Brian Garfield: Hopscotch

Myerson wasn’t a man for polite preambles. “Take your coat off, sit down, read this. Then we’ll talk.”

Cutter absorbed the fourteen pages in the time it took Ross to read the last nine. Then Cutter sailed it onto the desk. It indicated something about him: he wouldn’t have to look at it again, he’d committed it to memory. “Where’s the original?”

“I imagine Kendig’s still got it.”

“Then where’d this come from?” The chilly precision of Cutter’s voice disquieted Ross.

Myerson reached for the big glass ashtray. It was the first time Ross had noticed the cigar. While they’d been reading Myerson had chewed it to shreds; he dumped the remains in the ashtray and licked his teeth distastefully. “It came from Bois Blanc in Paris.”

Cutter said drily, “Well then he’s picked the right publisher for it.”

“Can we stop them from publishing it?” Ross asked.

“Wouldn’t help,” Myerson said. “He went hog-wild on the Xerox machine. At least fourteen publishers in as many countries have received copies of this thing. Or at least that’s what Kendig claims in his covering letter to Desrosiers.”

Desrosiers was the iconoclastic publisher of the Bois Blanc series. He’d published all the clandestine samizdat best sellers that were smuggled out of the Soviet Union. Myerson said, “We don’t know who the other publishing houses are. We’ll find out in time of course but I’m not sure what good it will do us. We can’t burn them all to the ground.”

“We might persuade them not to buy it.”

“How?” Cutter shook his head. “They know it’s a multiple submission. Damned few of them will turn it down and risk missing out on their cut of the pie. It’ll sell of lot of copies.”

“Can’t we convince them he’s a crazy?” Ross insisted.

“Desrosiers knows Kendig,” Myerson said. “They’ve known each other for thirty years. Kendig brought him Medvedev’s first manuscript.”

Ross slapped the typed pages in his lap. “But this stuff-it’s so wild. Who’d believe it?” He turned a page and read aloud, a sarcastic tone: “‘What was Richard Nixon doing in Dallas on the day John Kennedy was assassinated there?’ I mean that’s the cheapest kind of gossip-rag innuendo. It’s nothing but an empty teaser. ‘How many tons of counterfeit North Vietnamese currency has Air America dropped on North Vietnam since the truce was signed?’ And the bit-I can’t find it now-the bit about the assassination of Duvalier.”

“Page eight,” Cutter murmured.

It flustered Ross but he went on indignantly: “Or this thing about the Soviets assassinating Nasser with a spray of prussic acid. I mean how wild can you get? And it’s all unsupported, he’s given no details. All we’ve got to do is lean on them, show them how irresponsible it would be to publish unconfirmed rubbish like this. Make Kendig out to be a paranoid idiot who’s gone around the bend. I mean that’s what he is, isn’t it? It’s got to be that.”

Myerson said, “He’s a little crazy. But not that way. You’re right about one thing-it’s a teaser, nothing more.”

“But he’s got the goods to pay it off,” Cutter said.

Myerson nodded. “That’s the thing. It’s all true, you know. And Kendig will cite chapter and verse.”

It was hard to absorb. Ross said, “It’s true?”

“Of course it is,” Cutter said. “He’s not an absolute fool.”

“But he was a field agent. He’d never have had access to anything like this.”

“After his convalescent leave he spent eight months working two doors down the hall from this office,” Myerson said. “He didn’t fit in, he couldn’t stick it out-he never had the patience to sit at a desk. We offered to move him to NSA but he gave it the back of his hand. We had no choice but to retire him.”

“And in those eight months he came across all this stuff?”

Cutter said, “He must have made a point of looking for it. To give him an arsenal against us in case he ever had to use it.”

“That’s a little fanciful.”

“He was never a man to trust anybody. He always had to have an edge. That was what made him so good at the job. He never let anybody get him into a corner. He always had the escape route staked out in advance.”

Ross stacked the pages neatly in his lap, evening up the corners. “I’ve never come across any of this stuff and I’ve worked here six years now.”

“Not on the fourth floor you haven’t,” Cutter said. “This outfit’s like the Waffen SS, it’s got a compulsion to keep records of all its crimes in quintuplicate.” He was talking to Myerson now: “I’ve bitched about that for years. Haven’t I.”

“When they move you to the fifth floor you can start making policy,” Myerson replied, unruffled. “We’ll get along faster if you stop dredging up I-told-you-so’s. Right now we’ve got a problem and I expect you to provide the solution.”

Cuter only nodded; he was deep in thought. Ross said, “What am I doing here?”

Myerson blinked. “You’ll have to ask Cutter.”

Cutter said, “I asked for you.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because you’ve got a reputation for doing what you’re told without stopping to make waves.”

Myerson said, “We can’t assume anything; but we can hope he hasn’t written the rest of the book yet. If that’s the case your job is easy-just prevent him from finishing it.”

“With extreme prejudice,” Cutter said, very wry. “Personally I prefer the word ‘kill.’ It’s the goddamned euphemisms that’ll do us all in.” He snaked out his long brown hand to glance at his watch; shot his cuff and asked, “When did Desrosiers receive that?”

“Four days ago.”

“Shit. Hand delivered?”

“In the mail. It had a Paris postmark.”

“How did we get it?”

“We’ve got an editor in our pocket. Naturally Kendig knew that-that’s why he picked that publisher to send it to first. I suspect the Russians have someone there too, in view of the sort of thing Desrosiers publishes. Maybe it’s even the same editor, who knows. In any event you can be sure there’s a copy of this in Moscow by now-and I think you can be sure Kendig knows that too.”

“And they won’t like the thing any more than we do. So we’ll be tripping over the Comrades.”

Ross sat silent as if forgotten; the dialogue went on-Myerson said, “There’ll be copies surfacing in Whitehall and Bonn and the Arab capitals and God knows where else. The way he’s gone about it guarantees that. He’s trying to make the biggest noise he can.”

Ross said, “I don’t understand that. Why?”

Myerson pointed at Cutter. “You know the man. What’s your judgment?”

Cutter’s index finger flicked toward the pages he’d tossed on Myerson’s desk. “‘If the peoples of the nations concerned find out what has been done, and is being done, in their name…’” He was quoting it verbatim after the cursory reading he’d given it; Ross looked it up to make sure and Cutter had got it letter perfect.

Cutter said, “It’s got a phony ring to it. Kendig’s never suffered from the obvious brands of moral rationalizing. He never went in for sterile liberal dogmas. The only time I ever heard him get near the subject was once when Nixon was running in ’sixty-eight. He said he figured people got the kind of government they deserved. Nothing surprises him. He’s not the type to get indignant or bleat about injustice.”

“And?”

“The last I heard he was having fits of Gothic melancholia. Severe depressions. Bored to death.”

“So?”

Again Cutter pointed at the pages. “Maybe that’s his suicide note. He’s not the sleeping-pill type. He’d want to go down in flames. So he wants us to come and kill him.”