silence. Abrams didn’t know if this was amusing or awkward, if it was democracy in action or an act of noblesse oblige. They were trying, but he was getting a bit of a headache.

George Van Dorn found his cigar butt in the ashtray and lit it. “Did Claudia get you everything you needed, Abrams?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good.” He blew a billow of gray smoke. “She’s a client, you know. Not hired help or anything like that.”

“So she said.”

“Did she?” He settled back in his armchair. “Her grandfather was Count Lepescu — a leader of the Rumanian resistance during the German occupation. I guess that makes her a countess or something. She’s staying here for a while.”

Abrams glanced at Joan Grenville, who was sitting cross-legged contemplating the fire, her dress hiked back to her thighs. Abrams had a vision of a sorority-house weekend at Wellesley or Bennington, lots of beer, junk food, guitars, and chirpy voices. Strewn casually on the chairs was fifty thousand dollars’ worth of ski gear, and strewn casually on the floor were the skiers. There were pert little ski-slope noses and breasts to match, and dozens of pink toes with no nail polish. There was so much straw-colored hair and so many blue eyes that it looked like a cast party for Village of the Damned. There would be a huge red winter sun setting below a snowy-white birch-covered hill, and the fire would crackle. He’d never seen any such thing, but neither had he ever seen his pancreas, yet he knew it was there.

“The Reds grabbed him,” said Van Dorn.

Abrams looked at him. “Who…?”

“Count Lepescu, Claudia’s grandfather. Didn’t like his title. Shot him. Shipped the family to some sort of work camp. Most of them died. Nice reward for fighting the Nazis. War is shit. Did I say that?”

“George,” reprimanded Kitty Van Dorn, “please watch your language.”

“The Russians are shits too. Like to shoot people.” He finished his drink. “After Stalin croaked, what was left of the Lepescus were released. Claudia’s father wound up in a factory. Married a factory girl, and she gave birth to Claudia. The father was rear-rested and disappeared. The mother died a few years ago. We’ve been trying to get Claudia out for some time.”

“Who’s been trying?”

“Us. We finally shipped her out last autumn. Working on a citizenship now.”

“Why?”

Van Dorn looked at Abrams. “Why? We owed. We paid.”

“Who owed?”

“O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose.”

“I thought you meant your old intelligence service.”

No one spoke. Tom Grenville walked to the window. “The car’s out front. Maybe we should get moving.”

Van Dorn looked at his watch. “Where the hell is Claudia, anyway? It takes that girl forever to get dressed.”

Abrams put his drink on the mantel. “She’s coming?”

“Yes,” answered Grenville. “What table are you at?”

“I think it’s table fourteen.”

Tom Grenville’s eyebrows rose. “That’s with O’Brien and Katherine.”

“Is it?”

Van Dorn flipped a cigar ash in his glass. “That’s my table, too. The firm took eleven tables this year. We used to take twenty or thirty… ” He stubbed out his cigar. “One of you ladies should go hustle her highness along.”

Claudia came into the small room wearing a black silk evening dress with silver shoes and bag. “Her highness is ready. Her highness’s ladies-in-waiting are on strike. Her highness apologizes.”

Kitty Van Dorn said, “You look absolutely stunning.”

Abrams thought he would have bet a week’s paycheck that someone was going to say that.

Claudia looked at Abrams. “Will you ride with us?”

Abrams nodded. “If there’s room.”

Van Dorn said, “Plenty of room. Let’s go.”

They put on their coats and stepped into the cool wet night. A stretch Cadillac was waiting at the curb, and a chauffeur in gray livery held open the door. Abrams climbed in last and took a jump seat facing the rear.

George Van Dorn found the bar quickly and began to make himself a drink. “This stuff seems to taste better in a moving vehicle — boats, planes, cars…”

Kitty Van Dorn looked apprehensive. “It’s going to be a long evening, George.”

Joan Grenville said, “Not if he keeps drinking like that.” She laughed, and Abrams saw Tom Grenville kick her ankle.

As the car moved off, Van Dorn raised his glass. “To Count Ilie Lepescu, Major Henry Kimberly, Captain John Grenville, and to all those who are not with us tonight.”

