Agent in Place (6 page)

Chuck dropped the receiver, and was off to the bedroom for jacket and tie. He made a whirlwind exit, calling over his shoulder, “Back in an hour.”

So I lost that round, Rick thought: he will have his typewriter, and a completed script by ten or eleven tonight. But I’ve been given the time and opportunity I need. Better than I planned. So take it. He began clearing the desk, moving the section of the memorandum he had been reading out of his way. One hour, probably more. He would aim at forty minutes, and be on the safe side.

He produced a small bunch of keys and selected the skeleton one—that was all he needed for this simple lock. Deftly he manipulated it, pulled the desk drawer open, and lifted out the two top-security parts of the NATO Memorandum. He only glanced at the number of pages, wasted no time in reading them, although he had a strong temptation to examine Part III. He adjusted the strong desk-lamp to the correct angle. Then he took out a small matchbox-size camera from his inside pocket, and placed the first page in position under the circle of light. He began photographing.

The whole job was completed—the sheets all back in order and replaced in the drawer exactly as he had found them—within thirty-five minutes. The precious film was left in the camera: he would extract it when there was less chance of any mishap—his hands felt tired, his eyes strained. The inside pocket of his jacket, fastened with a small zipper, would be safe enough.

Now he could put the desk back in shape again. The pages of Part I were neatly placed, ready for Chuck’s use. He would make some sandwiches, get coffee percolating, and show some signs of a well-spent hour.

Lose one round, win another, he told himself, as he searched for his glass—he had laid it quietly aside on one of the small tables, unwilling to risk Chuck’s potent mix while he still had problems to work out. The Martini wasn’t worth drinking now. He carried it into the kitchen, emptied it down the sink, and poured himself a double vodka. He had earned it.

Tom Kelso got back to the hotel at ten past six, after a day divided between meetings—one with an editorial staff-member at the
Times
, to discuss the shape of his visit to France; another with a television reporter who had just ended a three-year assignment there; a third with an attaché on leave from the Embassy in Paris—and found Dorothea, clad in a black chiffon negligee and a white felt hat. She was seated before her dressing-table mirror, studying a profile view of the upturn-and-dip of the hat’s wide brim. She turned to welcome him, as he came through the sitting-room and halted at the bedroom door, and gave him a smile that would lift any tired man’s heart. “What do you think?” she asked him.

“A lot of things.” He lifted the hat from her head, tossed it on to a chair. And I’ve only got fifteen minutes to shower and change, and order drinks from the bar, he thought in sudden frustration.

“Don’t you like it?”

“It gets in the way.” He bent down and planted a kiss on top of her soft smooth hair. She raised her face, still flushed and pink from her perfumed hot bath, to offer him a proper kiss on her lips. She smelled delicious, damn it. “I’ll take a two-minute shower. Would you get out my blue shirt and red tie, honey?” He was on his way to the bathroom, pulling off his clothes as he went. “And you’d better start dressing, Thea.”

“But Chuck won’t be here till seven thiry. There’s plenty of time.”

“Not as much as you think. Tony Lawton is coming up for a drink. Brad Gillon, too.”

“When?” she called in alarm, rising from the dressing-table and going into quick motion. First the shirt and tie. Tom was already in the shower, her question drowned out in a flood of water. She began pulling on panty-hose and bra. Gillon she knew well, an old friend of Tom’s, once attached to the State Department but now out of Washington and into New York publishing. Tony Lawton? She started creaming and powdering. Yes, she remembered, she had met him once before—on a quick Washington visit—English—lived in London when he wasn’t travelling around—another of Tom’s friends from abroad. Some eyebrow-pencil, lipstick, hair combed into place. She was almost ready for her little black dress, in fashion again like the hat she had bought on impulse at the end of a hard day’s shopping. Saturday wasn’t her choice, exactly, to find Christmas presents, but that was the way Tom’s schedule had been arranged, and so—she shrugged her shoulders. Tom was out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry. “When are they due?” she asked, dress in hand.

“At six thiry, dammit.”

“Oh, heavens!” She began stepping into her dress.

“It’s always the way—” He stopped combing his hair. “I’m getting an awful lot of grey at the sides,” he said worriedly, looking into the mirror.

