Checkpoint Charlie (24 page)

“What are they looking for?”

“They didn't say.”

I glanced at the row of locked filing cabinets. “How far did they get?”

“They're up to P to Q Third cabinet, top drawer.”

“Have you got the keys?”

He brooded at me. “What do you think you'd find?”

“Something that might tell us who he had the appointment with on the embankment.”

Joe considered it. “We haven't time. They'll be back in here at eight in the morning.”

“That gives us fifteen hours. Look, we'll start with the R-S drawer — if there was anything in the earlier drawers they'd have found it.”

“Anything that vital, he'd have coded it into the computer and shredded the papers.”

“Joe, at least it's worth a try.”

“Maybe. But don't count on anything turning up.” But I knew he'd given in.

We set to work and it was drudgery: we had to read every sheet of every document in every folder and some of them were in code and I am not one of your speed readers. Most of it was routine stuff and after several hours I began to believe Joe was right. After all, Myerson hadn't been stupid enough to have left anything too sensitive in those files. He'd been as security-conscious as anyone in our business and he knew where the on-off switch was located on the document-shredding machine. There were no naked records of our ongoing clandestine capers or any of that lot; most of it was standard administrative and personnel and budgetary material. Requisitions and vouchers and the like. Crushing boredom.

At half-past six in the morning Joe slammed the V-W drawer shut and jammed both fists into the small of his back and reared back, stretching his cramped back muscles. “Nothing — unless you count my expense vouchers for the last Warsaw trip. Maybe he planned to blackmail me with them.”

I read slower than Joe does; I was still at the beginning of my last drawer, the X-Y-Z tray. I closed up the
Xerxes
file — that was the code-name of a double-agent we were running inside the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo — and flipped past the metal “Y” tab. The first file behind the tab was marked
Yevshenkovich, M
. One of the defectors we'd brought over a few years back. I didn't open the file; I merely scowled at it. “Joe? Have a look.”

He came sleepily to the drawer and blinked slowly at it. “What about it?”

“Think about it, Joe. What's missing?”

He looked at me. “Yeah.” He touched the metal “Y” tab. “The first file under ‘Y' is Yevshenkovich but that's wrong, isn't it. Yaskov. We're missing our old chum Mikhail Yaskov.” Then his face lengthened. “No. It's probably in the Inactive files. Yaskov's officially retired from the KGB now.”

“But he's still doing business from the Black Sea retirement villa. Yaskov's no more inactive than I am. I've filed half a dozen reports on him myself in the past eight months. They ought to be in here. No —Myerson removed the Yaskov file. What was he trying to hide?”

Joe was already on his way to the far cabinet:
Inactive
. He bent over the bottom drawer and lifted a folder out. “He wasn't hiding anything. It's right here — see for yourself.”

I did and he was right. Baffled, I flipped it open.
Yaskov, M
. Inside were all the reports I'd filed, as well as data from a hundred other sources.

And mixed right in with it was the evidence that could put me in prison for forty years — or more likely in the crematorium.

*   *   *

J
OE WAS
glum. “Istanbul — tenth October. You were there, right?”

“Yes. Myerson sent me on a wild goose chase.”

“Vienna, third April?”

“Yes. Interpol conference.”

“Helsinki, fourth June — same again?”

“That was a legit job but it didn't pan out.”

“Apparently Yaskov was in the same towns on the same dates. According to this, you met Yaskov secretly and didn't report any of the meetings to Myerson.”

“I didn't have any meetings with Yaskov, Joe.” I flipped a page in the file. “Source — M.S. Source — M.S. The same notation on every one. Who's this mysterious ‘M.S.' who's been following me around?”

“Or following Yaskov around. That's more likely, isn't it.”

“Joe, I know every executive in this section and none of them have the initials M.S. on their real names or their code names or any other names.”

“Could be another section. Hell, it could be NSA or military intelligence or any one of half a dozen branches.” He studied me with canny speculation. “The way it looks, Myerson called you on the carpet about these secret meetings with a Soviet agent. And you — not knowing Myerson had left written evidence in the files — killed Myerson to keep him from having you terminated for treason.”

“Come on, Joe. Come on. Why on earth would Myerson order me to draw a revolver from the armory if he thought I was a traitor?”

