The Proxy Assassin (22 page)

“What do you have in mind?”

“To let Leonid make his pitch to you, then nab him when you part company.”

“And you can do that without getting me shot?”

“I'll try my damndest, Julia, but I can't guarantee it.”

“All right, let's go.”

My kinda gal. But a thought occurred. “We can't.”

“Why not?”

“This is a big meet. Leonid will be shadowed by Soviet agents. Which will make it next to impossible to bag him.”

“If I don't show he'll call and arrange something else,” said Julia.

“Uh uh. You've ticked off the FBI, he'll figure your phone's tapped. Leonid can't risk contacting you and we have no way of contacting him. Do we?”

“No, but he might leave a message at the Star.”

“I
guess.”

“And who's to say this Leonid won't just give up when I don't show?”

I shook my head. “This is his last shot. Oh, he's got a back up reporter if you don't come through, but you passed his first test with flying colors. I'm guessing he'll give you tonight before he goes to Plan B.”

I got off the couch and paced across the narrow apartment, turned around and paced back. Julia hadn't settled in here yet. The landscapes on the living room wall were yellowed leftovers from a previous tenant.

“Okay, the first rule of missed connections is to return to the initial point of contact. Where was it?”

Julia described Bonnie's, a homey diner in Georgetown with curtains on the windows. I pictured Leonid in the
Café Gestern
in Berlin where we first met. At a corner table, away from the window, facing the door.

“If there's no message at the Star,” said Julia, “we'll go to Bonnie's Diner.”

“Good.”

“And what about his Soviet agents?”

“Lenny is not an agent in good standing. Plus he's an asshole.”

“Meaning his back up boys will ditch him when I don't show for my ten o'clock.”

Julia grinned at my wide-eyed surprise. “I'm a quick study.”

She was that. Now all I had to do was figure a way to subdue a veteran agent on full alert. My .44 would be worthless, Vitinov would know I couldn't risk shooting him. Once he saw me he would know his mission had been blown and his life was over. Lavrenty Beria wouldn't forgive him twice.

My plan was for Julia to wait at Bonnie's Diner and hope Leonid showed. I would find an observation post and wait till the meet was over to make my play.

But what if Leonid sneaked out
the back door? What if he…

“Yoo hoo, Hal, over here,” said Julia, waving a hand in front of my face. “This is simple. Terry thinks I'm a bimbo infatuated with his oily charm. I know how to deal with him.”

“I'm listening.”

“There's a tavern on the corner. I'll bat my eyes at him and say I don't want coffee and lemon pie, I need a drink. You jump him when we walk over.”

“That's very gutsy, thank you. Now all we need is a reason why you stood him up,” I said. “Something trashy since he thinks you're a bimbo.”

“Sure. Why not give me a shiner and I'll say I had a drunken fight with my sister.”

“Right eye or left?”

Julia put her hands on her hips. “I can't figure you, Schroeder. I can't decide if you're a real life intelligence agent or just a half-assed joker.”

I adjusted my horn-rim glasses and said something I had read in the back stacks of the Cleveland Public Library and had always wanted to repeat even if I wasn't quite sure what it meant.

“That, my dear Miss Julia, is what we intellectuals call a ‘distinction without a difference.'”

I took a certain perverse pleasure in watching Julia struggle to bite back a giggle.

Julia left her
building by the front door and headed to the Evening Star offices on Pennsylvania Ave downtown. I donned my wool topcoat against the chill and left by the back door.

It was a quarter of ten on a Sunday night and quiet as a tomb save for a yowling cat. I heel and toed my way east down the alley. Conditions were ideal for detecting a tail – a clear night in a quiet part of town.

The FBI favors the tag team automotive method but I didn't spot any four-door Ford sedans idling at cross streets as I hiked west. I didn't hear any following footsteps, didn't see anyone behind me when I spun around. I could smell a shag, I swear. But I couldn't see one.

Miss Julia and I had made a plan. She would need a hat. She selected a black, close-fitting little number but I objected. The hat needed to be instantly recognizable. Julia shrugged, she was a one-hat gal. We decided on an orange scarf pulled up over the back of her hair and tied with a topknot.

