Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels (19 page)

The cable he was drafting was the go-ahead. He combined it with a Situation Report with enough detail to see whether anybody had gotten fainthearted in Paris or DC. It was no worse than they must have expected, though. Presumably the Powers That Be had decided they wanted the omelet before they contacted Kelly in the first place.

The agent left Sergeant Rowe’s door unlocked behind him because he did not have a key to readmit himself if he needed to. His trouser cuffs swished and echoed at every step. They sounded much like a blade on a whetstone.

Ideally, the mini-computer would have been located with the General Services Officer in the Annex across the road. The system’s main day-to-day use was for inventory control. Other officers, with more clout, if less need, had lists of their own which they wanted on disk too, however. There was also some reasonable concern, Doug had said, that the local employees who swarmed about the Annex would find the new Western toy irresistible—and fragile—if it were where they could get their hands on it. That meant that Kelly had only to walk up to the third floor of the Chancery instead of hiking up the Chemin Cheikh Bachir Brahimi and back.

The computer sat on its cabinet, partially obstructing the entrance to the tower from which the harbor was monitored. The agent cut on the power, then checked the tower room more or less for the hell of it . . . though it wouldn’t have been wholly beyond possibility for one of the Company men to have been inside, “checking the cameras.” When the CRT screen announced the machine was PRET—Christ, it was a Thomson-CSF unit with all its commands and controls in French—Kelly took a program disk from his inside coat pocket and inserted it.

There was a set of similar—though not, of course, identical—code programs locked in the safe in the Defense Attaché’s office for emergencies. For the purpose of Skyripper, however, Kelly was assuming that the disks issued to Commander Posner had already been compromised; that is, that CIA officers had made a surreptitious entry to the office, burgled the safe, and copied the programs therein.

In all likelihood, that had in fact occurred.

Kelly began typing from his draft. He turned off the CRT since the letters that would be appearing on it were garbage anyway. The program simply coupled the keystrokes into a series of random numbers generated, Kelly had once been told, by cosmic ray impacts. It was the electronic equivalent of a one-pad code, totally indecipherable without an identical program. Because the patterns were random, even possession of the clear text of one message would not have permitted the deciphering of the next.

With the report complete and stored in the working memory of the computer, Kelly checked to see that the paper was straight in the sprocket feed of the printer. It was. Sighing, he punched COM and watched with his usual fascination as the daisy wheel raced back and forth across the paper. Even after five years of selling and servicing the damned things, Kelly still got a wrenching feeling every time he saw a machine working happily away without the necessary attention of any human being. It made the agent think of missile silos in North Dakota and Siberia, controlled by computers just as conscienceless as this one.

Of course, somebody still had to punch START.

The printer was a fast one. It had completed its task before Kelly’s mind had proceeded from the air bursts at 10,000 feet to the firestorms sucking houses and men into the heart of hell. Somebody else’s worry, that. Kelly pulled the sheet from the printer and checked it. Satisfied, he removed the program disk, put it back in its envelope, and cut the computer’s power—dumping the internal memory. With the encrypted sheet folded in his hand, he walked down the empty stairs to the basement and the Code Room.

There was no response when Kelly knocked on the heavy steel door. The agent’s frown began to smooth into the blankness his face took on when he was really angry. Then Charlie DeVoe called, “Hey, Cap’n,” from behind in the corridor. “Let me take that.” The Communicator was grinning. “Sorry I wasn’t here, but it hasn’t come to the point we can’t take a leak while we’re on duty, you know.”

“Just got here myself,” the agent said, handing over the encrypted report. At the top he had printed in block capitals the cable address and priority. No one had thought to tell Kelly where the normal word-processing program was kept. The address, if typed on the code program, would have been just as indecipherable as the text. “Sorry as hell to keep you on again,” Kelly said, “but maybe Doug told you—I hope a fifth of Scotch’ll make things a little smoother for you.”

The Communicator raised his eyebrows at the statement, then glanced down at the coded document. “Oh, didn’t have to worry about that. . . .” he said, meaning one fact or the other. Then, “Yeah, that sure as hell does smooth things. You know what a fifth of Johnny Walker runs me?”

