Recoil (26 page)

Mathieson said, “Maybe I'm just paranoid. A secret's only a secret as long as one person knows it. But you can see how it's going to work—you wired it yourself.”

“All I can see is, you expect something to be said in that office, and you want it heard by Ezio Martin but not by federal agents. I don't get much out of that.”

“Are you sure? Think about it.”

They went down and signed out; they walked to the car and got in. Homer put the key in the ignition but didn't turn it; he was scowling. Finally he shook his head. “No. I don't get to first base.”

“Good. If you can't figure it out then Bradleigh won't figure it out either. He'll know his bug's been tampered with, but he won't know why.”

“Sometimes you're a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“I hope I am,” Mathieson said.

2

He made the phone call at 10:30 in the morning from a pay phone in the lobby of the Hay Adams. “Is Mr. Gillespie in?”

“Who's calling please?”

“This is Walter Benson. From Oklahoma.”

“I'll see if he's in …”

He waited, nervously impatient. He'd rehearsed it endlessly.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Gillespie?”

“Yes. Who's this?”

“I gave your secretary the name Walter Benson.”

“I know you did. Who are you?”

“Actually my name is Robert Zeck but it won't mean anything to you—I'm sure you haven't heard of me.” He made his voice a fruity tenor, lilting and supercilious. “I happen to have come across some items I believe would interest you.”

“Yes?”

“Let me mention three names to you. Edward Merle. John Fusco. Philip Draper.”

“Never heard of them. What's this all—”

“Naturally you haven't heard of them. I really rather dislike telephones, I'm sure you understand—perhaps I could drop by your office for a little chat?”

“Where are you?”

“Not far from your office. I can be there in half an hour.”

“I'll be here.”

He went into the coffee shop and dawdled over a cup of tea and a newspaper: partly to calm his nerves and partly because it wouldn't hurt Gillespie to stew a while. Then he went into the men's room and inspected his disguise in the mirror. It was nothing radical. The padding under his newly bought suit added the appearance of twenty pounds to his weight. The cotton wads between upper gums and cheeks broadened his face. The bleach—a rinse that could be washed out immediately—made his hair and moustache a dirty tawny blond. The glasses with black plastic frames lent pedantic seriousness and further obscured the rectangular structure of his face. Finally there were the rings—six gaudy big rings on the fingers of both hands. The sort of thing that would be remembered at the expense of other detail. The suit was an ill-cut gray pinstripe, the tie was something with dreary red-and-black diagonal stripes. The overall appearance was that of a weary civil servant.

At five minutes to eleven he left the hotel and walked to the taxi rank.

3

When he left the elevator on the seventh floor he pressed his elbow in against the hard weight of the .38 under his jacket. If the scheme worked he wouldn't need it, but Gillespie was unpredictable and it might take a show of arms.

The receptionist took him back through the partition and he trailed along as though he hadn't seen the place before. She showed him into the corner office and disengaged herself while Gillespie rose to his feet.

Gillespie was taller than he'd thought.

“Mr. Zeck.” The voice and eyes were guarded.

An attack of nerves stopped him just inside the door. He cleared his throat and pushed his voice into the higher register. “Nice office. Very nice, yes.” He bobbed his eyes around the room, feigned a minor loss of equilibrium and pressed the side of his shoe firmly against the switch that disconnected Bradleigh's microphone.

He pushed the door shut and stepped forward, contriving a nervous smile.

“What's this all about?”

“Let's be circumspect.” He stared whimsically through his glasses at a point a yard above Gillespie's head. “You're really quite well fixed here, aren't you.”

Gillespie sidestepped to sit down and the movement brought his feet in view under the desk: He was wearing platform shoes. That explained it. Yesterday on the street Mathieson had seen him only at a distance. A short man who wanted to be tall.

Mathieson flashed a courteous unconvincing smile. He felt no pity at all: He'd thought he might but Gillespie's sharp arrogant face made such an emotion impossible. He felt a sort of pleasure. “Robert Zeck is not my name, of course.”

“I'm busy, Mr. Zeck.”

“I won't take long. May I sit down?”

Gillespie jerked his head toward a chair. Mathieson lowered himself and crossed his legs and flashed an unconvincing smile. “As you know, the bureaucracy works in mysterious ways its blunders to perform. Somehow even the most secret of secrets has a way of being filed away in quintuplicate. I came across your name recently on a printout from a government computer.”

“My name?”

“In connection with certain reports turned in by the Witness Security Program office.”

If Gillespie was surprised he didn't show it. “Do you work for the government?”

“It doesn't matter who I work for. At the moment I'm working for myself—that's all you need to know. I may be working for you, for that matter.”

“For me?”

“I'm doing you a service, Mr. Gillespie. The printout had to do with confidential informants—CIs as we call them.”

“I don't see what that's got to do with me.”

“Normally the identities of CIs aren't put in writing. The identity of the informant usually is a private matter between him and his contact. Now and then in an excess of bureaucratic zeal the government agent makes the mistake of reporting not only the information but its source.”

“I'm losing patience fast, Mr. Zeck.”

“I doubt that.' I've got you over a barrel.”

Gillespie's laugh was a cruel snort.

Mathieson kept his voice pitched high. “A few months ago you extorted information from a secretary in the Witness Security office. She gave you the current names and addresses of four men—Merle, Benson, Fusco and Draper. You passed that information on to your clients, Frank Pastor and Ezio Martin.”

“You're out of your mind.”

“The Witness Security office discovered the leak. The secretary was taken into custody and persuaded to talk. Naturally she gave them your name.”

“She lied, then.”

“Why? Because you'd never told her your real name? It happens she took the precaution of noting down the license number of that red Thunderbird of yours. Then she identified your photograph. You know we'd get this done a lot faster if you'd stop interrupting me with pointless denials.”

