Glen Cook - A matter of time

The visitor's character, however, didn't match Cash's pre-judgments.

"Lieutenant Railsback?" he asked uncertainly.

"Here." Hank raised a hand.

"Hi. Name's Tom Malone. Central Intelligence Agency." He extended his hand.

Railsback said, "Huh?" as he shook.

Interestinger and interestinger, Cash thought, changing his attitude. Must be an upfront guy. Pretending a need for another cheeseburger, he moved out to Beth's desk.

"FBI says a man we're interested in, the one called Smiley, is on the move."

Hank didn't seem quite able to get a handle on what was happening.

"Maybe you could fill us in a little?" Cash suggested, glancing at the letter the man offered as identification. Did it mean anything? Agency people wouldn't carry membership cards.

But why on earth would anyone come here pretending to be one? "Like why you're interested?"

"There's been a tag on his file for twenty-five years. Suspicious alien. When you requested the records search, their computer whistled. The word drifted over to Langley that he was up to something. The timing was interesting, so my boss sent me out."

"We want him for arson and murder," Railsback said." "That's not spy business."

"Could be. I'm here to find out. If I can."

"How come you?" Cash asked. "I mean, with all the stink about you people sticking your noses into the public's business…"

Malone shrugged. "I don't make policy. I'm just a gofer. I go where they send me."

"Henry," Old Man Railsback observed, "this looks like the time to play one hand washes the other." To Malone, "We may be able to help each other.”

Cash agreed. "Tell us about Smiley."

Malone examined each of them closely. Checking for Russians? "We've got a fat file. Mostly speculation. It goes way back.

"See, he did some work for us in Austria right after the war. It didn't turn out. There's a chance he sold us out to the Russians. We do know he did some work for them too.

"Anyway, when somebody found out he was over here as Smiley, they started a file. It's grown. It's interesting, too. Especially if everything's true."

Cash looked expectant. Then Railsback stirred, anticipating.

"Mostly it's odds and ends skimmed off the edges of other investigations. For instance, something somebody may have come across while we were backgrounding people in our nets in Eastern Europe. I can't show you the file, but I'll hit the high points.

"We're pretty sure he was born Michael Hodzв, a miner's son, at Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, in the late eighteen eighties. We got that from a Viennese who roomed with him before World War One, and who worked for us during the occupation."

"That makes him awful old to play James Bond," Rails-back grumbled.

"We've got older Czechs, Hank," Cash reminded.

"He does seem to age well. Around nineteen ten he turned up in Vienna. The man who knew him said he lied his way into medical school. In nineteen twelve he got defrocked, or whatever they do to med students, for performing an abortion."

"Aha!" Hank exploded. "What'd I tell you, Norm?"

"For a while he bummed around with Hitler. No, really. And during World War One he seems to have deserted from both the German and Austrian armies, and may have been involved in the Czech nationalist movement. There is also a hint of a connection with the Czech Legion, which kicked up dust in Russia during their civil war. Then he turned up as a doctor in Prague. A good one, too. This Dr. Hodzв is pretty well documented. If he's the same man. Anyway, he was so respectable he was one of the team doctors with the Czech contingent to the Berlin Olympics.

"When Germany invaded, though, he reverted." Malone sketched a tale of a man playing both sides.

"And when the Russians came, he worked for them. And us.

"The reason we're interested is he might still be on the Reds' payroll. Even though the Czechs have him on their wanted list."

"How'd you get all that?" Cash wondered aloud. "I mean, I couldn't even find out where he came from. And I knew him personally for twenty years."

"We have our ways," Malone replied. "Easy. Just playing my role there. Some we got on our own, some from the British, some from German records, some from the Czechs back when they wanted us to hand him over. Sometimes we were lucky. Like finding the man who knew him and Hitler in the old days, and getting hold of the diary of the priest who taught him when he was a kid. We've had a lot of years, and some good computers, to work on it, too."

"And money," Cash added softly.

"True," Malone replied.

"But why come looking for him now?" Cash asked.

"It's not the crime. We're not interested in that per se. It's the timing. There's something going on in Czechoslovakia. The Dubcek wing and the Chinese are up to something. We think it might involve us. So we're watching all our suspicious Czech immigrants."

"Who'd have thought it?" Cash mused. "Old Doc Smiley. Hard to believe."

"Not if you read his file. He was a bad dude. A lifetaker. Left a lot of bones behind him. The one thing we can't figure is why. But motivations of agents are always hard to pin down."

"Been a model citizen here. Till now. Then he suddenly torches his house, with the basement filled with bodies and a million bucks worth of fancy hardware nobody can figure out."

"Hardware?"

"Yeah. Looks like it was mostly medical stuff."

"Strange. Excuse me a minute." Malone rummaged through his briefcase, blocking Cash's view with his body. But Norm caught glimpses of piles of hastily typed papers. "Ah. I though so."

"What? "Hank asked.

"Just wanted to check one of the German reports. One of the houses in that town they destroyed had a basement full of hardware. They couldn't figure it out, so they just blew it up and bulldozed it with the rest."

"Smiley was up to the same thing then?"

"No. He lived in Prague before he ran to England. The house belonged to the local electrician."

"Let me guess," said Cash, smitten by inspiration. "It was a man named Fian Groloch."

"Ah, Norm…" Railsback started.

Malone looked bewildered. "How did you…?"

"How's that for a connection, Hank? The old witch has been hiding out from somebody."

"The guy was born twenty-some years after she left. You got to be shitting me. I don't buy it." But he spoke without conviction.

"Can somebody explain?" Malone pleaded.

Everyone chattered at him.

Once he had let it sink in, Malone mused, "My boss will really want to lay hands on the man now. But he'll probably give us the slip. He's good at changing identities. And he's had a long time to get ready."

"Pop," said Hank, "get over to the old lady's place. See if you can speed things up."

Cash said, "I know where he went."

"Where?"

"Same place as Miss Groloch. Her brother's place. He followed her. To get them both at the same time."

"Don't start that shit again!"

"Don't you start. I'm up to here…"

Beth gripped his arm. Cash forced himself to calm down. "Who's the resident Groloch expert? Maybe I haven't done so good, but you have to admit I know more than anybody else. And I was the only one who realized it was important back when you wanted to push it off on somebody else."

"He's got a point, Henry," Old Man Railsback said from the door.

"At the top of his head."

"Where do you think he went?" Malone asked. "I didn't catch your name, by the way. Nor yours,” he told Beth. He turned, but was too late to catch Old Man Railsback.

"Norman Cash. A sergeant in this chicken outfit. That's Beth Tavares. She's a detective too, only she mostly gets shafted into being a secretary."

"Norm's got the fastest mouth and gun west of the Mississippi," Hank snapped.

"You're the jerk who makes me lug a piece…"