“We only have your word for it that Myerson asked you to requisition the piece. It wasn't Myerson who signed it out. It was you.”

And that was, indeed, the weapon that had killed him. The I.S. people had confirmed that twelve hours ago. The inquiry was to continue today and Grebe had left me to understand that if I didn't come up with satisfactory answers I was in for a grueling grilling.

I walked to the L-M drawer and pulled Myerson's own travel-voucher file; I went through it quickly, having a look at hotel and airline receipts. The shape of this thing was emerging from a mist in my tired mind and when I looked up at Joe I think I managed a grin. “I think I know who killed Myerson. I need a few more facts but at least I've got an idea where to look.”

“Take it easy before you jump to confusions, Charlie. You're running on your nerve-ends just now. The shock of all this and no sleep for twenty-four hours and you haven't even had a meal…”

“That kind of pressure — that's when I'm at my best. You ought to know that, Joe.” I gave him my beaming smile. “It stirs up the adrenalin.”

“Have you seen any evidence that I haven't seen?”

“Maybe just these.” I showed him two vouchers from Myerson's travel records.

Joe looked at them but he didn't seem impressed. “That's clutching at straws, Charlie. I say again, take it easy.”

“Easy? It's my neck they're measuring for a garotte.”

He took the vouchers out of my hand and put them back into the file. “I don't see anything in those to prove anything against anybody.”

“That's because you're still just a shade slower that I am. No offense, Joe. Maybe it's just that you didn't know Myerson quite as well as I did. Come on, we've just got time for breakfast before they start up the hearing again.”

*   *   *

I
WAS
glad to have Joe's company at the I.S. conference table that morning and glad Grebe allowed him to sit in: that was a sign of the respect in which Joe Cutter was held throughout the Company.

Joe hadn't said anything soppy but he was there at my side and that was sufficient measure of his faith in me and in my innocence, and I needed that just now. It bolstered my weary soul — and I believe it inclined Grebe and his associates to give me more latitude than they might have granted me if Joe hadn't been there.

I said, “I hope I can clear this thing up before we waste any more time on false trails but I need to ask a few questions. May I?”

Grebe glanced at Joe Cutter and then said, “No blank checks, Charlie, but go ahead and we'll see.”

“Myerson was wearing a shooting glove. Were there powder stains on it?”

“Yes.”

“Recent?”

“Yes. But that's been explained. He'd been at his rod-and-gun club earlier the same day, sighting in a new deer rifle. His wife told us that. We examined the rifle. And the rod-and-gun people confirmed it. It's all true.”

“I don't doubt it. All right. Any luck tracking down that freight train?”

“It's in Augusta. The FBI's searching it now.”

“A hundred to one,” I said, “but they may find that thirty-eight revolver in a hopper car with my fingerprints on it. I assume you've got the results of the paraffin test I took yesterday at the armory?”

“Yes. Negative. But you could have been the one wearing the shooter's glove at the time of the shooting.”

“It wouldn't fit my hand, you know. But that's minor.” I glanced at Joe. His eyelids looked heavy. Joe needs his eight hours; he burns up energy fast — it's one of the disadvantages of being lean. I went on: “An I.S. team started tossing Myerson's office the morning before the day he died. Is that right?”

“Possibly.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Sorry, Charlie.”

“It's need-to-know, isn't it? I need to know it. It's my life on the line.”

“No.”

I said, “Then I'll have a guess, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You had a tip, didn't you. Probably from a minor type in the Russian Embassy.”

“I can give you this much,” Grebe replied. “It was a telephone tip — anonymous.”

“Telling you if you combed Myerson's records you'd find there was a traitor in his section.” I smiled. “The tip came from Mikhail Yaskov. I don't mean it was necessarily Yaskov's voice on the phone, but it originated with him.”

“What gives you that idea?”

I slipped the Yaskov file and Myerson's travel records out of the briefcase and Grebe sat bolt upright when he saw the name tag on the Yaskov file. “Who authorized you to —”

“I'm acting section chief,” Joe murmured. “They're my files now, Phil. I authorized it.”