They sat in silence as the limousine made its way up Park Avenue. Claudia leaned forward and rested her hand on Abrams’ thigh. He sat back and regarded her. She looked vaguely Semitic in the dim light, and he thought it was his fate to become involved with women who were mirror images of himself. There were no Joan Grenvilles or Katherine Kimberlys in his life, and there were not likely to be. Which, he thought, was probably — definitely — for the best.

George Van Dorn looked as if he were going to propose another toast but instead handed Abrams his glass. “Kill it,” said Van Dorn.

His wife patted his hand as though he’d done something fine and noble. Van Dorn, too, looked pleased with himself for resisting the temptation to arrive at a destination with most of his faculties impaired.

Yet there was something about Van Dorn that belied his outward self-satisfaction and shallow good fellowship. Abrams saw it in his eyes, in Van Dorn’s manner when Van Dorn and O’Brien were together. Patrick O’Brien did not suffer fools, and therefore Van Dorn was no fool. He was part of that inner circle that Abrams called the Shadow Firm — the other O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, the one that defended intelligence agents pro bono and sent and received encoded telex messages. George Van Dorn was one of the few people who had access to the room marked DEAD FILES.

Abrams lit a cigarette. He was, he thought, good at mysteries. That had been his job and his life. He’d never tired of the mysteries — he’d tired of the solutions, which were, in almost every case, insipid, disappointing, and commonplace.

If he’d had a flaw as a detective, it was this tendency to imagine or hope that at the end of the trail there would be something interesting or complex. But there never really was. The human drama was more often unintended comedy; the motivations for human action were depressingly trivial.

Still, he had followed the clues and had run the foxes to ground and accepted the pat on the head, while wishing the fox had been a larger beast that when cornered would fight back with the same cunning it had shown in evading him. He had always wished for a dangerous beast.

If one analyzed and thought about it — which he had been doing since the first of May — then there were logical explanations for every suspicion he had about this firm. Yet it was the sheer mass of circumstantial evidence that, in a cumulative form, refused to be explained away. He was still too much of a cop to ignore what he saw, what he felt, and what O’Brien had said to him on the observation roof.

The car slowed as it approached the mass of vehicles around the armory.

Abrams stubbed out his cigarette. Yes, tonight would be revealing. And on Monday, Memorial Day, when he entered the Russian estate in Glen Cove, he might have some answers.

The driver got out and opened the curbside door.

George Van Dorn announced, “Last stop.”

Abrams got out first and walked by himself to the sidewalk. He had the gut feeling that the Carbury business was not just another of O’Brien’s odd cases but was a piece in the larger puzzle. Carbury, O’Brien and Company, these people from 36th Street, the OSS, Katherine Kimberly, Glen Cove, and O’Brien’s musings about Wall Street being vaporized. What a jumble of clues and pieces. But if you twisted and turned them a bit, he was certain, they would all start to fall into place.

14

Katherine put her street clothes neatly inside her suitcase. The beige guest room had a forlorn look, and for all its luxury there was something of the government facility about the entire apartment. She had a few minutes before she had to dress for dinner. She lay down, naked, on the bed, stretched, and yawned.

Peter Thorpe’s adoptive father, James Allerton, actually owned the apartment and the furnishings. Peter’s late adoptive mother, Betty, had decorated all the rooms sometime before the war, when it had been her home. Many of the pieces were antiques or had become so in the intervening years. There were original Turners on the walls, bought in the 1930s when Turner was out of fashion and the world was out of money. There were also sculptures by Rodin and a Gobelin tapestry. If one thought to put a price tag on the artwork here, it would exceed a million dollars. Yet, to the best of her knowledge, not so much as a towel had ever been missing despite the heavy flow of transients. This was one company from which one did not steal.

Katherine thought of the housekeeper, Eva, a Polish woman in her fifties. Katherine reflected that the housekeepers changed periodically as a direct consequence of the political or military situation’s going to pieces somewhere. For the last few years there had been Polish women. For a long time before that there had been Southeast Asian women. Before her time, she imagined, there had been Hungarians, Cubans, Czechs. They were, she thought, women who had made a political and moral decision to risk their lives for an ideal. They had betrayed their country and were therefore traitors, and were traditionally treated with ambivalence and suspicion by all intelligence agencies. But Eva and the rest of them were owed something by the Company, and the Company paid.

And what these women lacked in housekeeping ability, they made up for in dedication; in any case, a day maid did the real work, and the housekeepers mostly wrote their reports or memoirs and kept an eye on the guests. This was the looking glass through which Katherine had to pass every time she stepped out of the elevator.

