Death Is My Comrade (5 page)

“Diplomatic immunity,” Creel said. “So what?”

“It's important,” I said, looking at the door again, “because it's reciprocal. Diplomats are usually pretty good eggs, but every now and then you get a rotten one. It's important because if diplomatic immunity weren't an accepted fact in international relations, the Reds could tie us in knots by jailing our people every time they learned something in the Iron Curtain embassies.”

Creel, who had been smoking, dropped his cigarette on my office floor and ground it out with his heel. “I want that envelope, Drum, and I want it now. Don't read me the regulations on diplomatic immunity. I got them memorized.” It was quite a speech for Creel, and he wasn't finished. “You trying to say another Russian popped this boy here?”

“What's in the envelope could lead you to think so.”

“Well, let me tell
you
something. There's no international agreement says we can't make a full murder investigation. There's no international agreement says we can't find ourselves a killer. If we find him, and if he's what you think he is, then we dump it in State's lap. Not before. Not a goddam minute before.”

“What if the envelope was more important than a murder investigation?”

“More important?” said Creel. “There isn't anything more important.”

He had a point there, but so did I. I looked at the door again. Still no Jack.

“The envelope. Let's have it.”

Ilya had died trying to give that information about Vasili Rodzianko to Mike Rodin. Where Rodin fitted the picture I didn't know, but I knew this much: it would be a real propaganda coup for the West if we could prove the Russians were keeping Rodzianko under house arrest, and had been issuing false statements in his name after the Swedish Academy had awarded him the Nobel Prize. Because Rodzianko's book had been interpreted in the West as anti-Communist.

But the State Department would want proof to back up Ilya's claims. If Creel got his hands on the envelope and made its contents known, as he probably would the first time he got within echoing distance of a reporter, the Reds would be warned before State or Central Intelligence could ferret out the proof. And Vasili Rodzianko might even, conveniently, get sick and die.

I shook my head, and Creel barked: “Hey, Phil!”

One of the patrolmen came in. “Lieutenant?”

“Frisk him. We're looking for an envelope.”

The patrolman approached me. Ilya's envelope was in the inside pocket of my jacket. I shrugged and said, “What the hell, okay. I'll get it for you.”

Creel's small pucker of a mouth widened into a smile. “That's more like it,” he said.

I went to the safe and worked the combination. Creel stood right behind me, watching. Then quickly I swung the safe door, took the envelope from my pocket, tossed it into the safe, slammed the door and turned the dial.

Creel's fingers dug into my shoulder. “Did you do what I think you did?”

My no answer was answer enough.

“You crummy shamus, you'll eat your license for that trick.”

“Let's wait for the man from the State Department,” I said.

Creel swung me around. Even his freckles had paled. His hand on my shoulder was shaking with rage.

“Do I hear my name mentioned in vain?” Jack Morley said from the doorway.

Creel let go of me. “Who the hell are you?”

“Morley. Assistant Chief of Protocol, State Department.”

It was a pretty impressive title. Jack Morley was a pretty impressive guy. He was a GS-12, my age and my size, with a thick black crewcut, shell-rimmed glasses and darkly tanned skin. He had the kind of soft, slow, almost lazy voice that makes you stop whatever you're doing to hear his words.

“Mr. Morley,” I said, “I'm glad you're here.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. Jack has a bear-trap brain. I'd called him Mr. Morley, which meant we weren't supposed to be friends at the moment because I had some trouble.

“Mr. Drum?” he said in that almost lazy voice. “It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. I've heard a lot about you.”

“About him?” Creel said.

“Sure have, mister. From my Chief of Section. From
the
Chief himself. Mr. Drum here has done some astonishingly good work for the State Department. He's gone on missions for us to South America and to Europe when, for various reasons, we couldn't send a Department man. He's something of a celebrity around Foggy Bottom.” The facts as Jack had outlined them were true enough, but I wondered if he was troweling them too thick. He pumped my hand again and said, louder, “It certainly is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr. Drum.”

“Something of a celebrity, eh?” Creel echoed. He had got back what little color he had. Jack knew what he was doing.

