1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (16 page)

“Durant, it doesn’t matter to me whether you believe me or not. What you need to understand is the media will believe me. They will report another case of Swiss police paranoia and incompetence. They will want to know how such a thing could have happened. Do you follow me? Do I make the call?”

The blinking stopped. Durant gazed at Ike for perhaps thirty seconds.

“Your wife is in the mortuary, two blocks away. The coffin is being prepared for air shipment to the States. I cannot be sure if she is, that is, if the body is.…I do not know what has been done, M. Schwartz, but if you insist, we will go there on our way to the airport. You will have five minutes. That is all.”

Ike nodded his agreement.

“These are your belongings, all except your passport which I will give you when you board your plane.”

Ike watched as the policeman emptied the contents of the manila envelope onto the table. Nothing much—wallet, keys, loose change, the guidebook he’d bought when he left the hotel, the one they needed to put on the table for the man—and the envelope.

Ike’s face did not betray the shock he felt. The exchange had been made and he’d missed it.

“Thank you, Captain. I believe that is everything. Shall we go?”

It was a six-minute walk to the funeral home. Durant spoke to the proprietor, glancing twice in Ike’s direction.

“This is Herr Grundig. He will take you to the viewing area. He asked me to tell you that under the circumstances, he cannot be responsible for…appearances.”

“I understand, Captain. Thank you.”

“Five minutes only.”

Ike followed Grundig into the back of the building and into a small tiled room filled with the scent of formaldehyde and phenol. Grundig pulled the chain on an overhead light. Ike winced at the glare. Eloise’s casket, simple gunmetal gray, lay across two trestles. Grundig opened one end and stepped back, eyes downcast.

Pale. She was so pale. They’d wrapped her in some sort of sheet. At least she looked at peace, he thought. He leaned forward as if in prayer, a one-man
Shiva,
dropped his right shoulder and slipped the envelope out of his pocket. Screened from the door and, the very uncomfortable M. Grundig, he slit open the envelope, withdrew and unfolded the single piece of old- fashioned onionskin paper and glanced at the writing, names, and addresses. The typing was bad, amateurish, but there was no mistaking the content, thirty—thirty-four names.

Ike replaced the paper in the envelope and dropped it into the casket. He turned so that from where he was standing, Grundig could see him. He slipped off his wedding band and placed it on Eloise’s cold finger, next to hers. At the same time, he nudged the envelope deep into the folds of the sheet.

“I’m ready. You can close here.”

“
Ja wohl
.” Grundig glanced into the casket and, satisfied that all was in order, closed the lid.

“Seal it, please,” Ike said in a tone that brooked no argument. Grundig hesitated, uncertain what he should or could do.

“Captain?” Ike was sure that Durant was close by, watching him. He was not wrong. Durant’s voice came from the hall just beyond the pair of swinging doors with their matched square windows.

“Yes, M. Schwartz.”

“Captain, I want to witness the sealing of the casket. You may too, if you wish.”

“Certainly. Herr Grundig, seal the casket. M. Schwartz is quite right.”

They watched as Grundig closed the lid, tightened the recessed setscrews, and slipped four short loops of cable through the hasps. After the loops were closed and set, they were sealed shut with lead slugs, the slugs marked, and the marks recorded.

“You are satisfied?”

Ike looked at the seals, gave each a perfunctory tug, and said, “Okay, Durant, to the airport.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Four hours later, Ike booked into the Chelsea Hotel in London’s East End, not the most glamorous stopping place, but the safest for what he had to do. He unlocked and opened his luggage, placing each piece on the bed. Eloise’s things made him wince and he decided that he would leave them in the room when he left. He put his wallet, passport, and papers on the dresser, picked up his key, and left the room.

He sat in a little park across the street feeding the pigeons and wondering who they would send. Kamarov sat down on the bench forty-five minutes later and threw some crumbs.

