'You think...?'
'Yes, I think we have our witness. I think we have our leaker, too.' Ryan explained that one quietly.
He had just called to hear the sound of her voice. So close to his goal, he was allowing himself to look beyond it. It wasn't terribly professional, but for all his professionalism, Kelly remained human.
'John, where are you?' The urgency in her voice was even greater than the day before.
'I have a place,' was all he was willing to say.
'I have a message for you. James Greer, he said you should call him.'
'Okay.'Kelly grimaced - he was supposed to have done that the day before.
'Was that you in the paper?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean,' she whispered, 'three dead people on the Eastern Shore.'
'I'll get back to you,' he said almost as fast as the chill hit him.
??ll? didn't have the paper delivered to his apartment for the obvious reason, but now he needed one. There was a dispenser at the corner, he remembered. He only needed one look.
Whatdoes she know about me?
It was too late for recrimination. He'd faced the same problem with her as with Doris. She'd been asleep when he'd done the job, and the pistol shots had awakened her. He'd blindfolded her, dumped her, explained to her that Burt had planned to kill her, given her enough cash to catch a Greyhound to somewhere. Even with the drugs, she'd been shocked and scared. But the cops had her already. How the hell had that happened?
Screw the how,son, they have her.
Just that fast the world had changed for him.
Okay, so now what do you do? It was that thought which occupied his mind for the walk back to his apartment.
For starters, he had to get rid of the.45, but he'd already decided to do that. Even if he had left no evidence at all behind, it was a link. When this mission was over, it wasover. But now he needed help, and where else to get it but from the people for whom he had killed?
'Admiral Greer, please? This is Mr Clark.'
'Hold, please,' Kelly heard, then: 'You were supposed to call in yesterday, remember?'
'I can be there in two hours, sir'
'I'll be waiting.'
'Where's Cas?' Maxwell asked, annoyed enough to use his nickname. The chief who ran his office understood.
'I already called his home, sir. No answer.'
'That's funny.' Which it wasn't, but the chief understood that, too.
'Want me to have somebody at Bolling check it out, Admiral?'
'Good idea.' Maxwell nodded and returned to his office.
Ten minutes later a sergeant of the Air Force's Security Police drove from his guard shack to the collection of semidetached dwellings used by senior officers on Pentagon duty. The sign on the yard said Rear Admiral C. P. Podulski, USN, and showed a pair of aviator wings. The sergeant was only twenty-three and didn't interact with flag officers any more than he had to, but he had orders to see if there was any trouble here. The morning paper was sitting on the step; There were two automobiles in the carport, one of which had a Pentagon pass on the windshield, and he knew that the Admiral and his wife lived alone. Summoning his courage, the sergeant knocked on the door, firmly but not too noisily. No luck. Next he tried the bell. No luck. Now what? the young NCO wondered. The whole base was government property, and he had the right under regulations to enter any house on the post, and he had orders, and his lieutenant would probably back him up. He opened the door. There was no sound. He looked around the first floor, finding nothing that hadn't been there since the previous evening. He called a few times with no result, and then decided that he had to go upstairs. This he did, with one hand on his white leather holster...
Admiral Maxwell was there twenty minutes later.
'Heart attack,' the Air Force doctor said. 'Probably in his sleep.'
That wasn't true of his wife, who lay next to him. She had been such a pretty woman, Dutch Maxwell remembered, and devastated by the loss of their son. The half-filled glass of water sat on a handkerchief so as not to harm the wooden night table. She'd even replaced the top of the pill container before she'd lain back down beside her husband. Dutch looked over to the wooden valet. His undress white shirt was there, ready for another day's service to his adopted country, the Wings of Gold over the collection of ribbons, the topmost of which was pale blue, with five white stars. They'd had a meeting planned to talk about retirement. Somehow Dutch wasn't surprised.
'God have mercy,' Dutch said, seeing the only friendly casualties of Operation boxwood green.
What do I say? Kelly asked himself, driving through the gate. The guard eyeballcd him pretty hard despite his pass, perhaps wondering how badly the Agency paid its field personnel. He did get to park his wreck in the visitors' lot, better placement than people on the payroll, which seemed slightly odd. Walking into the lobby, Kelly was met by a security officer and led upstairs. It seemed more ominous now, walking the drab and ordinary corridors peopled with anonymous people, but only because this building was about to become a confessional of sorts for a soul who had not quite decided if he were a sinner or not. He hadn't visited Ritter's office before. It was on the fourth floor and surprisingly small. Kelly had thought the man important - and though he actually was, his office as yet was not.
'Hello, John,' Admiral Greer said, still reeling from the news he'd received a half hour before from Dutch Maxwell. Greer pointed him to a seat, and the door was closed. Ritter was smoking, to Kelly's annoyance.
'Glad to be back home, Mr Clark?' the field officer asked. There was a copy of the Washington Post on his desk, and Kelly was surprised to see that the Somerset County story had made the first page there, too.
'Yes, sir, I guess you can say that.' Both of the older men caught the ambivalence. 'Why did you want me to come in?'
'I told you on the airplane. It may turn out that your action bringing that Russian out might save our people yet. We need people who can think on their ieet. You can. I'm offering you a job in my part of the house.'
'Doing what?'
'Whatever we fell you to do,' Ritter answered. He already had something in mind.
'I don't even have a college degree.'
Ritter pulled a thick folder from his desk. 'I had this brought in from St Louis.' Kelly recognized the forms. It was his complete Navy personnel-records package. 'You really should have taken the college scholarship. Your intelligence scores are even higher than I thought, and it shows you have language skills that are better than mine. James and I can waive the degree requirements.'
'A Navy Cross goes a long way, John,' Greer explained. 'What you did, helping to plan boxwood green and then later in the field, that sort of thing goes a long way, too.'
Kelly's instinct battled against his reason. The problem was, he wasn't sure which part of him was in favor of what. Then he decided that he had to tell the truth to somebody.
'There's a problem, gentlemen.'
'What's that?' Ritter asked.
Kelly reached across the desk and tapped the article on the front page of the paper. 'You might want to read that.'
'I did. So? Somebody did the world a favor,' the officer said lightly. Then he caught the took in Kelly's eyes, and his voice became instantly wary. 'Keep talking, Mr Clark.'
"That's me, sir.'
'What are you talking about, John?' Greer asked.
"The file's out, sir,' the records clerk said over the phone.
'What do you mean?' Ryan objected. 'I have some copies from it right here.'
'Could you hold for a minute? I'll put my supervisor on.' The phone went on hold, something that the detective cordially hated.
Ryan looked out his window with a grimace. He'd called the military's central records-storage facility, located in St Louis. Every piece of paper relating to every man or woman who had ever served in uniform was there, in a secure and carefully guarded complex, the nature of which was a curiosity, but a useful one, to the detective, who'd more than once gotten data from the facility.