Checkpoint Charlie (23 page)

Myerson snarled. “What do you think this is? A game of croquet? You're all finished, Pete — accept it.”

After Pete left the office I ate my sandwiches. Myerson glowered through his cigar smoke at the dreary rain outside the windows. “He won't do anything dramatic, will he?”

“No,” I said. “Pete's a survivor. He'll keep running as long as he can.”

“Do you want to chase him?”

“Give that job to somebody else. I want to get out where the air's cleaner.”

“All right.” Myerson certainly is mellowing. “I've got a job for you in Kenya…”

*   *   *

Charlie's
Last Caper

M
YERSON LIVED
— if that is the word for his peculiar existence — in an ugly house hidden away in a green part of Virginia that might have been a posh suburb were it not for the railroad embankment below the back of the property. Myerson didn't seem to mind the noise of the trains — or if he did he probably consoled himself with the knowledge that the clattering freights had made it possible for him to buy the land for a song.

When I arrived in the rent-a-car he met me in the driveway. He looked grumpy and unstrung — I couldn't remember seeing him so nerved up.

“Did you check out a pistol?”

It was a revolver, not a pistol, but Myerson was indifferent to such distinctions and I didn't say anything; I answered him with a dry look. He'd asked me to requisition the thing and he ought to have known better than to ask me if I'd obeyed — it was another index of how rattled he was.

I squeezed out from under the steering wheel — it has been decades since Detroit last designed a car commodious enough for a man of my bulk — and showed him the weapon. He gave it a cross glance as if suddenly he couldn't recall why he'd asked my to bring it.

I said, “I'll use it for a paperweight if you like.”

He clenched his jaw. I said, “I'll even let you borrow it to shoot rats in your woodpile but that's as far as I go. As you know, I don't shoot people. Any fool can shoot people. I'm far too old to start being a fool.”

“You're far too old and far too fat to be much use to anybody for anything else.”

“I didn't hasten out here to let you sharpen your tongue on me, either.”

“All right, Charlie. All right.”

“What's the flap? Why here and not in the office?”

“They've got Internal Security people crawling all over the office.” But he said it as if his heart weren't in it.

“I. S.? What for?”

“Who knows.” He seemed bitter — more weary that I'd ever seen him. “Let me have that thing.” He held out his hand.

When I hesitated his eyes burned briefly with the familiar arrogance of command. A few things ran through my mind but finally I let him take it.

“Wait in the car.” He turned away.

“As a host,” I told him, “you're a prince.”

“It's a flimsy house, Charlie. I don't think the floors could take your weight.” He trudged away.

The reason he hadn't invited me inside was that his wife Marge detested me. Myerson at one time had taken evident pleasure in explaining to me how loathesome and repulsive she found me. “You nauseate the poor woman, Charlie. You remind her of cancer cells.”

That “poor woman” was a supercilious rail-thin dried-up clubwoman who played incessant golf, drank martinis from noon on, and wore hats with peonies on them. At least I assumed they were hats because she wore them on her head. Under the circumstances I didn't mind not being invited inside but I was curious to know what he wanted the revolver for. I wouldn't have put it past him to use it to murder his wife — it had my fingerprints on it, after all, and it was checked out in my name — but even for Myerson, I thought, that would have been a bit raw.

He hadn't gone into the house. He'd walked away from me around the corner of the screen porch and disappeared into the trees back toward the railroad embankment. A fly inside the porch was banging against the screen trying to get out. I couldn't begin to fathom what Myerson was up to but I supposed it was possible he'd arranged a meeting back there in the woods with someone — one of ours or one of theirs. More likely one of theirs, I thought; that would explain his desire for a defense weapon.

But I resented his summoning me all the way from Langley just to deliver the revolver. I was the section's premier field man — not Myerson's bloody errand boy.

In the shade by the car I was working myself up to the tirade I was going to deliver to him when I heard the approach of one of the frequent freights that disturbed the peace thereabouts. The rataplan clatter grew to nearly earsplitting volume as the train went by. But even so I was certain the sound that punctuated it was the crack of a gunshot.

I'd heard too many of those to have mistaken it.

As I waddled into the woods I heard the train rumble away; it had dwindled nearly to silence by the time I came to the end of the copse above the embankment. I moved with care, staying just within the trees, not wanting to expose myself — I made too ample a target.

But nothing stirred along the embankment. Nothing at all — not even Myerson. He lay awkwardly asprawl on the grass.

He was dead.

*   *   *

I
BROKE
the news to the widow and made two phone calls, the second of them to the police. Then by mutual consent I withdrew from the house and returned to the embankment. Myerson, even dead, was better company than Marge.

The revolver was gone. It looked as if someone might have taken it away from him and then shot him, either with that revolver or with another. Myerson hadn't died immediately. He'd crawled a few yards. The trail of bloodstains began some distance below him along the grassy bank; he'd been shot while standing right on the rim of the railroad cut. It was a brick retaining wall ten or eleven feet high. The grass sloped up from there to where he had collapsed and died.

I noticed one odd thing. He was wearing a shooter's glove — cloth with leather patches. I hadn't even known he'd owned one. He hadn't been wearing it when I'd given him the revolver; I'd have noticed it.

Before the police arrived I had time to reflect on several things — mainly Myerson and my long acrimonious relationship with him. It had never been pleasant for either of us but it had been symbiotic and his death was neither a pleasure nor merely an annoyance. It probably meant the end of my career.

By dying he'd achieved his revenge at last. It was too ironic for anger; I could only brood at his corpse and acknowdege his victory. The apple-polishing political hack had won the last round. The bastard had beaten me. Within a week I knew I'd be out on the street without a job.

At first I thought that was the worst of it.

