Trinity factor, p.5
Trinity Factor, page 5
He reached up with both hands and pulled the collar of his dirty tan raincoat closer around his neck, and shivered. He was cold, tired, hungry, and most of all angry. Angry with himself for being the fool he was. He had no business being here this evening. No business following the man halfway across London every night for five nights now. And especially no business getting mixed up in this thing in the first place.
But Lovelace was a self-admitted snoop. And over the years his curiosity, if it could be called that, had won him both the admiration and the vexation of his superior officers.
He chuckled at himself, the sound thin and totally devoid of humor. He had been ordered out of Washington—hell, literally kicked out of Washington—six months ago for doing the same thing he was doing tonight: mixing in something that was no concern of his.
Across the street the door to the restaurant opened, spreading a shaft of dull yellow light on the wet pavement, and Lovelace stiffened as a man and woman emerged. The man quickly opened an umbrella, and, holding it over both of them, they hurried down the street. Lovelace sighed and relaxed. The man had been to short, too squat. He had been able to see that even from here.
The cobblestoned street was narrow, the three- and four-story buildings crowding in on it from both sides. From time to time he caught a glimpse of a narrow crack of light across the street in an upper-level window as someone pulled back a blackout curtain, but other than that the street was dark and totally devoid of life.
For a moment Lovelace let his mind drift to his small flat around the corner from his office at Broadway near Victoria. At this moment he should be settled back with a good book on his lap, a fire in the grate, a Scotch whiskey nearby, and a Lucky Strike. He had to smile at that. He had spent an hour here without a cigarette. It was some kind of a record.
He was reaching up to scratch his nose when the door to the restaurant opened again, and he froze as Lieutenant Stewart Young and another man stepped outside.
Young was tall and very thin, almost gangly, with a bowler hat perched ridiculously atop his narrow head. The other man was powerfully built, and wore no hat. Even from where Lovelace stood he could make out the man’s thick facial features. Bulgarian, perhaps.
Young seemed nervous, highly agitated, and he glanced both ways down the street before his hand darted beneath his dark raincoat, and he withdrew a fat manila envelope.
He waited a moment until the heavyset man produced a small white envelope, and the two men exchanged them, said a few words to each other, and then started away in opposite directions.
Lovelace stuffed his right hand in his coat pocket, his fingers curling familiarly around the grip of his Smith & Wesson Police Special .38, and he stepped out of the shadows.
“Leftenant Young,” he called out softly as he was halfway across the street.
Young swiveled around, nearly stumbling over his own feet. “Good lord,” he said.
From out of the corner of his eye, Lovelace saw the Bulgarian sink down into a crouch. He turned as he withdrew his pistol and fired two shots at the same moment the heavyset man was raising his own gun.
Without waiting to see if he had hit the man, Lovelace snapped around in time to see Young bringing up his own pistol.
“Don’t,” Lovelace shouted, as he brought his gun around with both hands and pointed it directly at the lieutenant.
At that moment sirens sounded all around them, and as tires screeched on wet pavement, headlights and flashing red lights bore down on them from both directions.
“Put it down!” Lovelace shouted again, but Young was like a wild man, apparently not hearing a thing but the sirens.
He seemed to be doing a macabre little dance on the sidewalk, as he looked both ways down the street at the approaching police vehicles. Then he glanced at Lovelace. A moment later he raised the pistol to his own temple and fired.
“No,” Lovelace screamed too late, and he raced forward toward the fallen man. He hadn’t wanted this to happen. Not this, goddammit!
Car doors were slamming, sirens were still sounding, and he could hear several men running toward him. “Halt,” someone shouted from his left.
He skidded to a stop a couple of yards from Young’s body and started to slowly turn around, holding both of his hands far out to his sides.
“Don’t move,” someone else shouted, this time from the right, and Lovelace stood stock-still.
Strong hands snatched the pistol from him and shoved him around to face the headlights.
