He stared into the darkness and thought about Quinn, relieved and at the same time disappointed. Quinn was in New York at the time of the Paris meeting. It wasn’t that he hoped to find that the CIA chief led two lives, but it left Warfield back at the starting line. He had nothing. Quinn could be a bastard, but it was unimaginable that he was a traitor.
Warfield woke up tired the next morning. He’d dreamt he was a corporate accountant and couldn’t make his books balance. The dream kept coming back around but the numbers never made sense: The computer-generated financial reports bore no resemblance to the input data and the reality of the financial status of the business.
The dream stayed with him all morning. He called Paula back. “Those records show whether my man had anybody with him on that New York trip?”
“You mean someone other than officials?”
“Right.”
“They don’t.”
Helen Swope dabbed at her eyes and then her forehead with a lace-bordered white handkerchief. The Reverend Ebenezer Fuller sat beside her and gently squeezed her bony shoulder in his large hand. “You’re doin’ the right thing, Sister Helen. Don’t you fret.” His tone comforted her. Helen was Austin Quinn’s once-a-week housekeeper during the time Ana was living there. She had testified at Ana’s trial that she saw Ana sitting in front of Quinn’s CIA computer terminal taking notes on several occasions.
Not long after the trial Helen began having headaches that kept getting worse. Her fingers took on a tremor and she lost from one-hundred-eighty down to ninety-five pounds. A tic developed that caused one corner of her mouth to spasm every few seconds. She hadn’t worked in six months. Her doctors couldn’t explain any of it.
A few weeks ago she confided in her minister, the Reverend Fuller, what she had done: She’d lied on the witness stand about Ana Koronis. And she knew her maladies were God’s punishment. She didn’t even know the name of the man who paid her the five thousand dollars to do it. Never saw him before the day he came to Quinn’s house when she was working alone on a Saturday, her usual day, and sat down and talked with her about Ana and what Helen must say at the trial. He said he couldn’t reveal to her all there was to know about the case, but justice could be served only if Ana was convicted and sent away. Helen would be doing a fine service to her country and even to her God, and the man didn’t want her to think of herself as being anything other than patriotic.
Helen and Austin Quinn had never exchanged so much as a single glance about it, before or after the trial. She was certain he never knew it happened. She didn’t know now any more than she knew at the trial about Ana’s guilt or innocence, but she did know she had stood there in front of that judge and that jury and her God and she put her hand on that Bible and said she would tell the truth, and then she got on the witness stand and knowingly spoke lies.
Her attorney Filmore Dunstan sat across the desk and leaned on his left elbow, chin in hand, making notes on a legal pad with the other. He told Helen he didn’t know how this was going to play out, but Helen made one thing very clear. She wanted to get it off her chest to the authorities. Come clean, whatever the consequences. Dunstan’s secretary brought in the phone number he had asked her to find, but he had some questions for Helen before he placed the call.
“The man who talked to you that Saturday, Helen. He tell you how he knew you, or why he thought you’d be at Quinn’s place that day?”
Helen shook her head.
“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”
“Doubt it. He wearin’ a hat and he had on some real dark glasses all the time he talkin’ to me.”
“Anybody ever ask you those questions at the trial?”
“No sir.”
Filmore Dunstan dialed the number for Joe Morgan, identified himself and asked Morgan if he remembered Helen Swope from the Koronis trial.
“How could I forget the key witness.”
“She’s sitting in my office. Has some information for you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yep.”
“Something like a guilty conscience?”
“Yep. Could involve others, as well.”
“She was put up to it?”
“Could be, but look, Helen wants to tell you all of this in person.”
“I’m outta town next three days. How about my office Friday morning at ten.”
“So, we meet again, Colonel Warfield,” Ana said.
“Need a little more input.”
She nodded blankly as she smoothed a wrinkle in her prison garb.
“You traveled with Quinn on official trips?”
“Sometimes.”
Warfield looked at Ana for a moment, sitting there in her orange ADC jumpsuit, plain Jane, used to such a different life, another world. “Guess that was an ordeal. All the security around him, I mean.”
“I was not unaccustomed to security, you know, married to the ambassador. But it can get to you.”
“Ever able to get away from it, even for a short time?”
“Austin had many of the same security people for a long time. Sometimes he’d put on some sort of token disguise — hat, sunglasses, mustache even, when he was feeling a little frisky — and tell whoever was in charge of his security detail he didn’t want them tagging along. I think they were pretty used to it.”
“It happened often, then?”
“I think Austin left them guarding an empty room now and then. I don’t know, didn’t travel with him too much because of my work.”
“How long would you stay out without security?”
“Sometimes we’d get a cab, go shopping, out to dinner, the theatre. Several hours, I guess.”
Warfield put away his notes. “Speaking of Quinn, seen him lately?”
She smiled dismissively. “I’m…I’m sure he’s been busy.”
“You still…oh, sorry.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I still think of Austin. Nothing romantic. That was over before the trial, but I know the whole thing was hard on him, too.”
“Saw him yesterday. He asked about you.”
She nodded. “Wouldn’t mind spending some time with him one day. You know, closure. Some old issues we never got to talk about.”
Warfield mulled over the meeting as he headed back to Washington. Nothing incriminating about Quinn shaking his security detail now and then. Warfield figured he would do the same thing himself under the circumstances. But Warfield’s bottom line was that he wasn’t satisfied.
He dialed Paula. “Can you meet me at Castro’s?”
“It’ll have to be later, say, seven.”
After Warfield left, Ana stood at the narrow window in her room at ADC. Birds were chirping, flying tree to tree, chasing each other around the compound, Ana thinking of their total freedom. She wondered how much longer before she was free. She was pleased at her progress with the colonel. And Suri. Suri had more of an impact on Warfield than Ana would have imagined.
Castrogiovanni’s was a place you didn’t worry about being overheard. The noise level took care of that.
Warfield asked Paula, “Can you find out who was on Quinn’s security detail at a given time? That New York trip for example.”
“Security Protective Service may have provided us a crew list. I can check.”
“Before noon tomorrow?” Warfield pressed.
Paula groaned. “Gonna get me fired, Cameo.”