Katherine went to the dressing table and absently arranged her makeup, then looked into the wall mirror. Her hair was in disarray, and there was a small scratch on her neck, a result of their lovemaking.

On an emotional level she knew this place was all wrong, but on an intellectual and professional level she accepted it. What went on when she wasn’t here fell into that very gray area of expedient morality, sanctioned by national security. What went on here was also none of her business. On the other hand, it might be. She thought about the third floor.

She rose and walked to the bathroom. She listened for the sound of the shower on the opposite side of the wall but heard nothing. She opened the medicine cabinet and saw a bottle of astringent, which she dabbed on her neck. “Damn.”

Katherine heard a hallway door shut and walked quickly into the bedroom. She peered through a fisheye peephole and saw Peter Thorpe, dressed in his evening clothes, rapidly descending the staircase. She opened the door and stepped out. She was about to call after him but decided against it.

She began to shut the door, then paused. A few doors down was the narrow staircase that led to the third floor of the triplex. She took a robe from her closet and stepped into the hall.

Katherine climbed the narrow, unlit staircase and stood at the top landing, facing a door made of some type of synthetic material. There were two Medeco cylinder locks on the door and probably an alarm device as well. She hesitated, then turned the knob and pushed. The heavy door swung inward, and she took a step into the room.

The long garretlike room was not fully illuminated, but there were eerie blue-white fluorescents hanging above ten or twelve different machines positioned around the room. Katherine identified a telex, a shortwave radio, a stock printer, several video screens, a computer terminal, and something that could have been a polygraph. In a far corner was a table on wheels, a hospital gurney with loose straps hanging from it. She did not like the looks of that.

The other machines, large and small, she could not identify. She stepped farther into the room and let the door close quietly.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the uneven light, and she noticed, almost directly in front of her, a large electronic console of some sort. Behind the console sat a figure. The figure rose and turned toward her.

Katherine caught her breath and stepped backward toward the door.

“Yes?”

Katherine let out a long breath. It was Eva. The tall, big-boned woman with stringy gray hair moved toward her.

Katherine partially regained her composure. “I’d like a look around.”

“Mr. Thorpe permits this?” Eva came closer.

“I never asked.”

“I think you have no business here.” She stood directly in front of Katherine.

Katherine had to look up to meet Eva’s eyes. She felt exposed, defenseless, with her arms wrapped around the robe to keep it from falling open. Katherine controlled her voice. “And you do?”

“I work here. For Mr. Thorpe. Not the same way as you—”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Pardon me… my English… that maybe sounded—”

“Good evening.” Katherine summoned her courage and turned her back on the woman. She reached for the doorknob, half expecting to be restrained, but wasn’t. She opened the door and stepped onto the landing.

Eva followed. She took a key from the pocket of her housecoat and quickly double-locked the door, then caught up to Katherine on the stairs. “It was not wise to enter that room.”

Katherine didn’t answer. She descended at a normal, carefully measured pace.

“This is secret, this room. Government secret. Mr. Thorpe has not told you?”

Again Katherine didn’t answer. She reached the balcony and turned toward Eva. Eva stood a few feet away, towering a full head over her. With a barely discernible movement, Katherine assumed a guarded stance.

Eva seemed to notice, and a smile passed over her thin lips. She spoke in a tone that a teacher would use in lecturing a child. “In my country you would be shot for spying.”

“We are not in your country. We are in my country.”

Eva seemed slightly annoyed, then resumed an impassive attitude. “True. But I must make the report.”

“Do what the hell you want.” Katherine walked quickly past the woman and went to her bedroom. She closed the door, then looked out through the peephole and saw Eva’s face very close, staring at the door. Katherine hesitated over the bolt, then angrily threw it shut. At the sound of the bolt, Eva smiled and turned away.

Katherine sat on the edge of the bed. She was upset, humiliated, furious. Never again would she make love in this apartment. In fact, she thought, she would never set foot in the place again. Her eyes rested on a bottle of chilled Principessa Gavi left on the night table. She pulled out the cork and poured the wine into a long-stem glass, then drank it.

