“Very well—if you feel the risk is that great. But send me a copy when you send it to the rest of them.”
“Naturally.”
“There’ll probably be a matter of libel insurance. With a book of this kind the premiums may prove costly.”
“The publishers will have to pay for that.”
“I’ll arrange that if I can.”
Kendig said, “What’s the usual procedure for paying commissions?”
“I take ten percent of the client’s gross receipts off the top. When I receive a check from a publisher I deposit the check in my corporate account and draw my own check for ninety percent of that amount, payable to the client. Naturally the client is welcome to examine my accounts at all times. There’s no written contract between me and any of my clients—it’s a handshake arrangement. When a client’s dissatisfied with my work he’s free to go elsewhere.”
Ives continued, “In your case since you say I won’t be able to reach you the thing would be for me to open an account for you and make deposits as the money comes in.”
“No good,” Kendig said. “A bank account can be frozen by court order. I’ll want cashier’s checks, made out in my name, sent by airmail to this address in Switzerland.” He wrote it down and tore the page out of his pocket notebook and tossed it onto the desk. Ives picked it up curiously.
Kendig said, “People from the government will be around to see you before very long.”
Ives’ grin made him even younger. “They won’t learn anything from me. Not without a warrant.”
“They won’t use warrants. They don’t work that way. You’d find yourself up to your ears in income tax audits. Your driver’s license would be mysteriously revoked. Your credit rating would evaporate overnight. Maybe you’d find that certain publishers were no longer buying anything from you. You’d start to lose clients—they’d give some vague excuse for shifting to another agency. Your wife would find her charge accounts canceled. Your kids would be caught with narcotics planted in their pockets. I could give you a list of subtle persuasions ten pages long.”
Ives’s manicured index finger touched the piece of notepaper. “Then you want me to reveal this to them?”
“It won’t do either of us any harm.”
“But they’ll trace the address.”
“They already know it. Those are my brokers in Zurich. One of them has my power of attorney to make deposits in my bank. He doesn’t have the account number. He takes the check and the power of attorney to the bank. The bank deposits the check in my numbered account without giving the number to the broker. It’s a dead end for the Agency. He can’t lead them to me. Neither can you. Just cooperate with them when they approach you.”
“What if they insist I stop representing you?”
“Then do what they ask. Inform the publishers you’re no longer representing me. Ask them to send the payments directly to that address.”
At four o’clock he was ready to leave. Ives said, “I can only think of one thing more. Not to be gruesome but I gather there’s a chance you could suffer a fatal accident. Have you made a will?”
“Yes. My Swiss brokers have it.” On the way out he added, “I’ve left everything to the Flat Earth Society.”
– 7 –
CUTTER MADE A face when he stepped into the FBI building. Myerson beside him took off his hat, wiped the inside hatband and then his forehead where the hat had welted a red dent. Then he looked at the hat. “That’s appropriate.”
“What is?”
“I walk in with my hat in my hand.” Myerson winced and blubbered his heavy lips around an exhalation. He patted his stomach. “I’m back on the cottage cheese and salad number. I envy you wiry bastards. Here we are.”
The secretary kept them waiting a while and then they were granted their audience with the Assistant Director of the FBI, a trim sandy man named Tobin in the regulation seersucker.
There were the usual interdepartmental preambles—cautious courtesies—and then Myerson gave Cutter the floor. Cutter proffered one of the composites. “His name’s Miles Kendig. Retired Agency official.…”
“I’ve met him a few times,” Tobin said. “What’d he do, defect?”
“He may have. He’s ramming around somewhere and we’ve got to get our hands on him. There are things we need to find out from him.”
“What secrets did he steal?”
“That’s what we want to find out from him,” Cutter said smoothly. He didn’t like the Bureau; he especially didn’t like it when they had to kowtow to the Bureau. “He was in Virginia yesterday. God knows where he is by now. But if he’s still in the United States it’s your bailiwick, not ours. Anyhow we haven’t got the domestic manpower for it.”
“You’re asking me to put up a dragnet for him?”
“I’m afraid we are,” Myerson said. “It’s that important.”
“But you won’t even tell us what he’s charged with?”
Cutter said, “He hasn’t been charged. We want him for questioning.”
“Sure you do. In connection with what?”
Cutter contained his temper and deferred to Myerson because he didn’t trust himself to speak calmly. Myerson said, “I’m afraid that’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“You guys are something else,” Tobin said. Now Cutter was amused: this was the kind of treatment the Bureau habitually gave to local police departments and now the shoe was on the other foot.
Myerson said, “It’s a matter of national security.”
“That’s a phrase that’s lost a lot of meaning lately, Mr. Myerson.”
On the curb Myerson put his hat on and scowled. “I’ll have to take it upstairs. Tobin won’t put any enthusiasm into it. It’s going to have to come down from the top before he gets his ass in gear. But that’ll take a day or two. In the meantime keep your people working around the clock—and keep them working afterwards too. I’d like to get to Kendig ahead of the Bureau if we can. Shove their noses in it. Smug bastards.”
“I’ll be surprised if anybody gets close to Kendig very fast. He’s quick. All he ever needed was the smell of an opportunity.”
Myerson shook his head. “He only needs to slip once and the ceiling comes down on top of him. You want to have some lunch?”
“No thanks. Ross will be reporting back at one.”
“Cottage cheese and salad.” Myerson left him.
Cutter caught a taxi to take him back to the Arlington lot where he’d left the motor-pool car. He’ll go to ground for a while, he thought. Now where would he hide?
Ross was early—waiting for him. Ross looked too long for the chair he was in—absurdly tall with pink smooth baby-skin and the brown hair cropped close to the skull like fuzz on a tennis ball, in-candescently eager and energetic. “We had a signal from Follett.”
“Where’s Follett?”
“Marseilles. Kendig bought his papers from Saint-Breheret.”
Something twanged inside Cutter. This was the real start of the hunt.
“Three blank passports—two American, one French. Three blank driver’s licenses, same distribution. But he bought a wallet full of credit cards in the name of James Butler.”
“Okay,” Cutter said. He smiled abruptly. “Okay. It’s a con game but we’ll play it his way. Maybe he’ll tell us something he didn’t mean to.”
“What do you mean a con game?”
“We’re supposed to waste a lot of energy tracking James Butler. It’ll turn out to be a dead end when it suits Kendig’s purpose. But he may leave us a trace or two he didn’t count on leaving.” He reached for the phone. “FBI headquarters, please. Mr. Tobin.”
– 8 –
HE SPENT TWO days combing the bars and employment offices and late-night eateries of Philadelphia and didn’t find anybody who fit the physical requirements; on the third night he canvassed a dozen places in Camden and on the fourth he hit pay dirt in a jukebox-and-color-TV saloon on the west side of Trenton about six blocks inland from the river. The man had gone to seed but spruced up he’d look the part well enough. Kendig had searched thousands of faces to find this one and he made his sales pitch a strong one.