Safe House

“And not browns and not yellows and not reds and not no other fucking shade, okay?” Herk told him, a step shy of aggressive.

“And Jews?”

“Jews? They ain’t white people. They ain’t people at all.”

Pryce went “Ummm . . .” like he was considering this newly presented wisdom. “Tell me about the man you killed,” he said finally.

“I don’t know nothin’ about no—”

“You first,” I interrupted, holding Pryce’s eyes.

“This is a leaderless cell,” Pryce said, like he’d never asked the homicide question. “A super-cell, in point of fact. It’s been in place just a few months. There are only a half-dozen or so members, and they all have conventional lives. Relatively conventional. The meetings are in various places, but they use a bookstore in lower Manhattan for an information drop. They’re only in New York until—”

“What’s a super-cell?” I asked him.

He nodded like a college professor who got asked a moderately intelligent question—one that showed the students were paying attention. Finally. “Each of them is a . . . representative,” he said. “From one of the original leaderless cells scattered throughout the country. Eventually, each of them will return to his base area to a pre- determined residence and await contact. Their home cells may have changed composition or personnel by then. Or they may have disappeared. But if they are contacted when they return, each member of the super-cell passes the word. The date for the unified action.”

“And you don’t know that date?”

“No. I don’t believe it is known. Yet.”

“Or the target list?”

“There’s no way to know that at all. Each of the local cells has that. The way it’s set up, the member they detached to the super-cell doesn’t know it either.”

“Why can’t you just shadow each of them when they split?”

“Do you know the kind of surveillance effort that would require? And without tipping them off? No, we need the date. Anything else we get would be gravy.”

I raised my eyebrows at the mention of gravy. If he noticed, Pryce gave no sign.

“Up to now, they’ve been taking their cues from the newspapers. The church arsons, that’s an example. One cell just goes out and commits an . . . action, they call it. Another reads about it, does the same thing. There’s no communication between them. None at all. But this one’s different.”

I looked around for an ashtray. Couldn’t see one. Lit a cigarette with a wooden match. A real one this time, no damn cloves. I watched Pryce’s face. Nothing. Okay. I took out a small metal box, the kind some cough drops come in, and opened it up. Pryce nodded approvingly. Good. Let him get used to me taking things out of my pockets.

“You telling me each of them has a home cell?”

“Yes.”

“So where’s Lothar’s?”

“Right here,” Pryce said. “New York City.”

“And he’s gonna give them up too?”

“He already has,” the colorless man replied, the muscle jumping under his eye.

“So they’re being watched?”

“He has no contact with them, I told you. And we don’t have the resources to do that anyway.”

I wondered who “we” was in that sentence. Whoever it was, it wasn’t the FBI. It has enough damn “resources” to watch anyone. Could they already be in custody?

I dragged on my cigarette, thinking. The whole thing was as snaky-shaky as a politician’s promise.

“Herk’s gotta be a member, right?” I put it to him. “Not some free-lance assassin —a card-carrying, true-believing member. He’s gotta be inside.”

“That’s true.”

“And his credential is that he did some . . . job for them, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you can cover that?”

“Yes.”

I got it then. “So Herk was in Lothar’s cell? From the jump, right?”

“Right.”

“And the guy he . . . took care of, that guy was in the cell too?”

“Yes.”

“An informant?”

“No!” he said sharply. “There can’t even be the hint of such a thing. They would instantly disband if they had any reason to believe they’d been infiltrated. Just fold their tents and go.”

“But not drop the plan?”

“Of course not. But there’d be no way to pick them up again.”

A thought crossed my mind. Something I’d never asked. But it could blow the whole thing higher than Timothy Leary. “This guy you . . .” I asked Herk. “He was white?”

“Uh, yeah,” Herk said. He hadn’t thought about it either.

“No he wasn’t,” I said leaning forward, flushed with relief. Elbows on knees, looking only at Herk, shutting Pryce out of my vision. “He was a Jew. His mother, or his grandmother, whatever, was a Jew. That makes him a Jew. That’s the way they do it in Israel. He’d changed his name, but the cell discovered it. That’s when you got the word to—”

“That’s when you volunteered,” Pryce interjected, with me now.

I shifted my eyes back to the colorless man. “They have some kind of mail drop?” I asked him. “I know they can’t contact the old cell, but is there some way for the cells to reach out to them?”

“Yes. They use a P.O. box on—”

“Okay.” I spun it out. “Lothar gets word that . . . one of his cell buddies was rotten, okay? Now listen, he tells the other guys in his unit that he got this word. He can get the details, but, to do it, he’s gotta meet with someone from his old cell. That’s Herk.”

“They might panic and—”

“And that’s the game,” I said flatly. “If they run, they run. But if they want to hear what really happened, calm themselves down, make a decision whether to abort or not, they have to meet with Herk. And once they meet with him, he’s gotta stay with them until it’s over, right?”

“Yes,” Pryce said slowly. “That’s the way they would behave. Once he was there, he couldn’t go back. But it’s a risk. . . .”

“Any other bullshit way you try and stick Herk in there is a risk too. Only question is, who takes the risk? And here’s the answer: it’s not gonna be us.”

“It’s my decision,” Pryce said. “Not yours.” He scratched the tip of his nose with his index fingernail. “Unless you can guarantee that this divorce business will be dropped.”

“I can’t do that,” I told him. “My way’s the only way. You can get a meet with Lothar, right? That’s when he meets Herk. He wouldn’t necessarily know all his cell buddies that good anyway. This is the way to do it, and you know it.”

“We’ll need good information, very good information about the . . . Jew.”

“I can get all that,” I promised him.

“How fast?”

“Twenty-four hours, max.”

He took a shallow breath. “You have complete control? Of that woman?”

I knew who he meant. “Total,” I promised him.

“Get the information,” he said. “We don’t have much time. You two stay together. Wait for my call. I’ll call her. Two, three days at the most.”

“Done,” I said. To remind him about the money.