Katherine settled herself back in a chaise longue and closed her eyes. She steadied herself and tried to clear her mind. No, she thought, it would be wrong not to come back. She owed Peter at least that degree of trust, she told herself. Also, she was curious. More than that, Patrick O’Brien had suggested in a very oblique way that he found Peter, and Peter’s operation, a bit odd.

She felt herself drifting off, and her mind became confused… There was a key somewhere; she’d always felt that. A key such as Eva possessed, and which Arnold possessed, and it was a master key to many locks, many doors and closets and chests. And inside were secrets and ciphers, skeletons and scandals. Everyone else seemed to know this — O’Brien, Peter, James Allerton, her sister, Ann, her sister’s fiancé, Nicholas West… Her father had known it too, and Colonel Carbury knew it. It was like a great family secret that the children sensed but did not know, that the adults lived with but never mentioned.

Tonight, she thought, they would hold a family council. Tonight little Kate would be told.

15

Peter Thorpe walked into the second-floor cocktail lounge of the University Club and sidled up to the bar. “Good evening, Donald.”

The bartender smiled. “Evening, Mr. Thorpe.”

“Sorry about the other night.”

“Hey, no problem.”

“I remember looking into the bar mirror there… I saw myself leaning into a force-ten gale wind that no one else in the room seemed to feel.”

The bartender laughed. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Just a wimp water, please.”

The bartender laughed again and poured a Perrier.

Thorpe pulled a copy of the Times toward him and flipped through it. “I can’t believe the number of murders committed in this town. Crazy.”

“Yeah, but most murders involve people who know each other. Did you know that? And not our kind of people, either. Banjos and bongos.”

“Banjos and bongos?”

Donald smiled as he polished a glass. “Yeah, you know.” He looked at a Hispanic busboy near the tables and lowered his voice. “Blacks and Ricans. Banjos and bongos.” He winked.

Thorpe smiled back. “You have an excellent command of the modern vernacular, Donald, and a good ear for idioms and jokes. I loved the definition of a woman. Have any more?”

“Yeah. What do you get when you cross a black with a Frenchman?”

“What?”

“Jacques Custodian.” He slapped his rag against the bar and laughed.

Thorpe raised his glass of mineral water. “I salute you.” He drank. “By the way, do you have any chits on a man named Carbury? Supposed to be registered here, but—”

Donald flipped through a stack of cards. “Nope.”

“Englishman. Older man, tall, thin, maybe a mustache.”

“Oh, Edwards. Comes in here a lot.”

“He’s been here since maybe Wednesday?”

“Right, Edwards.” He flipped through his chits again. “Room 403. Came in maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago. Had one and left.”

“Did he have a monkey suit on?”

Donald scratched his head. “No… no, he had tweeds.” Donald seemed to notice Thorpe’s evening clothes for the first time. “Hey, heading for a big shindig, Mr. Thorpe?”

Thorpe refolded the newspaper. “Ever hear of the OSS?”

The young bartender shook his head.

“World War Two,” prompted Thorpe.

“Oh, yeah. Used to entertain the troops.”

Thorpe laughed. “No, Donald, that’s the USO. How about the KGB? M16?”

“The KGB… sure — Russian spies. M16… sounds familiar . .”

“How about the SS?”

“Sure. Nazis.”

Thorpe smiled. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“About what?”

“Oh, about life. About heroes and villains. About things like good and evil, about faded glory, about sacrifice, duty, honor, country… about remembering — memories. A good memory is not necessarily a good thing, Donald.”

Donald didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. “Yeah—”

“The OSS Veterans dinner. Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA.” He pointed to the front page of the Times. “That’s where I’m going. They get together to remember. They remember too damned much. That’s dangerous.”

“Hey, you’re going to hear the President speak?”

“Right.” Thorpe pushed a sealed envelope across the bar. “Do me a favor, Donald. Call around the club — billiards room, library, and all — see if you can locate Edwards. Get this to him.”

Donald put the envelope behind the bar. “Sure… you want me to page him, or put this in his message box?”

“No. I want you to give it to him personally, before he leaves here. You might even call up to his room. He’s probably dressing for dinner. But keep my name out of it. Okay?” Thorpe winked in a conspiratorial manner.

Donald automatically winked knowingly in return, though he seemed a bit confused.

