Sustenance (47 page)

There was a tap on his door, and before he could rise to open it, one of the night patrolmen came into his office, a flashlight in one hand, the other resting on his holster. “Working late again, I see.”

“Just doing my job, like you,” said Broadstreet with a modesty he did not feel; he glanced at his watch. “Nine-forty-eight,” he said. “I won’t stay much longer; probably about an hour or so.” He had already decided to leave at eleven, but he wanted to know if the Guard would be here longer than he would.

“I’ll be gone by then,” the Guard said. “Shift change at ten.”

“That’s coming up fast,” Broadstreet said. “And it’s important that I get back to my reports. Thanks for checking on me. Who knows who might have been in here?”

“Well, you keep at it. And call down to the Guard Station when you’re ready to leave; they’ll tell you which door to use to get out.” The Guard rubbed the stubble on his face. “You parked in the lot?”

“In Lot B, yes,” said Broadstreet.

“I’ll ask them to try to set up the north door, but it may have to be the east one: the cleaning crew is doing the floor in the north lobby.” With that, the Guard touched the brim of his peaked cap, and stepped back into Broadstreet’s outer office. Three seconds later, the outer door slammed.

What sort of omen was that? Broadstreet wondered when he was certain the patrolman had gone. Was he being warned not to be smug about what he had accomplished, or was it not connected to his achievement? But how could that be? To have a night patrolman enter his office without so much as a by-your-leave was unusual, and that stood out alone in his thoughts providing an alert, like a Civil Defense siren. He considered the possibilities as he left and locked his office in order to go thirty feet down the hallway to the men’s room. He used the toilet, then threw cold water on his face and wiped it away with two stiff paper towels, all the while telling himself to calm down. “It’s going to work. It’s going to work,” he muttered to his reflection, telling himself as he did that this room surely was not bugged. “It’s going to work.”

When he got back to his office, he was astonished to discover the door unlocked and Opal Pierce seated behind her desk, rolling a sheet of paper into the typewriter. “Missus Pierce,” he said as if her being here were the most natural thing in the world. “How good of you to work late. I hadn’t expected you.” He wanted to know why she was here, but thought it was better if she volunteered the information than he demanded it.

“Oh, Mister Broadstreet, I didn’t realize you were still in the building,” she said in adorable, fallacious confusion, concealing her disappointment that he was here at all. Her smile was quick, with just enough seductive charm to ensure his attention. “I have about an hour’s work I didn’t finish earlier, and as this was on my way home, I thought I might as well…” She shrugged as her explanation fizzled. “So here I am.” And now that he had seen her, she would need to spend some time on completing her assignment so he could see her do it.

He had noticed that she was dressed for a night out, in an evening suit of emerald-green peau-de-cygne with a high neck-line and an elaborate lace jabot to set off her face; she was wearing scent, something delicious and disturbing, and her mouth was painted deep-red. “You didn’t have to do this,” he told her, trying to decide if it would be proper to close the hall door with the two of them alone in the office together.

The strikers clacked on the paper. “But I do. I thought you were aware of the report I haven’t completed; I’m sure I mentioned it to you. I don’t want to leave you hanging because I lacked determination. This way, you won’t have to be responsible for my error.” She stopped typing long enough to pat her steno pad, just now open to a page that was filled with her meticulous shorthand. “I’ve had this on my mind all evening; I couldn’t pay attention to the concert at all.”

He felt himself nonplused. “I appreciate you doing this, Missus Pierce, but it isn’t necessary that you … extend yourself in this way. You certainly didn’t have to abandon your seat for the chamber music festival.” He recalled vaguely that she had mentioned her anticipation of delight at an evening of Bach and Handel; it all seemed a little outre to him, too fussy and high-brow. Give him Louis Armstrong or the Dorsey Brothers any day, or Gershwin. He liked Gershwin—but he supposed it was a matter of taste. “I know how much you enjoy it.” He was glad to see her, but she was a distraction, or perhaps an omen of ambiguous meaning. To have her so near, in the implied intimacy of night, engaged his fantasies much more than she did when she was working by the full light of day.

