Operation Breakthrough (9 page)

The guard took a step toward me, and reflex took over. I went through the turnstile like a seed squeezed from a slice of lemon. If I didn’t get out of there, the first thing I knew, I’d be trying to answer FBI questions with no government agency security umbrella in the present and a whole lifetime of unwhitewashed activities in the past.

I reached the street with the guard’s eyes boring a hole in my back. I looked at the acres of cars in the lot across the street. I hadn’t stolen a car in years, but it looked like my only way of getting away from this birdcage.

And then along came salvation.

A taxi pulled up in front of the gate to permit a distinguished gray-haired man in a business suit to alight. I was in the back seat before the driver could produce change for his fare.

The cabbie looked over his shoulder at me. “Where to?”

I drew a deep breath. “Downtown Washington. I’ll tell you where later.”

I needed time to think.

I
WAS
in such a mental turmoil at the frustration in not being allowed to make the necessary contact with Erikson’s man that the cab was already crossing over the Fourteenth Street Bridge when I looked out the window. The fog had thinned, but it was still a gloomy day.

I still had no idea where to go to get rid of the briefcase.

I leaned back in the cab and tried to think of everything that Erikson had said when he showed up at Hazel’s ranch. I tried to recall something in his conversation that would give me a clue as to which government agency might have commissioned his trip to Nassau, however unofficially.

But I couldn’t think of a thing.

The more I puzzled over it, the more endless the possibilities became. The Central Intelligence Agency certainly couldn’t be excluded, even though the affair seemed to be taking on the dimensions of a police case rather than a matter of national security. One factor pointing to the CIA was the fact that the fishing-in-troubled-waters expedition had taken place outside the continental US, where I assumed the CIA had prime control.

I had heard Erikson state that the National Security Agency operated almost entirely in the communications-intelligence field with few overt acts, so it was unlikely to be them. The FBI hardly seemed a better possibility for two reasons: (1) I knew they jealously worked alone unless conditions were imposed upon them from the top, and (2) their fiefdom was the forty-eight plus two with British-influenced Nassau outside their bailiwick.

Experience gained from working with Erikson in the past wasn’t much help in making up my mind either. When we were in Cuba together, the Treasury Department had assigned him the task of recovering a wad of cash sent there years before by the State Department but since disowned by it as a political hot potato. Both departments had taken a more than casual interest in our eventual retrieval of the cash.

The Atomic Energy Commission had been the agency of prime concern when we stopped an unwholesome type at the UN who all but had his hands on a nuclear weapons core being shipped across the country. The Department of Defense also looked over our shoulders on that one.

The present situation had overtones of the Treasury Department again since it appeared that income tax evasion could be involved, but it could also be the Justice Department or one of the myriad smaller agencies recently established by Congress to crack down upon organized crime.

I was struck by another thought. Even if I did learn which agency had sent Erikson to Nevada to recruit me for the safe deposit box job in Nassau, I probably wasn’t in much better shape. No matter which government department was involved, Erikson wouldn’t have been commissioned by a man sitting in an open office for the world to see. Far more likely the man would be layers deep in the internal structure of his organization, hidden away in an office that never saw daylight.

The cab driver turned on the front seat and looked over his shoulder. We were approaching Constitution Avenue with the Washington Memorial on the left. I still didn’t know where to tell the cabbie to take me. Go left to the Navy Department building and try to get a line on Erikson’s boss via the Bureau of Personnel? Turn right and see if I could do any good at the Justice Department? Or go straight ahead to the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania Avenue since I knew one of Erikson’s jobs had originated there and this one seemed a possible?

“Where to, mister?” the cabbie said when a red light halted us.

I didn’t answer him.

Erikson’s only contact I’d actually met and was able to put a name to was Jock McLaren, a specialist who worked for Erikson out of a supposed export-import office on Fifth Avenue in New York City. If I could reach him, Jock McLaren might be able to steer me in the right direction. He should also have a real concern for Erikson’s present predicament. The trouble was that the Fifth Avenue office had an unlisted phone, and I didn’t know the number.

The cab driver turned squarely around in the front seat. “You did mean Washington, D.C.?” he demanded sarcastically. “Or maybe you had in mind Seattle, Washington?”

“How did the nightclub circuit ever miss a comedian like you?” I countered somewhat weakly. “You can let me out right here.”

