We had to call the parking lot to get her car brought over then drove the guy back again. It was a quarter after eight before we pointed the car toward the borough across the stream. Ethel was behind the wheel, driving with a fixed intensity. She wouldn't talk unless I said something that required an answer. After a while it got tiresome so I turned on the radio and slumped back against the seat with my hat down over my eyes.
Only then did she seem to ease up. Twice I caught her head turning my way, but I couldn't see her eyes nor read the expression on her face. Fear. It was always there. Communism and Fear. Green Cards and Fear. Terror on the face of the girl on the bridge; stark, unreasoning fear when she looked at my face. Fear so bad it threw her over the rail to her death.
I'd have to remember to ask Pat about that, I thought. The body had to come up sometime.
The street was the same as before, dark, smelly, unaware of the tumor it was breeding in its belly. Trench Coat was standing outside the door seemingly enjoying the night. Past appearance didn't count. You showed your card and went in the door and showed it again. There was the same girl behind the desk and she made more of me than the card I held. Her voice was a nervous squeak and she couldn't sit still. Deliberately, I shot her the meanest grin I could dig up, letting her see my face when I pulled my lip back over my teeth. She didn't like it. Whatever it was scared her, too.
Henry Gladow was a jittery little man. He frittered around the room, stopped when he saw us and came over with a rush. 'Good evening, good evening, comrades.' He spoke directly to me. 'I am happy to see you again, comrade. It is an honor.'
It had been an honor before, too.
'There is news?' I screwed my eyebrows together and he pulled back, searching for words until he found them. 'Of course. I am merely being inquisitive. Ha, ha. We are all so very concerned, you know.'
'I know,' I said.
Ethel handed him another of those envelopes and excused herself. I watched her walk to a table and take a seat next to two students where she began to correct some mimeographed sheets. 'Wonderful worker, Miss Brighton,' Gladow smiled. 'You would scarcely think that she represents all that we hate.'
I made an unintelligible answer.
'You are staying for the meeting?' he asked me.
'Yeah, I want to poke around a little.'
This time he edged close to me, looking around to see if there was anyone close enough to hear. 'Comrade, if I am not getting too inquisitive again, is there a possibility that . . . the person could be here?'
There it was again. Just what I wanted to know and I didn't dare ask the question. It was going to take some pretty careful handling. 'It's possible,' I said tentatively.
He was aghast. 'Comrade! It is unthinkable!' He reflected a moment then: 'Yet it had to come from somewhere. I simply can't understand it. Everything is so carefully screened, every member so carefully selected that it seems impossible for there to be a leak anywhere. And those filthy warmongers, doing a thing like that . . . so cold-blooded! It is simply incredible. How I wish the party was in power at this moment. Why, the one who did that would be uncovered before the sun could set!'
Gladow cursed through his teeth and pounded a puny, carefully tended fist into his palm. 'Don't worry,' I said slowly.
It took ten seconds for my words to sink in. Gladow's little eyes narrowed in pleasure like a hog seeing a trough full of slops. The underside of his top lip showed when he smiled. 'No, comrade. I won't worry. The party is too clever to let a direct representative's death go unpunished. No, I won't worry because I realize that the punishment that comes will more than equal the crime.' He beamed at me fatuously. 'I am happy to realize that the higher echelon has sent a man of your capacity, comrade.'
I didn't even thank him. I was thinking and this time the words made sense. They made more than sense . . . they made murder! Only death is cold-blooded, and who was dead? Three people. One hadn't been found. One was found and not identified, even by a lousy sketch. The other was dead and identified. He was cold-bloodedly murdered and he was a direct representative of the party and I was the guy looking for his killer.
Good Lord, the insane bastards thought I was an MVD man!
My hands started to shake and I kept them in my pockets. And who was the dead man but Charlie Moffit! My predecessor. A goddamned Commie gestapo man. A hatchetman, a torpedo, a lot of things you want to call him. Lee ought to be proud of his brother, damn proud. All by himself he went out and he knocked off a skunk.
But I was the prize, I was the MVD guy that came to take his place and run the killer down. Oh, brother! No wonder the jerks were afraid of me! No wonder they didn't ask my name! No wonder I was supposed to know it all.
I felt a grin trying to pull my mouth out of shape because so much of it was funny. They thought they were clever as hell and here I was right in the middle of things with an in that couldn't be better. Any good red would give his shirt to be where I was right this minute.
Everything started to come out right then, even the screwy test they put me through. A small-time setup like this was hardly worth the direct attention of a Moscow man unless something was wrong, so I had to prove myself.
Smart? Sure, just like road apples that happen behind horses.
Now I knew and now I could play the game. I could be one of the boys and show them some fun. There were going to be a lot of broken backs around town before I got done.
There was only one catch I could think of. Someplace was another MVD laddie, a real one. I'd have to be careful of him. At least careful that he didn't see me first, because when I met up with that stinkpot I was going to split him right down the middle with a .45!
I had been down too deep in my thoughts to catch the arrival of the party that came in behind me. I heard Gladow extending a welcome that wasn't handed out to just everybody. When I turned around to look I saw one little fat man, one big fat man and a guy who was in the newspapers every so often. His name was General Osilov and he was attached to the Russian Embassy in Washington. The big and little fat men were his aides and they did all the smiling. If anything went on in the head of the bald-headed general it didn't show in his flat, wide face.
Whatever it was Henry Gladow said swung the three heads in my direction. Two swung back again fast leaving only the general staring at me. It was a stare-down that I won. The general coughed without covering his mouth and stuck his hands in the pockets of his suitcoat. None of them seemed anxious to make my acquaintance.
From then on there was a steady flow of traffic in through the door. They came singly and in pairs, spaced about five minutes apart. Before the hour was out the place was packed. It was filled with the kind of people you'd expect to find there and it would hit you that when the cartoonists did a caricature of a pack of shabby reds lurking in the shadow of democracy they did a good job.
A few of them dragged out seats and the meeting was on. I saw Ethel Brighton slide into the last chair in the last row and waited until she was settled before I sat down beside her. She smiled, let that brief look of fear mask her face, then turned her head to the front. When I put my hand over hers I felt it tremble.
Gladow spoke. The aides spoke. Then the general spoke. He pulled his tux jacket down when he rose and glared at the audience. I had to sit there and listen to it. It was propaganda right off the latest Moscow cable and it turned me inside out. I wanted to feel the butt of an M-1 against my shoulder pointing at those bastards up there on the rostrum and feel the pleasant impact as it spit slugs into their guts.
Sure, you can sit down at night and read about the hogwash they hand out. Maybe you're fairly intelligent and can laugh at it. Believe me, it isn't funny. They use the very thing we build up, our own government and our own laws, to undermine the things we want.
It wasn't a very complicated speech the general made. It was plain, bitter poison and they cheered him noiselessly. He was making plain one thing. There were still too many people who didn't go for Communism and not enough who did and he gave a plan of organization that had worked in a dozen countries already. One armed Communist was worth twenty capitalists without guns. It was Hitler all over again. A powerful Communist government already formed would be there to take over when the big upset came, and according to him it was coming soon. Here, and he swept the room with his arm, was one phase of that government ready to go into action.
I didn't hear the rest of it. I sat there fiddling with my fingernails because I was getting ready to bust loose