“Ike, I am sorry about your lady. I do not understand how it happened. The man, the shooter, was a new one, and I suppose very excited on his first assignment. He was careless. For whatever it’s worth, he has been disciplined.”

“I know, Alexei. It’s not your fault.”

“We want the envelope, Ike.”

“You know I haven’t got it. You’ve searched my room and luggage.”

“Yes. Thank you for making that easy for us.”

“It’s new luggage, wedding present. I didn’t want your fumble- fingered friends busting it all up. I haven’t got it, Alexei. I didn’t get it.”

“Our man didn’t have it, Ike, which means you have it or the Swiss police have it. Our people say they don’t have it. That leaves you.”

“You can search me too. I haven’t been out of your sight since it happened. I haven’t got it. He never passed it. He was being followed, and told me where to meet him later to make the pass, when you nailed him. If you waited, you could have gotten the stuff then. Now, we’ll never know.”

Kamarov studied Ike, one tired old pro sizing up the other. Someone had watched Schwartz since the shooting. There were only two opportunities to get rid of the envelope: at the mortuary, and on the airplane. They had removed the cushions in the latter, and the contact in Switzerland had assured him that only a ring was placed in the casket. Schwartz was good, but not that good.

“Very well, Ike, you haven’t got it. You understand it makes no difference now whether you do or don’t. If we do not have it, then adjustments will be made to assure that whoever does cannot use it. You understand?”

“Certainly.”

“Ike, I am very sorry about what happened. You know none of us likes that approach. None of us would do that to colleague.” The Russian paused and looked at Ike, his brown eyes searching. Finally, he asked in a puzzled voice, “Why, why on a meet as important as this one, did you bring that beautiful young woman?”

“Orders, Alexei, orders, and misunderstandings, the usual crap.”

“Ah, my friend, I am sorry. You didn’t know, yes? What was being passed?”

“No.”

They sat in silence a few moments.

“This may be the last we shall see of each other,” Kamarov said. “You have been an admirable opponent and occasional ally. Do not be too bitter, old friend. We chose to play this game and accept the risks that go with it. It is a crazy game, and those of us who play it are not Olympians earning laurels. We are more like your professional football players. We play for the money or the thing it does for our ego. We respect one another only for the skill we display, not for whom we display it. In this, as in the football, only the spectators care which uniform we wear or what the scoreboard says at the end of the day. Good-bye, Ike. Be very careful.”

***

Ike landed at Dulles two hours before dawn. No one met him. He drove a rental the seventeen miles to Langley, parked in a spot reserved for visitors and passed through the security checks. If anyone wanted to know where he was, now they knew. Once signed in at the Agency, you were tracked as closely and as thoroughly as modern technology allowed.

Hotchkiss waited for him.

“You look as bad as I feel, Ike.”

“Bullshit, Peter, you don’t feel bad, you don’t feel anything. For you, it’s just another job.”

“Look, I am sorry about Eloise. We all are. There was no way we could have known.”

“Shut up, Peter. I am an old-timer, remember? Ike Schwartz, dumb but dependable, not quick enough for a slot in Operations, but good—very good in the field. After twelve years, Peter, even the dumb ones learn something.”

“Ike, you’re upset. Take it easy. You’ve had a shock.”

“I told you to shut up. I do not want to have to tell you again. I am going to talk and you are going to listen. When I ask you a question, you will nod yes or shake your head no. I am not fooling, Peter. I am very angry—angry enough now to take your head off at the shoulders and punt it out the window. You have been behind that desk for a long time, Peter, translating musings from King Henry into forays on Archbishops. You’ve lost a step and you’re soft, so shut up and listen.”

Hotchkiss stared at Ike for a full minute without speaking. Ike knew he was on shaky ground. Oh, he could take Peter if he wanted to. He always could, but he also knew that he had been expected. There might be four or five gorillas listening to him right now who could be all over him in thirty seconds if Hotchkiss wanted. Hotchkiss sighed and slouched back in his swivel chair.