Kelly was taken aback by the question. The liquor was, after all, a gesture rather than payment
per se
for work within the Communicator’s normal duties. “Well, about three bucks, I suppose,” he said mildly, “but I’ve always found it’s a good way to spend three bucks.”

“Three bucks to somebody on the dip list,” DeVoe corrected. “Somebody who can order duty-free from Justesen, sure. To Foreign Service
Staff
,
like yours truly”—he thumped himself on the chest— “It’s the full duty. That’s about eighty bucks in Algiers, that’s what it is.”

“Christ,” said Kelly in amazement, “I knew it was that way on paper . . . but I thought missions generally pooled their duty-free allowances and everybody got some. I mean, they keep telling us America’s a democracy, don’t they?”

DeVoe sneered. “Not the Algiers mission,” he said. “And that’s not a policy that’ll be changed by his Excellency Rufus Jackass Gordon, either.” The Communicator’s face brightened. “Say, you know that bastard’s looking for you, don’t you?”

“Heard there was a cable on the subject,” admitted the agent. The situation reminded him of the business deals he had made in men’s rooms across Western Europe. DeVoe could not take him into the Code Room, and a suggestion that they move anywhere else would have broken the rapport.

“Sure was, short and sweet,” the Communicator said. The problem with making people violate their oaths in order to keep their jobs was that once the initial sanctity was gone, the oath itself meant very little. DeVoe had lost his cherry a long time back. “‘Request denied,’ it said, and I’d have given a month’s pay to see Gordon’s face when Buffy carried it over to him. God
damn
I would!” He sobered, even as his hand raised to slap his thigh. “Say, though, that’s not what I meant. The duty officer’s been calling all around the building looking for you. He had Gordon on the line, wanted you ASAP.” DeVoe waved the sheet of gate-fold paper and grinned. “Guess he didn’t try the computer, did he?”

“Hell, I was busy,” said the agent. “I wouldn’t have answered if somebody did ring. Though come to think, I didn’t see an intercom up there anyway.” He sighed. “Well,” he went on, “I guess I better go put in an appearance or you’ll be here to morning with the Ambassador’s cable traffic. . . .”

XX

Kelly could hear the angry voices as he mounted the stairs to the lobby. Even so, he was surprised when he stepped through the doorway and saw that one of the three men wrangling in the reception area was Ambassador Rufus Gordon himself.

“Ah—” said the youngest of the three men, presumably the duty officer. He pointed toward the stairs and Kelly.

Ambassador Gordon and the plump, suited man of about forty turned at the gesture. “What in
God’s
name do you think you’re doing?” Gordon demanded in a voice on the high edge of control.

“Ah, Mr. Ambassador—” the plump man beside him said anxiously.

“Reeves,” quavered the Ambassador, “when I need the warnings of my DCM as to what I should say in my own embassy, then I’ll ask for them!”

The Deputy Chief of Mission bit down on his lower lip. Kelly said very carefully, “Sir, I’m doing my job, just like anybody else. I’ll be leaving—”

“Who told you you could waltz around the Chancery unescorted?” Gordon shouted. He wheeled on the duty officer like the cutting head of a turret lathe. “You—Byrne!
You
let him loose this way?” In his silver-gray suit and agitation, the Ambassador looked like a man who had witnessed a murder on the way to a dinner party.

Kelly did not know the junior officer, but he knew his own duty as a human being. Raising his voice in a verbal lightning rod to draw the anger back on himself, the agent said, “My permission to use embassy facilities freely came to me through Major General Wallace Pedler, the DA in Paris. If you feel the confirmation of those orders which you’ve already received is not enough, then I suggest that’s a matter for General Pedler’s superiors and yours.
Sir
.”

Ambassador Gordon’s face was pale enough under ordinary circumstances. Now its pallor was less that of a corpse than of the bone beneath the flesh. He took a step toward the agent. Kelly, with the chill certainty of the knife he would not need to draw, spread his feet a half step and waited.

“Good God!” cried the DCM, leaping between the two men. Kelly had not advanced, and the Ambassador had paused when he met the agent’s eyes. Reeves bobbed between them, suddenly ridiculous—separating two motionless men already ten feet apart.

“Kelly, I swear one thing,” the Ambassador said, breathing hard. “
I’m
the President’s representative here, and
I
decide the use of embassy premises. And if you don’t leave my wife alone, you’ll rue the day you were
born
!”