*   *   *

T
HERE WAS
the tedium of dealing with the police. Then Joe Cutter arrived — he was the one I'd phoned first. Of all the people in our sector of the Agency, Joe is the one I want on my side in an emergency. He's too handsome for his own good and he's arrogant sometimes — he thinks he's as good as I am but he'll never quite achieve that — but he's leagues ahead of the others. Joe Cutter is a throwback; like me he works from premises of talent and experience and instinct, and he never forgets a thing. Unlike the new breed, Joe knows there are still problems you can't solve with computers and microfilm and hypodermics.

The County Medical Examiner was making his preliminary study; they hadn't moved the body yet. Technicians and detectives prowled around, seeking clues, and Joe Cutter said to me, “Myerson had four kids, I think.”

“None of them worth a damn.” A workaholic father and an alcoholic mother — what could you expect? The four Myerson children — three boys, one girl — were in their twenties and thirties now but none of them had amounted to anything. Myerson had been forever bailing them out of jams, financial and otherwise. It was one reason he'd been unable to afford a better house than this clapboard white elephant by the tracks.

“For their sake,” Joe murmured, “I hope his life insurance was paid up.” He looked down toward the retaining wall: two cops and a dog handler with a Doberman were scouting the grass. Joe said, “They won't find much. You said you heard a train go by just as the shot was fired? Whoever shot him probably jumped down on top of the train. They must move pretty slowly through that curve. Or maybe the guy was already on the train and shot Myerson from there. A tricky shot from the top of a moving freight car but I guess it's possible. Myerson could've come down here to receive a package, you know — something somebody was supposed to toss to him from the train.”

The M.E. looked up at us. “He wasn't shot from the train. Powder burns on his shirt front. He was shot at close range.”

Joe scowled at the bloodstained grass. “Then the train was the getaway vehicle. He used the train to mask the sound of the shot and then he used it to make his escape.” Joe turned to me. “So who was he?”

I shook my head: no idea. But I knew one thing. The bastard who'd killed Myerson might have done the world a favor but he'd done me out of a job.

I said, “I don't suppose there's a chance in hell they'd give you Myerson's job.”

“No. They'll give it to some hack who plays golf with the Director — somebody who's earned a political favor. The same way they gave it to Myerson in the first place.” Joe looked bleak — partly, I'm sure, because he didn't relish the idea of having to break in a new section chief.

“Funny,” I muttered, “all the dicey capers we've survived — Berlin, Moscow, all the tightropes and guantlets, and it ends here in the grass in his own backyard.”

Joe regarded me glumly. “What was the piece?”

“Standard thirty-eight caliber issue from the Agency armory. Why?”

“It's not here.”

“I know.”

Joe said, “As a matter of policy the Agency keeps a sample bullet fired from each armory weapon. For ballistic comparisons. What happens if they dig this slug out of Myerson and it turns out to have been fired by the gun you signed out?”

“I know. They'll try to pin it on me.”

“Everybody knows how you and Myerson felt about each other. He used to mention your name in the same tone of voice Napoleon must have used when he talked about Wellington.”

I said, “You'd better search me right now. I haven't got it on me, but frisk me and make sure.”

“All right. But it won't matter. They'll say you had plenty of time to get rid of it. Charlie — listen. You didn't kill him, did you?”

“And do myself out of a job? No. I didn't shoot him, Joe.”

“And you don't know who did.”

“No. I don't know who did.”

“All right. Then we'd better find out what happened. Because if we don't, they'll hang it on you — and you won't just be terminated, Charlie. You'll be terminated with extreme prejudice.”

“Why not just say killed? It's the damned euphemisms that'll do us all in, in the end.”

*   *   *

W
HEN
I arrived next morning at the Agency there were long faces around the conference table. Joe Cutter wasn't there; this was Internal Security and the agent in charge was an amiable hatchet-man named Philip Grebe. He had small hard eyes and polished fingernails; his grey suit was too well tailored and his mustache too neatly trimmed — he was compulsive about details, a thorough and ruthless man but a fair one. He had an unpleasant job but he was good at it. I'd rendered a few favors and assistances to him in the past but that didn't count for anything now, not with a cool sort like Grebe.

“You understand this isn't a formal inquiry, Charlie. If we learn anything that's pertinent to the case and not subject to the security laws we'll pass it on to the county attorney in Virginia. But we're not officially empowered to investigate murder cases. If it turns out, for example, that his wife killed him for the insurance or to settle a domestic spat then we have nothing to do with the case. But if it proves to be a problem inside the Agency we want to know about it.”

I said, “Was his insurance paid up?”

“To the hilt. He had outside policies in addition to his Civil Service insurance. Nearly half a million in benefits, all told. The beneficiaries are the widow and the four children — roughly a hundred thousand each.”

“Five good motives for murder,” I observed.

“Possibly.”

“But they don't explain why he went down to the embankment with a loaded gun in his pocket, do they.”

“Quite,” Grebe said.

The silence that followed his comment was ominous.

Finally he said, “Shall we begin?”

“I thought we already had. You mind my asking one more question? I've been out of the country for a while, you know. I just got back day before yesterday. I'm not up on whatever's been going on here in Langley. Myerson mentioned something yesterday — said I. S. was searching his office. What were you looking for?”

“Sorry, Charlie. That's need-to-know.”

“Then can you tell me if you've got any glimmering of why he might have wanted a revolver?”

“I can answer that one. The answer is no.”

*   *   *

J
OE
C
UTTER
was on the phone when I went up to our section late that afternoon. When he cradled it he said, “How was it?”

“They're friendly enough. But they think I blew him away.”

It was a bit of a jolt to see Joe in what had been Myerson's chair. He said, “I'm acting chief until they appoint a replacement for him. It's no fun, let me tell you. His papers are in a mess. I. S. was in here all day going through the stuff. They'll be back again tomorrow.”