The Talbot Odyssey (8 page)

Katherine opened the door, and Carbury stepped up to it. He said, “Please consider yourself operational now. Security, discretion, and extreme personal caution.”

Katherine replied, “If you are who you say you are, and the letter is what it purports to be, then thank you, Colonel. If you are not who you seem, then be extremely careful yourself.”

Carbury smiled. “Good day.” He left.

Katherine walked to her desk and pressed her intercom. “Mr. Abrams, will you come in here? Immediately, please.”

She folded the Wingate letter and slid it into the pocket of her wool blazer.

Tony Abrams opened the door between her office and the library. Katherine looked at him, framed in the doorway against the brighter lights of the library. He was a tall man, with dusky skin, black hair, and deep-set dark eyes. He did not affect what she called the Brooks Brothers–attorney costume. He seemed to own only dark suits and white shirts, all of which were remarkably alike. The ties—and there were a good number of them—were always colorful, as though he were trying to avoid being taken for a funeral director. His movements were slow and easy, and his manner was taciturn. They exchanged barely a dozen words at a time, but somehow they had developed a good working relationship.

She nodded toward the door. “An Englishman, name of Carbury.” She handed Carbury’s card to Abrams. “Just left. Tall, thin, white mustache, about seventy years old. He’ll be asking the receptionist for his coat. Follow him, please, to find out where he’s staying. Call me.”

Abrams handed back the card and without a word turned and left.

Katherine walked slowly to the sideboard. She looked at a picture framed in old silver: Major Henry Kimberly, dressed in officer’s tans, without a cap, so that his light hair fell boyishly over his forehead. It was an outdoor shot, in sepia tones. In the background was the blurry suggestion of a stone wall, which as a child she had imagined to be a fort. Now she wondered if it was Brompton Hall.

She picked up the picture and held it closer. Her father’s eyes, like her own, were large and very clear. She remembered the only nice thing her mother ever said about him: “He had eyes that sparkled across a room.”

She looked at the inscription:
To my Little Kate, I love you,
Daddy.
She placed the photograph back on the sideboard. Lifting the decanter of Scotch, she poured some into a half glass of water. The neck of the decanter rattled against the lip of the glass as her hand shook.

She took the drink to the window and held it pressed against her chest. She looked out across the city and took a long, deep breath, feeling the tears forming in her eyes. The cityscape dissolved into a watery blur, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Yes,
she thought,
a day of long gray shadows
.

Tony Abrams crossed the large, beige-toned reception area and saw Randolph Carbury approaching the elevator bank, pulling on a tan raincoat.

Abrams took his own coat from the closet, descended the sweeping circular staircase in the center of the reception floor, and walked to the elevators on the lower floor of the law offices. He pushed the button and waited. The elevator doors opened, and Abrams stepped in beside Carbury. They rode down to the street level.

He followed Carbury through the long, shop-lined concourse and exited with him from the east end of the RCA Building, into the damp, chilly air.

Abrams established an interval of ten yards and followed Carbury around the skating rink, through the promenade, and onto Fifth Avenue, where Carbury turned north.

As he walked, Abrams considered that he was following a man he didn’t know for a purpose he couldn’t begin to fathom. At forty-three years of age he was doing what he’d done at thirty-three as a New York City undercover cop. At least then he knew the whys and wherefores of his assignments. Now he knew very little about the tasks he was asked to perform for the firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose. Such as agreeing to go to the Russian estate on Monday, Memorial Day. But Patrick O’Brien had assured him he’d be fully briefed before he went. O’Brien’s idea of fully briefed, he suspected, did not coincide with his own.

Carbury stopped now and then, ostensibly to take in the sights. Abrams’ instincts told him that the man was a pro, a fact Katherine Kimberly had failed to mention.

Abrams stopped and looked into a bookstore window as Carbury waited for a light. Whenever he followed someone, Abrams was reminded of his mother’s sage advice: “Get an inside job.” In the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn where he’d grown up, the world was neatly divided into outside and inside jobs. Outside jobs meant pneumonia, heat stroke, and unspeakable accidents. Inside jobs of the tie-and-jacket variety were safe. Notwithstanding that admonition, he became a cop. A little inside, a little outside, once in a while a tie. His mother wasn’t altogether pleased. She’d tell her friends, “He’s a detective. An inside job. He wears a suit.”