It wasn’t the parting shot Kelly had expected. Gordon turned and strode out of the Chancery. The entryway door was too heavy to fling open as the Ambassador would have liked, but it made a satisfying slam behind him.

The three men in the lobby looked at one another for a moment of silence. Then the agent said quietly, “Look, I don’t suppose either of you like me worth a damn . . . and I don’t blame you. But I’m sorry, for what’s gone down and what’s coming.”

Reeves rubbed his fleshy cheeks with his hands. Instinctively, he glanced at the TV monitor as if to be sure that the Ambassador was not in the anteroom with his ear glued to the door. “This is officially a hardship post, Mr. Ceriani,” he said. “A 15% differential over base salary is paid to personnel stationed here. The weather is splendid, the government is stable—the people are quite friendly, really, if you go out and meet them, none of this ‘US go home’ stuff or jacking up the price for an American. . . . But there are times, you know, that I don’t think 15% is nearly enough.”

He drew himself up. “Well,” he concluded, “I will go back to my wife and cold dinner and
not
explain to her why his Excellency saw fit to call me away.” Shaking his head, he left the Chancery.

Kelly waited for the door to close. Without looking at the duty officer, he said, “Look, it doesn’t matter to me . . . but I’d suggest you not tell anybody about this either. If it gets beyond the, well, four people who were here, somebody’s going to get real embarrassed. That wouldn’t be good for anybody who needs a fitness report to get promoted . . . however much fun the embassy wives might find the story.” He looked up at Byrne at last. The duty officer nodded agreement.

“Well, I’m gone then,” said the agent, striding to the door. He closed it gently behind him, then waved to the TV camera before stepping out of the antechamber. He had forgotten to check on Sergeant Rowe, who should have returned by now. And on the liquor.

The first question resolved itself, while the need for a drink became more acute: Annamaria sat on one of the benches beneath the cantilevered roof covering the entryway.

The tall woman was dressed as Kelly had seen her earlier that evening, but with the addition of a dark jacket, suede or wool so far as the agent could judge in the entrance light. She was smoking a cigarette as well, something Kelly had not seen her do previously. She ground it out against the side of the stone bench before she rose. “Your things are in the St. George, the room your ‘firm’ had booked,” said the woman. “Your car is parked at the Annex, all very proper—Doug insisted. Now, if
I’d
been driving, you’d be right down there where I am.” She pointed toward the lane between the Chancery and the Villa Inshallah.

“That’s fine, sure,” Kelly said. “Look, Doug—”

“Doug has gone home, I told him to,” Annamaria said. She raised a finger to forestall any comment by the agent. “Of course, you can call him there if you really need to destroy his little girl’s birthday supper, which was supposed to have been last night.”

“Oh, hell, he didn’t say a thing about that,” Kelly mumbled. “Not that there would’ve been a choice—we needed those enlargements.”

“Well, tonight there was a choice,” Annamaria said primly. “I can’t imagine any errands Doug could run that I can’t . . . or any keys that he has and I don’t, either, though I suppose I shouldn’t admit that. Oh”—she reached down behind the bench and straightened with a topless Haig and Haig box—“Doug says these are for you.”

Kelly took the box. The metal foil seals of the two bottles winked above the cardboard cells. “Yeah,” he said, wetting his lips and pretending he had not heard the question in the woman’s voice. “Look,” he went on, facing the ground, “I need to get these inside. . . .”

“I’ll wait out here.” Annamaria spoke brightly, but as Kelly buzzed the Chancery door he noticed the flame of a cigarette lighter behind him.

Byrne turned out to be one of the vice consuls. If he was surprised at the agent’s request that he give the Scotch to DeVoe when he left, it did not show. Kelly had no intention of disturbing the Communicator while he was in the middle of sending Kelly’s own urgent cable. As for the sour mash waiting for the agent’s return—it was more than a temptation to open it and take a quick slug before walking back into the night. Kelly did not do so; but he was not sure he would not until he had closed the outer door behind him.

“Look, Anna,” he said as the woman stood again and the second cigarette joined the first, “maybe we need to talk, but I don’t think—this—is the place. . . .”