Creel never even asked him for his identification. Instead, Creel took out his own buzzer and said, “Creel, Homicide Squad.”

Jack acknowledged the introduction perfunctorily, as if he met Homicide lieutenants every day and twice on Sundays, and held them in the same regard as he held the file clerks around Foggy Bottom. Then Jack said: “I understand the dead man was a member of the staff of the Russian Embassy.”

“That's what his ID says,” Creel admitted.

I told Jack the story as I had told it to Creel. He didn't interrupt once, and Creel didn't echo. It took less than five minutes. “The lieutenant and I had just decided,” I finished, “that State ought to have first crack at Alluliev's envelope.”

The patrolman named Phil opened his mouth. Creel chopped his hand at air, cutting off whatever the patrolman was going to say. “First crack,” Creel said in a subdued voice. “That's right.”

I got the envelope out of the safe and gave it to Jack. He stood with his back to the window, reading what was in it. Watching his face avidly, Creel waited. Jack folded the sheet of paper, replaced it in the envelope, put the envelope in his pocket and headed for the door. He turned there. “For Mike Rodin, was it?” he said, scowling. He told Creel: “Don't contact Rodin in any way. We'll take care of that. We'll co-ordinate with Commissioner Mann at the proper time.” The scowl wasn't much, but there was an edge to Jack's voice. That bear-trap brain had fastened itself on Ilya's message. Jack was excited.

Creel cleared his throat and said, “I mean, can we dust it for fingerprints or anything?”

Jack removed the envelope from his pocket, removed the sheet of paper from the envelope, gave the empty envelope to Creel and said: “Surface is probably too soft for good latents, but she's all yours.” He put the sheet of paper in his pocket. Returning to the door, he said: “I'd like to ask Mr. Drum to join me at the office if it's all right with you.”

Creel nodded slowly, mutely.

“Thanks,” Jack said. “Good-bye and good luck.”

He went out into the hall. Just then two men carrying the morgue basket came up. I stood aside to let them pass.

“Rodin,” Jack said to me in a tight whisper. “Can you beat that?”

The telephone rang.

Creel picked it up, said “hello” into the receiver, his voice still subdued. “Yeah, he's here.” He held the receiver out to me. “It's for you, Mr. Drum.”

“Drum speaking,” I said into the phone.

“Chet? Thank God I reached you.” It was Marianne.

“What's the matter?”

“The twins, I.… God, Chet. The twins.…”

She was barely coherent. Marianne was not a” girl to get flustered easily. I felt my heart jolt against my ribs. “Take it from the beginning,” I said, more sharply than I had intended. “What is it?”

“A man was here, early this afternoon. He wanted the envelope. I said I didn't have it. I didn't like his looks, didn't tell him about you. When he left I tried to call you. There wasn't any answer. They came back. Two of them. They searched the house. They … Chet … they just left.…” Marianne was crying.

“What happened?”

“In broad daylight, Chet. Mrs. Gower tried to stop them. They hurt her. They took the twins, Chet. They kidnaped the twins.”

Chapter Six

U
nder the dashboard of the Chrysler there is a sliding shelf which holds one of my Magnums. I got it out, swinging and checking the cylinder. There was a bullet in every chamber except the one under the hammer.

Jack Morley, behind the wheel, said: “God, that's some gun.” Rushing outside with me while I'd told him Marianne's story, he'd taken one look at my face and offered to do the driving.

“Just hurry up,” I said.

We were on Pennsylvania Avenue. Jack made a right turn into heavy traffic on 22nd Street. I sat staring straight ahead, holding the Magnum on my lap. Early rush-hour traffic clogged 22nd Street almost bumper to bumper as far as Washington Circle.

“She's been through too much,” I said. “First Watty's death, now this.” I was staring straight ahead but I didn't see the traffic. I saw Marianne's face.

“What are you going to do, call the Bureau?”

“What good would that do?”

“In D.C.,” Jack said reasonably, “they don't have to wait twenty-four hours to assume state lines have been crossed.”

We hit Washington Circle and swung off it on K Street, heading west. The traffic was still heavy. It eased off some when we climbed the ramp to Whitehurst Freeway.

