Maybe after that he’d explain what I was in the Far East for, and what was on the film, and who we were chasing this time. Maybe.
I poured another cup of coffee and the phone rang. I put the coffee down and picked up the receiver. It wasn’t Hawk and it wasn’t Washington. It was one of the staff downstairs at the switchboard. “Mr. Carter?”
“Yes?”
“This is most unusual. May I please have that number again?”
I gave it to him. “Why?”
“Well, sir... I thought I might have got it wrong. But that was the number I’d asked for all right.”
“What’s the matter?”
“There doesn’t seem to be any such number.”
“You mean it’s been disconnected? Or that it’s, uh, ‘no longer in service,’ as they say?”
“No, sir. There doesn’t seem to be any such exchange in the District. Neither there nor in the Maryland or Virginia suburbs served by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company.”
“No such exchange? But... but I’ve called the number a hundred times. I’ve talked on that line. I...”
“I was sure you knew your business, sir. That’s why it all seems so extraordinary. Shall I make an inquiry?”
I thought about that. “Uh... no, thanks. I’ll send a cable later, perhaps. Can I dial outside directly for a local call?”
“No, sir. You may call for me. Operator Two.”
“Thanks.” I hung up. Then I sat there on the bed, thinking. The wire was Hawk’s semi-covert line. He’d answer... oh, this month is was “Westinghouse. Repair Department.” Then you could say anything you pleased to him on it, so long as it sounded like a repairman calling in, or perhaps a salesman or parts jobber. You’d be surprised at how much of your message you could get across if you both knew in advance more or less what you’d be talking about on that line. Of course there’d always be the other direct line. You could say anything you chose on that one. But you couldn’t call on that one from anywhere outside the continental United States. It was on a very special scrambler, and only the Bell System was equipped to handle it.
I called downstairs again and gave Operator Two a number. “It should take another couple of minutes to get through again, right? Okay. I’ll be making one brief local call in the meantime. I’ll keep the wire open after that. Okay?”
“Splendid, sir. May I have the local number?”
I had the Hong Kong book open and had a finger on it. I gave it to him. I didn’t have long to wait this time.
“Hermann Meyer,” the voice said. “Import-Export.”
I sat up fast. It’d been just a wild idea, and I hadn’t expected to find anyone home. “Uh... Mr. Meyer, please.” There was a pause at the other end. The accent had been British public school, but the speaker definitely had English for a second language, not a first “Who shall I say is calling, please?”
“Mr. Cowles. He’ll remember me, I’m sure,” I lied. “We met last year in San Francisco, on the ferry to Oakland.”
There was another pause, then another voice came on: “Ah, Mr. Cowles. Hermann Meyer. What can I do for you, please?”
I blundered onward: “I... well, sir, I remembered the fine time we had in San Francisco, and how you said to look you up the next time business brought me to Hong Kong...”
“Certainly, certainly. Where are you staying? I can have a car sent over for you.”
No thanks, I thought. “I’m staying at the Gloucester, on the Island, but I’ll be out for the rest of the day. I was wondering if we might get together tomorrow sometime.”
“Splendid. I’ll send my chauffeur in the morning. No, I won’t take no for an answer. We’ll have a holiday of it. I’ll show you the town, as you might say.”
“Fine. I’ll look forward to that.”
“Splendid, Mr. Cowles. Shall we say ten? Time for elevenses, perhaps, at my place?”
“Okay. Fine.”
“See you then.” He hung up.
I looked at the wall.
Well, first off, there wasn’t any Hermann Meyer. Hermann Meyer was dead many miles to the south in Saigon. And if he’d been alive he’d have spoken with a German accent, not with this old-school-tie British accent with something oddly out of place in the middle of it. Then, too, there wasn’t any Mr. Cowles for anyone to remember, and he hadn’t met anybody named Hermann Meyer — neither the real one nor the phony one — on any ferry from Frisco to Oakland last year, because the ferry had been discontinued fifteen years before. Interesting, I thought. I’d have to pay Mr. Meyer a call, but not at any morning tea at his place. Any call I’d pay on him in the near future would be done in the wee hours, with a jimmy in one hand and Hugo up one sleeve. Damn, I thought suddenly; I’d have to see about digging up a replacement for Wilhelmina...
The phone rang again.
I picked it up. “Carter here.”
“Mr. Carter?” It was Operator Two again, and his voice registered perplexity once again in that subdued British way of his. “I... this seems not to be our day, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, sir, the second number is an answering service number, sir, as you said. But the name of the client seems to have changed.”
“The client? You mean the reference for the service?”
“Yes, sir. It seems no longer to be Westinghouse Repair Department, as you thought. And this is odd. It’s still a refrigerator repair service, it appears. But the name of the company has changed.”
“Changed to what?”
“Maytag. Shall I keep trying, sir?”
“No,” I said. “Thank you. That’ll be all.” I hung up, and my hand was shaking. There wasn’t any mistaking what had happened.
AXE had had its cover blown. Hawk had flown the coop and he’d covered his tracks. The message he’d left me — in German — was as clear as if he’d left it in English.
Maytag — with the original German pronunciation was the international distress signal, and Hawk had chosen this way of tipping all the AXE agents off whenever they called in for progress reports, and further instructions. I whistled, long and low, and the words formed silently on my lips:
Mayday! Mayday!
Chapter Five
Okay, Carter, I told myself, it’s time to get your stuff together.
The first impulse was to grab the phone again and book a flight back to D.C. as fast as I could manage it. This didn’t stand up under sober reflection, though. I did have unfinished business, and if I came home empty-handed, and without having given it the old college try, it wouldn’t matter if Hawk had been evicted, desk and typewriter and all, right into the middle of Connecticut Avenue. When I pulled up he’d still be sitting there behind the desk, munching on one of those phosgene cigars of his, and the minute I came within earshot he’d start letting me have it.
And he’d be so right.
The work, right now, seemed to be here, whatever it turned out to be. I could always drop in at the Embassy and slip a discreet query back to the States in the diplomatic bag. Or something like that.
In the meantime, there was the matter of Hermann Meyer — two of him, in fact: one of them dead, one of them alive. And there was a better than even chance that the killing of the one back in Saigon had something to do with the roll of film I’d been sent out to get. After all, Phuong had told me that Meyer’s apartment was to have been Corbin’s last stop on the way to her place. Corbin could very well have slipped the film to Meyer before coming downstairs. And the people who killed him could very well have taken it from him then.