Julia was to flag a cab to the Evening Star and check for a message from Leonid. At 10:40 she would walk the three blocks to the M Street streetcar line. I would hoof it to the next stop on the M line.

Julia would take a window seat on the right hand side. There were four possibilities. Julia had, or had not, gotten a message from Leonid, and had, or had not, been followed. If she had gotten a message she would exit the streetcar at my stop. If not she would keep her seat. If she thought she'd been tailed she would be bareheaded. If not she would wear her orange scarf.

Thus, if she stepped off the streetcar at my stop wearing her orange scarf we would hurry off happily to her rescheduled
meet. If she kept her seat while wearing her orange scarf I would bound aboard and join Julia on her trip to Bonnie's Diner.

I wanted to see that ugly orange scarf in other words. I wanted to know we weren't being shadowed. The spy game has a simple scoring system that's independent of politics and war. Whoever holds superior knowledge at the end of the contest wins.

I was excited. As an observation agent my WWII service consisted mostly of hiding in mudholes. But now, as an operational agent, I would get to use actual tradecraft.

I checked Captain Dragomir's pocket watch. 9:48. I was about twelve blocks from my destination. I had a few spare minutes to call Bill Harvey's private line.

Leonid would be State Department certified as a special attaché to the Soviet Ambassador or somesuch, meaning he would have full diplomatic immunity, meaning the worst we could do was deport him.

But Bill Harvey wouldn't let any of that bother him.

I got to R Street and looked around for a phone booth. No Ford four-doors sat idling, no stealthy figures lurked. The hair on the back of my neck stood down. I wanted a phone booth to avoid being overheard but none presented themselves. The only establishment open at the late hour was a corner tavern, Swoozy's Joynt. I swoozed in.

An intelligence agent is supposed to have keen powers of observation. But I had been preoccupied, hadn't noticed the neighborhood's storefront churches and catfish stands. I hadn't noticed but the patrons sure noticed me. I was the only white face in the joynt.

I had been to a shinebox before, in both Cleveland and Youngstown. They always have a killer jukebox, everything from Delta blues to Louis Prima. The key was to pump nickels into the Wurlitzer and let your hep choice of tunes show you belonged.

But the
jukebox sat silent this evening. Swoozy's dozen or so patrons were listening to a glowing Philco that sat behind the bar. A fire-breathing speaker with a gospel cadence had them mesmerized. While I couldn't make out much of what he was saying his tone was unmistakable. He was angry. Angry at folks who looked like me if the hard stares of the patrons were any clue.

There was a pay phone at the back of the bar. A pay phone on which a large man in a Panama hat was having a heated conversation.

I squeezed onto an empty stool near the door and ordered a draft from a tall black woman with hoop earrings and a regal bearing. Was this Swoozy? She poured me a beer, set it down and ignored my dollar bill. My money wasn't welcome here. Neither was I.

I leaned back and looked down the bar at the phone box. Panama Hat was in full harangue, in ragged counterpoint to the radio preacher. I needed to talk to Bill Harvey right now. There was a big man on the pay phone and another phone behind the bar that money wouldn't buy. What then?

I got my wallet in my left hand, put my right hand in my gun pocket and strode the length of the bar, hoping a bit of misdirection would do the trick, hoping my out-of-state driver's license would pass for an FBI buzzer.

The big man in the Panama hat was dripping sweat though the room was cold. He gave me a yellow-eyed once over as I approached, then returned to his argument. Someone was late with a payment. Whether Panama Hat was the creditor or the debtor I couldn't say. He would have to work it out later in any event, I had a Soviet saboteur to apprehend.

I whipped open my wallet while hoisting my .44 from my pocket and holding it at my side. “Agent Schroeder, FBI, I need this phone.”

The big man didn't look at anything but my face. “Wait your turn,” he growled, “
ofay
.”

This brought a wave of guttural approval from the patrons behind me. Someone turned down the radio. Panama Hat and I were now the evening's entertainment. He was going to be a job of work. He stood a head taller and went about two-fifty.

I took my time stowing my wallet and gun. Then I tore the receiver from his big paw, stepped forward, grabbed his wrists and said the eight most powerful words in the English language.