“They killed the kid right there in my office,” I said. “They're not playing games. They want that letter.”

“What will you do?” Jack asked again.

“Give it to them. They have the twins.”

“All right,” Jack said. “All right, I'll go along with that, but get yourself some law. The kids are too young to recognize their kidnapers, aren't they? They won't be hurt.”

I said nothing. Their being too young to identify their kidnapers was half the story. The other half was that they were too young to be dropped off on a street corner in Georgetown and left to find the way home under their own power. Some kind of contact would have to be made for their return. The kidnapers wouldn't like that.

“Well?” Jack said.

“Step on it, Jack. That's all. Step on it.”

Marianne lived with the twins in a subdivided Georgian town house a block from the Potomac. Hers was the downstairs front apartment. What could have been a fifth apartment, in a one-story wing of the building, had been converted to a garage for the tenants. A door entered the garage directly from Marianne's apartment.

We pulled up past the driveway. I was out and running before Jack set the hand brake. I shoved the Magnum into my jacket pocket as I ran.

Dr. Nickerson opened the door for me. He was a short, stocky, white-haired man with the almost beautiful hands of a violinist or a surgeon. He placed those hands against my chest and held me off.

“Don't go rushing in there like that, Mr. Drum,” he cautioned me. “Exude confidence, will you? She needs it.” Dr. Nickerson had delivered the twins and had cared for Marianne after Wally Baker was murdered.

“Where is she?” I said.

“Bedroom. I wanted to give her a sedative. She wouldn't take it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“She called me. Mrs. Gower was hurt. Assaulted. I had to take six stitches in her scalp.” He added: “Mrs. Baker won't tell me. It's the twins, isn't it? They're gone.”

“Kidnaped,” Jack Morley said, rushing up behind me.

Dr. Nickerson's usually bland face, that was almost magenta from too much sun at one of Washington's parks on a Saturday afternoon in June, got mean. “Animals,” he muttered. “Animals. Why did they do it? She doesn't have a great deal of money.”

“They think she has something they want,” Jack said. “We have it.”

Dr. Nickerson said, a little pompously: “I have treated a victim of assault. The law says I must notify the police.”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Let's go inside.”

Jack showed the doctor his empty hands. “Try arguing with him.”

I pushed past Dr. Nickerson and went inside. I heard someone crying right away. It wasn't Marianne. It was Mrs. Gower. She came out of the living room wearing a helmet of bandages on her head. Her eyes were red. She clutched my hand and wouldn't let go of it.

“Thank God you're here, Mr. Drum,” she said, pawing at her tear-streaked cheeks with her free hand. “You're going to get them back, aren't you? You're going to get them back.”

I think I nodded. I couldn't get Marianne out of my mind. That was all for the moment, just Marianne, waiting in there, not asleep but not making a sound either. And I thought: some people are born to be unlucky. First Wally, now this. Now the twins.

That wasn't going to get me anywhere. I asked again: “Where is she?”

Mrs. Gower pointed mutely down the hall to the nursery door. Before going in there I asked: “Who were they? Can you describe them?”

“Two men. Two fiends from hell,” Mrs. Gower said theatrically. “I don't know, they were just men. In work clothes, though. Your age, maybe a little older. One of them was very big, bigger than you. I don't know … that's all.”

“They speak with an accent?”

“No, Mr. Drum. They were native sons.” She had started to cry again. “I can't help you. I can't be of any use to you at all.” Grief and frustration made her face ugly. “I can't even tell you what they look like.”

I went to the nursery and knocked softly on the door. There wasn't any answer. I opened the door. The curtains were drawn. Probably the twins had been sleeping.

Marianne was standing with her back to me, one hand raised, fingers clenched on the footboard of one of the cribs. The index finger of her other hand traced a pattern on the wall, traced the image of a clown being borne aloft by an enormous balloon on the wallpaper.

“Marianne,” I said.

She didn't turn around. Her finger kept tracing the clown. “Hello, Chet.” Her voice was neither laden with emotion nor bereft of it. She sounded almost casual.