The cab crossed Constitution Avenue and pulled in to the curb. “I ain’t got time to count my buttons while you flyboys try to make up your mind which broad you’re gonna shack up with tonight,” the driver grumbled.

I paid him and got out of the cab, clutching the briefcase. “You don’t want to make us flyboys mad,” I told him, “or the next time we’re up there in a C-5A, we’ll buzz your house and roll our landing wheels up your roof.”

He grunted something unintelligible and pulled away.

I waited for the light to change, crossed the street, and began flagging taxis headed the other way. Most were occupied, but I finally caught an empty. “National Airport,” I said as I climbed into the back seat. Even if it hadn’t been instinctive not to let the original cabbie take me from Andrews’ back door to National, I’d have felt like a fool telling the first one to take me back to a point just around the corner from where I’d started.

I was impatient now that I’d finally decided what to do. At the airport I went directly to the Eastern shuttle window and got myself ticketed. I only had to wait twenty minutes before boarding the next plane to New York. While awaiting takeoff, I amused myself — except that amused wasn’t precisely the word — by counting my diminishing bankroll. It was under five hundred dollars, and if I were the nervous type, I’d have been nervous. To me money means maneuverability, and very shortly I was due to have my options cut.

The eighty-minute flight to New York was uneventful. I took the airport bus to the East Side Terminal and then caught a cab to 505 Fifth Avenue. I almost fell asleep in the cab. During the past seventy-two hours I’d had a few brandy-fumed hours of sleep at Candy’s, a few uneasy catnaps in the grass outside the fence at Oakes Field, and a few half-awake, half-asleep moments on the flight from Nassau to Washington. Otherwise I’d been on the go almost constantly.

The small lobby at 505 Fifth Avenue was deserted as usual. The last time I was there I’d been afraid I was followed, and I’d waited in a corner of the lobby to see if anyone followed me inside from the street. This time it wasn’t a problem. I took the elevator to the fifteenth floor.

When I stepped out into the corridor, even before the hum of the elevator faded from my ears, I could see that it wasn’t business as usual at the office I’d come to visit. That particular door in a long line of frosted-glass doors stood open, and the corridor walls on both sides were lined with heavy steel-strapped crates, leaving only a narrow passage between.

I walked to the open door. There was no one at the desk in the tiny receptionist’s office. I looked inside the office that had been Karl Erikson’s. There was no one there, either. The large picture on the far wall which had served to conceal the entrance to a hidden room was gone.

The entrance stood open, and inside I could see more crates. Some were packed, and some in the process of being packed. I was sure they contained the closed circuit television sets, tape recorders, listening devices, snooper-scopes, guerrilla-type weapons, and other sophisticated equipment we had found so useful. Now they evidently were being shipped out.

The thought of the weapons supply in the formerly hidden room made my mouth water. My own gun was at the bottom of the elevator shaft in the Nassau bank building where Erikson had deliberately dropped it. Certainly Erikson owed me a replacement, and here was a chance to help him fill that obligation without my getting tangled up in logistical red tape.

I walked into the hidden room. There were only four crates that already had tops screwed onto them. I dug around in the open ones. The first contained various types of microphones; a second smaller one, an assortment of bumper beepers carefully packed in crushproof cartons. But the third held an eyepopping assortment of Beretta .22s, Walther .38s, and Smith & Wesson .38 police specials.

I grabbed an S&W .38, hefted it, then dropped it into my pocket. My shoulder holster was a tightly rolled lightweight bulge inside my jacket. I was so used to wearing a .38 on my left side that I’d felt lopsided ever since losing it. I found ammunition in the bottom of the crate, and I took a box.

I had already started out of the hidden room when I heard the sound of a door being closed across the hall. I reached the entrance between Erikson’s former office and the receptionist’s cubbyhole at the same time a short, roundish man with a pepper-and-salt crewcut bustled through the corridor door. He stopped short at the sight of me. “This is a private office,” he said sharply. His glance lingered briefly on the attaché case in my hand. “Do you have business here, sir?” He looked and sounded like an office manager.

“I’d like to see Jock McLaren,” I told him.

“Never heard of him,” the roundish man replied.

It could have been true, but I didn’t believe it was true. “He worked out of this office,” I tried again. “Sandy-haired, youngish, very good with locks.”

“Locks?”

