Henry Wood Perception (14 page)

“Is Mr. Pimpkin in charge of the Navy stuff?”

“I don’t know. There is another building, and I saw him go in there once. Should I try to sneak a peek into the building?”

“No, right now, I just want you to keep your eyes open and keep doing a great job.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. Today, I started at the second station and, by the end of the day, I was on another one. It had a lot more things to remember, and if I did any of them wrong, the pipe wouldn’t pass inspection. I had three of them fail today and the colored guy said the first time he tried it he had five. He said three was a record. I ate lunch with him. He is older and really nice. I don’t know why I can't remember his name. He doesn’t talk much, but is a good listener. He asked about my family, and I told him.”

“You're doing great. Don’t ask too many questions, but if someone asks about your family, it would seem natural to ask about theirs.”

Henry liked how enthusiastic Lawrence was. He wondered how he had looked to Mickey that first week. Mickey was a good teacher. Henry would do the same for Lawrence. “In a week or so, we are going to start asking a few questions. So, you want to ease into it. You're likable. Just be yourself but keep your mind sharp. If you hear a name, try working it into the conversation. Someone says, ‘Hi, I’m Steve,' you say, ‘It’s nice to meet you, Steve,’ not ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ Understand?”

“I think so."

“Then you ask him a question, ‘How long you been working here, Steve?’ See what I did? I used his name immediately. Then when you're thinking back to when you met him, you'll remember how long he had been there and probably that his name is…”

Lawrence nodded.

“What was his name?”

“Steve.”

“You got it.”

The expression on Lawrence’s face looked as if he had just discovered a mysterious secret. He stood up and said he would learn their names. He left, just as Celine was walking in with a box. Lawrence looked in the box as he walked past. “Hello Buttons.”

Celine asked, “How’d you know his name?”

“Henry is teaching me how to remember stuff.”

Celine decided it wasn’t worth figuring out. She set the box on the desk and pulled Buttons out and set him on the floor. He walked into Henry’s office and said, “Meooow.”

Celine said, “I'm sorry, he seems drawn to you.” Buttons was now curled up in the corner near Henry’s desk.

“Buttons is welcome here anytime.” Henry reached down and rubbed the cat’s ears. He was rewarded with some light purring.

“How is Lawrence doing at his new job?”

Henry filled her in and then she gave a lengthy recount of her adventures at the vet. Buttons took a nap.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Celine added the final touch, a spritz of perfume and a bracelet. She assessed herself in the mirror and approved. Buttons hopped up on the bed and meowed though not in his usual way. She looked at him suspiciously but decided to rub his ears. A strange sound came from her cat.
Could it be purring?

“Are you feeling better?” She asked. Buttons didn’t answer but pushed the top of his head into her hand. She thought he was trying to lull her into a false sense of security. It was nice, so she let him.

She left Buttons on the bed when she heard the knocking. “Coming…”

“Are you ready?” Carol yelled through the door. Carol was two years older than Celine and had known her since high school.

Celine opened the door and smiled. Carol walked in and said, “Oh, I like your dress. You look wonderful. The boys will be buying us drinks all night.”

“A girl’s gotta eat, well, drink, heck, let’s make them buy us food. You're looking sexy, too.” Celine gave her a hug.

Celine put out a dish of food for Buttons and they headed out.

The taxi let them off in front of the bar, and a couple of sailors whistled. Carol blushed while Celine wiggled her hips and said, “Hey, boys.”

Carol was about twenty pounds heavier than Celine with a nice face and a sweet smile. She was generally quiet and hid in the background noise at parties except when she was with Celine. Celine would nudge her into the fun...something she couldn’t do on her own.

Just after 9:00 pm the crowd was packed in like sardines. This was their favorite place and full of friends. They settled into their chairs and had a couple of beers. There was a lot of laughter. Celine had them all in stitches, as she could tell a story with the best of them. She noticed the handsome guy at the bar, but didn’t let him know she saw him. He would have to come to her.

***

Jack stood at the bar. He was on his game having just gotten up from a solid six hours of sleep. This was the favorite part of his job, getting beautiful women to trust him, and Henry’s secretary was better than most. He liked her hair and confidence. He would throw her a look, let her see him watching her, and, in a while, buy her a drink. He knew she would play hard to get. They all did. It wouldn’t be fun if she didn’t. Hard to get wasn’t too tough to crack, he would usually give a shrug and smile. A brief conversation with a lesser woman would usually seal the deal. Celine would take more gamesmanship. Jack knew his good looks and charm would win the day. He could tell that the guys at her table were just "friends" with delusions of suitor.

Celine said, “So the little furry demon let me pet him, and he purred. I know he is up to something. Buttons will likely kill me in my sleep.” Her friends laughed. Two of the guys laughed a bit too loudly, but she was used to it. Carol got up, and she and Celine went to the ladies room.

Jack lit a cigarette. He blew out the smoke and maneuvered himself to a spot where he could see his prey returning from the back. He checked his tie in the mirror. It was perfect. Carol and Celine were giggling when they walked by Jack. “What is so funny?”

Carol said, “Oh, nothing.”

Celine said, “We were just laughing at a really bad pick up line we heard.”

“I guess it comes with the job. You're both probably used to it,” he said and blew a ring of smoke.

Carol asked, “Job? What do you think we do?”

“I haven’t been in town long, but I know a couple of models when I see them. Is it fun?”

Carol blushed and said, “We're not models.”

Celine added, “We have brains.”

“I'm sure you do. May I buy you ladies a drink? You can tell me what a better ‘line’ would have been.”

***

Celine sensed she was being challenged. Carol didn’t care if it was a line; she liked him and said, ”I’d like another beer, thank you.”