“Bloody hell, it’s Lovelace,” a familiar voice said from farther back, and a moment later he was looking into the scowling face of his direct liaison duty superior, Major Chadwick Faircloth.
“Good evening, major,” Lovelace said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. He had bungled it and there was going to be hell to pay. He let his hands fall slowly to his sides.
Faircloth half turned away. “Stand down, people,” he shouted. “He’s one of ours.” He turned back to face Lovelace. “I hate to admit.”
“I think they’re both dead,” Lovelace said, glancing over at where Young was lying sprawled on his back. Half the side of his head was covered in blood, and a dark, glistening pool had formed beside him on the wet sidewalk.
“They bloody well are, you stupid bastard,” Faircloth said, barely able to control his anger. He shook his head. “What in hell were you doing here?” he asked, but then he held out his hand. “No, don’t tell me. You can explain it all to the colonel.” He stared at Lovelace for several long moments, and then finally turned away and began issuing orders for ambulances, ID teams, and someone to come and clean up the mess.
Lovelace slowly walked over to where Young’s body lay, bent down over it, and pushed the man’s raincoat aside. From an inner pocket he withdrew the white envelope the Bulgarian had handed over, and opened it. Inside were twenty dirty, well-worn, five-pound notes. A hundred pounds.
“He was being blackmailed and needed the money,” Faircloth said from behind him.
Lovelace looked up, then put the money back in the envelope and the envelope back in the dead man’s pocket, and then he stood up.
“Their setup all the way?” he asked.
Faircloth nodded, his intense anger of a few moments ago evaporated. “They thought so. The poor bastard. He was a fairy and thought we didn’t know it,” he said, staring down at the dead man. “But he was a hell of a good cipher man. We didn’t give a damn if he was the Queen of Sheba.”
“What was he selling?”
Faircloth looked up, an expression of weariness on his features. “That’s just the hell of it—he wasn’t selling a thing. We were using him as a plant. Coded returns, dummy troop movements, and the like, with a key. We wanted the information to get back to Berlin so we could nail down their conduit. If they had swallowed it, we would have had a field day.”
“Sorry,” Lovelace said, looking down again at the dead man.
“Sorry, hell,” Faircloth snapped, his anger flaring again. “You had no business on this one. You’re a liaison man, nothing more.”
“If I had been told, none of this would have happened,” Lovelace said. He could feel his own anger rising. “Christ, all Woodsworthe would have had to say last week was that it was a special operation, and that I would be told about it sooner or later. I wouldn’t have gone after him.”
Faircloth nodded. “If it’s any consolation to you, Lovelace, none of my people spotted you.”
Lovelace managed a slight smile, although he did not feel that great. “I didn’t see your people, either.”
Faircloth shook his head again. “You’re such a damned good cop—it’s too bad you can’t learn to keep your nose out of other people’s affairs.”
“That’s a contradiction in terms, major.”
“I suppose,” Faircloth said. He glanced down at the dead man, and then back up at Lovelace. “Let’s go, then,” he said, and he turned on his heel and went down the street to where his car was parked.
Lovelace followed him and climbed in the passenger side as Faircloth issued a number of other orders to his people. Then the major climbed in behind the wheel and backed the car down to the corner, where he turned around.
A moment later they were headed through Soho toward Broadway, the windshield wipers flapping back and forth in a soothing rhythm. Lovelace pulled out a Lucky, lit it, and inhaled deeply, briefly wondering if they allowed prisoners at Leavenworth as many cigarettes as he smoked each day.
Six months ago. Washington, D.C. It seemed like a million miles and as many years away.
“What in hell are we supposed to do with you, Lovelace?” his superior officer had asked rhetorically.
When he had tried to answer, the captain held up his hand. “No. Please, I don’t want to know that.”
They were in the Pentagon Security Office, and outside the captain’s tiny cubicle, Lovelace could hear the hubbub of activity—telephones ringing, typewriters clattering, and the low murmur of a dozen voices.