He had graduated at the top of his class from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, then entered Fordham Law School. It was then that he’d had an occasion to see the O’Brien firm in action. He had been observing a stock-fraud case for a law class, and it seemed that the defendant had more lawyers than the district attorney had pages in his indictment. The assistant DA trying the case had been dazzled—intimidated, actually. Abrams had been impressed, both as a cop and as a law student, and some weeks later he had applied for and gotten a part-time process server job with the O’Brien firm. Then, a year ago, Patrick O’Brien offered him a full-time position and full tuition reimbursement. At the time, it seemed apparent that they wanted a house dick, someone with special police knowledge and without the encumbrances of being a sworn peace officer. Since his May Day conversation with O’Brien, he wasn’t certain anymore of what they wanted of him.

Randolph Carbury crossed the street and stopped again to watch a well-attended sidewalk game of three-card monte. Abrams suspected that Carbury was trying to determine if he had a tail. If so, he’d try to shake the tail. And in a one-on-one situation, that wouldn’t be difficult. Abrams considered the unhappy prospect of going back to Katherine Kimberly empty-handed. But he also considered that he was unhappy with the way he was usually kept guessing about these assignments.

There was something decidedly non-kosher about the prestigious firm of O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, and Abrams had one clue: Like the law firm of the late General William Donovan, which was located a few floors below, O’Brien’s firm had national intelligence connections going back to World War II. Not only was Patrick O’Brien an ex-intelligence officer, but so had been the late Henry Kimberly. The late Jonathan Rose had been an Allen Dulles aide in Bern during the war and a John Foster Dulles aide in the State Department during the Eisenhower administration. Also, Abrams had seen a good number of intelligence men and women, who had somehow run afoul of the law, pass through the office. If there was anything irregular about this law practice, it was those connections and associations. Tonight at the dinner he might learn more.

Carbury continued north. Abrams followed. His thoughts turned back to Katherine Kimberly. There was a woman who personified sangfroid. He imagined she took cold showers in the winter and stood in front of an open window to dry off. The Ice Queen, he called her, though certainly not to her face.

Yet when she had summoned him into her office, he had been almost shocked at her appearance. She was ghostly white, very upset, and she’d barely made an effort at hiding it. There was still that ice wall between them, but it had clearly cracked, and she seemed more human and more vulnerable in those brief seconds than he could have imagined.

Obviously the interview with Carbury had precipitated some strong emotion in her. Carbury was British, a colonel, World War II vintage. His card said retired and gave no branch, but the man was decidedly not a quartermaster officer. He was more likely in intelligence or police work of some sort. Abrams, after more than twenty years, could spot the signs. This did not explain what had caused so startling a transformation in Katherine Kimberly, but it was a clue.

He thought perhaps he should have asked her if she was all right. But then she might have borne a grudge against him for noticing and commenting on it; though he wondered why he felt it mattered.

Carbury passed the Plaza Hotel and headed west on Central Park South, then turned into the St. Moritz Hotel. Abrams waited a full minute, then entered the lobby.

Carbury was at the news counter buying a copy of the
Times.
He walked to the desk, spoke briefly with the clerk, then walked to the elevator and took the first car up.

Abrams paused at the news counter. The
Times
headlined: PRESIDENT SPEAKS TONIGHT IN CITY. A subline announced:
Addresses
World War II Intelligence Service.
The
Post
read simply: PRES SPEAKS TO EX-SPOOKS TONIGHT. The
News
reported: POSH BASH FOR CLOAK AND DAGGER BOYS. Which reminded Abrams that he hadn’t picked up his tuxedo yet. “Damn it.”

He walked across the lobby and approached the desk clerk. “Do you have a Colonel Randolph Carbury registered?”

“Yes, sir. Room 1415.”

Abrams walked toward the front doors. That was easier than he thought. Too easy? He turned and walked to the house phone. “Colonel Randolph Carbury, room 1415.”

After a pause, the operator answered, “I’m sorry, sir. Room 1415 is unoccupied.”

“Do you have a Randolph Carbury registered?”