I pushed the papers across the table and while Grebe examined them I said, “Myerson moved the Yaskov file to the Inactive cabinet. That's why your people would've needed another day or two to find it. But he meant to draw your attention to it by moving it. I'm sure he moved it there after he learned your people were on their way to shake down his office. As soon as he heard about the pending I.S. toss he knew he was in trouble. So he scribbled a few phony reports from a nonexistent agent named ‘M.S.'— probably ‘myself'. The handwriting looks crabbed, as if maybe he scribbled it with his left hand, but I suspect it's Myerson's. The phony reports try to show that I had a series of secret meetings with Yaskov in Istanbul and Vienna and Helsinki. I never saw Yaskov in any of those places. The interesting thing is, Myerson's own travel vouchers show that Myerson himself was in Vienna on April third and in Helsinki on June fourth — the same days when Yaskov presumably was meeting me there. I didn't meet Yaskov, but I suspect Myerson did. Myerson wouldn't have turned traitor voluntarily, so I assume Yaskov must have had something on him. I have no idea what it was. But if you start looking for it you'll probably find it. Nobody's had reason to look for it before, have they.”

Grebe lifted his eyes from the papers. He didn't speak at all. He only watched me, reserving judgment.

I said, “When the I.S. investigation came down, Myerson was in a trap and there wasn't any way out of it. He couldn't bluff it out because obviously Yaskov double-crossed him by tipping you. Yaskov always wanted to get Myerson and me out of the way — he's spent half his life tripping over us and we've bested him too often to suit him. When I bluffed him out of Finland a year or two ago it must have been the last straw. First he dug up something on Myerson. He blackmailed Myerson into compromising himself. Then he betrayed Myerson's treachery to you. Yaskov knew that would get Myerson out of his way — which also gets me out of the way, since without Myerson the Agency won't keep me on.”

I gave Grebe an opening to speak but he only waited for me to finish; he knew I hadn't the punch line yet.

I said, “Myerson knew he'd get fired at the very least. No pension, half his insurance canceled. He might be discredited, maybe go to prison, maybe be killed. I don't know because I don't know how serious the compromise was. Obviously Yaskov found some way to blackmail Myerson into doing the Russians a favor or two — and Yaskov must have kept the evidence of those favors. Whatever it was, Myerson had to know there was no way to get Yaskov off his back. So Myerson took the only way out but he hated me so much he had to take me with him.”

Grebe sat bolt upright. “What? You're saying Myerson killed himself?”

“Of course he did. But he made it look like murder. Because the insurance wouldn't have paid off on a suicide. And he made me look like the killer — and the traitor — because he needed a plausible murderer. He set me up with the motive, the means and the opportunity.”

Grebe settled back. “It's a clever hypothesis, Charlie, but there's no evidence to support it.”

“There are bits and pieces. One thing is those travel vouchers. They show I wasn't the only one in the section who could have had those meetings with Yaskov. Another thing — why did he choose that morning to go shooting at the rod-and-gun club if he didn't need an excuse for the fresh gunpowder on his shooting glove? And why did he move the Yaskov file over to the Inactive drawer if he didn't want us to notice the shift? And there's one other thing he didn't take into account. It's true that I was in on April third but I was only there four hours — it was an airport meeting with several Interpol people to update our data on one of the terrorist groups and I was never out of sight of half a dozen police executives. I couldn't possibly have met Yaskov there, so that suggests all the ‘M.S.' reports are fakes.”

Grebe chewed a pencil; the rest of them smoked and reached for their styrofoam coffee cups and it was clear what they were thinking: they were picturing Myerson on the lip of the embankment shooting himself in the chest rather than the head because he needed time to toss the revolver onto the passing train after he'd used it on himself; then dragging himself up away from the lip, not noticing the bloodstains he was leaving behind on the grass, and finally collapsing there and curling up like a strip of frying bacon, his last thoughts probably sour and resentful and filled with obscure regrets and rage. He'd been a bitter man always, a hearty politician on the surface with his clubhouse tan and his locker-room humor but that had been facade and the real Myerson had been a man who only took real pleasure in the suffering of others. He'd had fits of terrible depression throughout the years I'd known him. Tension and anxiety and inadequacy had characterized his life and suicide was not out of character for him, nor was his final parting shot — the attempt to frame his most intimate enemy for his own murder. That was what they were thinking, Grebe and his men.