“It suits you, darling.” She took a minute off dressing, and studied him. At forty-two, he was a healthy specimen: muscles firm, waistline still trim (he brooded about it, kept swearing off second helpings and desserts, but that was a vanity he shared with a million other men), dark hair plentiful even if greying at the temples, dark eyes watching her with a smile as he studied her in turn.

“Come on, blondie,” he said, “get that dress on, however much it spoils the view. Old Brad would lose the sight of his good eye if he were to see you like that.”

“Oh, Tom!” Her even eyebrows were raised, black eyelashes flickered, pink lips parted into a gentle protest.

“Yes, it’s always the way,” Tom said again, pulling on his own clothes. He had been delighted today when Tony Lawton had called him at the office, suggesting a drink this evening—and would Tom invite Brad Gillon, too? “Why didn’t I say seven o’clock?”

“Because Chuck is coming at seven thiry. You’d never have time for any of that old-boys-together talk.”

“Better order the drinks,” Tom reminded himself, moving quickly to the telephone.

“How did your day go?”

“Not too bad.” Tom waited for bar-service to answer, speculating again why Lawton had been so eager to arrange a meeting here this evening with Gillon, rather than going straight to Gillon himself. Tony’s wiles always amused Tom: they gave him good copy too, although they weren’t always immediately publishable. “Not too bad at all. I was well briefed. I’ll know where to start digging for information in Paris, get the French points-of-view about the Brussels meeting next month. They’ve got a kind of—” He broke off to tell bar-service that he needed Scotch, bourbon, spring water, soda and plenty of ice. Pronto.

“A kind of what?” Dorothea asked as he left the ’phone.

“We-are-with-you-but-not-of-you complex. Tricky to evaluate. It could mean more than we think, or less than we hope.” The French, dissociated since de Gaulle from NATO’s military problems, would attend only the diplomatic and economic sessions of the Brussels meeting, but they still held definite opinions about European defence.

“So,” she said slowly, “you’ll be covering the NATO meeting on December twelfth.” She was still hoping that he wouldn’t have to return so soon to Europe. With this Paris visit, he would miss Thanksgiving at home. He might miss Christmas with his trip to Brussels. “It’s all definite?”

“Definite,” he said, and hoped there would be no more argument about that. “I’ll be back before Christmas. All the NATO meetings will be over well before then.”

But, she wondered, will your business be over, my sweet? Emergencies could stretch an assignment, as she well knew. She ought to be grateful, she reflected, that Tom wasn’t staying on for extra weeks in Paris while he waited for the Brussels meetings to begin—a lot of men would have done just that.

“You look like a girl who needs help with a zipper,” said Tom, and fixed her dress. “Perfect,” he decided, swinging her round to look at the total effect, and it was no diplomatic lie. He kissed her gently.

“So are you. I like that dark red tie.”

“Matches my eyes,” he told her, and let her go, to hurry into the sitting-room as a waiter arrived with the tray of drinks. He heard her laugh. But his eyes were tired, he had to admit. As well as listening today, there had been a lot of reading and note-taking; and a head now filled with a collection of odd facts that kept swimming around. All he wanted was a relaxed evening, a pleasant dinner, and early to bed with his beautiful blonde. “Any message from Chuck?” he called to her.

“Not so far.” Dorothea was selecting the right earrings. Tom’s voice had sharpened. She could imagine the frown on his face. “Chuck will be here. Even if he didn’t get my message, he’ll turn up.”

And there came the old twinge of guilt, whenever she mentioned Chuck: her fault, probably, that he had drifted away from Tom in these last five years. Before her day, they had enjoyed a fairly comfortable set-up from Chuck’s point of view. Until she had entered the scene. Then, he had left Washington behind him for a job at Shandon House and a life of his own in New York.

About time, too, she had believed: Chuck, except for college and army service, had been on Tom’s back since he was eight and Tom eighteen. At that ripe age, Tom had become father and mother combined, and found a cub-reporter’s job to pay the bills (their parents’ life insurance could scarcely meet the rent of the New York apartment). As soon as Chuck was safely into college, Tom seized the chance to be a war correspondent in Korea. With that over, he was back at the dutiful-brother bit, seeing Chuck through a youthful and disastrous marriage, remaining a bachelor himself—partly because he was into international politics and the new excitement of travel, partly because there was his move to Washington, but mostly because being a bachelor had become a habit hard to break. (After all, if the boy of eighteen was loaded down with family responsibilities, the man he became had already had enough of them for a while.)