“Hold on. . . . No, sir, there is no one by that name here.”

Abrams’ impulse was to go back to the desk clerk and have a talk with him, but it would be better if Carbury thought he’d pulled it off.

Abrams went out and stood on the sidewalk. It was getting late, and he was becoming annoyed. The assignment was better accomplished from a telephone. If Carbury was registered anywhere in the city under his own name, Abrams could discover where within a few hours. Katherine Kimberly made easy use of his time and shoe leather.

He crossed Central Park South and entered a phone booth from which he could see the St. Moritz. A light rain began to fall.

He called a friend in the Nineteenth Precinct and gave him the information, then placed a call to Katherine Kimberly. “I’m across from the St. Moritz—”

“Is he staying there?”

“That’s what he wants me to think—”

“You mean he suspects he’s being followed?”

“If he’s trying to lose me, then he knows, doesn’t he?”

“I thought you were good at this.”

Abrams gave himself a few seconds to control his voice. “You are supposed to tell me if the man is a pro.”

“Oh . . . sorry.” She paused. “Does he think he lost you?”

“Maybe. Look, I can’t follow him indefinitely. I’ve got someone working on hotel registrations. I’m leaving.”

“No. Stay with him. I want you to see that he’s safely in his hotel, or wherever it is he’s staying—”

“Safely? Safely implies that someone is trying to do something unsafe to him. You’ve got a lot to learn about briefing—”

“I’m sorry. I had no time. He left me with the impression that someone may want to harm him.”

Abrams looked across the street, then scanned the park behind him. He slipped his .38 “police special” out of his shoulder holster and dropped it into his coat pocket. “He probably thinks I’m gunning for him. Christ, he’s probably called the cops. That’s all I need, to get busted for harassment—”

“We’ll represent you. No charge.”

He started to reply, then laughed.

Unexpectedly, she laughed too, a genuine laugh, light and almost girlish, and it surprised him. “Be careful,” she said. “Stay with it. All right, Mr. Abrams?”

He lit a cigarette. “All right, Miss Kimberly. But listen, I’ve decided to skip this thing tonight.”

She snapped, “You’ve got to be there,” then softened her tone. “I’m afraid that it’s a command performance.”

Abrams drew on his cigarette and stared through the rain toward the hotel. “My tux is at the cleaners. Can’t get it while I’m doing this.”

“I’ll have it picked up and delivered to you.”

“Good. I’ll change in a phone booth.”

“Listen to me. Colonel Carbury is going where we are going tonight, so he also has to dress. Eventually he must go to his hotel—”

“You should have told me that, too. It makes a difference.”

“Now you know. So stay with him until then.”

“Do you know I live in Brooklyn?”

“Yes, and I sympathize. So you will go to the firm’s town house at 184 East Thirty-sixth Street, where your dinner jacket will be delivered. You can dress there, unless you’d prefer a telephone booth. What cleaner do you use?”

He hesitated, then mentioned a formal-wear rental shop, cursing her silently for making him reveal the fact that his wardrobe didn’t include such a thing.

She made him repeat the name of the place, and he wondered if she was enjoying herself. She said, “I’ve called the Burke Agency, and they’ve got two detectives with a radio car ready to assist you. Can they rendezvous with you now?”

“They could have if you’d mentioned it sooner. Unfortunately, Carbury has just left the hotel. I’ll call Burke’s office later.”

“Call me, too. I’ll be here until five fifteen. Then I’ll be at the Lombardy Hotel. Ask for the Thorpe suite.”

He hung up and crossed the street. Carbury headed south on Sixth Avenue. It was after 5:00 P.M. now, and rush hour traffic was getting heavier. Shop windows cast oblongs of light onto the wet sidewalks. Carbury was barely visible crossing 58th Street.

Abrams hurried to catch up. The telephone conversation had somehow taken the edge off his bad mood. He was interested again. The Lombardy Hotel. Only it wasn’t actually a hotel. Every suite above the lobby was owned by somebody who paid more money for it than it would cost to buy the entire block in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. “You travel in the right circles, Ice Queen.” The Thorpe suite. Peter Thorpe—Abrams had been introduced to him once in the office. He’d check that out too, though it was none of his business.