He had been in similar situations in a hundred offices around the country during his seventeen years of military service; beginning as a clerk typist at the Fort Hood Military Police Depot in San Antonio and stretching from one end of the United States to the other, Lovelace had become a cop. A damned good cop, but one who never seemed able to leave well enough alone.
The first incident had been at Fort Bragg, where Lovelace happened to discover that the base commander had been pilfering supplies and selling them to downtown merchants. The commander, a lieutenant colonel, had received ten years at hard labor for his escapade, and Lovelace had been reassigned without promotion. The colonel had been Old South money.
Another incident involved the Officer’s Club in New York City, which Lovelace discovered operated a highly successful bordello. When he had exposed that setup, he had caught a district command officer, Lieutenant General Hubert Briggs, literally with his trousers down. Briggs resigned his commission and retired to a small farm in Massachusetts, and Lovelace, still a corporal, was reassigned once again without promotion.
“What I do want to know,” the captain asked sincerely, “is why you don’t just get out of the army? Hell, the Inspector General’s office doesn’t even want you.” There was no rancor in his voice. “But I’m sure that any police force in the country would take you.”
Lovelace smiled. “There’s a war going on, captain, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said softly. “Besides, I need three more years for my retirement.”
The captain shook his head in wonder, opened a file folder, and handed a single sheet of paper across the desk. “Your orders came over this morning.” When Lovelace took the paper, the captain smiled and shook his head again. “If you fuck this one up, you’ll be in big trouble.” He laughed. “This time I think they’ve finally got you boxed in.”
Lovelace looked down at his orders, and he too had to smile. The captain was probably right this time. He had been assigned as special U.S. Army G-2 liaison between General Eisenhower’s staff in London and the British Secret Intelligence Service (the SIS) headquarters.
“I’m to be a paper shuffler, then,” he said, looking up again.
The captain stood up, a broad smile on his face. “You got it, sarge. No more cops and robbers. But, more importantly, I’ve got you out of my hair.” He came around his desk and pumped Lovelace’s hand warmly. “I want to wish you all the luck, and I really mean that.”
A paper shuffler, Lovelace thought, as he took a deep drag from his cigarette. He looked over at Major Faircloth, who was concentrating on his driving.
“Is Colonel Woodsworthe in his office at this hour?”
Faircloth glanced at him and nodded. “He was waiting to see how our operation turned out this evening.”
“Great,” Lovelace said dourly.
“How in bloody hell do you get into these messes?” Faircloth asked. He was totally without anger now. “I took a peek at your file when you came to us, and good lord, it’s a wonder they hadn’t set you before a firing squad years ago.”
“It’s easy,” Lovelace said absently. He took out another cigarette and lit it from the stub of the first.
Six days ago, during the usual Monday morning tea-and-crumpet staff briefing, Lovelace had noticed a red-tagged file sitting on Colonel Woodsworthe’s desk. There had been a glossy photo of a man paperclipped to its cover, and he had asked about it.
The colonel had pushed the file aside and shook his head. “Not for you,” he said.
“Who is he?” Lovelace asked. The several other officers in the office, Faircloth included, looked with amusement at the exchange. Lovelace’s reputation had preceded him.
“See here,” the colonel fumed. “I told you it’s none of your bloody business.”
Lovelace shrugged and stubbed out the butt of his cigarette in the colonel’s spotless ashtray. “Just curious, colonel. No offense meant.”
Woodsworthe’s eyes went incredulously from Lovelace to the ashtray and back to Lovelace. No one smoked in Woodsworthe’s presence. The ashtray, purely ceremonial, had been given to him by the King, and he was angry now. Once again his goat had been gotten.
“And before you show up at another staff briefing, sergeant, do something with that uniform tunic—it’s filthy!” the colonel shouted, his face turning red.