Celine could tell that Carol was enamored with him, and she liked the idea of trying to come up with better lines. She ordered a beer, too.

An hour later, Jack was sitting with Celine, Carol, and her friends. He had flashed his smile and bought a few rounds. Even the guys liked him. He was able to skip the playing "hard to get" step. When Celine and Carol decided it was time to go, Jack had already gotten Celine's number. She acted tough, but put up little resistance.

***

Jack returned to the office and filled out his expense report and got caught up on the status of the agents being tracked. Nothing interesting there, so he decided to listen to the tapes from the bugs he placed the night before. It was grunt work, and the analysts would go through them again, but he always liked to make sure they were working well. Nothing interesting there, though he did like hearing Celine’s voice, and he looked forward to getting her to trust him. He loved his job.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Dewey came in early. The stack of file folders on his desk was daunting, but he hoped there were answers inside. The first folder gave a detailed description of the previous day's wire taps. He scanned for anything that might have come from the detective's office. The highlight of the report was an account of the arrival of a cat named Buttons. He was confident that Buttons couldn't be considered a reliable prospect as a mole. He smiled when the analyst included details of Buttons return from the vet saying he was going to be okay.

The detailed report from Jack was a little more entertaining to read. He liked to brag and spared no ink explaining how he had cleverly won the detective's secretary over. He had her number and was confident he could get her to have drinks with him and much more. Dewey wished that, just once, Jack would be wrong about a woman being powerless against his charms. Though Jack’s bragging annoyed him a little, he took some small measure of comfort in knowing that it would really get under Gilbert's skin. He could almost hear the scoffing now.

An analyst knocked on the door and said, “Sir, another report. Shall I put it on top of the stack?”

“What’s it about?”

“Daily movements for one of the KGB agents you wanted.”

“Anything out of the ordinary in there?”

“No, sir.”

“Here, hand it to me.” Dewey put it to the side and said, “How many of these reports have you read?”

“I reviewed them all before putting them on your desk.”

“Did any of them give an indication as to who might be replacing Oleg Kiselev or Pytor Chistyakov?”

“You were looking for anyone who might be recalled to Moscow, correct?”

“Yes, but if you found anything, it would be helpful.”

“Nothing, sorry.”

“Thanks.”

The analyst left and Dewey got up and looked out the window.

Gilbert knocked, walked in, and headed straight for the coffee. “Are those the agent status reports?”

“They're a pile of nothing. Not a single agent has been recalled. We must have missed something. Are you sure you found everyone who could be in line for a promotion?”

Gilbert added some sugar and said, “Yes, everyone. Maybe they will recall someone today?”

“Have you ever known the Russians to take a day off?”

Gilbert couldn’t argue with this logic. He hated not knowing what was going on, and he was starting to have doubts about the whole mission. He was about to voice his concerns, but Dewey beat him too it.

“I'm starting to wonder if I got this whole thing wrong.”

Gilbert appreciated how he took responsibility but wasn’t about to let him fall on his sword. “It is we, not you, who saw the patterns and sold this to Langley. I just can’t believe we could be so far off. You don’t suppose the Russians bluffed us?”

The idea had occurred to Dewey, too. Both sides did it. “If they planted everything just to get us to chase our tails, well, I guess they won. Still, some of our moves were brilliant. Like how you found that agent in Prague. His notes alone seemed enough. We weren’t even supposed to be there that weekend. How could they have planned for it?”

“I don’t know, but in this business, deception is the name of the game. It's like a magic trick; you get people looking at one hand while the prize is in the other. If all this time has been a set-up, well, we are through.”

“They will definitely take our decoder rings back.” Dewey joked. Neither man laughed.

“It will go down as one of the greatest deceptions in spy history. I'm sure Oleg and Pytor are laughing loud enough to wake the dead.”

Dewey looked at him and started pacing behind his desk. He began flipping a pencil between his fingers. Gilbert went quiet. The wheels were turning and Gilbert wasn’t about to get in his way. They both knew each other well enough to let the other finish his thought. “Gilbert, what if we were right all along? What if they were planning a major theft of our technology, one that could alter the balance of power on the seas? What if Agent Robert Lohman’s death really was the first shot?”

“Those have been our theories. Where are you going with this?”

“What would be the second shot?”

Gilbert sat down and looked at Dewey. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was a very good question. “They would need to get either Oleg or Pytor into the U.S. to make it happen.”

Dewey knew he didn’t need to say it, but he did anyway. “They might send them both. They might fake their deaths.”

“Those clever bastards. Of course they would. The KGB got a whiff of what we have been doing, and they killed Robert. Then to cover their tracks, Moscow crashes a plane and says it's Chistyakov and Kiselev . And viola, the world believes them dead, and Moscow sends their two best men on their way. I think you're right. This plan would be too important. They would build in redundancy, which is why they're using both of them.”

A meeting was called. They needed to find the two dead Russians.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Oleg and Pytor had crossed seven time zones and were resting at Niagara Falls, waiting for the cars which would take them to their new homes in New York City. The trip had worn away the years of animosity brought about by ambition. Now, they were comrades who had one thing in common - their families thought they were dead. Pytor had a son and daughter who were in college. He looked at the falls and thought about how much they would enjoy it, but not as they were now, for he saw their faces as the young kids who used to give their mother fits. Oleg had listened to Pytor mourn for his children losing their father as Pytor had done the same for him. Oleg had abandoned, as he put it, his lovely bride. They had only been married for four years. He had met Oxana on a mission in Berlin. She had been stationed there for six months. The drop had been flawless, and they had enough time to fall in love before returning to Moscow. She would be strong after hearing of his death. It was her training.