The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Read online

  “Where is he today?”

  “I honestly do not know.”

  “Is he still in Iraq?”

  The impressive gray eyes closed for just an instant. “You are not well informed, Captain Leopold. Your government’s agents sent an unmarked plane over the Iraq oasis some eleven months ago. It dropped three bombs on the buildings there, and killed fifty-four people. A crude attempt at Venice, but it failed, since he’d already left.”

  The words had been bitter, and there was something like naked hatred in those eyes now. “Can I believe that?” Leopold asked.

  “It’s a matter of public record. Some blamed the Jews at the time, but we always knew who had done it, and for what reason.”

  “If that’s true, I’m very sorry.”

  “They won’t stop until Venice is dead,” Farngood told him. “And the man simply wants to be done with it all.”

  “Perhaps it’s too late to be done with it.” Leopold took out another cigarette, against his best resolutions. “Did you poison Walter Moon out of some misguided loyalty to Venice?”

  “Hardly. I know nothing of his death except that he lived and now he no longer lives.”

  “Did he talk to anyone else here the other night?”

  “Only my daughter, Helen.”

  “Could I speak to her?”

  “Certainly, if you wish.” He rose, moving quickly for a man of his apparent age, and disappeared up the stairs to the second floor. When he returned a moment later, he was followed by a slender woman with dark hair and a striking face.

  Helen Farngood was of an indeterminate age that might have been as low as thirty. After a few moments with her, one didn’t think too much of her age but rather the vibrant charm and almost masculine tenacity with which she entered into a conversation.

  “He was such a nice man,” she volunteered. “Such a nice man. I hate to hear about people dying.”

  “Somebody poisoned him, Miss Farngood. Did you – or your father – notice him taking any pills while he was here?”

  “Pills, yes! From a little brown bottle! I remember asking him what they were for, and he said he had an allergy. Poor man.”

  “Do you assist your father in the ceremonies of the Peacock Angel?” Leopold asked.

  “No.”

  “I was mainly interested in how many members you have,” Leopold said.

  Jerome Farngood cleared his throat. “I can answer that. We have just seven members at present, the minimum number for a lodge. My daughter is not one of them, though she aids me in other ways.”

  “None of them were here when Moon came?”

  “No. We were not meeting that night. But he did ask for – and receive – a list of members.” He threw his hands wide in a gesture of goodwill. “You see, we have no secrets.”

  “When is your next meeting?”

  “Friday. Two nights from now.”

  “Could I come and observe it?” Leopold asked.

  Farngood hesitated a moment, and his daughter answered for him. “Of course he can, Father!”

  The white-haired man nodded finally in agreement. “Certainly, the meeting is an open one. I ask only that you merely observe and do not try to interrupt the ritual with needless questions.”

  “For a policeman investigating a murder, no questions are needless,” Leopold said. “But I can ask them after your so-called ritual.”

  “We will see you on Friday, then.”

  Helen Farngood rose to show him to the door. “If not before,” Leopold threw in. Then, at the door, he paused to ask her, “You wouldn’t happen to know if Moon called on any of the members after he left here, would you?”

  “I have no idea. I can tell you where he went directly from here, though.”

  “And where was that?”

  She stood with hands on hips, reminding him of nothing so much as a statue of some pagan goddess. “To the little church down the street. I watched him from the upstairs window.”

  Leopold frowned slightly. Was Walter Moon the sort of man to go to church in the middle of a mission? “Thank you,” he said.

  “Not at all. We’ll be looking for you on Friday.”

  Leopold walked a block to a corner drugstore and telephoned Fletcher at his home. When he had the man on the phone, he asked, “Was there a list of names on Walter Moon’s body?”

  “Names? Sure, Captain. We’ve been checking them.”

  “Well, get out and check some more. They’re the members of the Peacock Angel. I think Moon may have visited them the night before he died.”

  “Right. I’ll see how the boys are coming with them.”

  “Fletcher, I want you to check them, every last one of them. And tonight!”

  “Sure,” the detective said, and hung up softly.

  Leopold lit a cigarette and wondered why his nerves were suddenly going to pieces. He hadn’t yelled at Fletcher like that in years. Somehow the interview with Farngood and his daughter had upset him, and he wasn’t sure just why.

  He stood on the corner of the street for a moment, looking in both directions. Finally he turned and walked toward the soft glow from the little church halfway up the next block.

  The place, a modernistic sanctuary of glazed brick and pebbled glass, was half-filled for a Lenten service. Leopold stood in the back, aware of a silence so great he could hear the whispered prayers of the old women in the rear pews. When finally it was over, he went forward up the side aisle to where a lean-faced priest was carrying on a quiet conversation with an anxious teenager.

  When she had gone, Leopold introduced himself and followed the priest’s lead to the modernistic rectory next door. There, settled in a leather-covered chair that seemed somehow a bit too comfortable, Leopold said, “It’s about a man who might have stopped in your church two nights ago, Father . . .”

  “Father Regan. Many people stop in my church.”

  “This would have been a man named Walter Moon.” He took the morgue shot from his pocket and showed it to the priest.

  “Yes,” the priest answered slowly. “I think I remember him.”

