with Robert Frederickson. 'Why didn't you tell me this at the beginning?' I asked in a voice that I hardly recognized as my own.
'To what purpose? I knew you didn't kill some old man. I wanted to hear what you had to say so that maybe I could get some clue as to who did kill him. My money's on your KGB plant.'
'For Christ's sake, Garth, Harry Peal was Jay Acton's father.'
'He'd never met the man. Harry Peal would have been just one more threat, like Burana, who had to be removed; we're talking KGB here, not the Junior Chamber of Commerce. And he figured he'd try to take you out along the way.'
'That's fucking absurd,' I said, turning back to face Garth. 'It doesn't make any sense at all. If Acton wants me out of the way because I know he's probably KGB, why didn't he just kill me, instead of trying to frame me on some bullshit murder charge that can't hold up? Arranging for me to be charged with murder isn't going to keep me from talking.'
'You have a point,' Garth said evenly, staring thoughtfully at the palms of his hands. 'Except that he couldn't be in two places at once. He took care of Peal himself, and he was counting on Trex and his buddy to take care of you.'
'And they muffed it; I end up alive and in the hospital. So what's to be gained by this stupid murder charge? Who's this witness?'
'An anonymous phone tip.'
'An anonymous
'What the hell; it did the job. You're currently under arrest, dear brother, on the charge of suspicion of murder. There's a guard sitting outside your door right now. He was looking real bored when I came in, so I managed to find him a newspaper.'
'How did you get in here?'
'My old NYPD courtesy card and a little courtesy from a former comrade-in-arms.'
'Mosely?'
'Uh-huh. That's where I got my information.'
'I take it he failed to mention all the other shit that's been going down around here.'
'It must have slipped his mind,' Garth said absently.
'You remember Mosely from the good old days?'
Garth nodded. 'Vaguely. Our paths used to occasionally cross at the station house, and I remember seeing his name on the duty list. He spent some years in safe and loft, then was transferred to full-time U.N. detail. The word on him was that he was a straight arrow-probably a lot straighter than most of the other cops in that precinct.'
'Except you.'
'There are a lot of honest cops, Mongo. You know that.'
'And you're saying Mosely was an honest cop?'
'I never heard otherwise-and I would have.'
'Well, he's a real. . he's something else now.'
'But not necessarily dishonest,' Garth said distantly. I suspected he was thinking about the same thing that was troubling me, namely what my enemy or enemies hoped to accomplish by maneuvering Mosely into arresting me. 'He's got a political job now.'
'I still don't understand this move, Garth. What's the point of trying to pin Harry Peal's murder on me, especially when the witness is nothing but an anonymous phone tip? It can't stop me from talking about the KGB officer on Elysius Culhane's staff. I've already told you, and-oh, shit.' Suddenly I understood. I sat bolt upright in bed, ignoring the pain that shot through my skull and back. 'It's just a holding action, Garth. Acton had counted on Trex to kill me, and Trex blew it. Now Acton needs time to figure out how to get at me. I wanted to freeze him in place by having him arrested, and that's precisely what he's done to me. I have to die, same as Michael and Harry Peal, because of what Harry told me. Now you'll be marked too.'
'Why wasn't Peal killed the same time as Burana?'
'There wasn't time. Harry left for Eastern Europe within hours after he talked to Michael. The KGB didn't want Harry to die in a communist country, because it would have been an embarrassment to the Russians and their allies. Harry had just returned from that trip when I talked to him on Sunday.'
Garth rose, looked over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed, then reached into his jacket pocket and took out his old Colt automatic. Garth no longer liked guns and didn't even bother practicing on a firing range. I hadn't seen the old Colt in years, and yet from the way he held the weapon as he checked the firing chamber and magazine I suspected he remained the deadly accurate shooter he had once been.
He looked up, reacted to the surprise he must have seen on my face. 'I noticed your gun was missing from the safe, so I figured I'd better bring mine along. I assume you lost the Beretta?'
'Yeah,' I replied curtly. I felt very tense and anxious. Now that it had finally dawned on me why I was under arrest for the murder of Harry Peal, I hoped I wasn't too late to prevent another killing. 'Listen, there has to be a pay phone around here someplace. Go find it and call Mary Tree; get the number for the Community of Conciliation from Information. Whoever's been following me must know that she and I talked, which means that her life is probably in danger; she's the one who steered me to Harry Peal in the first place. She has to be warned. Her organization has offices all over the world. She has to split, and she has to do it right now. Tell her to find some other Community residence to hole up in, preferably one that's a long ways from here. Tell her to pack her bags in a hurry, and you'll take her to the airport.'
Garth grunted, clicked on the Colt's safety catch, then stepped forward and slipped the gun under the sheet, next to my thigh. 'Hang on to that until I get back,' he said, then turned and left the room.
I gripped the taped butt of the Colt and waited, my heart pounding. Hours had passed since Harry Peal had been killed and the attempt made on my life. Everything indicated that Jay Acton, whoever he really was, was in a hurry to clean house, to eliminate everyone he thought could connect him to his Russian mother and birthplace and membership in the KGB, which meant that Mary Tree might already be dead. I would not like that at all. It would be my fault.
Garth returned twenty minutes later. 'Did you reach her?' I asked as soon as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
'Yeah,' Garth replied easily as he walked over to the bed, took the gun from my hand, and put it back into his jacket pocket. Then he went to the window, looked down. 'No problem.'
'What the hell does that mean? Does the Community have some other residence that's secure, and where she can hide?'
'I suppose so,' he said in a tone of voice that I thought sounded oddly distracted under the circumstances.
'What the hell do you mean, you suppose so? Are you taking her to the airport?'
'No,' he said evenly as he turned away from the window. 'As a matter of fact, you and I are going to the Community residence here for an indefinite stay.'
'What?'
'We both agree that your arrest is somebody's idea of a holding action, and we agree that said holding action isn't going to serve any purpose unless you're taken out before you can start talking to the media. Your police guard doesn't exactly remind me of Wyatt Earp to begin with, and when I came back from using the phone I found him down the hall trying to make time with one of the night nurses. I don't think you're safe here, brother, and I wonder how safe you'd be in police custody. If I were a KGB killer, I don't think I'd lose much sleep worrying about the prowess of the Cairn Police Department.'
'I can't say I'm overjoyed with my situation, but I don't much care for the idea of putting you and Mary in the position of aiding and abetting a fugitive.'
'I discussed that with Mary, and she and I agreed that the two of us have more serious things to worry about. As you pointed out, I'll be marked for death now that I've come to see you, so the three of us arc all in this together. Even if she did want to fly out of the country, there's no guarantee that the KGB wouldn't be able to trace her. But I doubt we'd even make it to the airport; by now my car has been identified, and somebody is probably keeping an eye on it. Mary says she can sneak us into that mansion and find a place for us to hide in there without anyone else knowing about it. We'll have sanctuary there and time to figure out our next moves.' He paused, turned