“Say what you came to say.”

“The next step is an assumption, I admit. I can't prove it but I assume you must have realized how risky your situation was. As soon as you got the information from the secretary and passed it on to your clients, you became a member of a conspiracy. An accessory to attempted murder.”

“That's a crock. I never——”

“Well you may have had some other reason, I admit that. If so, I don't know what it was. In any case I do know what happened. You had to protect yourself in case anything went wrong. Something did go wrong, of course—the secretary was arrested and she incriminated you. But you'd already prepared for that. You'd already made a clandestine contact with government agents.”

“I
what?
”

“It's all on the computer printout, Mr. Gillespie. You made a deal with the government—you talked. Information in return for your own immunity. That explains why you haven't been arrested, of course.”

“You're out of your mind.” Gillespie's voice climbed.

“You said that before.” Mathieson smiled imperturbably. Inside he felt a chilled satisfaction: It was working. Gillespie had taken the hook. “The state of my sanity is beside the point.”

“You're not going to——”

“I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. You gave information to the government. Tipped off by you, the government was able to hide three of the four intended victims before Frank Pastor's killers could reach them. How else could the government have acted so fast, if you hadn't given them advance warning? They didn't even arrest the secretary until several days later. The information couldn't have come from her. It came from you.”

“The hell it did. There was an attack on Benson and they put two and two together, that's all. Nobody tipped them to anything.”

“I see where you'd have to take that position. But it won't hold up.”

“I've never contacted anybody in that office. I never gave information about anything to anybody. I don't know where you got——”

“Your information was too late to protect Benson but it gave them time to hide the other three men. Now the field agents file weekly reports on these cases. One of those reports drew my attention. I happened to retrieve it in a batch of printouts that had to do with a computer audit. I saw the report and the significance of it was obvious. It states that you came forward privately to a government agent and told him the whole story. You're pinned like a butterfly, you know.”

“You're stark raving bananas.”

“Look at it this way. If that report should ever be shown to Frank Pastor or Ezio Martin, what do you suppose would happen to you?”

“Wait a minute. There's no such report and you know it.”

“Not now there isn't. I agree. I erased your name from the memory bank of the computer. I substituted the phrase ‘confidential informant' wherever your name appeared in the printout of that report. Do you understand now?”

“I understand that you're a——”

“I've still got two tapes of the original printout. One copy is in my possession. I don't have it here with me but I can lay my hands on it. The second copy is in a sealed envelope in the custody of a disinterested party. He has instructions to mail the tape to Frank Pastor if anything should happen to me.”

“What kind of slimy game is this? What are you——”

“To put it simply, blackmail.”

“You bastard.”

“I've got evidence that can destroy you, Gillespie. If I put it in Pastor's hands you're a dead man. I'm willing to sell you the evidence. It's a simple straightforward proposition.”

“It's a fucking lie. I never informed on——”

“The computer says you did. Computers don't lie. Now shall we discuss terms?”

“I'm not discussing anything.”

“That's shortsighted.”

“The whole thing's a fucking lie.”

“Why should the agency lie about it?”

Gillespie squinted shrewdly at him. “You're one of them.”

“One of what?”

“Corcoran and Bradleigh. One of that outfit.”

“The Witness Security Program? No, I'm afraid not. Not my department at all.”

“Sure you are. They sent you up here with this load of shit. It was supposed to scare me into spilling my guts.”

“If you doubt the tape exists I'll be happy to make a copy of it and send it to you.”

“If there's a tape it's a phony. It doesn't prove a thing.”

“Let's go over this again. First, if you didn't inform, then how did the government know Merle and Fusco and Draper were in danger? Second, since the secretary implicated you months ago, why weren't you arrested? Your freedom alone is persuasive evidence that the tape isn't a fake.”

“It's a fucking frame. I don't know whose idea this was, but by God——”

“The tapes will cost you one hundred thousand dollars. In cash. Small unmarked untraceable currency. Random serial numbers. When the money's in my hands I'll deliver both copies of the tape to you. Otherwise I send one copy to Frank Pastor and one copy to Ezio Martin.”

Mathieson stood up. He moved quickly to the door.

Gillespie slowly rose from his chair. He stared at Mathieson with no expression at all on his sharp features. Mathieson turned brightly, pressing his foot against the switch, activating Bradleigh's microphone. “I'll be in touch in a day or two. Think it over and let me know how you want to proceed. It's up to you. I have every confidence you'll do the right thing.”

Gillespie didn't say a word. Mathieson opened the door, went through it and pulled it shut behind him.

By the time he reached the elevator he was shaking badly and the sweat burst from his pores, but he had a savage sense of triumph.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Washington, D.C.: 4 October

1

G
lLLESPIE STEWED FOR HALF AN HOUR. THE RECEPTIONIST
announced the arrival of a client; Gillespie said, “I've got to make a call. You'll have to ask him to wait.” Then he picked up the private line. He put the coded card into the phone and let it dial for him.

“Bellamy Security, may I help you?”

“C. K. Gillespie. Let me talk to Ernie.”

“I'll see if he's in, Mr. Gillespie.”

“You do that. It's important, honey.”

“Yes, sir. Hold on a minute please.”

In a moment she was back: “I have Mr. Guffin for you now.”

Ernie's voice was coarse; you kept wishing he'd clear his throat. “Get off the line, Mary Lou.” Gillespie heard the click. “What can I do for you, counselor?”

“There was a man in my office about thirty-five minutes ago. Gave his name as Robert Zeck. Some kind of government computer technician—says he does audits on computerized files.”

“What do you want about him?”

“Robert Zeck's a phony name. I want to find out who he is.”