I started to heat up at what I felt sure was deliberate evasion. “Locks,” I repeated. “And at getting into unopened envelopes with knitting needles. And fluoroscoping envelopes to detect trigger mechanisms inside. Recognize him now?”

“No.”

“He worked for Karl Erikson,” I continued doggedly.

“I went to school with a Tom Ericksen,” the roundish man offered. He smirked in what might have been intended as a smile. “But I don’t suppose it’s the same one.” I took a step toward him, and he backed away, an expression of alarm on his puffy face. “Here now!” he blustered. “I’m only trying to help!” His gaze again lingered momentarily on the briefcase in my hand.

“Like hell you’re trying to help!” I unloaded on him. “There’s probably some sort of password or code word necessary to crack the magic circle around here, but I don’t have it. All I want to do is talk to Jock McLaren.”

“Sorry,” my opponent said curtly. He appeared to be regaining his courage now that I’d stopped my advance upon him.

“Sorry he’s not here or sorry you won’t let me talk to him?” I persisted.

There was no reply. I shoved the briefcase toward the roundish man. “Recognize that?” I demanded.

“Certainly,” he replied so promptly that it surprised me. “It’s a type 27 courier case. But it hasn’t been used for some time, although we used to — ” His lips closed suddenly in a firm cautionary line. “And anyway I have no authority to — ” He let that sentence trail off, too.

I realized I was up against a dead end. This was no field operative. This was some minor bureaucrat charged with inventorying and cleaning out an address no longer in use. He might or might not know Jock McLaren, but if Jock McLaren had already been transferred, this man certainly wouldn’t know where. He worked with pencil and paper, not with damn fools like me carrying a briefcase loaded with financial dynamite.

I wondered if he’d try to give me a hard time about getting out of the place considering my unauthorized entrance. I took another deliberate step toward him. He jumped to one side, then backed away, obviously fearful of the uncouth type I represented. He made no move to stop me as I made my way past him. I traversed the narrow passage afforded by the double row of crates in the corridor and took the elevator down to the street.

I had some more thinking to do, but it was going to have to wait. I felt numb from the brick walls I’d been butting with my head. What I needed was sleep. A side street hotel that wouldn’t question only a briefcase for luggage would do nicely.

I found one and was assigned a room for four dollars. There was no bellboy. I went upstairs alone, checked the floor for cockroaches and the bed for bugs, found neither, wedged the room’s only chair under the doorknob after locking the door, put the briefcase under the mattress at the foot of the bed, stripped, and piled in.

My last conscious thought was a wish for a better day on the morrow. There were still a few hours left in the current day, but my only use for them was to recharge my rundown batteries.

When I opened my eyes, my watch announced I’d been asleep for fifteen hours. Early morning sunlight was streaming in a window. I dressed quickly after dashing water on my face from a wash basin in a corner of the room. Once again I was thankful that a beard is no problem for me. Not that I’d recommend to anyone the route I took to achieve a beardless state.

I retrieved the briefcase from under the mattress at the foot of the bed, then sat down upon the bed’s edge to collect my scattered thoughts. Whatever had been marinating in my subconscious during the night, one idea had floated to the surface: I had blown a beautiful chance to get rid of the briefcase yesterday when I was in Erikson’s old office amidst the open crates.

If I hadn’t been so intent upon rearming myself, I could have stuffed the briefcase inside one of the crates, covered it with a few handfuls of the loose packing excelsior lying around, and left it to be delivered wherever the shipment was going. When the crates were eventually opened and the contents checked against the waybills, someone would discover the extra item.

Security men would first check it out with fluoroscopes, sonic probes, and other electronic devices, but sooner or later it would be opened and — hopefully — turned over to someone who would know what to do with it, since Karl Erikson had been connected with that office. Or was that asking too much of the Washington muddle boys? At any rate I’d missed the chance.

I wondered suddenly if it was too late. They hadn’t finished packing the crates yesterday. If they were still at it today, I might be able to get rid of the briefcase after all. I’d have to talk my way past the office-manager-type somehow, but I’d worry about that bridge when I came to it.

I jerked the chair out from under the doorknob and opened the door. Directly across the hall the door was also open, and a two-hundred pound female with a baby-doll face reposed naked on a double bed. She had a box of chocolates resting on the plateau between her huge breasts and bulbous stomach. “C’mon in, honey,” she said to me. I went down the corridor to the wheezing elevator, wondering if I’d be kicking myself when I was old and gray at such missed opportunities.