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Suddenly David realized what he was staring at.
Walter Kendall had subconsciously outlined an obscene caricature of an
erect penis and testicles.
Happy New Year, Mr. Kendall, thought Spaulding.
He put the page carefully into his pocket with its partner, returned the
others and shut the drawer. He switched off the lamp, walked to the open
door, turning to see if he had left everything as it was, and crossed into
the reception room. He pulled Kendall’s door shut and considered briefly
whether to lock the tumblers in place.
It would be pointless to waste the time. The lock was old, simple;
janitorial personnel in just about any building in New York would have a
key, and it was more difficult inserting tumblers than releasing them. To
hell with it.
A half hour later it occurred to him – in an instant of reflection – that
this decision probably saved his life. The sixty, or ninety, or
one-hundred-odd seconds he eliminated from his departure placed him in the
position of an observer, not a target.
He put on the Rogers Peet overcoat, turned off the lights, and walked into
the corridor to the bank of elevators. It was nearly seven, the day after
New Year’s, and the building was practically deserted. A single elevator
was working. It had passed his floor, ascending to the upper stories, where
it seemed to linger. He was about to use the stairs -the offices were on
the third floor, it might be quicker – when he heard rapid, multiple
footsteps coming up the staircase. The sound was incongruous. Moments ago
the elevator had been in the lobby; why would two -more than two? -people
be racing up the stairs at seven at night? There could be a dozen
reasonable explanations, but his instincts made him consider unreasonable
ones.
Silently, he ran to the opposite end of the short floor, where an
intersecting corridor led to additional offices on the south side of the
building. He rounded the comer and pressed himself against the wall. Since
the assault in the Montgomery elevator, he carried a weapon – a small
Beretta revolver – strapped to his chest, under his clothes. He flipped
open his overcoat and undid the buttons of his jacket and shirt. Access to
the pistol would be swift and efficient, should it be necessary.
It probably wouldn’t be, he thought, as he heard the footsteps disappear.
Then he realized that they had not disappeared, they had
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faded, slomed down to a walk – a quiet, cautious walk. And then he heard the
voices: whisper-like, indistinguishable. They came from around the edge of
the wall, in the vicinity of the unmarked Meridian office, no more than
thirty feet away.
He inched the flat of his face to the sharp, concrete comer and
simultaneously reached his right hand under his shirt to the handle of the
Beretta.
There were two men with their backs to him, facing the darkened glass of
the unmarked office door. The shorter of the two put his face against the
pane, hands to both temples to shut out the light from the corridor. He
pulled back and looked at his partner, shaking his head negatively.
The taller man turned slightly, enough for Spaulding to recognize him.
It was the stranger in the recessed, darkened doorway on Fifty-second
Street. The tall, sad-eyed man who spoke gently, in bastardized
British-out-of-the-Balkans, and held him under the barrel of a thick,
powerful weapon.
The man reached into his left overcoat pocket and gave a key to his friend.
With his right hand he removed a pistol from his belt. It was a heavy-duty
.45, army issue. At close range, David knew it would blow a person into the
air and off the earth. The man nodded and spoke softly but clearly.
‘He has to be. He didn’t leave. I want him.’
With, these words the shorter man inserted the key and shoved at the door.
It swung back slowly. Together, both men walked in.
At that precise moment the elevator grill could be heard opening, its metal
frames ringing throughout the corridor. David could see the two men in the
darkened reception room freeze, turn toward the open door and quickly shut
it.
‘Chee-ryst Almighty!’ was the irate shout from the angry elevator operator
as the grill rang shut with a clamor.
David knew it was the instant to move. Within seconds one or both men
inside the deserted Meridian offices would realize that the elevator had
stopped on the third floor because someone had pushed the button. Someone
not in evidence, someone they had not met on the stairs. Someone still on
the floor.
He spun around the edge of the wall and raced down the co m-dor toward the
staircase. He didn’t look back; he didn’t bother to muffle his steps – it
would have reduced his speed. His only concern was to get down those steps
and out of the building.
207′
He leaped down the right-angled staircase to the in-between landing and
whipped around the comer.
And then he stopped.
Below him, leaning against the railing, was the third man. He knew he’d
heard more than two sets of feet racing up the staircase minutes ago. The
man was startled, his eyes widened in shocked recognition and his right
hand jerked backwards toward his coat pocket. Spaulding didn’t have to be
told what he was reaching for.
‘ David sprang off the landing straight down at the man, making contact in
midair, his hands clawing for the man’s throat and right arm. He gripped the
skin on the neck below the left ear and tore at it, slamming the man’s head
into the concrete wall as he did so. David’s heavier body crushed into the
would-be sentry’s chest; he twisted the right arm nearly out of its shoulder
socket.
The man screamed and collapsed; the scalp was lacerated, blood flowing out
of the section of his skull that had crashed into the wall.
David could hear the sounds of a door being thrown open and men running.
Above him, of course, one floor above him.
He freed his entangled legs from the unconscious body and raced down the
remaining flight of stairs to the lobby. The elevator had, moments ago, let
out its cargo of passengers; the last few were going out the front
entrance. If any had heard the prolonged scream from the battered man sixty
feet away up the staircase, none acknowledged it.
David rushed into the stragglers, elbowing his way through the wide double
doors and onto the sidewalk. He turned east and ran as fast as he could.
He had walked over forty city blocks -some two miles in Basque country, but
here infinitely less pleasant.
He had come to several decisions. The problem was how to implement them.
He could not stay in New York; not without facing risks, palpably
unacceptable. And he had to get to Buenos Aires at once, before any of
those hunting him in New York knew he was gone.
For they were hunting him now; that much was clear.
It would be suicide to return to the Montgomery. Or for that matter, to the
unmarked Meridian offices in the morning. He could handle both with
telephone calls. He would tell the hotel
2D8
that he had been suddenly transferred to Pennsylvania; could the Montgomery
management pack and hold his things? Hed call later about his bill….
Kendall was on his way to Argentina. It wouldn’t make any difference what
the Meridian office was told.
Suddenly, he thought of Eugene Lyons.
He was a little sad about Lyons. Not the man (of course the man, he
reconsidered quickly, but not the man’s affliction, in this instance), but
the fact that he would have little chance to develop any sense of rapport
before Buenos Aires. Lyons might take his sudden absence as one more
rejection in a long series. And the scientist might really need his help in
Buenos Aires, at least in the area of German translation. David decided
that he had to have the books Lyons selected for him; he had to have as
solid a grasp of Lyons’s language as was possible.
And then David realized where his thoughts were leading him.
For the next few hours the safest places in New York were the Meridian
offices and St. Luke’s Hospital.
After his visits to both locations he’d get out to Mitchell Field and
telephone Brigadier General Swanson.
The answer to the violent enigma of the past seven days – from the Azores
to a staircase on Thirty-eighth Street and everything in between – was in
Buenos Aires.
Swanson did not know it and could not help; Fairfax was infiltrated and
could not be told. And that told him something.
He was on his own. A man had two choices in such a dilemma: take himself
out of strategy, or dig for identities and blow the covers off.