She finished typing the heading. “I promise I won’t bother you while you work. Only you need to get this in to Deputy Director Channing before tomorrow night, and you’ll need me to do it tonight if that’s going to happen.” All through the afternoon she had struggled to leave a small amount of work incomplete so that she could account for her presence in Broadstreet’s office tonight; she had estimated to Channing that it would take a week to accustom Broadstreet to her after-hours presence; she wanted Broadstreet to go home, so she could do what Channing had charged her to do: slip two memos into specific
SECRET
flies among those stacked on Broadstreet’s desk. She disliked working for Broadstreet, and this assignment was beginning to rankle, so the sooner she could accomplish this, the better. With any luck she would be out of here in under a month—two or three at the most. She had a brief moment to consider what Channing was doing to Broadstreet, but any compassion she might feel toward Broadstreet faded when she recalled his selfish clumsiness the first two times he tried to kiss her—the third time she let him, and that told her more than she wanted to know about him.

“I … I’m grateful. You don’t have to do this,” he said, more out of good manners than belief. “I was planning to work until eleven, but don’t let that—”

“I have to get home before then,” she said, and put him at something that was almost ease. “So I should get to work.” And she would have to slip in the memos at another time, an aggravating thought.

He coughed diplomatically. “So must I. You’ll want me to inform the Guard when you’re ready to leave. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.” With that, he turned on his heel and went into the large, inner office, and sat down, staring at the stack of files, but trying to keep the image of Opal Pierce from his mind.

Twenty minutes later, while he fretted over how to show links and connections from known Communists with members of the Ex-Pats’ Coven, he looked up at the dark windows, clapping his hand over his mouth to keep from shouting. “
Baxter!
That’s it. Baxter.” Baxter was clearly the solution to this coil; now he would have to decide how to go about bringing him into it. He wondered vaguely why he had not thought of Baxter before, but did not linger on that question as he considered the possibilities Baxter provided. Baxter could be invaluable if Broadstreet worked him right. He would come up with a trail that would lead from one of the Coven members—Hapgood Nugent would be a good choice, considering that Nugent’s brother-in-law would help out—to suspected Communists in the US. He sat very still, weighing the omens, then he squinted his eyes and nodded. It would work. It had to work.

Goaded into action, he took his notepad and fountain-pen, and began to work out how he might construct a link from … which of the Coven members: that was the problem, he realized. Nugent was his choice, but mightn’t Axel Bjornson be better? Or Charis Treat? Or Mary Anne Triding? Not Winston Pomeroy: he had a couple of good connections who might object, both of them in strong positions in the judiciary, including some kind of cousin newly appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—who could cause trouble, just as Russell McCall could, if he found an editor to back him. It would have to be one of the solos, anyway, that obviously was necessary. Stephen diMaggio, then? Probably not: his use to the Coven was very limited and specific. Same thing with Washington Young. He couldn’t use Bethune, either; this wasn’t the kind of game you played with a lawyer if you could avoid it. It might be best to look at the US families of the Coven members again, and work that angle. He could feel his mind racing, and he tried to jot down enough of what sped through his brain so that he could work it into a sensible plan, and quickly.

Fifteen minutes later, Missus Pierce rapped on the door. “Mister Broadstreet? The report is done, and I’ll drop it off for Mister Channing, if you like. I’m leaving. I’ve cleared myself with the Guard and will be going out through the north door. See you in the morning.”

Broadstreet looked up from the litter he had spread on his desk; he was glad now that he had closed the door between their offices, for he would not want anyone to see what he was working on. “Thank you for working late, Missus Pierce.” He thought he should say something more, something that would show her that he valued her. “I appreciate your dedication. See you in the morning. Oh, and I may be out tomorrow afternoon,” he added. “I’ll phone in where I can be contacted. But that’s for later.”

“I gather it’s important,” she said, hoping to lure him into explaining to her.

