George Chesbro: Shadow of a Broken Man

"Excuse me," Tal said weakly. "I think I'm going to be sick." He walked shakily down the beach toward the undamaged boathouse on the right. He was holding his left arm tightly against his side; his shirt on that side was stained with blood, and the dark patch was spreading. No one else seemed to notice.

Garth nudged me. "All right, brother, let's hear it from the top."

"Huh?" I wasn't really listening. The apparent chaos suddenly did not seem so confused, not in light of some of the things that had begun to bother me. Had Lippitt ordered the killing? It seemed highly unlikely, considering Lippitt's ambiguous feelings toward Rafferty, and Malakov just hadn't had time, even if he'd had the inclination. Then who had arranged the explosion?

Rafferty.

He'd staged an apparently fatal end for himself, just as he'd done five years before. But this time he'd arranged for the entire world to look on.

"I want to hear the whole story, Mongo," Garth was saying. "I want to know what happened here."

"Over steaks and drinks, Garth. Just give me a few minutes."

Tal had disappeared from sight into the boathouse on the right. I went after him.

The boathouse was dark and smelled of still, dead air. Tal was standing at the opposite end, silhouetted by the late- morning light streaming in a window. He was smoking a cigarette-the first time I'd ever seen him do so. The smoke curled up around his head like a halo, or a mist from hell.

"I'll be damned," I said, the dank air muffling my voice. "Here I've been following you around all this time and I haven't found a single hamburger wrapper. You certainly did go through some changes, didn't you?"

I instinctively held up my hand and shied away as I felt an almost imperceptible tingling in my head. It was a sensation I'd experienced before and hadn't been able to put my finger on. This time I'd been looking for it.

"I assume you can control what you do," I said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd respect my privacy."

The tingling stopped. Tal was still silhouetted against the window, and I couldn't see his face. I wondered what he was thinking.

"How did you manage the fingerprints on the pencil? That was good. It threw me off the track right at the beginning."

Tal said nothing. He continued to smoke.

"You know that I know."

" What do you know, Mongo?"

"I know that you're Victor Rafferty. That was the French agent who died in the boathouse. Elliot Thomas was the 'Frenchie'-an American working deep undercover for France." I pointed to his side. "You're bleeding, but there aren't any bullet holes in your shirt. You've been favoring that side since yesterday; you ripped open an already existing wound when you tackled Garth. My guess is that Thomas-or whatever his name really was-finally caught up with you. After all, he'd been at it a long time, and he'd really been digging ever since the Nately Museum went up. He knew, just as your ex-wife knew, that Victor Rafferty had designed that building. Somehow, you got on Thomas' list of candidates; when he got around to checking your background, your cover didn't hold."

Tal remained silent.

"God only knows how Thomas did it," I continued, "but he must have gotten the drop on you. Unlucky for him: Thomas didn't make out any better than Lippitt did five years ago. You've been keeping Thomas on ice for the past few days; Rolfe Thaag's been baby-sitting him while you put this plan into operation. You knew what was in my mind, so you had every reason to think I'd buy it. I can't point to any one thing that convinced me; it's the sum of a lot of little things. Considering the fact that you've been winging it for the past few days, you've done damn well. But then, you read minds, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mongo," Tal said quietly.

"Now you're just playing out the string, hoping I'll back off. I won't. Putting Thomas in that boathouse down there was pretty murderous for Victor Rafferty, but you certainly had cause. He's been trying to kill or capture you for years. That would try my patience too."

Tal still hadn't moved, and I stayed where I was, firing long-range verbal artillery. I hated to admit it, but I was afraid to go closer. I liked Ronald Tal, but I didn't know this stranger at the other end of the boathouse.

"When did you arrive at these conclusions, Mongo?"

"Don't you know? Why don't you look in my head and find out?" I waited, but Tal said nothing and there was no tingling sensation. "It suddenly occurred to me on the beach that I was being had. Call it deja vu once removed. Why the hell should Victor Rafferty have come out of that boathouse like it was High Noon ? It didn't make sense. Thomas was dazed; the man didn't even know where he was. He was like a man who'd just recovered consciousness-or who'd had a few mental circuits burned out. He died trying to carry out his duty, which was to kill you. That's why he fired up the beach."

"I understand that you think I'm Victor Rafferty," Tal said calmly, "but you're wrong."

"No, I'm not. 'In the world of diplomacy, information is the most valuable commodity.' Remember when you told me that?"

"I remember. What does it prove?"

"Nothing. I just want you to know that I know the truth. You see, that's precisely what you've been doing all this time: providing Rolfe Thaag with that valuable commodity. All his diplomatic success springs from you."

"What about the fingerprints on the pencil?"

"All right, that is troublesome. Let's speculate. You had advance warning of who I was and what I wanted when Abu called. You immediately probed my mind when I walked into your office and found out everything there was to know; up to that point, anyway. You started setting me up from that very moment. You put a contingency plan into motion. My guess is that the pencil was Rolfe Thaag's. You'd probably covered the tips of your fingers with cellophane tape. Even dried glue would do the trick. Then you set the pencil down right in front of me; you knew I'd take it, just as I'd taken the protractor from Elliot Thomas' office. You knew I was suspicious of you, and you decided to knock me out of the box right at the beginning."

I tried to see Tal's face, but he was still framed against the circle of muddy light. He didn't move. "You have fantastic control over your emotions," I continued. "I suppose that's just one more thing you had to learn in order to survive. I'm sure you knew that Richard Patern had used your design for the Nately Museum, but you probably didn't suspect that you were in danger of being discovered until I walked into your office. And you never blinked an eye. But you knew what could happen, and you started keeping a close watch on things. You were too late to save Abu, but you were probably trying to find a way when he was killed."

Tal dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his heel. Then he walked forward and stopped in front of me. His face was impassive, but his black eyes shone brightly in the dim light. He was still holding his side, but the bleeding had stopped. "Rafferty and I don't look anything alike," he said. "Wasn't he quite thin? I must be at least thirty pounds heavier, and I don't think you'll find that much fat on me."

"Anabolic steroids could do that; the drugs, combined with a heavy conditioning program, would build you up. You not only managed to change your physical appearance, you radically altered your whole behavior pattern; you must be some natural actor. Then there would be plastic surgery, hair transplants, and voice training. The works, and all within the space of a year or so. That's cutting it close, but it could be done. It was done. I'm betting you looked different-pretty shaky-when you first showed up at the U.N. That-finally-may have been what tipped Thomas off once he thought about it and started making inquiries. I'm going to do some heavy checking on that myself."