Len Deighton - XPD

Billy Stein looked down at the body and twisted his hands. He did not want to touch this bloody figure which bore such slight resemblance to his father. He looked round at the others. They expected something from him, so Billy knelt and, suppressing a shudder, put one hand upon his dead father’s shoulder. Perhaps they expected him to cry or to wail, but all that would come later. It would be something only between him and his father; Billy Stein was not given to public display of emotion.

‘My father couldn’t climb up there, Mr Breslow.’

‘He could and he did, Billy. He had this gun; he was trying to kill me. He said I’d killed his brother.’

Officer Cooper turned to the chief security guard. ‘Where’s the phone?’ And to his partner he said, ‘We’ll tell them he’s badly hurt, OK?’

The detective nodded. It was always better to say the body might still be showing signs of life. That way they would not have to wait for the coroner’s office to send someone down here. Better that he went to the receiving hospital and was pronounced ‘dead on arrival’-that way they could get back on the job.

‘I’m going to take you for treatment, then to headquarters, Mr Breslow. We’ll soon get it sorted out downtown.’ Officer Cooper had spent nine years on radio cars. He had long ago learnt that it was easier to take into custody a prisoner who thought it would all be sorted out quickly and conveniently.

‘No need for the handcuffs,’ said Mary Breslow.

‘Regulations, I’m afraid, miss. Felony suspects have to be cuffed.’ He flicked the cuffs on to Breslow’s wrists with practised agility. The last time Mary saw her father on that terrible day he was in the back seat of the black and white, leaning well forward with his hands stretched behind him, and the passenger officer was reading to him the Miranda rights.

‘Well, you’re happy now, I suppose?’ Billy Stein asked Stuart.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You chased him and harassed him. You threatened me and locked me up. Now he’s gone and you’ll get your medal.’

‘Don’t, Billy!’ Mary Breslow told him. ‘Don’t talk that way.’

‘They killed him,’ Billy insisted. ‘Your father didn’t kill mine. These bastards did it.’

‘Get in the car, Billy,’ said Boyd Stuart. ‘I’ll take you home.’

‘What am I going to do?’ said Billy. ‘Me and dad… we’ve always been together. He’s always done everything for me.’

Stuart took Mary Breslow’s arm and guided her close to Billy Stein, who was leaning on the car roof with his face buried in his folded arms.

Willi Kleiber had regained consciousness in a wooden hut in South Carolina. The lush green marshlands, through which the rains from the Appalachian Mountains flow in a thousand rivers to the Atlantic, provided an ideal hiding place. Rutted, potholed tracks meandered through the trees to a dilapidated pier. From there they had taken him to one of the little islands which hang along the coastline like iron filings on a magnet.

There was no electricity and the only communication with the mainland was by short-wave radio. The men with Kleiber wore cotton trousers and sweat shirts, with lace-up boots to protect their ankles against the snakes. It was hot and almost unbearably humid. The only sounds came from the insects and the ocean, and the only movement was that of the shrimp boats far out to sea.

There was a physician there-a young man, his skin as black and shiny as a newly polished limousine. He had come from Charleston on a motorcycle and now as twilight came he was fretting to get away. He pronounced Kleiber fit and signed accordingly, before they heard the sound of his bike clattering down to where the motorboat was waiting to ferry him back to the mainland.

Melvin Kalkhoven did the primary interrogation but it was the project chairman who, later that evening, got down to what was expected of Kleiber. Kleiber listened, as he had listened to Kalkhoven, without saying very much. He stared at the fly screen, which throbbed and vibrated under the weight of moths which desired nothing more than the chance to dash themselves into the flames of the kerosene lamp hissing on the table in front of him.

‘But why would I make direct contact with the Soviet embassy in Washington?’ Kleiber said finally. ‘No experienced agent would do that. It’s damned dangerous, and it goes against everything that Moscow Centre teaches.’

The project chairman leant back so that his rocking chair creaked. He rested his elbows on the arms of it and put his fingertips together. Intended as the mannerism of a scholar or philosopher, it looked more like the attention-seeking gesture of a man who liked to listen to himself.

‘You’ll scare him,’ he promised. ‘You’ll scare Yuriy Grechko half to death. When he hears you tell him what is happening to his network-that Parker is going into the bag and the rest of them are being rolled up-he’ll be terrified. Moscow Centre hates that kind of foul-up. They’ll recall him; he’ll be scared-really scared.’

The project chairman broke off as another aspect of the case came to mind. ‘Is Parker a Russian?’

‘He’s never admitted it,’ said Kleiber. ‘But yes, he is.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was born in a house that looks out over the Baltic. I can recognize a Russian when I see one.’

The project chairman nodded contentedly and tapped his fingertips together. ‘So Grechko will be worrying if we’ll dig that out too. You’ll tell him it’s going to hit the fan, Willi. Grechko won’t be reading the instruction book to tell you you shouldn’t have have called him; he’s going to be worried sick.’

Kleiber said, ‘Grechko will ask me where those Hitler Minutes are.’

The project chairman turned away to get his coffee cup. There had been several mentions of something called the Hitler Minutes but that was of no concern to him or to the CIA. He was determined not to have any red herrings drawn across the very satisfactory path of this investigation.

‘You tell him the papers were taken off you by the customs officials at Kennedy. We’ll fake you the kind of receipt that the customs use. Give it to Grechko. Let him worry about that.’

‘He’ll be furious,’ said Kleiber. ‘He’ll be furious with Parker for ordering me to bring the stuff back to the USA.’

‘Exactly,’ said the project chairman, wiping coffee from his lips with a paper handkerchief. ‘Now you see what I’m driving at, Willi. We’re going to create a problem for Grechko… and the only way out of it will be to make you the illegal resident.’

‘Illegal resident!’ said Kleiber. ‘Now look… ’

The project chairman stared at him, blank faced. Kleiber ran a finger round inside his collar, and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead and in a line along his upper lip.

‘Well, you don’t think we went to all that trouble in there unless it was going to yield something real big, do you, Willi?’ The project chairman scarcely moved his head to indicate the room next to where they were sitting. Displayed in there had been all the accumulated evidence of the murders that Willi Kleiber had committed. There were colour photos of the corpses of Bernard Lustig and MacIver and some black-and-white shots of the two men killed in London. There was other evidence too: the damaged wrist-watch that provided an estimated time of death, the parking ticket and teleprinter messages and other police paperwork. There were even fingerprints; Kleiber had thrown his cotton gloves into the car trunk with Lustig’s body and then closed the lid with his bare hands. There was also a signed statement from someone who had witnessed the MacIver shooting that took place that same evening. The murderer’s description fitted Kleiber exactly. Kleiber had spent fifteen minutes studying the material and then had declared that there was not enough evidence to get a conviction. The project chairman had shrugged. Tell me what else we need and we’ll get it manufactured, he had said. Kleiber believed him.