Thorpe slid a ten-dollar bill across the bar and Donald stuffed it in his pocket. Thorpe looked at his watch. “Time and wilted salad wait for no man, my friend.” He slid off the barstool. “You’re familiar with T. S. Eliot, of course. ‘Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.’ Well, Donald, that future will be here soon. The tidal wave of the future, which began as a ripple forty years ago, will wash over us all. In fact, I can give you a precise time for it: Fourth of July weekend. You’ll see. Remember where you heard it.”

“Sure, Mr. Thorpe. Hey, have a good night.”

“I’m afraid I’ve made other plans.”

Thorpe looked out the cab window. Traffic on Park Avenue had slowed to a crawl, and ahead he could see by the illumination of floodlights that two lanes were blocked by barriers. Mounted police moved up and down the avenue in the light rain. On the left side of Park Avenue, between 66th and 67th streets, opposite the Seventh Regiment Armory, a few hundred demonstrators were chanting from behind police barriers. The cab driver said, “What the hell’s going on now?”

“The President is speaking at the armory.”

“Christ! You should’ve told me. Who’s he speaking to?”

“Me. And I’m late. I’ll walk.” He paid the driver and began walking through the stalled traffic. Limousines were double- and triple-parked around the armory entrance, and across the street, the demonstrators were waving antinuclear placards and singing a 1960s song:

Thorpe nodded. “You’ve got that right, bozos.”

Thorpe passed through a cordon of uniformed police and approached the armory. He looked up at the hundred-year-old structure of brick and granite. These OSS functions had always been held at the Waldorf or Pierre, but in the beleaguered spirit of the times, they’d been shifted to this structure of ersatz bellicosity. Brooding towers rose into the night, topped by sinister-looking rifle ports, but the whole effect was like a Coldstream Guard’s uniform: better fitted for show than for battle.

Thorpe climbed a canopied staircase past a file of tactical police and entered the armory through a pair of massive oak doors.

The lobby was paneled in heavy wood and lined with impressive portraits of the martial variety. Hung from the two-story-high ceiling were frayed and faded battle flags and regimental colors. The large chandeliers were early Tiffany, and the entire feeling was one of nineteenth-century gentility, thought Thorpe, a venerable Park Avenue gentleman’s club gone slightly to seed. It had been a place where New York’s upper crust played soldier on weekends, and it still had the function of providing a convivial atmosphere for East Siders who owed, or thought they owed, a modicum of national service.

Late-arriving guests scurried past Thorpe, and dozens of Secret Service men stood around in business suits or semiformal wear. A few tried to pass for waiters or busboys. The ones who wore the unfashionably long jackets, he knew, were packing Uzi submachine guns and sawed-off shotguns.

A policeman directed Thorpe to the right, and he waited his turn at a walk-through metal detector, then passed through under the scrutiny of Secret Service men.

On the far side of the detector was a broad flag-draped corridor off which wide pocket doors had been parted to reveal handsome reception rooms. Thorpe entered a room filled with coatracks and exchanged his rain-spattered cloak for a receipt. He wandered back into the corridor, crossed it, and entered a lavishly appointed reception room where predinner cocktails were being cleared. Thorpe found an untouched martini and drank it.

“Bad form to be late for the President, Peter.”

Thorpe turned and saw Nicholas West approaching. Thorpe said, “It would be worse form to be early and sober.”

They shook hands. West said, “Did you just arrive?”

Thorpe smiled. “I was on Company business. What’s your excuse, Nicko?”

“I was stacked up over La Guardia.”

Thorpe took West’s arm. “Look, why don’t we skip this boring reunion and go out on the town? I know a deliciously vile topless place on West Forty-sixth, with a whorehouse upstairs.”

West forced a laugh, but his cheeks flushed.

Thorpe regarded West. Even in black tie he looked as if he were wearing his crumpled Harris tweeds. West was forty-one years old but looked no more than thirty, thought Thorpe. He had been an instructor of history at Washington University when, in 1967, he and several other young historians were recruited by CIA Director Richard Helms to prepare an encyclopedic history of the OSS and the CIA. That massive secret undertaking turned out to be a continuing and interminable project of which West had become the chief. Thorpe found another martini on a tray and took a swallow. “How’s the book coming, Nick?”

West shrugged. “There’s always newly uncovered information that makes it necessary to rewrite.”

Thorpe nodded. “Newly uncovered information can be a pain in the ass. Have you found a publisher?”

West smiled. “Actually, we’ve got two volumes into print.”