“Okay, Ike, you talk. By the way, you’re safe. There’s no one here but me. That’s the truth. We’ve been together a long time.”

“Thank you for that, anyway. The only question I have to live with now is why? In fact I have a long list of whys. Why me? Why Eloise? Why the rush? You are very good, Peter. They pulled you out of the field because you are very good at operations. You have a success rate that is the envy of the section. You never—I repeat—never leave loose ends if you can avoid them. So there I was caught up in the most screwed-up operation I have ever seen, and I ask myself, why?”

“I told you, we were short on time and we didn’t believe it would get, um, complicated.”

“I said no talking. So I ask myself why? Then it hits me. You knew, Peter—you knew. You said some trivial bank records, but that is not what was passed. You told me a minor official, a Swiss banker, an amateur, but I met with some guy from the Russian Embassy and, I’m guessing, a pretty high up somebody.

“There were no financial records in that envelope. Just names, thirty-four names and addresses. Am I right?”

Hotchkiss started to speak, then stopped and nodded.

“Very good. ‘Let me see,’ I said to myself in the funeral parlor. ‘What names would be worth killing for?’ And you know what I concluded? None of them were. So why is everyone dead?”

“Ike, they were agents. My God, we had a chance to get the names of every one of their agents operating in the Switzerland/Northern Italy zone. We had to take the—”

“They are dead, I said to myself, because they are supposed to be. Simple. When you refuse to accept complexity as a necessary condition of existence, things can be made very simple. The reason, for example, that you are so good at what you do is that everyone expects complicated plots and counter plots, disguises, and ruses. But you design simple, straightforward plans, and then let those caught up in it miss the boat because they can’t believe it’s so simple. Sometime, you have to lie to get what you want, and that helps create the illusion of great complexity.

“Well, knowing that about old Peter, I think, ‘What the hell is going on?’ You do not care about those agents. Hell, half the people on the list we already knew about, and none of them were important. And now, they are dead, too, aren’t they? As we sit here talking, thirty-four unexplained accidents, homicides, and disappearances are cluttering up the police blotters all over Switzerland, southern France, and Italy. They didn’t get their list back. They do not know if we have it or not, so they can’t take a chance. Thirty-four agents are erased in a week or two, and later, thirty-four more will take their places.

“And who wins? Nobody. We lose the names of the seventeen agents we did know, and it will take us a year or two to discover the new ones, so we don’t. They’re out of business for a month or more, so they don’t. And you knew that. You knew it all the time. You weren’t after the names at all.”

“Ike, I swear to you…yes, I lied about the documents, but we needed to get those names and set up the meet.”

“Oh, I believe that. Yes, indeed, but not for the reasons you want me to believe. The names were meaningless. You wanted the meet with that sweaty little man. He was the important piece. The only thing needed? He meets me and passes that envelope. He could have given me a recipe for chicken soup and you have what you wanted. I need a yes or no, Peter.”

Peter nodded.

“Good, so what are we looking at here? First, there is a need to do something about the Russian intelligence in Switzerland for a while, say, one or two weeks. You have got their number two or three guy wired somehow, and he is ready to give you some names. Now, all you need is the time and place and the reason. Somebody upstairs says, ‘Peter, there’s a big one going down on such and such a day in Switzerland and we do not want the Russians to know, so deactivate them.’ And you say, ‘The whole area?’ And then you get lucky. Big, dumb Schwartz rolls into your office asking you to fix up a passport for him and his bride, and what do you know, they’re going to Switzerland. Your number one agent is going to be on the spot. So you say, ‘You bet, Ike, no problem,’ and off we go.

“Well, it’s simple after that. You con me into a meet with whoever-it-was, and you leak it to one of your double agents so they know, and bingo, their whole intelligence apparatus in the area is blown. They have to replace agents. They have to find out who else is involved, and while they’re doing that, we sneak some stuff through the country, right?”

