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Culhane said, stopping and looking at Partridge. "Was he fighting Communists,
terrorists, Nazis any of the standard bad guys? Or just some crazies? Whoever
it was, it was a hit, pure and simple. It wasn't anything he was carrying,
nothing like that. They just drove up beside him, shotgunned him through the
window or the windshield and ran him off the road. Maybe it was your guys."
"He told you, then. I knew he did. About the Gladstone Log."
"The what?"
"You can lie and tell me you don't know, but you do. And you're right; he
didn't trust contacting the... the firm through the usual channels, He never
should have had the local resident rent him the car. Maybe that made it too
easy to pick him up I don't know. But last night in Ventnor, Georgia, some
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old woman librarian by the name of Evelyn Collingwood had her house broken
into and searched. We found Jeff's fingerprints there, but it wasn't Jeff who
did the searching. We found no other fingerprints. Then her library got torn
apart and we've got evidence somebody had her bound and gagged there. Found a
dead night watchman at the library with all the bullets fired out of his
revolver. But the bloodstains on the floor weren't the same type as your
brother's or the Collingwood woman's or the watchman's. Tests show it was
probably a man's. That's all we know. Then the woman turns up dead in a
construction site a couple of blocks away, impaled on some piece of equipment.
Looks like she tried flying without wings. More bloodstains some of them
could have been your brother's. And a mailbox ripped to hell. More bloodstains
around that. No bodies. Somebody came along and cleaned up, at least sent a
meat wagon. They left poor old Evelyn, though. We think that's how your
brother got shot up. The people who searched the Collingwood house and the
library were the ones following Jeff, the ones who killed him. All adds up to
Steiglitz everything does."
"So why didn't Jeff trust the Company?" Culhane lit another cigarette as they
walked, circling the ice rink below them.
"Steiglitz you know the story. Got in trouble in the sixties, was made to
resign from the CIA in the early seventies. He still has connections plenty
of 'em. The innocent kind the kind you can use best. You know hey, guy, you
owe me a favor; what's the current status on whatchamacallit? that kind of
stuff. That's why Jeff called you instead of us Steiglitz. Jeremiah
Steiglitz."
"There was a woman in the car."
Partridge stopped walking and grabbed Culhane's left forearm. "Did you see her
face well enough "
"All I can tell is that it was a woman, or it was a guy with a skinny face and
long hair behind that shotgun."
"It was Sonia Steiglitz Steiglitz's daughter."
"But can't you arrest them? Or have the FBI do it or just "
"Just what?" Partridge laughed. "Kill him? Kill her? He's got enough dirt
on... on... well, got enough dirt to fill up the headlines for months, maybe
years. He's protected himself. Unless we get him cold nothing."
"A powerful man," Culhane said unnecessarily, starting to walk again.
Partridge was nearly through with his ice cream cone.
"Yeah, you know the story?"
"Not all of it," Culhane told him honestly.
"Well, Jeremiah Steiglitz is like this genius-level IQ, hell on wheels with
foreign languages, had a Ph.D. in physics by the time he was nineteen. Because
of the language ability most of all, he was able to get into OSS youngest
field agent they ever had. He could go into any country and convince 'em he
was a native, he was that good. Still is, I guess." Partridge shrugged. "And
he served brilliantly got a chestful of medals awarded to him after we took
Berlin. He stayed in OSS, worked in some kind of research group after OSS was
broken up, then joined the CIA when it got started under Truman. Did great
became chief of a special branch of Covert Operations during the sixties. I
used to work for him." Partridge laughed. "He got into hot water over some
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unauthorized projects."
"Assassinations," Culhane supplied.
"Well, yeah that and some other things. You'd be surprised. You think you've
got an imagination with your books and everything that guy was something
else. And after it all cooled down, he tried it again. Finally he had to
leave. One hell of a career man, let me tell ya...."
Culhane stopped; Partridge stopped. They looked at each other. "You sound like
you almost "
"Admire him? Yeah," Partridge admitted. "Sometimes he was brilliant, but he
also used all of us for his own purposes and U.S. policy be damned. Sure,
sometimes that was all right U.S. policy was fucked up. But it wasn't like
that. It was like he had personal axes to grind, and he'd use Covert
Operations to do it. Your brother worked for Steiglitz just before he was
forced to resign. Nobody knows the extent of his contacts. Come on, I'll buy
you an early lunch."
"I thought you liked to move while you talk."
"What I'm gonna tell you now, well, if you didn't already know it and
listened, you'd think I was probably crazy. And if you did, so what? Besides,
the Marine Corps doesn't only make men, it makes sore feet. Come on."
Partridge gulped the rest of his cone, crunching it loudly as he started back
toward the hotel.
Culhane had been in the restaurant before. The prices were too high, and the
food wasn't all that great. But it was dark, quiet, and Partridge was paying.
They'd driven over with the two remaining penguins, who now were at another
table on the far side of the place.
Partridge sipped at a glass of white wine. "All I can drink. I used to really
put it away thought everybody had diarrhea in the morning, ya know? Anyway,
now I go light."
Culhane picked up his glass Smirnoff 100 vodka and grapefruit juice, a Salty
Dog minus the salt. "If Jeff didn't trust talking to the CIA, even considering
his longstanding friendship with you " Culhane paused " then why the hell
should I trust the CIA?"
"Or me," Partridge concluded. "Very simple. What you tell me goes no further
than myself and the deputy director, period. I'd say just me, but what happens
if I die of a heart attack or something? You're left out in the cold, that's
what. Always make a backup system just like Sean Dodge does in your books. If
you work with us, well, maybe we got a chance, maybe even you've got a chance
of staying alive. If you don't, well, maybe you can get a retroactive family
rate at the mortuary, huh? You'll wind up dead going against Steiglitz. And
you got no choice but to go against him, 'cause he'll come after you. You're a
loose end."
"What Steiglitz a traitor?"
"A traitor? Jeremiah Steiglitz? Wash your mouth out with soap, son. Hell, no.
He's as anti-Commie as they come. Hates the Russians almost like it's
something personal. During World War II he had an assignment working with a
Russian agent think it was the Cheka in those days "
Culhane interrupted. "It was the Cheka, then the Gosudarstrenov Politicheskoe
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Upravlenie, and then it became the KGB, at the outbreak of World War Two. Its
name changed a few more times, but eventually it ended up as the Committee for
State Security the KGB again."
"Yeah, well, anyway, Steiglitz arranged things so he could kill the Russian
afterward."
"Sounds like a hell of a nice guy, Steiglitz does."
"Hey, I wouldn't do it, even if it was a Commie I got stuck working with. But
that was Jeremiah Steiglitz. He's no traitor. Scratch that. This thing has
nothin' to do with espionage. It's the Gladstone Log. What did Jeff tell you
about it?"
"Nothing," Culhane said noncommittally.
"Nothing, my ass but I'll tell you about it. You've heard of Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone, prime minister of Great Britain from the late 1860s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]