A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (22 page)

“Sure.”

“He would be a good place to start.  Who are you working for, Booth?  The Americans?”

“I’m working for myself,” Salinger answered.

“Good,” he said.  “No one trusts the Americans or the British anymore.”

“There’s another reason I called . . . I may need to bring someone in,” Salinger said.  “A holiday in Italy this time of the year may be good for them.”

“Let me know and I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Thank you, Peter,” Salinger said, then hung up the phone and stood at the window.  Below the dull façade of the hotel, the waters of the river wound like a black snake through the dusk.  Across the graceful roofs of nineteenth century buildings, off in the distance, a yellowed flare flickered from an oil refinery.  He stood there for a long time and watched the lights of the city sparkling in the evening.  Tomorrow he would be back in a world from his past, a place where he thought he’d never go again. 

Salinger went to the closet and tossed his travel bag on the bed.  It was while he was packing that it came to him.  Mayfield hadn’t asked why Goli wanted to find Walter Bredow.

-Twenty-One-

Isafahan.

A town of narrow streets.
  The rain from last night was gone, replaced with a blue teal sky and a hot sun.  Salinger and Goli finished a late breakfast at an open café built along the garden beside a secluded street.  Salinger sat there with a wide view of the slate-colored mountains and read an English newspaper and smoked a cigarette.  Goli wore a brown dress and sunglasses while she drank coffee.

Two tables over men played cards.  Earlier, they had walked from the main street to the café, and took a table under the shade of a tree branching out over the fence.  Finally, the card game broke up and the men ambled down the small street and into the crowd.

One man lingered, then approached limping badly on his right leg, and took the table beside them.  He wore a cheap charcoal suit that hung loosely on his body.  One hand remained in his coat pocket as he stared. “Good morning.”

He nodded toward Goli.  “And how is the lady enjoying the morning?”

“Fine,” she said.  Then she stood and walked away.

“This was a much better place before the war,” he said in halting English.

“Any place is better without war,” Salinger told him, a simple code recited.

When the old man leaned across the table, the morning sun came through the trees and fell across his face.  He smelled of garlic.  “You have papers proving who you are?”

Salinger produced several folded sheets from his suit pocket, and handed them over.  After studying the documents for a long moment, the man handed them back with his good hand.  “So it is.  They tell me that you are thinking of some sightseeing.”

“I’m to meet a friend.”

The old man turned and watched two boys laughing as they crossed the narrow street in front of them.  Their footsteps clicked on the stone street until they were gone and the street fell silent again.  “Do you have an American cigarette?”

“I have French cigarettes,” Salinger said, producing the tin from his coat pocket.

“Even better.”  The old man lit the cigarette.  “And you have a motorcar?”

Salinger pointed to the black Fiat parked just down the street.

“Good, then drive perhaps two kilometers south of the city.  On the right side of the road is a grove of trees.  Across the railway tracks is a hotel.  I think there you will meet interesting people.”

The old man limped down the street.

Goli came back and sat.  “So?”

“He told me where Bredow is.  I’ll go there within the hour.”

She asked, “Tell me about the man, this German.” 

“Walter Bredow.”  Salinger remembered.  “A German assassin picked up by British Intelligence in Madrid in late 1941.  Two years later he killed two ex-Gestapo officers in Lyons to prove himself,
then he was put on ice until his services were needed.  He was sent to Prague.  That was the last I knew of him.”

“Why a German?”

“For no reason other than he had dirty hands and he was an expert.  He operated freely in Iran,” Salinger explained, “That’s the way it was done then.”

Salinger finished his coffee, and they walked to the Fiat.  As the old man instructed, Salinger alone headed on the main road.

----

A hotel across from the railway station.
             

When Salinger entered the
room on the third floor, there was the woman and he hadn’t counted on that.

Salinger had known Eva Vermeer when she had worked in Allied intelligence as a runner.  She was almost thirty now with dark hair and a short, slim body.  She had a round white face with pewter eyes that flickered when she was nervous.  She stood at the doorway wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, elbow in hand smoking a cigarette. 
             

Eva said, “Walter’s to come straight over from the station.” 

“Where is he arriving from?”

“He travels a lot,
Booth.  He’s nervous about all this and about why you wanted to see him.”

“Of course he’s nervous, he’s a German,” Salinger said when he’d had time to think about it.  “But he knows why I’m here.  If he sai
d he didn’t, then he’s lying.”
“He’s good to me, I want you know that.”

“That makes me feel better,” Salinger said.

Eva smiled, and came closer and put out her cigarette in the ashtray on the chair arm.  Salinger could smell her sweet skin. 

“Everything will be all right, Eva.  Just you wait,” he told her, though he couldn’t figure why she had taken up with a fellow like Bredow.  “I’ll get what I want from Walter,
then I’m out of your life.”

“I believe you, Booth, I always have.”  Then she disappeared down the hallway.

Salinger looked at his watch, and then leaned, glancing out the window at the train station.  Bredow was late.

The scurrying outside the door froze Salinger’s heart.  He cleared the pistol from his coat pocket, listened to the rattling of keys.  Bredow came in and stood inside the door.  The German stepped to the table and set down a shopping bag and a folded newspaper.  Then he came to the chair across the small table.  He had stocky shoulders, thick eyebrows that ran across a wide, leathery face.  Gray eyes stared over coffee-colored pouches.  “Well, now that you’ve found me,” Bredow said finally, “what would you like to discuss?”

