He looked around the large panelled office, at the bookshelves, the graceful furniture and the framed photographs on the walls… photographs. There were over twenty of them scattered about the dark panelling in crisscrossing patterns. He walked over and began examining them, snapping on a table lamp for better light. They were the usual collection of self-aggrandizing pictures showing Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Vanvlanderen in the company of political heavyweights, from the President down through the upper ranks of the administration and Congress. Then on the adjacent wall were photographs of the widow herself without her late husband. Judging from appearances these were obviously from Ardis Vanvlanderen’s past, a personal testimonial that made clear her past was not inconsequential. Expensive cars, yachts, ski slopes and luxurious furs predominated.
Varak was about to abandon the panoply of conceit when his eyes fell on an enlarged candid shot obviously taken in Lausanne, Switzerland, Lake Geneva’s northern Leman Marina in the background. Milos studied the face of the dark-skinned man standing beside the effervescent centre of attraction. He knew that face but he could not place it. Then, as if following a scent, the Czech’s eyes roamed down to the lower right, to another enlarged snapshot also taken in Lausanne, this in the gardens of the Beau Rivage. There was the same man again—who was he? And next to it yet another, now in Amsterdam, in the Rozengracht, the same two subjects. Who was that man? Concentrate! Images came, fragments of elusive impressions but no name. Riyadh… Medina, Saudi Arabia. A shocked and furious Saudi family… a scheduled execution, then an escape. Millions upon millions had been involved… eight to ten years ago. Who was he? Varak considered taking one of the photographs, then instinctively knew he should not. Whoever the man was, he represented another telling aspect of the machine built around Orson Bollinger. A missing photograph of that face might send out alarms.
Milos turned off the table lamp and started back towards the desk. It was time to leave, to get his equipment and meet the Sound Man down in the street outside the service entrance. He reached for the dome-shaped lamp on the desk when suddenly he heard the door opening in the foyer. Swiftly he turned off the light and moved to the office door, partially closing it so he could slip behind and watch through the space of the hinged panel.
The tall figure came into view, a lone man walking confidently into familiar surroundings. Varak frowned for an instant; he had not thought about the intruder for weeks. It was the red-haired FBI agent from Mesa Verde, a member of the unit assigned to the Vice President at the request of Ardis Vanvlanderen—the man who had led him to San Diego. Milos was momentarily bewildered, but only momentarily. The unit had been recalled to Washington, yet one player had remained behind—more accurately, one had been bought before Varak had found him in Mesa Verde.
The Czech watched as the red-headed man walked around the living room as if looking for something. He picked up a glass from beneath an ivory-shelled lamp on a table to the left of the couch then went through a door leading to the kitchen. He returned moments later with a spray can in one hand, a dishtowel in the other. He crossed to the bar where he picked up each bottle separately, spraying each and wiping it clean. He next sprayed the copper rim of the bar top and rubbed it thoroughly with the cloth. From the bar he proceeded to go to every solid piece of furniture in the sunken living room and repeated the cleaning process as if he were purifying the premises. What he was doing was apparent to Varak: the agent was eliminating the forensic presence of Eric Sundstrom, removing the scientist’s fingerprints from the area.
The man put down the spray can and the towel on the coffee table, then casually started across the room… towards the office! The Czech spun silently out from behind the partially closed door and raced into the small bathroom, closing its door, now more than partially, leaving barely an inch between the edge and the frame. As Milos had done, the FBI agent turned on the desk lamp, sat down in the chair and opened the lower right-hand drawer. However, he did something that Varak had not done: he pressed an unseen button. Instantly, the vertical moulding of the desk shot out.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said the red-haired man to himself, his stunned cry a whisper as he peered into an obviously empty recess. Without wasting motion, he reached for the telephone on the desk, almost ripping it out and dialling. Within seconds he spoke. ‘It’s not here!’ he cried. ‘No, I’m certain!’ he added after a pause. ‘There’s nothing!… What do you want from me? I followed your instructions and I’m telling you there’s not a goddamned thing!… What? Down the street from your house? All right, I’ll get on it and call you back.’ The agent depressed the telephone plate, released it, and dialled eleven digits: long distance. ‘Base Five, this is Blackbird, special assignment San Diego, code six-six-zero. Confirm, please… Thank you. Do we have vehicles in La Jolla I don’t know about?… We don’t… No, nothing urgent, probably the press. They must have found out the VP is going to an art show soiree—you got that, soiree—with the fruitcake crowd. He wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from Al Capp, but he’s got to fake it. I’ll check it out, forget it.’ Again the lanky red-haired man hung up and redialled. ‘There’s nothing from our side,’ he said quietly, almost immediately. ‘No, there’s no law that says we have to be told… CIA? We’d be the last to know… Okay, I’ll call the airport. Do you want me to reach your pilot?… Whatever you say, then I’m getting out of here. The Agency and the Bureau don’t mix, we never have.’ The FBI man hung up as Varak stepped out of the dark bathroom, his thin black automatic in his hand.
‘You’re not getting out of here that fast,’ said the coordinator of Inver Brass.
‘Christ!’ screamed the red-headed agent, lunging out of the chair and hurling himself at Varak in the doorway, gripping the Czech’s right wrist with the strength of a panicked animal, propelling Milos back into the wall above the toilet, crashing Varak’s head into the tastefully papered plasterboard. The Czech straddled the lavatory basin in the dark bathroom, whipping his left leg around the man’s torso and levering it while yanking his right hand and gun straight up, half tearing the agent’s left arm out of its socket. It was over; the man collapsed on the floor, gripping his damaged arm as if it were broken.
‘Get up,’ said Varak, the weapon at his side, not bothering to level it at his prisoner. The red-haired man struggled, wincing while he pulled himself up by the rim of the marble wash basin. ‘Go back in there and sit down,’ ordered Milos, shoving the agent through the door to the desk.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked the man breathlessly, plummeting into the chair, still holding his arm.
‘We’ve met, but you wouldn’t know about it. A country road in Mesa Verde, west of a certain congressman’s house.’
‘That was you?’ The agent shot forward, only to be pushed back by Varak.
‘When did you sell out, Federal man?’
The agent studied Milos in the wash of the desk lamp. ‘If you’re some kind of naturalized spook from a cross-over unit, you’d better get one thing straight. I’m here on special assignment to the Vice President.’
‘A “cross-over” unit? I see you’ve been talking to some very excitable people… There is no cross-over unit and those vehicles around Grinell’s house were dispatched from Washington—’
‘They weren’t! I just checked!’
‘Perhaps the Bureau wasn’t informed, or perhaps you were lied to, it doesn’t matter. Like all privileged soldiers from elite organizations, I’m sure you can claim that you were merely following orders, as in removing fingerprints and searching for hidden documents of which you know nothing.’
‘I don’t!’
‘But you did sell out and that’s all that matters to me. You were prepared to accept money and privileges for services rendered under your official status. Are you also prepared to lose your life for these people?’
‘What?’
‘Now, you get this straight,’ said Varak quietly, raising his automatic and suddenly pressing it into the agent’s forehead. ‘Whether you live or die means absolutely nothing to me, but there’s a man I must find. Tonight.’
‘You don’t know Grinell—’
‘Grinell is immaterial to me, leave him to others. The man I want is the one whose fingerprints you so carefully removed from this apartment. You’ll tell me where he is right now or your brains will be all over this desk, and I will not bother to clean them up. The scene will add a further convincing nuance of evil consistent with everything that’s taking place out here… Where is he?’