He was almost embarrassed. “Four years I’ve had that gun and never once had to use it. I’m too well known, Nick. Now, it’s like they don’t care what happens if I get knocked off.”
“So it’s not the Syndicate?”
“Not unless they’ve gone clean out of their minds! And I doubt that! No, my boy, it was someone else’s work.”
“What’d you find in the morgue?” I asked. “You must have found something or they wouldn’t have gone after you.”
“Not a thing,” he said ruefully. “Every one of those five men is a model upstanding citizen — about whom not much is written, I’ll admit,” — he flashed a trace of his old, cynical smile — “because of their influence. They’ve a lot of that, y’know.”
“What about Alexander Bradford?”
“He’s the most interesting of them all,” Reilly said, his eyes locking into mine. “Why are you so interested in him alone now? How come not the others?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “Just tell me about him.”
“Well,” said Reilly, “he’s old family — like the others. They all go back to the Mayflower, or maybe the second or third ship after it, at the latest. He’s the only one left of his family. That’s what’s different about him. His father and mother both died when he was a child. He was brought up by his grand-aunt. Served in World War II. He was a lieutenant-colonel in an infantry outfit. He was captured by the Germans, spent a year in a prisoner of war camp—”
“Hold it,” I said. That was it. That was what I had been looking for. “Which stalag?”
Reilly was puzzled. “What the hell difference does it make?”
“Did you learn which camp?”
Reilly looked at me as if I were a teacher accusing him of not having done his homework thoroughly. My question was an insult to a newspaperman as good as he was.
Reilly mentioned the stalag number. And it fit. That particular stalag, I knew, was located in what is now the DDR. Deutche Democratische Republic. East Germany.
“He was liberated by the Russians,” I said. “Right?”
Watching my face carefully, Reilly asked, “Is that a guess or do you know?”
“I’ll do some more guessing,” I said, growing more and more certain of my hypothesis because it was the only way it could have happened, the only way the Russians could have made the swap. “He wasn’t returned to the States right after he was liberated, right?”
Reilly nodded. “Word came back that he was a hospital case. It took him almost a year to recuperate, first in a Russian hospital and then back here in the States at Walter Reed. There was a lot of surgery. For a time, they thought he might not pull through.”
“Plastic surgery?”
“Some. Not much,” said Reilly.
“Just enough so that if someone who knew him before the war wondered about the difference in his appearance, the surgery would explain it.”
“You could say that,” said Reilly.
“No family? No relatives? Right?”
“Just a grand-aunt, like I mentioned before,” said Reilly. “She raised him, but she was very old by the time he returned from Germany.”
“So if he not only looked different, but acted differently, there’d really be nobody to notice it?”
“Is that a question or a statement?” asked Reilly.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re trying to tell me something,” Reilly observed, staring intently at me with a cold, inquisitive look in his eyes. “You think the Russians got their hands on him and brainwashed him. Is that it?”
“Suppose they substituted another man for him, John? Suppose the original Alexander Bradford’s been dead since 1945 and another man — a Russian, a KGB infiltrator, a ‘plant’ — has been taking his place ever since?”
“It could have happened that way,” he admitted grudgingly.
“It did happen that way, John.”
The expression on Reilly’s face changed. Not irreverently, he whispered, “Holy Mother of God! That’s a wild statement, Nick. Is that what this is all about? Are you trying to tell me that the men who came after me tonight are Russians?”
“No, they’re Americans. John, you know enough. Stay out of it now.”
“So that’s the story you said I’d never be able to print,” Reilly mused out loud. “You’re right, m’lad. No one’d ever believe it! Not in this town! It’d be like trying to claim that the Pope, himself, is a Communist spy!”
I slid out of the booth.
Reilly reached out and caught me by the arm.
“There’s more to it, Nick, isn’t there?”
I nodded my head.
“Can you tell me about it?”
“No.”
“Later on? When it’s over?”
I smiled at him. “No way, John. Never. You’ve learned enough. Maybe too much for your own good.”
“Well,” said Reilly, leaning back against the wooden partition between the booths, “take care of yourself, Nick.”
“You, too, John.”
I started to turn away when he suddenly reached forward across the corner of the table and fastened his hand on my arm.
“Sit down, Nick!” The sudden urgency in his voice made me obey without questioning.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Two men just walked in the door.” His voice was pitched low, barely reaching me.
“You know them?”
He shook his head, his eyes staring past me at them. “Not by name. But I know them alright. They’re two of the men who tried to kill me earlier tonight. But I think you’re the one they want now, laddie. They haven’t taken their eyes off you since they came in.”
“Is there a back door to this place?”
Before Reilly could answer, the front door of Grogan’s swung open and Julie strolled in, impatiently jangling her car keys. She marched right over to our booth and slid in beside me.
“I’m running out of gas,” she announced, unsmiling.
“You and John, here, were just leaving, sweetheart,” I answered.
Reilly knew what I meant. This was no place for Julie. I wanted him to take her out of the bar. And to get the hell out himself. One side of his face had already been smashed in because of me. He grinned crookedly and shook his head.
“You two” — he pointed a chubby finger first at my chest, then Julie’s — “go through the kitchen. Then up a flight of stairs. Don’t go all the way to the top, though. The door to the roof hasn’t been unlocked in years. Go down the hall to the end of the first floor. You’ll find a window there. It opens out onto the fire escape. It’ll take you to the roof. From there, you’re on your own.”
He reached inside his coat and surreptitiously took out his revolver, sliding it under the table to me.
“I think you’ll be needing this more than I will.”
Cupped in my hand, muzzle up, the snub-nosed .38 gleamed brightly under the dark shadow of the table top. I looked down at it. Light reflected off the round chambers and from the trigger guard. The hole of its barrel gaped blackly at me. So did four of the chambers I could see into.
“I appreciate the offer, John, but this thing won’t do me any good...”
Reilly frowned. “Since when will a gun not do—”
“—unless you have cartridges to go with it, friend,” I finished. “You fired all six of them.”
Reilly flushed with embarrassment. “Wait here a minute.”
For a heavy-set man, Reilly moved nimbly. He got to his feet and went across the room, motioning to the bartender to join him. The two of them conferred in whispers at the end of the bar. The barman went into the back room. Reilly drummed his fingers impatiently on the hard mahogany surface until the man came back.