The Prodigal Spy (55 page)

“Everything is going to be all right.”

A weak smile, ignoring him. “And now I’m going to be her, do everything she did. Even sell the shirts.”

“Molly, if it bothers you, don’t do it. We’ll figure out something else.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do it.” She paused. “I am like her. I’ll do it for you.”

“No. Do it for her.”

She sighed. “She’s dead, Nick.” She turned from the window. “I’ll do it for you. So you’ll be finished with it.”

“We’re so close,” he said again. “What do you want to do, walk away from it? I need to do this for him.”

Another wry smile, looking down at the nuts.

“What?” Nick said, annoyed.

“Not for him,” she said. “Don’t you know that?” She raised her hand, stopping his response. “It’s okay. I want you to bury him. But how do you end it, Nick? What are you going to do if this works, if you do get Silver? Have you thought about it?”

Nick looked down, embarrassed because he hadn’t. It had seemed enough to know, to see a face. “This one we turn in,” he said finally.

“But not the others.”

“He’s a murderer.”

“Maybe they are too.”

“And maybe they just sell shirts. Would you have turned Rosemary in?”

She shrugged, shying away. “I guess not. I don’t know.”

“Molly, what’s wrong?” he said, touching her arm. “What are you so worried about?”

“You’re just so determined.”

“We’re going to get him.”

“Then what? Push him over a balcony? Nick, let’s just give the whole thing to the FBI now. Let them do it.”

Nick took a drink, calming himself, so that when he spoke his voice was steady and reasonable. “Molly, for all we know it
is
the FBI.”

“You just want to do it yourself.”

“Yes,” he said, still calm. “I want to do it myself. I want to see his face.” A beat. “Then it’ll be over.”

“Will it?”

He held her eyes, sure. “Yes.”

She glanced out the window, avoiding him, then busied herself lighting a cigarette. She exhaled, then nodded. “When do I go to work?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Selling seashells by the shore,” she said. “Let’s hope I don’t end up the same way she did.” Then, before he could answer, “And just when I was getting somewhere with Mr Brown.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said he wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t. But there’s another thing,
if
you had let me finish. I took a drive over to the parking lot at National–that’s where you said he left the car, right? Well, it wasn’t there. So what is he up to?”

Nick thought for a minute, then frowned. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t him.”

“But funny, don’t you think?”

“We don’t have time. She’s the only one who matters now.”

“Well, you have to do something while I’m playing salesgirl. Why not find out? Unless you want to protect him from the FBI. One of your innocent spies.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See the guy at the end of the driveway? He’s been keeping an eye on us.”

Nick looked out the window. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve developed this instinct–in my new professional capacity,” she said airily, then nodded. “Pretty sure.”

“He follow you here?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. I just noticed him while we were talking. I told you Lapierre would have them put a tail on us.”

“Then he’s interested in me. Good. We can’t have anyone walking you to work.”

“Take the car out tomorrow and see.”

“Damn. Why now?” Nick said, worried. “What do they want?”

“Like old times, isn’t it?” Molly said, her eyes back at the window.

“We have to get rid of them.”

“The FBI?”

“Hoover can.”

She glanced back, amused. “That would do it.” Then, seeing he meant it, “Right to the top. Larry’s name again?”

“No.” He smiled. “I thought I’d use Jeff’s.”

But he didn’t have to use either name: Hoover sent for him.

He drove out to National in the morning, avoiding Chevy Chase, his eyes almost fixed on the rearview mirror, but the tail, if it was there, had been trained in a better school than Zimmerman’s–he seemed to be alone. He went slowly through the parking lot. No car. Had someone taken it? A day ago he would have felt uneasy; now it was only a piece of a different puzzle.

He took the direct route home, then doubled back across the Mall, where they were putting up a stage for the peace rally. Still no obvious tail. Then, at the hotel, he saw they hadn’t bothered. The two men approached him in the lobby, said the boss wanted to see him, and led him to the car. When they hustled him into the back seat with a peremptory shove, he was at Holečkova again, the same helpless anxiety, his palms damp, as if he were back in handcuffs.