“Ike, it was important, big, one of the biggest. We had to. The Middle East, Arabs, oil, and the terrorist groups we have been after—”

“I don’t want to know, Peter. I do not want to know the product, but counting the shooter and Eloise, over three dozen people died for whatever it was. That is a high price to pay. I do not want to hear Eloise died so that some economically strapped arms manufacturer from Chicopee, Massachusetts, could unload his surplus inventory of rocket launchers on some two-bit Arab terrorist, our terrorist this time, without interference from the Russians.”

“How did you find out, Ike?”’ Ike heard the fear in Hotchkiss’ voice.

“Peter, do you think I’m stupid? I worked Europe a dozen years. There isn’t anything or anyone out there I don’t know or I can’t find out. Three phone calls and a confirmation from Kamarov—it’s done. When will you desk types learn? When will you learn to say ‘help me’ and ‘thank you’?”

Ike had not slept for close to forty-eight hours. He gazed through bloodshot eyes at the man who had trained with him, a man he liked, respected and had worked with for years. He felt empty.

“Ike?” Hotchkiss’ voice was tentative, probing, and wary. “They know?”

“They know. It’s not going to work. The shipment is going to go badly, the plan will be exposed, and the Agency is either going to have to eat another public exposé, or it will have to throw the arms company to the dogs and hope they don’t blow the whistle. That could get, what was your word? Complicated.”

Hotchkiss leaned back and closed his eyes. Back to his scheming, Ike thought, looking for a way out, his mind ticking off possibilities, maneuvers, and strategies. He was startled when Hotchkiss spoke.

“Ike, I am sorry about Eloise. That was not in the script, believe me. I thought they would confirm the meet and pick our man off before. It is not their style to blast away in public. I don’t understand.”

“Kamarov said the guy was new and nervous, and by now is no longer with us.”

“I hate this. Dear God, forgive me, I hate this. I believed I used you as a minor player. You are right. The fact you were there would ring their bells and then the meeting time and place would be all that was needed. He wasn’t even supposed to show up.”

“But he did, Peter, and now, it’s over.”

Two men sat in silence for a while.

“Ike, you knew when you signed on how the game was played, the risks involved.”

“Peter, you’re the third person in forty-eight hours to call what we do a game. It is what is wrong with this business. It is all a game, and we play it like summer campers playing Capture the Flag, all rah-rah and removed from reality. But it is very real, Peter, and lots of people feel what we do personally, and usually tragically. If those rocket launchers get through, a lot of Israelis—men, women, and children—are going to die. Why? For oil? For twenty cents off the barrel price of crude so we can keep our gas-guzzling SUVs rolling down our superhighways? And the Israelis will retaliate with their rockets and Mirage jets and a lot of Arabs are going to die.

“Don’t you ever wonder, Peter, what the hell this is all about, all this death and destruction in the name of hegemony? It only makes sense if it is a game, not if it is real. So we play games, and sleep at night.” Ike paused, the weariness washing over him with the first real stirrings of the grief that would embrace him for the next year.

“I’m finished. You’ve got me this time. Schwartz is hanging up his cleats, turning in his marker, folding up his board, turning up his cards—
kaput.
I am done, finished. No more games.”

“Ike, don’t. We need you. Take some time to get over what happened. Take as much time as you need, then—”

“Peter, I’m done. I will never get over losing Eloise and what my country, in its misguided way, did to her and to me. I am telling you, and you can tell the division chief, who can tell the director, who can tell the President, Schwartz is through.”

***

Ike exhaled.

“And that’s it. Sorry. I had no right to burden you with it.”

“It’s not a burden, Ike. No, I’m glad you told me and I’m honored that you felt safe enough to tell me.”

“Yes, well, that’s something, I guess.” He stood and stepped out of the shadows and leaned against the porch rail.

“That’s something, all right. I don’t know if I should cry, or be angry or…and here’s something else for you to think about, I think you are the most irritating, engaging, infuriating, attractive man I have ever met.” And that said, Ruth stepped up and kissed him.