  “Could you tell me what he wanted, Father?”

  “He was interested in the house down the street, an odd sort of religious cult. But I told him I’d been here only a few months myself and couldn’t help him.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Oh, we talked for a while, casually, about the neighborhood. I’ve forgotten most of it now.”

  “He died yesterday,” Leopold said simply.

  “Of course! The man in the hotel room! I hadn’t connected them until now. What a tragic way to die! Do you think he took his own life?”

  Leopold pondered the question and gave an honest answer. “I really don’t know. There are some who think he was murdered, but I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t seem like a man at the end of his rope.”

  “One other question, Father – did you see him take any pills while he was here?”

  “Pills? No, I don’t believe so.”

  Leopold thanked him and departed. Something about the case was still bothering him as he walked back to his car.

  The morning was unexpectedly foggy, with a mist that came up off the river and gradually flowed like an uncoiling serpent through the dreary streets. Leopold wasn’t happy when he met Jim Saunter shortly after nine. It wasn’t a happy sort of morning.

  “Such fog,” he mumbled, brushing aside the mass of papers that had collected on his desk overnight. “I wanted to be down here an hour ago.”

  Saunter unzipped his briefcase, all business. “Did you question the Peacock people last evening, Captain?”

  “I talked with Jerome Farngood and his daughter. My man Fletcher is interviewing the others.”

  “Any leads on Venice?”

  “None. I’m beginning to doubt that he even exists, except in the minds of you people.”

  “He exists, all right,” Saunter said shortly. “He killed Walter Moon.”

  “But did
he? Did anyone?”

  “What do you mean by that? Are you back to the suicide theory again?”

  Leopold sighed and buzzed Fletcher. “Send somebody out for coffee, will you, Fletcher? I need it this morning.” Then he turned his attention to the CIA man once more. “Mr. Saunter, is it true that your crowd bombed a settlement in Iraq and killed fifty-odd innocent people in an attempt to get Venice?”

  Saunter was still young enough to reflect embarrassment. “The incident to which you apparently refer was not an official action of the CIA or any other government agency. And I think the number of dead was closer to thirty than fifty.”

  “I see,” Leopold said, feeling irrationally sorry for the man, for all of them. “Just an overly zealous agent in the field, is that it?”

  “I can’t discuss it. We’re here to talk about Walter Moon.”

  Leopold, red-faced and fighting for his temper, was suddenly on his feet. “Listen, man, Moon’s life is no more important than those Arabs half a world away!”

  “Venice is a murderer, several times over. Perhaps he killed half of London with his reports during the war.”

  The coffee came and Leopold passed a cup to Saunter. When he’d calmed down a bit, he said, “About Moon. There’s a theory I have that would support the idea of suicide, if you care to hear it.”

  Saunter nodded. “I’ll listen, but I don’t have to believe it.”

  “Well, your man Moon visited Farngood and quite possibly heard the same story I did about the bombing of the oasis. After he left there, he went down the street to a church where he spoke with a priest, perhaps seeking spiritual comfort. When he didn’t find it, he went back to his room and killed himself out of a horror for what had been done. I believe you people always carry cyanide pills for emergencies.”

  The young man’s lips twisted in a sort of smile. “I’m afraid you have let your imagination run away with you, Captain. If you’ll allow me to kill off your points in order; Walter Moon knew about the Iraq thing some months ago, he was not a religious man, and – despite the spy novels – we never carry suicide pills. A few agents may request them when entering foreign territory, but they are never issued as standard equipment.”

  “All right,” Leopold admitted. “It was just a possibility. These suicide pills, though – Venice would probably be carrying them in case he was captured.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Then it would seem that their paths crossed, that Venice observed Moon taking his allergy pill and arranged to place a cyanide pill in the bottle.”

  “Something like that has been my contention from the very beginning.”

  Leopold was thinking out loud. “But would the pills be the same size, the same color?”

  “They were capsules. It would take only a minute for Venice to empty the powder from one and substitute cyanide from his own supply.”

  “All right,” Leopold sighed. “So we’re back on the trail of your master spy. If that’s the correct designation for him.”

  Saunter nodded. “Any spy who runs other agents is considered a master. It’s another technical term generally misused in fiction. But it applies in this case. Venice had quite a string of them during his recent years in Paris. We have reason to believe there might even have been a Venice agent behind the attempted assassination of de Gaulle, among other things. Tony Wilder, the man we have under wraps in Washington, was one of his Paris agents.”

  “What about Wilder? Could you have him up here tomorrow night? The Peacock people are meeting.”

  “I could have him here in two hours.”

  Leopold pondered a bit. “Well, they’ll all be together tomorrow night, and I’ve already got an invitation to attend. How about flying him up tonight and we’ll keep him in a hotel here, just so he’s on the scene.”

  Saunter nodded in agreement. “I’ll get on the phone.”

  “You’re sure he can identify Venice?”

  “He’s sure, and I believe him.”

  “What if there’s been plastic surgery?”

  “It leaves scars. Besides, why should Venice bother when there’s no description of him in existence? To our knowledge, Tony Wilder is the only living person who’s ever seen him.”

