Hopscotch Page 4

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

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

  “And?”

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

  “So?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Don’t be defeatist.”

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

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

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

  “Granted. Can’t be helped.”

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

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

  “Anything on the type face?”

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

  “Most recent known associates?”

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

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

  “Yes.”

  “Christ. There’s a connection then.”

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

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

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

  Then Cutter said, “Notice anything interesting?”

  “Sure. He’s a hell of an odd bird.”

  “About the file itself, I mean.”

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

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

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

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

  “I’d know him if I saw him.”

  “There you are, then.”

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

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

  “Am I supposed to be flattered?”

  “No. I’ll run your ass ragged.”

  “It’ll be a change at least.”

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

  “At all?”

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

  “Why’d he do that?”

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

  “Why?”

  “You’ve read the backgrounding.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Did you like him?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “It’s the same thing.”

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

  “So what do we do?”

  “Cast a fly.”

  “How?”

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

  – 4 –

  IT WAS A small postal exchange outside Lyons. There was a drizzle that gave the street a fogged pointilliste atmosphere. Kendig went inside unbuttoning his raincoat; he bought jetons and stood in the call box waiting for the interminable connections to be made. It took fourteen minutes and then all he had was Bois Blanc’s switchboard; it used up two more jetons before they pulled Desrosiers out of a conference and Kendig had his voice on the line.

  “It’s rather insubstantial, isn’t it?” Desrosiers said cautiously. “Not to say libelous.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about libel if I were you,” Kendig said, belaboring the obvious. “In the United States it’s impossible for a public figure to sue for libel. And the Russian’s can’t take you to court, can they.”

  “That’s all very well, Miles, but what you’ve given me is unsupported sensationalism.”

  “What do you think it is that sells books?”

  “I have a reputation for integrity,” Desrosiers said stuffily. The connection, as always in France, was poor; his voice crackled thinly on the line.

  “Are they tracing your incoming calls yet?”

  “I really don’t know.” And by implication he didn’t care to. Desrosiers was very old-world.

  Kendig said, “I’ve got chapter two finished. I’ll have it in the mail to you today.”

  “I hope it’s a bit more specific.”

  “It’s got nothing in it but nuts and bolts. But it’s the last material you’ll see until I’ve got a contract for it. I’m not giving this stuff away—you can understand that, can’t you?”

  “I have spent a lifetime dealing with greedy artists, Miles.”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to start mentioning numbers?”

  “Not until I’ve seen this new material. You must realize I’ve been handed what you Americans call a pig in a poke more than once. Clearly I cannot commit myself to publishing your work if the whole of it is as tenuously inferential as the sample you submitted last week.”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “I don’t know you as a writer at all. Do I.”

  Kendig was neither angry nor impatient; he was going through the motions, that was all. “I’ll be in touch next week perhaps.”

  “Please do. Oh Miles, there’s one thing. I’ve had a transatlantic call from someone called Cutter. He urgently desires that you make contact with him.”

  “I’ll just bet he does.” Kendig smiled broadly in the privacy of the booth.

  Marseilles was a city of criminal ferment and Kendig went right down into its rancid crotch. Streetwalkers drifted from doorway to doorway, bedraggled, wrung out, degraded, battered and hostile; inquiring out of the sides of their mouths whether he was out for a little sport; loftily ignored by the strolling gendarmes who were the best police that money could buy. The city was as full of vendettas as a Sicilian mountain village and the sharp-featured Corsicans who hurried by were deadly and chronically frightened. It was a capital of international affairs—for smugglers, for businessmen who dealt in cocaine and heroin, for the Union Corse. For Kendig it was familiar turf.

  He threaded the passages, moving alertly on the damp cobblestones. A windowless masonry wall was decorated with the tatters of old circus posters and Johnny Hallyday concerts. Rusty fire escapes zigzagged down the alley walls. Spherical black oil lanterns around an excavation looked like sputtering anarchists’ bombs.

  He made his way into a flyspecked building. The hall was painted in a dingy yellow that covered a multitude of years in which the turnover in tenants probably exceeded the turnover in wall calendars: the kind of office building whose occupants could be expected to be on the way up, down or out.

  The occupant of B, deuxieme étage was unique: he had been there at least eleven years.

  A. Saint-Breheret. The paint had faded. Kendig knocked on the panel and after a moment a beam of yellow light appeared at the Judas-hole, dimmed as an eye blocked it, brightened again and then went black; and a key rattled.

  Saint-Breheret beamed. “My old friend—it has been such a long time!” He pumped Kendig’s hand and they went inside.

  Saint-Breheret was a twinkling little man, fat and half bald, baggy worsteds and a gold chain across his waistcoat; his cheerful smile concealed the chronic indiscriminate terror of a quivering Chihuahua dog.

  Kendig said, “I’m only in town a short while.”

  “Yes?”

  “I heard you’d got your hands on a mint ’seventy-nine peso.”

  The teeth flashed brilliantly—on and off, like a timed neon sign. “The news has traveled fast. I bought that estate only last week.”

  “I’d like to see it. I’ve still got that hole in my collection.”

  “I keep such valuable coins in the bank vault, of course. Would you prefer to wait here or come along to the bank with me?”

  “I’ll walk along,” Kendig said drily and waited for Saint-Breheret to get his raincoat down off the rack. The office was as nondescript as its owner: a desk, chair, file cabinet, Oriental rug separated from the rest of the small room by a wooden railing with a gate in it; and a six-foot Mosler safe against one wall.

  Saint-Breheret turned toward the door. “It was one of those fortunate strokes one cannot anticipate.” He kept talking on the way down the hall: “The estate of Jean-Louis Arnauld—perhaps you’d heard of him? An amateur collector of course, but quite wealthy. His taste in coins was more eclectic than specialized�
��the heirs found they could not obtain a fair price for the whole, so there was an auction of individual pieces.” They went down the stairs. “By the ordainment of fate I was able to obtain a few pieces at remarkably fair prices. You won’t be disappointed.” Saint-Breheret held the door for him and they went out into the street.

  The firepots smudged the intersection. Saint-Breheret made a right turn and they walked unhurriedly past grimy shops and bistros. “What is it you need?”

  “Three passports, three driver’s licenses. At least one of each of them must be American. Blanks only. A couple of credit cards.”

  “There’s no such thing as a blank credit card, you know that.”

  “As long as they’re fresh. But the passports and licenses have got to be blank.”

  The nervous smile: “You have great experience hanging paper?”

  “We’ll manage,” Kendig said. “Give me a price.”

  They turned the corner past a drunk who sat propped in a doorway. Saint-Breheret had stayed in business for many years because he was a cautious businessman who said nothing meaningful inside any four walls which might be bugged. “The price will be high.”

  “Russo stole a truckload of American passport blanks for you three years ago. You haven’t unloaded all of them.”

  “They are getting scarce,” Saint-Breheret said imperturbably. “If you prefer a wholesale price perhaps you’d do better to try your own government printing office.”

  “You stay in operation because it’s convenient for us to know where you are. We appreciate your co-operation. But if you start dragging your heels maybe we’ll have to re-evaluate your usefulness.”

  The tongue darted across the pale lips. “I have never turned you down.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand francs for the passports. Two thousand for the license blanks. The credit cards you may have for five hundred.”

  Kendig said patiently, “My bureau is on a budget.”

  “Oui. So am I.”

  “Six thousand for the package.”

  “I must cover my overhead you know.”

  “You’ll survive.”

  “Seven,” Saint-Breheret said.