“I have a problem, I need your help.”

That took the starch out of him for the moment. I spun away and addressed the patrons of Swoozy's Joynt, two of whom had left their barstools and were headed my way.

“I'm
a federal agent attempting to keep Communists from sabotaging the Presidential election this Tuesday.” This went over okay so I added, “I need the telephone and a ride downtown. I'll pay ten bucks.”

No takers. The patrons were waiting on the big man in the Panama hat. He was behind me now, presumably yanking a razor from his shoe.

“I do some gypsy haulin',” he said to me in a voice deep as the sea. “Make your damn call.”

I turned around. “Sure thing, thanks.” I patted my pockets and cleared my throat. “You got a dime I can borrow?”

-----

His name was Cleve, the big man in the Panama hat. We got along just fine. He didn't ask any questions as we drove southwest down Rhode Island Avenue, I didn't tell any lies. His gypsy cab was a dark red Plymouth coupe from the late twenties. It ran nice and smooth though I could see pavement rushing by through rusted out floorboards.

My phone call to Bill Harvey's private line had gotten me a chirpy girl at an answering service. I told her that ‘Tony'
needed to meet Mr. Harvey outside Bonnie's Diner and gave her the address. I said it was urgent. Twice.

She said she would give Mr. Harvey the message when he checked in. Private line my ass.

The Plymouth didn't have a mirror on my side so I kept a vigil out the back window. Cleve drove slow, then gunned the sputtering coupe through an amber light at 9
^th
Street. Well done. Maybe I could I recruit this guy as my backup in the likely case that Harvey didn't show.

Nah, too many ways to go wrong. And a crying shame. I'd pay good money to see the dapper little Russian's face when he got a load of big Cleve.

We drove down to M Street. The silence between us grew heavy. Cleve had questions that wanted answers. He couldn't very well return to the bar without a tale to tell. He had saved my bacon, I would tell him what truth I could.

“I'm not FBI.”

Cleve grunted.

“You probably figured an FBI agent wouldn't be worrying about a shag job on his home turf. Or borrowing a dime to make a call.”

Cleve hawked a loog out the window. I was making a fool of myself. I said my piece, not knowing where I was headed till I got there.

“A Soviet agent is attempting to turn the Presidential election with a last-minute smear story. His name is Leonid Vitinov. Leonid Vitinov. I'm trying to intercept him before that happens. I'm lone wolfing it, except for a girl reporter. My name is Hal Schroeder. Her name is Julia Hammond.”

“Why tell me?”

“Not sure. I guess there's a chance Julia and I will both be killed and no one will know why.”

“Who you want me to tell?”

“Well, if you see a story in the paper about our mysterious and gruesome deaths, tell somebody at the Evening Star. Preferably a girl reporter, Julia would like that.”

“Awright.” Cleve made
a soft right onto M Street.

“You can pull over here.”

He curbed the Plymouth at M and 19
^th
. I handed him a twenty. He pulled a fat roll from his jacket pocket. I told him to keep the change.

“'Precíate that Mr. Schrader…”

“Schroeder, Hal Schroeder. And the Soviet spy is Leonid Vitinov.”

“Right. You g'wan tell me who you working for?”

My apple pie answer surprised me. “I'm workin' for you, Cleve, I'm workin' for you.”

Julia
had her orange scarf on when the streetcar pulled up, which meant no message from Leonid and she hadn't been tailed.

I boarded, paid my fare and took a quick inventory of the other passengers. A couple loudmouth teens out past curfew, a sleeping drunk in a filthy raincoat and a colored lady in a maid's uniform who looked beat from a long day's work.

I sat down next to Julia. We were off to Bonnie's Diner in hopes Leonid was waiting for her, sitting in a back booth, tapping his foot.

Julia and I started in again about what she should say to ‘Terry' to explain missing the appointment but, sitting there, the back of my neck got itchy. For some daft reason I thought about my old pal Col. Norwood, MI6 Berlin Station Chief. About his description of the Four Powers at Versailles after WWI, how they haggled endlessly over the wording of a peace treaty, ignoring the down-at-the-heels vagrant at the table. The vagrant who would come back to haunt them.