“Hello.” It sounded like Joan Chandler.
“Hello,” Akutagawa said. “What number is this, please?”
“Who is this? Hello.” It was Joan Chandler. I gave Akutagawa the nod.
“Yes, hello. This is the office of the district attorney.”
“What? Who? Say is this some kind of joke?”
“No, madam, this is not any kind of joke. I understand that Assistant District Attorney Angus Narijian is at this number. I would like to speak with him, if you please.”
There was a gasp, then silence at the other end of the wire. Then Joan Chandler came back to us and her voice was noticeably thicker than it had been: “I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number. There’s no one here by that name.” She hung up fast.
Akutagawa grinned at me. “Get the car out front, Miro-san. I’ll join you as soon as I hear from Portman.” Portman was the man assigned to tail Joan Chandler.
I hustled down to the garage to get the Volkswagen. Within three minutes I had it waiting outside the glass doors of the Secretariat. Akutagawa emerged ten minutes later, black homburg set at a jaunty angle on head and the rest of him well protected against the elements.
“That was good work,” he said, as he slid in beside me and slammed the door. “I must remember to commend Portman.”
I got the car rolling.
“Let me guess where we’re heading,” I said.
“You are serious?”
“Yes, sir. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, northwest.”
“But that’s— Ah, so, you are joking. I apologize. Turn left here and take Second Avenue downtown to Thirty-sixth Street — three hundred and fifty East Thirty-sixth Street is our destination.”
“But that’s George King’s address. International Acoustics. How—”
“That is a question I cannot answer with certainty. Except that he is the first one Joan Chandler flees to upon hearing the news that Narijian is on the D.A.s staff. Also seen arriving shortly afterwards was Morris Green and another man fitting Noel Draftsman’s description.”
I said: “But—”
“Plus one final point kindly supplied by the regional FBI office — that George King was operations officer in the same intelligence unit that Draftsman and Joan Chandler served in between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty-three. The interesting thing about King is that he received a medical discharge — paranoid-schizophrenia was the diagnosis, which roughly adds up to a persecution mania. The Army had to get rid of him because he kept seeing Communist spies in all the Federal agencies, and they were naturally out to get him.”
“In other words, he’s crazy. Is he dangerous?”
“He could be. We will have to be careful. Narijian’s man will of course be armed.”
I made a left turn on East Thirty-sixth Street. It was the last building on the right hand side, a ten-story modem complex which was about ten years old. Lots of glass and brushed steel siding.
We parked a little ways up the street. Portman came over and gave us the lowdown. They were all still up there. Each had taken the elevator to the fifth floor. George King’s apartment was 5-A. Portman had scouted the outside of King’s place. It had a front and rear door.
There were five wooden crates outside the back door, irregular in size and very heavy. They were unmarked but resembled ammocrates.
Akutagawa assigned Portman to the lobby of three-fifty just as Narijian came barreling around the corner in an unmarked police car. I could tell it was Narijian driving. He always drove that way, all out and mostly on two wheels. He too had delusions of grandeur, though maybe he wasn’t quite as dangerous as George King.
He double-parked and came striding over, waving this legal looking document under our noses.
Akutagawa gave him a slight bow: “Ah, Mr. Narijian, you made excellent time.”
They shook hands.
Narijian nodded stiffly at me.
“You’re tires are still smoking,” I said. His passenger was ashen-faced.
“Twelve minutes from City Hall,” he roared.
Akutagawa said: “I see you have brought the warrant. Excellent, Mr. Narijian. Come, let us serve it. I will explain how things have developed up to this point.” He took him by the arm and I brought up the rear.
I left Akutagawa and Narijian outside 5-A and cut around to the rear door. I could see what Portman meant. They didn’t look like crates of canned goods. The wood was new and unmarked, which probably meant that King and his crew had gotten rid of the original crates. I eased the .38 in its shoulder holster and stood to one side of the door.
I didn’t have to wait long. This joker came soft-footing out, with a small suitcase gripped in one hand. It was Noel Draftsman. I recognized him from the photo.
“Hello, Noel,” I said softly, and he swung around on me, suitcase first I let him come, then at the last moment side-stepped and jarred him off-balance. His momentum carried him into the wall and I chopped him down with a backhand to the base of the trapezius. Which made us even, if he was the one who’d bopped me. If not, then I was one up on him.
I opened the suitcase. It was filled with carefully arranged packages of thermoplastique. I set it down gingerly and hauled Draftsman into the apartment. I must have made more noise than I thought, because everyone’s eyes were turned my way.
“What’s this?” roared Narijian.
Greem let out a little sob when he saw me. King knocked Narijian to one side and broke for the window. Greem lunged for Akutagawa. Joan Chandler sat frozen. I made for Greem, but Akutagawa was there first, reacting with stunning ease. Straight finger blow to the solar plexus. Short chop to the side of the head. And that was all for Greem.
Narijian hadn’t done so well. He made a flying tackle at King and got kicked in the head for, his ingenuity. Proof positive that you can’t carry college football techniques over into the real world. Now King was on the fire escape, descending rapidly.
I was about to take a shot at him when Narijian roared, “Hold it.” He came rushing to the window. “Craven will take him.” He yelled down. It sounded like a full-throated bullhorn and I’ll swear the street reverberated.
King shot at Narijian and splintered the wood frame by his head. It sounded like he was using a .38. Then the deeper sound of a .45 cut in. Craven. Two shots, a scream from the third story of the fire escape, then a soft thud, and silence.
That about wrapped it up. King was dead when he hit the sidewalk. Which was a pity, because it would have been nice to know where he got the thermoplastique, also the crates of .30 caliber ammunition and the automatic rifles outside his back door.
As it turned out Draftsman and Greem wouldn’t talk. Joan Chandler would, only she didn’t know quite as much as they presumably did. She knew enough, though, to deeply implicate them. Violation of the Sullivan weapons act was only part of it.
As Akutagawa put it the following morning: “The group — The Citizens’ Council for the Preservation of American Liberties — had planned a wave of terror against the United Nations by planting thermoplastique in the cars of prominent UN officials. The object was to disrupt the daily operations of the Organization, to the extent that no business could be transacted.
After several months of this, interspersed with 3.5 mm rifle shots at the buildings and maybe a few long range rifle assassinations, the American people would see how ineffectual the UN was, besides being a drain on the economy, and they would demand that it pack up and go to where it should have gone in the first place — namely, Moscow. That at least was the plan George King thought up.
International Acoustics, which was quite prosperous, existed solely to finance the plan. More than ten years of effort went into perfecting the plan. King was a meticulous man. He kept voluminous notes on the plan’s progress, as you know. At the bottom of it all was his sickness, which caused him to believe the UN was part of an international communist conspiracy, aimed at his and his country’s destruction.”