The office, a suite of rooms, was on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, past a secretarial pool and a corridor lined with autographed pictures and plaques and framed awards, the tokens of a grateful nation. The visitors’ office made Welles’s look like a closet: a huge room with an oversize desk between two flags, whose only purpose seemed to be for taking pictures. A vast blue rug with the Bureau seal. A ghoulish death mask, mounted–Dillinger, 1934. More photographs, all of them with Hoover. Burly, in a double-breasted suit and crisp fedora, leading a fugitive up the stairs. Bending over to shake hands with Shirley Temple.

Nick’s escorts knocked on the inner office door, nodded to the prim woman in a high collar who opened it, and backed away, like courtiers. One more large room, with windows looking out over Pennsylvania Avenue, this one for working–a line of wooden memo trays, another football-field desk, with telephones and a single open file. Standing behind the desk was the director himself, bulldog jaw sticking out just like it did in his pictures, glowering up at Nick with a theatrical intensity. A silence.

“Am I under arrest?” Nick said.

“No. I want to talk to you,” Hoover said, the words coming as fast as bullets. Nick wondered if he had worked on it, practicing in front of a mirror until speech too had become an intimidating prop. “I hear you want to talk to
me
. If you don’t, you can leave right now. I’m a busy man. Thank you, Miss Gandy,” he said to the secretary, so that, ironically, the next sound Nick heard was the door clicking shut behind him.

“Now we could start friendly, but I haven’t got the time. Nobody bothers my agents, Mr Warren. Nobody.
Interrogating
them. Who do you think you are? Of course I know
who
you are.” He tapped the open file with his finger. “The only reason I’m talking to you at all is that your father’s been a friend to the Bureau.” Nick realized after a second of confusion that in Washington he was always Larry’s son first. “Sometimes. Depending. But I don’t hold grudges, and the Bureau takes care of its friends.”

“I’ll bet.”

Hoover jerked his round head and stared at Nick. “Don’t do that again,” he said evenly. “Talk smart to your father. Maybe he’s used to it. I don’t like it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some kid who thinks he’s having fun with the Bureau, and that’s not smart. Ask your father, he’ll tell you.”

“He’s my stepfather.”

“I know that too. I know everything about you.” He touched the file again. “War record. Not much, but at least you weren’t one of the dodgers. I’m not surprised you changed your name. We can’t help our parents–I don’t hold that against you. Maybe I should. They usually don’t fall far from the tree. But right now I just want to know what you think you’re doing. Talking to Lapierre, playing cute with us in New York.”

“I wasn’t trying to play cute. I just left early. They weren’t there around the clock.”

“You’re not worth twenty-four-hour surveillance,” Hoover said. “You’re not that important.”

“I’m not that important now, either. So call off the guys you have watching me here. I haven’t done anything. If there’s something you want to know, ask and I’ll tell you. I don’t like being followed. I had enough of that in Prague. But you expect it there. I didn’t think we were like that yet.”

Hoover peered at him curiously, sizing him up, then moved out from behind the desk. Involuntarily Nick glanced down to see if his shoes had lifts. Hoover had always been described as short, but here, on his carefully constructed set, the sight lines seemed to exaggerate his bulk, and the broad shoulders and thick neck gave the impression of a large man barely contained by his suit. What caught Nick’s eye, however, was the hair, short but still dark, at his age a color that could only have come from a bottle. Nick wondered if he did it himself, towel wrapped around his neck at the mirror, or if a barber had been sworn to secrecy.

“Not yet, Mr Warren. And we’re not going to be. We’ve still got a free country here, no thanks to people like Walter Kotlar. Why did you go see him?”

“Because he asked me to. Look, you’re busy–let me make this easy for you. He sent a message that he wanted to see me. I went. I spent a few days with him and his wife. He didn’t tell me any state secrets and he didn’t tell me about the old days. He did tell me that he was sick and he’d like to come home. One of your people there–a legat, isn’t that what you call them?”

Hoover nodded almost imperceptibly.

