“And the sharpshooter?”
“Fuck him,” Haynes said.
Mott nodded slowly. “That’s not bravado, is it?”
“Hardly. He wants me scared, not dead. Otherwise I’d be dead at the Bellevue Motel. Now, can we get on with it?”
“All right, let’s,” Mott said, paused briefly and asked, “You’ve each read Steady’s manuscript; what’s your assessment?”
Haynes said, “It’s a snappy adventure tale about how a rather picaresque Steadfast Haynes almost single-handedly saves a long string of tottering democracies — except for a few out in Southeast Asia whose loss isn’t really his fault.”
“Snappy?” Mott said.
“It moves right along,” Erika said.
“And how is the CIA portrayed?”
“If not with reverence, at least with benevolent contempt.”
“Nothing offensive, libelous or a threat to national security — whatever that is?”
“Nothing,” Haynes said and gave Erika a go-ahead glance. She opened the canvas bag that rested on her lap, removed the manuscript and handed it to Mott.
After leafing through it quickly, as if to make sure he hadn’t been handed yet another collection of blank pages, Mott looked at Haynes and asked, “Innocuous, you say?”
“Totally.”
Mott placed the manuscript on the table beside his chair, clasped his hands across his stomach and stared up at the twelve-foot-high ceiling. “So Steady passes the word around town that he’s written a killer exposé of the CIA. But because the agency can’t prove he ever really worked for it, there’s no way it can legally suppress publication. Fair enough so far?” he said, bringing his gaze down from the ceiling to rest it first on Erika, then on Haynes. They nodded.
“However,” Mott continued, “Steady’s convinced that eventually the agency’ll make him an offer, which, after all the dickering’s done, he’ll accept and sign over all rights to Langley. And with that done and the money safely banked, he’ll furnish them with a copy of the manuscript, whether they ask for it or not, just to make sure they fully understand what dopes they’ve been.”
“His last laugh,” Erika said.
“Except Steady died,” said Mott.
“So did three others,” Haynes said. “Or four, counting Purchase, who also helped spoil the joke.”
“Somebody,” Mott said, “is goddamned afraid of what Steady knew and of what he might’ve written. This same somebody is so afraid that he or she or even they were willing to kill Isabelle Gelinet, Gilbert Undean and Tinker Burns. Of these three, I think only Burns suspected he was in danger.” Mott stopped to stare at Haynes, then nodded to himself and said. “I also think Tinker may have left the cause of his suspicion to you.”
“What d’you mean ‘left’?” Haynes said.
Mott rose, went to his old rolltop desk and picked up a Federal Express envelope. “This arrived late this afternoon,” he said. “It’s from Tinker. It was sent yesterday morning around eleven — which means it had to go all the way down to the Federal Express hub in Memphis, then back up to Washington.”
“Did he send it to you or to me?”
“To me,” Mott said. “But inside the Fed Ex packet was a large manila envelope. Printed across it was a somewhat melodramatic message: ‘To Be Opened Only in the Event of My Death.’ And underneath that was Tinker’s signature. Well, since Tinker was indeed dead, I opened it. Inside was a small envelope addressed to you.”
Mott went over to Haynes and handed him the smaller manila envelope. Haynes stared at the envelope. His name had been printed on it with a ballpoint pen. Down and a little to the right in big block letters was the one word PERSONAL, which had been underlined three times.
Haynes ripped open the envelope and removed three sheets of paper of different size and weight. One was a sheet of guest stationery from the Madison Hotel. The others were a carbon copy of a two-page, single-spaced memorandum, dated the previous Saturday and written by Gilbert Undean. The intended recipient was “File.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Mott said.
“Sure.”
“Read it to yourself first and then decide whether it’s necessary — or even wise — for us or anyone to know what it says.”
“Okay,” Haynes agreed.
He read the note from Tinker Burns first. Then he read Gilbert Undean’s memo to file. As Haynes read the memo, all expression left his face and it grew perfectly still except for his eyes, which danced from line to line. When he finished the memo, he looked up and Mott noticed that Haynes’s eyes were no longer dancing. They now looked as old and still as death and just as implacable.
“I think you two should hear Tinker’s note to me,” Haynes said in a curiously formal tone as he looked first at Erika, then at Mott. Before either of them could reply, he began to read aloud:
“ ‘Dear Granny: Here’s a carbon of a memo that Gilbert Undean wrote to his personal file and I found underneath his desk blotter out in Reston after I’d called the cops to tell them he was dead. I thought I could make a few bucks with it but since you’re reading this, I guess I made a mistake. The Big One. Ha. Ha. Anyway, do what you want to with it but play it smarter than I did and remember it’s a carbon and that somebody has got the original. If you need help, you can figure out from the memo who to ask. So long. Tinker.’ ”
A long silence followed. Mott finally ended it by clearing his throat and saying, “I don’t think Erika and I should hear any more. In fact, we may’ve heard too much already.”
“Okay,” Haynes said.
“I want to ask one question,” she said.
Haynes nodded.
“When he said you’d know who to ask for help, who did he mean?”
“Padillo,” Haynes said. “Who else?”
Forty-three
It was easier to find the sender than an open service station after midnight. But Haynes finally found one far out on Georgia Avenue, almost to Silver Spring, where the old Cadillac made a hit with the two young black attendants and a gaggle of equally young kibitzers, who offered a steady stream of advice, if not assistance.
Haynes pulled into the full-service bay and got out. He almost had to shout to make himself heard over the extra-loud boombox rap. After he asked one of the attendants to fill it up, check under the hood and make sure the tires were okay, Haynes began his search for the sender by running an exploratory palm beneath the fenders. When the attendant, who now had the hood up, asked in a near shout what he was looking for, Haynes shouted back, “Rattles.’
He found the sender stuck up underneath the left rear fender. It was the ZC–II model, made in Singapore, and much favored by DEA agents — at least by the several Haynes had met in Los Angeles. Back behind the wheel of the Cadillac, he showed the transmitter to Erika, who examined it curiously. “This the stick-on magnet?” she said, touching its smooth, dark gray side.
“Right.”
“What’ll you do with it?”
“Send it on its way.”
“How?”
“That cab in the self-service bay?”
She looked and nodded.
“Let’s go ask how much the fare is to Dulles. You do the asking.”
They got out of the Cadillac and started toward the middle-aged cab-driver who was putting 87 octane into his two-year-old Chevrolet Caprice sedan. Erika went first. Haynes followed, using a white handkerchief to wipe fender grime from his hands.
“Excuse me,” Erika said to the driver.
He nodded at her, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Haynes dropped the handkerchief and knelt to retrieve it. The driver gave him a glance, then looked back at Erika.
“I need to go to Dulles to meet someone coming in on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt, and I was wondering how much the fare is?”