“Sure,” Lovelace said absently, but he was staring at the photo and the code number on the file. He had been around SIS long enough to identify the index number. The man whose photo he was looking at was in all likelihood a Nazi agent. Probably someone within the service itself, which would explain the colonel’s sensitivity about it.
When he returned to his cubbyhole of an office later that morning, he placed a call down to archives, giving them the code number he had memorized.
“Colonel Woodsworthe has that file, sir,” the WAAF clerk said over the phone.
“I know that,” Lovelace replied. “I just came from the man’s office, but like the fool I am I forgot his duty assignment. Could you look it up for me?”
“I’m sure that the colonel would be happy …”
“Look,” Lovelace interrupted, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “I’m in a bit of a jam with the colonel as it is. I’m on my best behavior. If I go barging back into his office now requesting information I should already have, he’ll hit the ceiling.”
The woman was silent for a moment, and then she laughed. “All right, luv, just a sec.”
Lovelace sat back and put his feet up on the desk and smiled. A few seconds later the woman was back.
“He works in Cipher School, Communications Division.”
“Bletchley Park?” Lovelace asked, dropping his feet from the desk top and sitting forward. The Park was where the British were decoding Nazi Enigma messages. It was their most sensitive project.
“Until recently,” the young woman said. “He’s been reassigned here in analysis. Is that all?”
“Yep,” Lovelace said. “I wasn’t aware that old Barnes worked out of this building.”
“Barnes?” the woman said, confused.
“Yes, Joseph Barnes,” Lovelace said in mock surprise. He repeated the file number. “Barnes is the man we’re talking about?”
“I can see why Colonel Woodsworthe would be mad at you—you’ve apparently gone and mixed up your files. I don’t know anything about this Barnes, whoever he is, but the index you’re talking about belongs to Lieutenant Stewart Young.”
“Thanks,” Lovelace said. “You saved me from a fate worse than death. If the colonel had found out what I was up to, he’d have my head for sure.”
“Anytime,” the woman said. “And good luck,” she added before she rang off.
Faircloth parked at the rear of the SIS building, and they entered through a back door, which the major unlocked with his own key. Down a narrow, dimly lit corridor, they came to the large entry hall at the front of the building, where they signed in with date and time. Then they took the wide marble stairs, with ornate iron railings, up to the third floor.
At the top landing they stopped, and Faircloth seemed to study Lovelace’s eyes for a long moment. “I suppose that over the years a fellow like you would have built up quite a list of enemies.”
Lovelace nodded, but said nothing. He had always liked Major Faircloth, who had seemed to him to be a decent sort.
“Is that why you carry a weapon?”
“It’s come in handy from time to time.”
Faircloth seemed to think that over for a moment, then grunted noncommittally. “When the lab boys are finished with it, I’ll see it gets back to you.”
“Thanks,” Lovelace said, and together they walked down the wide corridor, their heels clattering loudly on the tile floor.
At the far end of the building, Faircloth knocked once at a plain wooden door, and Lovelace braced himself for the coming storm. He briefly wondered what his next assignment would be, if indeed there was to be another assignment, and then Faircloth opened the door and they entered the staff briefing room.
Colonel Woodsworthe, his thinning gray hair mussed, his military tunic open, and his tie undone, sat at one end of the long conference table, several maps and documents spread out in front of him. Next to him sat an American army lieutenant colonel, whom Lovelace vaguely recognized as someone he had seen around Ike’s London headquarters.
Both men looked up and then got to their feet as Faircloth and Lovelace entered the room. They shook hands.
“Thanks for your cooperation at this time of night, colonel,” the American officer said.
“My pleasure,” Woodsworthe replied, and he glanced over at Lovelace. “Entirely my pleasure,” There was a tight smile on his face.
“Will you need his report?”
Woodsworthe shook his head. “We’ve pretty well pieced it together.” Again he glanced at Lovelace. “Quite inventive, actually.”