“How about sales?”

“One hundred percent. Ten copies of each volume were printed, then we destroyed the tapes.”

“Who got the books?”

“Well, the Director, of course, got one set of volumes. My section got a set… ” He looked at Thorpe. “The other distribution is classified.”

“Send me a set.”

“Get a note from the Director.”

“Sure. Which two volumes went to press?”

“The OSS years, 1942 through 1945, and the two years that preceded the founding of the CIA in 1947.” West looked around the reception room. It was empty except for busboys. “We’d better go in.”

“No rush.” Thorpe finished his drink and turned to West. “I’d like to see some of that stuff. My computer can access your computer and we’re in business.”

West looked at him closely. “If you have a need to know and proper authorization, I’ll show you what you need.”

Thorpe shook his head. “These things are better done on an old-boys basis.”

“I’ll think it over.”

“Right.” Thorpe lit a cigarette and sat on a long table. West, he knew, was getting nervous about being late, which made it easier to deal with him.

Thorpe looked at the colorless man. By the nature of West’s job, and because his need-to-know was boundless, he’d evolved, quite by accident, into the single most knowledgeable person in the CIA. Someone once said, “If the KGB had their choice of the man they most wanted in an interrogation cell — the President, the Director of the CIA, or Nicholas West — they would pick West.” Thorpe flipped his cigarette into the fireplace. “Ever come across my name?”

West avoided Thorpe’s stare and started toward the door that led to the ballroom. “Let’s go, Peter.”

Thorpe jumped down from the table and followed. “Does it make you nervous carrying all that sensitive stuff around in your head?”

West nodded. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years.” He slid one of the pocket doors open and passed into a curtained-off area of the ballroom. A Secret Service man asked for his invitation, and he showed it. The man checked it against a guest list and waved him through. Thorpe showed his invitation and followed.

Thorpe stopped near the curtains. “Looks like the Eastern Establishment has shown up. Last chance to split, Nicko.”

West shook his head and moved toward the curtain, but Thorpe put his hand on his shoulder. “Hold up, sport. Ceremonies are beginning.”

West stopped. He felt Thorpe’s hand squeezing his shoulder, tighter, until finally he pulled away. Peter Thorpe made him uncomfortable. The man was a case study in excesses: too much physical strength, an overbearing personality, too good-looking, and too much money. Yet, in an odd way, West was attracted to him.

Thorpe said, “Do you have a nursemaid tonight?”

West shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Can’t you spot them?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ll spot him. Then we’ll lose him and get over to that cathouse later.”

“They don’t care if I go to a cathouse. They don’t care what I do as long as I don’t drop a briefcase off at the Soviet embassy or book myself on a Cruise to Nowhere.”

Thorpe laughed. “It’s encouraging to see that you can joke about it.”

West looked at Thorpe. “For all I know, you’re my nursemaid tonight.”

“Not me, Nicko.”

West smiled. “I guess not.” On past occasions he had sometimes compromised himself professionally by his indiscreet talks with Thorpe. But if there was one thing he would never do, it was compromise himself personally with Thorpe by joining him on one of his escapades. Thorpe was, in some ways, a friend, but Thorpe was also, West sensed, a seducer; a seducer of men as well as women. West felt that Thorpe wanted a piece of him, a piece of his soul, though he could not imagine why.

Thorpe said, “When you’re with me, Nicholas, nothing bad will ever happen to you.”

“When I’m with you, nothing good ever happens to me.”

Thorpe laughed, then his expression changed. He put his arm around West’s shoulder and pulled him closer in a hug that was uncomfortably intimate. He spoke softly into West’s ear, “They’re going to grab you, Nick. They want you in Moscow, and they’re going to get you.”

West craned his neck and looked up at Thorpe. “No. The Company is protecting me.”

Thorpe saw the blood drain from West’s face. He smiled sadly and shook his head. “They can’t protect you forever, and they know it. They don’t even want to protect you, because you know too, too much, my friend. When they terminate your employment, it will not be under the New Identity Program — the NIP — it will be under the RIP. That’s how they do it. God help you, Nick, but your fate is hovering somewhere between Moscow and Arlington Cemetery.”

West felt his mouth go dry. Unconsciously, he leaned closer to Thorpe.

Thorpe patted West’s back. “I can help you. We have some time yet.”