  Leopold nodded. “All right, then. That seems to be our best bet. Call me when you’ve got this Wilder bedded down and I’ll come over to see him.”

  After the government man had departed, Leopold turned his attention once more to the papers and reports on his desk. There was one from Fletcher, a rundown on the six members of the Peacock Angel whom he’d interviewed long into the previous night. Three of the six had come to the city during the past year, and one admitted having lived in Europe. Otherwise they seemed fairly ordinary. One was a woman Leopold knew slightly, a downtown shopkeeper who sold ladies’ hats.

  He read over the paper again and then put it down, more in the dark than ever.

  Saunter phoned him that night just after seven. “He’s here,” the CIA man said simply. “Hotel Hudson. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “Right.” Leopold hung up and got his coat.

  The lobby was crowded with a convention of some sort when he reached it, but he had little trouble picking out the youngish government man standing on the sidelines. As he headed for him, he suddenly found himself face to face with Father Regan, the priest he’d met the previous night.

  “Hello again, Father. Are you part of the convention?”

  “A small part,” the priest explained. “It’s a Knights of Columbus gathering. Good to see you again.”

  “And you, Father.”

  Leopold kept going and shook hands with Saunter in a good imitation of unexpected encounter. He followed the young man into the elevator and they rode in silence to the seventh floor. There, two more youngish and casual-looking men lounged in the corridor, quite obviously on guard.

  “Before we go in,” Leopold said, “fill me in a bit on this Tony Wilder.”

  “There’s really not much to tell. He’s a Russian citizen who’s heen passing for English since the war years. We had nothing on him till quite recently, when his name turned up as one of Venice’s Paris agents. We knew that he journeyed to the Middle East a year ago, apparently for a meeting with Venice. A few months later he turned up in Berlin, asking political asylum. He admitted he wasn’t English, and confessed to a good many other things as well. During the questioning it came out that he’d met Venice twice and could positively identify the man.”

  “And that’s when you got interested.”

  “Right.” Saunter paused before one of the doors and knocked. “But he can tell you the rest himself. He’s quite a talker.”

  After a moment the door opened, revealing a middle-aged man with an ordinary face and tired eyes. He stepped aside to let them enter, then closed the door and carefully snapped the lock. “What’s all the noise?” he asked, with just a trace of a British accent.

  “Convention in the hotel,” Saunter explained. “You needn’t worry.” He turned his head to indicate Leopold. “This gentleman is from the local police, looking into the killing of Walter Moon. Captain Leopold, Tony Wilder.”

  Leopold accepted the firm handshake and sat down. His first thought was that this man didn’t look like a spy, either. Wilder was more the aging playboy type, the retired adventurer who still viewed the world as fair game for someone on the make. The eyes were tired, yes – but there was still the trace of a twinkle deep within them.

  “I was sorry to hear about Moon,” he said.

  “Did you know him?” Leopold asked.

  “He came to question me one night, before he left for here. I warned him that Venice was a ruthless man.”

  “Just what did you tell him?”

  “Oh, about the last time I saw Venice, in Iraq.”

  “At the place that was bombed?” Leopold asked, shooting a glance toward Saunter.

  “Yes. It was about fourteen months ago, some time before the bombing. I’d worked for Venice
in Paris, and he summoned me to meet him at the oasis of the Peacock Angel. It took me three days by camel to reach him.”

  “You’re sure it was really Venice.”

  “I’m sure. I remembered him from Paris. He told me he was finished with the game, told me he was retiring. He said he had a foolproof cover identity worked out that would enable him to live in the United States undetected.”

  “Did he say it was connected with the Peacock Angel?”

  “No, but I suspected it might be. He used the society as a cover in London, I know.”

  Leopold frowned. “Just what does Venice look like?”

  “That is what Moon wanted to know, too. He’s very difficult to describe, quite ordinary looking, really. About my age, I’d say.”

  “You’re Russian, Mr. Wilder?”

  The man smiled slightly. “My real name is quite lengthy and almost unpronounceable. I’ve thought of myself as English for a good many years.”

  “But you chose to ask for political asylum with the Americans when you could have returned to England and lived as you had before. Why?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” He turned to stare out the window. “With Venice gone and the network collapsing, there wasn’t anything left for me. Maybe you could say I have a compulsion to betray secrets. The Russians didn’t want me anymore, so I turned to your side.”

  “And now you’re ready to betray Venice.”

  Tony Wilder shrugged. “I met the man twice. He was no friend, only a business acquaintance. He’d do the same thing to me, I’m sure.”

  “What are you getting in return?” Leopold asked, keeping his eyes on Saunter.

  “Nothing. A place to live out my days in peace, that’s all.”

  Leopold stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t like it. The whole thing’s a filthy business and I don’t like it.”

  “What don’t you like, specifically?” Jim Saunter asked.

  “I don’t like setting up the entire membership of the Peacock Angel for this bird to look at, and maybe for your people to take potshots at. You know very well that identifying Venice – simply identifying him – won’t give me a shred of evidence for a murder indictment. But it will give you what you want, a target for a bullet or maybe even another bomb.”