“I don’t want anyone to do anything that might alert Miss O’Malley.”
“Of course not. And the last thing I would ever do is something that displeased you, Walter. You know how grateful I am.”
She said she would retain an investigator of the highest respectability, someone who would act with great discretion. The investigator’s work would never be shown to anyone but her. When he was finished, his work product would disappear just as he would. That was important, Walter said. No records. She said she would call Walter when she had something. He thanked her, said he would be in Boston for a few days and would wait for her call. He never asked about her daughter. That’s not the way he worked.
Sean Dooley was more than a little surprised to hear from Walter. A man doesn’t hold a gun to your head, strip you naked on the floor and threaten to crush your balls beneath his foot, then call you up on a Sunday afternoon.
“You remember me, don’t you Sean?”
“That I do.”
“Good. I need a favor from you.”
“A what? A favor… from me?”
“Tell me about Abby O’Malley.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me everything. I’ll listen.”
It wasn’t much. Dooley told Walter he’d never seen her. Spoken to her a few times, but never in person, always by phone.
“How’d she find you?” asked Walter.
“I don’t know,” answered Dooley.
“You don’t know? You get a call from a stranger and you never ask how?”
“Not with the kind of money she was offering.”
“To do what exactly?”
“Mostly to watch this old man. Englishman, a Lord or something. You never know with them. Follow him around. See where he went, write down how long he was there. Things like that.”
“How many times did you break in?”
“A few-broke into a few places…”
“Places where the old man had been?”
“Yes, that’s right. But I never found nothing.”
Louis Devereaux didn’t call for very much research. His background information was easy to get, some of it public record-Yale, University of Chicago, CIA. Of course, there came a time in Devereaux’s public resume when he began taking on titles at the CIA Walter knew to be pretense. The truth behind those things was harder to get at, perhaps impossible. But it hardly mattered. Walter was certain Devereaux had told him the truth about himself when they were in Atlanta. Men like that don’t tell small lies, he told himself. Devereaux was eager to get Lacey’s confession. But why? Walter was sure he was working on his own. It made no sense to think the CIA was behind such a thing. No, it was Devereaux. The question of motive, however, remained open. What could Devereaux want with Lacey’s confession and why would he kill for it?
Walter considered the situation, the series of events that led him to this point. What Devereaux had going for him was the President of the United States. If the President wanted Lacey’s document, if the President knew Harry Levine had it, why didn’t he just ask for it? And wouldn’t Harry have delivered it to the President? Walter was sure he would have. Why didn’t he then? Perhaps he did, or perhaps he thought he was. Perhaps the President did ask for the document and put Devereaux in charge of getting it. Walter considered that as a possibility. Harry had never told him about details like that. He never said what the President specifically told him to do.
Of course, Walter thought, it was Devereaux. It had to be. He figured Devereaux for a killer, a big-time killer. Walter couldn’t be exactly sure what Louis Devereaux did for the CIA, but he knew Tucker Poesy worked for him, and Tucker Poesy was definitely a hitter and probably not much else since she proved inept at what she tried to do in Walter’s house. She paid a high price for that misstep. A busted jaw maybe, and a week, naked, tied to a chair, hand fed and watered, never knowing what might happen next, shitting and pissing all over herself. That’s a high price, he thought. But in the end he let her go. She didn’t kill Harry. She pulled a gun on him, in his own house. Ten years ago he would have killed her without a second thought, without a moment’s hesitation. Ah, fuck her! he thought, with some degree of frustration.
Abby O’Malley and Louis Devereaux had some unknowns hanging out there. Still, Walter had every reason to believe all their unanswered questions would be resolved, soon. It was the Georgians who presented a more pressing problem. Walter had no idea who they were. Aminette Messadou was all he had. He’d never heard of her great-uncle or the story of his retreat from Georgia. He didn’t know very much about the Russian Revolution except that was how the communists got their foot in the door. He didn’t know the Czar’s name. Never saw the movie. Never heard of the transwhatever federation.
After a few hours looking up these and other things on the Internet, Walter placed a call to Dr. E. Bard Leon, a professor at Marlboro College in Vermont. One of the skills Walter had perfected over the years was his ability to call a perfect stranger, tell the stranger he needed their help, and get it. Despite whatever decline he was in, if he’d kept anything he’d kept that. Like so many had done before him, professor Leon agreed to see Walter. It was an easy drive from Boston to Marlboro, Vermont, just a few miles west of Brattleboro. Before getting to the campus, he stopped at a small diner, on the side of the road, in an old wooden building, not a modern aluminum diner, and had a bowl of macaroni and cheese made with pure, white Vermont cheddar. It was the best he’d ever tasted.
Professor Leon turned out to be a walker, a nature lover, one of those fifty-year-old men who wore hiking boots and old chinos, sweatshirts and woolen hats. He had long hair, longer than Walter’s. Grayer too. They walked about the hilly, wooded campus as they talked. Walter thought of telling Dr. Leon he was recovering from bypass surgery, but decided against it. If the walk proved too much, he could always stop and explain.
“Djemmal-Eddin Messadou was quite a fellow,” said Professor Leon. “Remarkable man.” Dr. Leon was the author of six books on Russian history, including a two-volume edition on the last of the Czars and a seventh about the long-forgotten Transcaucasian Federation. He loved to talk about all of them and spoke, uninterrupted by Walter who had no reason to stop him, for at least an hour while they strolled leisurely across the small campus and down the single, picturesque road leading to it. They walked slowly enough not to tire Walter at all. Everything Aminette Messadou had said was pretty much the way Professor Leon told it. The arrival of the Georgian had caused quite a stir in Europe.
“What about the personal fortune Djemmal-Eddin had? Jewels, gold, whatever?” Walter asked. “How did he get it out of the country before the Bolsheviks overran him?”
Dr. E. Bard Leon, distinguished Professor of History at one of the country’s elite liberal arts colleges, looked at Walter as if he just realized he was talking to someone who knew nothing at all. “Djemmal-Eddin had no personal fortune, as you put it. That’s not what he came west with. That is not what caused all the excitement. Not at all. Oh, no, Mr. Sherman, that is not what Djemmal-Eddin Messadou brought with him to Europe. Let me tell you about Solly Joel.”
According to professor Leon, Djemmal-Eddin had amassed many tons of the Czar Nicholas II ten Ruble coins. “Tons,” he told Walter eagerly, with a wonderfully warm smile. “Can you imagine it!?” Gold paid the bills for an independent Georgia as well as the ill-fated, short-lived Transcaucasian Federation. Djemmal-Eddin’s son-in-law Frederick Lacey was a great help to the struggling new nation. He assisted in the negotiation of international trade arrangements supplying Georgia with needed materials of all kinds in exchange for some of the Czar’s gold. While the coin itself held no monetary value for a supplier in England or the Netherlands, Italy or anywhere in Europe, the gold in the coin was always worth the value of. 2489 ounces. No one turned it down as a form of payment.