“Dark claims Purchase offered him twenty thousand cash,” Erika said.
Mott gave his right earlobe a thoughtful tug. “So when Purchase inspected the car, he had the opportunity to attach the electronic device.” Without waiting for comment, Mott continued, still tugging at his earlobe. “But all that happened before anyone could’ve known you two would pick up the car. In fact, the idea didn’t occur to me until a few seconds before I suggested it at McCorkle’s. Therefore—and I’m getting a little weary from leaping to all these conclusions—someone was monitoring the car electronically when you picked it up. The someone obviously wasn’t poor Purchase because he was dead. But whoever it was used the sender’s signal to track you to the motel.”
“Sounds about right,” Haynes said.
“Have you attempted to find the gizmo?” Mott asked.
“No.”
“Then that expert marksman may even now be lurking outside my house.”
“Want to run him off?” Haynes asked. “Just dial 911 and tell the cops you’ve got burglars. After they notice your Cleveland Park address, they’ll be here in three minutes flat. Maybe two.”
Mott ignored the suggestions. “When you searched the car for the manuscript, why didn’t you find the sender?”
“Goddamnit, Howard, I told you we didn’t search the car.”
“We didn’t have to,” Erika explained. “We had a flat and by pure dumb luck discovered Steady’d hidden his manuscript underneath the spare tire.”
“But you do intend to look for it?” Mott said.
“When we leave here, I’ll run the car up a lift in some all-night gas station and find the thing in less than ten minutes.”
“And the sharpshooter?”
“Fuck him,” Haynes said.
Mott nodded slowly. “That’s not bravado, is it?”
“Hardly. He wants me scared, not dead. Otherwise I’d be dead at the Bellevue Motel. Now, can we get on with it?”
“All right, let’s,” Mott said, paused briefly and asked, “You’ve each read Steady’s manuscript; what’s your assessment?”
Haynes said, “It’s a snappy adventure tale about how a rather picaresque Steadfast Haynes almost single- handedly saves a long string of tottering democracies—except for a few out in Southeast Asia whose loss isn’t really his fault.”
“Snappy?” Mott said.
“It moves right along,” Erika said.
“And how is the CIA portrayed?”
“If not with reverence, at least with benevolent contempt.”
“Nothing offensive, libelous or a threat to national security—whatever that is?”
“Nothing,” Haynes said and gave Erika a go-ahead glance. She opened the canvas bag that rested on her lap, removed the manuscript and handed it to Mott.
After leafing through it quickly, as if to make sure he hadn’t been handed yet another collection of blank pages, Mott looked at Haynes and asked, “Innocuous, you say?”
“Totally.”
Mott placed the manuscript on the table beside his chair, clasped his hands across his stomach and stared up at the twelve-foot-high ceiling. “So Steady passes the word around town that he’s written a killer expose of the CIA. But because the agency can’t prove he ever really worked for it, there’s no way it can legally suppress publication. Fair enough so far?” he said, bringing his gaze down from the ceiling to rest it first on Erika, then on Haynes. They nodded.
“However,” Mott continued, “Steady’s convinced that eventually the agency’ll make him an offer, which, after all the dickering’s done, he’ll accept and sign over all rights to Langley. And with that done and the money safely banked, he’ll furnish them with a copy of the manuscript, whether they ask for it or not, just to make sure they fully understand what dopes they’ve been.”
“His last laugh,” Erika said.
“Except Steady died,” said Mott.
“So did three others,” Haynes said. “Or four, counting Purchase, who also helped spoil the joke.”
“Somebody,” Mott said, “is goddamned afraid of what Steady knew and of what he might’ve written. This same somebody is so afraid that he or she or even they were willing to kill Isabelle Gelinet, Gilbert Undean and Tinker Burns. Of these three, I think only Burns suspected he was in danger.” Mott stopped to stare at Haynes, then nodded to himself and said. “I also think Tinker may have left the cause of his suspicion to you.”
“What d’you mean ‘left’?” Haynes said.
Mott rose, went to his old rolltop desk and picked up a Federal Express envelope. “This arrived late this afternoon,” he said. “It’s from Tinker. It was sent yesterday morning around eleven—which means it had to go all the way down to the Federal Express hub in Memphis, then back up to Washington.”
“Did he send it to you or to me?”
“To me,” Mott said. “But inside the Fed Ex packet was a large manila envelope. Printed across it was a somewhat melodramatic message: ‘To Be Opened Only in the Event of My Death.’ And underneath that was