“I’ll know more tomorrow evening, when the meeting is over,” he said. “It may be the break I’ve been looking for.” He had stumbled upon a possible tie-in between Hapgood Nugent’s sister and Szent-Germain’s publishing company in Amsterdam; on one of her madcap rambles through Europe, she had kept a journal, which Eclipse Press had published for the American market with some success. If that was too flimsy, he could cobble together a tie-in with Baxter. He frowned as he reminded himself that he needed to find a Social Security number for Baxter, or Channing would have more questions to ask.

“Then I hope it pans out,” she said, eager to leave.

“Thank you, Missus Pierce,” he told her, for once wanting to get to his work more than he wanted to talk to her. “Good night, then.”

“Good night,” she said, and went away.

Broadstreet looked at the clock and tried to make up his mind if he should call the Guard Station and tell them he would be leaving later than he anticipated, and decided against it. He would book a call to Phil Rothcoe on his way out; the night desk would do it for him. He needed to get some absolutely current information, and Rothcoe should have it. He picked up his pad of paper, shoved it in his briefcase, closed his pen, and made a cursory effort at stacking up all the material he had strewn across his desk, making it look much more organized than it was. He turned off his desk-lamp. After ringing the Guard Station and announcing he was on the way out in ten minutes, he sighed. This was going to be a real drag to get through, but once it was over, he would have a much stronger position in the Agency, and would be in line for a promotion. He gathered up his hat and coat, turned out the lights, and locked his office, checking twice to be sure the door was secure. He then locked the outer office and trod off to the elevators to get down to the main floor.

“Telephone call to France,” he said, handing a request form to the clerk on the night desk. “Ten-forty
A.M
., local time for me. It won’t be too late in France then, and I won’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, hoping to catch him before lunch.”

“Ten-forty, to France for L. Broadstreet,” said the clerk, dutifully entering it in the master-schedule. “Got it.”

“Thanks,” said Broadstreet, and hurried off toward the eastern lobby to be let out into the blustery streets, his mind already working out plots and possibilities for shoring up his investigation.

Driving home, Broadstreet decided he would have to get some more anonymous paper for the Baxter note he planned to compose. And pens that were untraceable: the sleuths in the analysis unit of the CIA could find out amazing things from pens and paper. So he would have to have an excuse to be out of town for a day or two. That would mean a drive of some distance, which he could tie into making contact with Baxter. He wanted to choose another location for the event, one he had not used before. He would have to take a look at his road atlas at home, and work out a route he could take that would not suggest he was trying to cover his tracks. There had to be someone he could visit, or an event he could attend. He continued to mull over the possibilities as a mist gathered more closely along the road. So preoccupied with these plans was he that he paid no attention to the blue Nash that followed him, two cars back, all the way home; only when Broadstreet was locked in for the night, the two FBI agents found a telephone and reported back to their superiors, telling the night-clerk that Broadstreet had made no stops going home and was in for the night. They were allowed to call it a night, since Broadstreet was known to be a heavy sleeper.

Missus Pierce was at her desk when Broadstreet approached his office the next morning; she was in a neat dress—fashionable but not daring—that showed her figure to advantage; it was made of rayon so it was nearly as clingy as silk, and the color, a very subdued persimmony orange that hinted at banked fires, complemented her hair and her slightly olive skin tone, and reflected the fading summer. Her scent was lighter than what she had worn the night before, but Broadstreet noticed it anyway, and smiled appreciatively. “Good morning, Missus Pierce. I know I’m a little late, but it is in a good cause. I’ll tell you all about it this afternoon.”

“You don’t have to explain any of this to me,” she said, offering him another tantalizing smile.

He paid no attention to her remark, fixing his attention on a place just above her head so he would not be distracted by her mesmerizing presence. “I’ll be talking to one of our people in Paris this morning, at ten-forty, and that should provide a crucial piece of the puzzle—that is, if I have reason to sum up all these disparate factors in the way I think they should be viewed, so that the treachery is visible and not hidden in a number of—” He realized he was blathering, and made himself stop; clearing his throat, he went on, “I’ll ask you to go on your coffee-break while I make the call; it needs to be private.” He grinned, and held up his briefcase. “It’s taken months to follow all the ins and outs of this investigation. Finally my work is paying off.”