“A legat found out about it and ran with it, all the way back to the Bureau, where they started ringing bells so loud even you heard them. Is that about right so far? But he didn’t come back. He killed himself. I found him. The Czech police thought I did it, or caused it somehow, or whatever. Who knows what they think? I wasn’t going to hang around to find out. I got out as fast as I could, only to come home and get the same treatment from you. Which I would like you to stop.”

Hoover looked at him for a moment. “I know all that,” he said finally. That doesn’t tell me anything.“

“What do you want to know?”

“Why he thought he could come back.”

“I don’t know that he did think it. He just said he wanted to.” Nick paused. “He didn’t know you had the lighter.”

Hoover said nothing, stone-faced.

“I’d like it back, by the way. It’s mine now. It’s not evidence anymore. He’s dead.”

“You’re talking about Bureau property.”

“No, I’m not. The Bureau doesn’t officially have it. You do. You’ve always had it. In one of your special files. Just in case. But you can’t get him anymore. He got away again.”

“You think you know all about it.”

“No. Just that it was you. All along. You fed Welles. You fed McCarthy. That was your little war. Years of it.”

“You think it wasn’t a war? You’re too young to know, all of you. The only reason you’re walking around free today is—” He stopped. “It was a war. And we won it.”

“Well, you did anyway. You’re still here.” Hoover glared at him. “And so is the lighter. The one time you really had somebody and he slipped through your fingers. But at least you could always get him for something he didn’t do–if he came back.”

“He did do it.”

“Your agents don’t think so. Neither did the police.”

Hoover looked at him steadily, his voice low. “But I did. Naturally you don’t want to.”

“It doesn’t matter what we think anymore, does it?”

“Then why are you bothering Lapierre? Nosing around where you don’t belong? What are you really doing in Washington?”

“Research. Not your kind. History, that’s what it is now. It’s important to talk to who was there while they’re still around.”

Hoover’s eyes widened as if he’d been personally insulted. “Research,” he said sarcastically. “For who? That pink in London you’ve been working with?”

“Yes, that pink.”

He snorted. “Not far from the tree. Well, not with my agents, you’re not. Don’t expect any help from this office. And keep the Bureau out of it.” Hoover held up a finger. “I mean that. I’m not interested in history.”

And Nick saw suddenly that it was true, that all the stagecraft was there not to trick the future but to keep things going now, attorney general after attorney general, Hoover still at the desk. The only idea he’d ever had was to hold on to his job.

“Then it won’t matter,” he said.

“You know,” Hoover said, more slowly now, “a lot of people come into this office just set on showing me they’re not afraid of me. It’s a thing I’ve noticed. Smart talk. They don’t leave that way.”

“How do they leave?”

“With a little respect for this office and what we’re doing. They find it’s better to be a friend of the Bureau.” The eyes so hard that Nick had to look away.

“Would you tell me something?” he said.

“For your research?” Almost spitting it.

“No, for me. Just one thing. It can’t possibly matter to you anymore.”

Hoover looked up, intrigued.

“Who told you about Rosemary Cochrane? You told Welles, but someone told you.”

“What makes you think I told Welles?”

“Because he told me you did. He didn’t intend to, but he told me.”

Hoover twitched, annoyed. “Well, that’s not what I would call a reliable source. Ken doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. Never did. Did a lousy job with your father, too.”

“Despite all the help.”

Hoover said nothing.

“You knew about her. How? It can’t matter anymore.”

“It always matters. That’s Bureau business. We never divulge sources–wouldn’t have them, otherwise.” He paused. “But in this case, since it matters to
you
.” He glanced up. “It was an anonymous tip. A good one, for a change. We never knew who.”

“Yes, you did,” Nick said.

“You’re sure about that,” Hoover said, toying with him.

“Yes.”

Hoover glanced away. “I don’t remember.”

Nick stood, waiting.

“I don’t think you understand how things work here,” Hoover said, looking back at Nick. “Information, that’s like currency to us. We don’t spend it. We don’t trade for it.”

“Yes, you do.”

For the first time there was a trace of a smile. “But you see, you’re not a friend of the Bureau’s.”

Nick stared at him, stymied.

“Now I’ll ask you something,” Hoover said. “Why you? All those years, and you’re the one he sends for, says he wants to come home. Why not just go to our people in the embassy?”