“Let’s try the truth.”

Bredow grunted.  “Yes, who can you and I trust anymore?  It’s obvious that you can’t trust me, can you?”

“I could have at one time.  A gentleman’s agreement, I believe you told me back then.  You performed well beyond what was expected.” 

“And this is how you repay me?  Coming to my house and demanding more?”

Salinger leaned forward.  “You became involved in something you should have avoided.”

“And what is that?”

“The assassination of Bozorg Faqiri.”

Bredow stared at him, his face very pale.  “Yes, I’m sorry about that if he was your friend.  And, I’ll tell you that I’m sick of all this.  I’ve been sick of it all for a long time.”

“Who ordered it?”

“I don’t know.  You must believe that.  A phone call late at night as most of these things happen.”

“Was it a voice you would have recognized?”

“The conversation was very brief.  The operation issued by a coded telegram delivered to my hotel room.  I was paid to inform them when the operation had been completed, and that was that.”

“And you never thought that was wrong?”

“They paid me, Salinger.  The only reason I’ve ever done anything in this business is for the money.  I’ve never possessed loyalty to anything . . . country or man . . . only a deep devotion to live as I like.”

Salinger asked again, “who paid you? 
The Soviets?”

“I don’t know.”

Bredow certainly wasn’t beyond bargaining with information.  Salinger had the safe house in Italy to bargain with, that had been arranged.  But the contempt on the German’s face told him it wasn’t time for that yet. 

“What about Yousef Abbosi?  He and Faqiri were political enemies.”

“Political foes don’t always shoot each other, Salinger.”

“If it meant more than just politics,” Salinger said.  “Could he tell us?”

“Ask him yourself.”

“I think I will.”  Salinger stood.

The German glanced over his shoulder.  “You didn’t know about Eva, did you? And—you’re wondering why she would take up with me, don’t you?”

“It’s none of my business.”
  Salinger stood.  “Believe me I hate this because of Eva.  But think about this for a moment—whoever ordered the hit on Faqiri, once they know I’m in Isafahan looking into the matter, your life becomes nothing.” 

“I thought about that the moment I saw you sitting there,” the German said.

“That’s very smart of you, Walter.”

Salinger walked to the door.  Eva stood in the shadows of the narrow hallway, her face washed white with everything that had been spoken.

----

For over an hour Salinger waited across the street outside of the hotel.  Finally Bredow came out and walked along the street congested with pedestrians, past several fruit stands and toward the station.  It was a low profile, dark and unfriendly building, and at the entrance were two guards flanking the double bank of glass doors.

A large number of passengers hurriedly exited the train.  One brushed rudely against the German and Bredow backed against a near wall to avoid the flow of departing passengers.  The arriving train stopped on the inside track, its black frame crackling, gray steam floating from underneath.  Bredow waited as another wave of passengers departed through the doorways, and then he stepped onto the metal steps and into the carriage car.

Salinger edged closer ready to jump on.  Was the German going to make a run for it?

But Bredow stepped out of the train and headed toward the exit and onto the crowded street.

Salinger followed.
  A small boy scurried alongside the German.  Inquisitive eyes turned upward, a sheathed notebook under his arm. A pencil curled protectively in his small hand.

----

The man in the brown suit was no longer standing under the theater marquee where he had watched Salinger enter the hotel.  Instead, he was now several blocks away, in the dark shade of a drugstore entrance away from the awful sun.  Leaning against the cool wall, he could feel his shirt soaked in sweat underneath his coat.

Finally, he saw Salinger exit from the train station.  The German and a boy were fifteen meters ahead of him.  He watched as they crossed the street, and as a cautionary measure glanced back
to see if the black sedan was still parked across the street.

He flicked the cigarette ashes from his brown lapel,
then reached for the keys in his trouser pocket.

----

Goli had left him telling him she would return later that night.

Later, Salinger went downstairs sat in the hotel bar and ordered a drink.  He listened to a conversation at a table between a Swiss businessman and two Iranians.  They wore suits and drank wine.  Later Salinger went for a long walk to clear his head.  Turning at the river, he headed back to the hotel.  Overhead, zinc-colored clouds filled the night with rain.

At first Salinger didn’t notice her standing along the wall and away from the light.  Eva stepped out of the shadows wearing a belted camel hair coat.  She pulled the hood away from her face and ran her fingers through her cropped hair.

“I had to come,”
she said and took another step, the light revealing her pale face and that gave her away.  She held out a package.  A diplomatic pouch.  “Walter lied to you and I can’t stand that.”

“You don’t have to do this, Eva.”

“It’s not what he said when you and he were discussing things, but what he didn’t tell you,” she said.  Salinger took the pouch, put his arm around her.  “The pouch is from the hotel room,” she said.  “Walter’s gone.”

“We shouldn’t go back there,” Salinger said.  “We’ll go up to my room.”

They entered the hotel room, and Eva sat on the couch.  Salinger sat under the lamp at the end of the couch.  He noticed the seals had been broken as he opened the pouch and read the letters. 
Then he replaced the documents.

“You were right.”

“I thought so,” she said.  “Are you going to tell me?”

“It would put you in danger,” he said.  “You’ve done enough just by coming here tonight.  We should put this back before your husband returns.”

“Being in danger doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It may matter because of the boy.  I followed Bredow to the station and saw
the him.  He looks like his mother, Eva.”

“But I have to know why you came back.”