And then Tom and she had met.

In a television studio. (She was arranging interviews on the Bud Wells Talk Talk Talk Show, and Tom was one of the victims that day.) Ten minutes, no more than that, ten minutes together, and there it was, bingo. “The hard-case bachelor of thirty-seven, the career girl of twenty-six—goodbye to all set plans and determined ideas; hello to a future of whatever it took to make it work.

She smiled at the memory, and carefully fastened her earrings into place. They dangled brightly. The rope of mock pearls was discarded. Enough was enough. Looking critically at her image in the mirror, she wondered what kind of woman Chuck had imagined for a suitable sister-in-law: plump and speechless, or grey-haired and motherly? He resented her; she could feel it, although he hid it well. Just as she resented the way Tom still worried about him. But one rule she had made right from the beginning: never criticise Chuck, that delightful, brilliant, and forgetful young man. Why didn’t he call? Tom hadn’t seen him in almost two months. And it hurt Tom: of course it must.

Dorothea went into the sitting-room. “You know, darling, he may never have got my message.”

“Chuck? You worry too much, my pet.” Tom’s voice was carefully casual.

Do I? she wondered. Then she smiled in relief as the telephone rang. But it wasn’t Chuck. It was the desk-clerk announcing Mr. Bradford Gillon.

Brad connected in her mind with another thought. “He
is
going to publish your book, isn’t he?”

“Hasn’t backed out so far.”

“If only you could get some time to yourself and finish it. Just six months—”

“Would you settle for three?” He was laughing at the surprise he had given her. “Meant to keep the news for dinner, but you really coax things out of a man. You’d be a good reporter.”

“Oh, Tom—did the
Times
tell you today, actually promise—?”

“They’ll consider a three months’ leave.” He caught her, held her close. “But that will depend on how the world news breaks,” he added to keep their excitement in check.

“Oh, Tom—” she said again, her arms flung around his shoulders. “I’ve got plans too. I’m taking a year off. Oh, I know, I may never get that job back again, but—”

“A year?” He looked at her quickly.

“Two, if necessary. There’s more to life than having my name painted on my office door. Besides, I saw Dr. Travis first thing this morning. She says I’m in great shape now. No further risks. She sounded definite about that. Everything’s fine. All systems go.”

“Thea—”

A quiet knock sounded on the door. Tom released her and went to answer it. “Hello, Brad. Isn’t Tony coming?”

“Sure. I saw him circling around the lobby.” Brad’s usually serious face was showing definite amusement. “He’ll be arriving by himself any minute.”

“By the stairs?” Tom asked with a grin. He left the door ajar.

Brad was now wholly absorbed with Dorothea. “You look wonderful.” He gave her a brotherly hug and a warm kiss on the cheek.

“So do you.” A little heavy, perhaps, but he was a tall big-boned man, so he carried his weight well. Strong features, hawk nose, heavy eyebrows, almost sombre in repose. White hair waving back from a large brow—plenty of brains inside that massive head. Gentle eyes, blue and quietly observant. “How is Mona?” Dorothea asked, minding her manners.

“Just recovering from her third attack of ’flu this fall.”

“It’s a hint to make you take her to Florida sunshine for ten days.”

“Wish I could. Haven’t had a week off the chain since last Christmas.”

Recently he had been in France and Germany, Dorothea remembered, to discover some new authors and round up a belated manuscript or two. (Brad had reverted to his early interest in French and German literature—he had a degree from Harvard, way back in the early 1940s—which provided a pleasant niche for him in the publishing field.) “Why not take Mona with you on your next trip abroad?”

“Children,” said Brad briefly. As a man of fifty-two who had married young, he now had all the problems of two divorced daughters and four grandchildren. “Why people can’t stay married!” He shook his head. It seemed to him that after bringing up two strong-minded females, it was a bit much to have their offspring dumped on Mona. “Never own a house with five bedrooms,” he said. “Should have got rid of it years ago.”

“Well,” said Tom, pouring bourbon for Brad and Scotch for Thea and himself, “when home becomes unbearable there’s always the office.”