They drove out into the courtyard, past the parked coupe and the bullet-shattered Audi. “Soon it will not matter, but – whatever I can do to make it up to you, Thomas Monaghan, I will do.”
“What you’re doing already is all I could ask for,” said Kelly, meeting the woman’s eyes in the dash lights. “I need friends real bad. Take me to your top folks and, if they’ll help me, I’ll do everything I can about the crabs with them. With you all.” He paused before adding, “And my real last name’s Kelly, but Tom’s just fine.”
There was one thing more the veteran needed to do before he tried to talk his way – bluff his way, in a manner of speaking, but he was doing precisely the job he’d been tasked to do – onto a military flight at the airport. Kelly unzipped one pocket of his attache case to remove his radio, the concealed tape deck, and the headphones. Working by the greenish light of the gas and temperature gauges, Kelly rewound the tape and set it to play back whatever it had heard in Elaine’s hotel room.
The lengthy hash with which the tape began was, Kelly realized after a minute or two, neither jamming nor a malfunction: the maid had entered 727 and was vacuuming it. He advanced the tape and, as he was preparing to blip forward a third time, heard the wheezing vacuum replaced by a click of static and the recorded ring of a telephone.
Click. “Go ahead,” said the voice of Elaine Tuttle, who picked up the handset before the completion of the first ring.
Click. “Having sex, he says. It’s, I don’t know. Could be true, certainly could be.”
Click. “Doug, Us – ”
Click. “No, just listen to me. He doesn’t have a gun right now, but he could get one very easily. We don’t want to push him, that’s not what we’re – ”
Click. “Of course we don’t trust him. I’m saying we’ve got to give him the room to do what he’s tasked to do, or there was no point in – ”
Click. “Except that wasn’t your decision or even mine,” Elaine’s voice said, each word as distinct as a blade of obsidian set in a wooden warclub. “If you want to take that up with those who made the assignment, then I’ll give you liberty right now to get on the next plane.”
It was noticeable that though she had not raised her voice, this time she was able to finish her sentence without being cut off by the person on the other end of the line.
Click. “All right, I’m not neglecting the long-term. Trace them, it’ll be good to cross-check Kelly as well as adding to our database on those Nazis. But don’t crowd him; he’s still as good a chance as we’ve got of coming up with the link between the Dienst, the Kurds, and the aliens.”
Click. “All right. But be careful, sweetheart, he’s dangerous even if he doesn’t have a gun.”
There was nothing more of interest on the tape, not even the slam of the door as Elaine went out. Twice, the toilet flushed loudly enough to trip the recorder, but there were no phone calls and no face-to-face conversations after Elaine had signed off with a warning that Doug Blakeley had chosen to ignore. She had waited in her room, ready to relay information or orders, and neither had come.
Doug should have reported on the shooting in the Hilton parking lot. Either he’d been afraid because he was sure that his career had ended in the melee; or, more likely, he was afraid that the orders he would get would clearly debar him from the revenge he intended to take on one Tom Kelly, the working-class slob who was the cause of all the trouble . . . because there had to be a single cause for Doug’s mind to grip. Otherwise there was nothing at all to keep him from slipping into a universe with no certainties at all.
Kelly took off his headphones and touched the Rewind switch of the recorder. Wonder if there’s anybody left to give’er a phone call, he thought, or if she’s going to read about it all in the papers. Maybe George has the number to call.