The Art of Cold War:
Chapter One: The Breath of Hell
Miriam Elise Kay-Richardson (1917-1953), heiress to the fortune of banker Richard Kay, MBE (1898-1949), died Tuesday at the age of 36. Along with 23 other passengers and the five person flight crew of Monarch Airlines Flight 6780, Mrs. Richardson was initially reported lost at sea when the Convair 240 she was travelling in veered radically off coarse while on final approach to Chicago Midway Airport, apparently crashing into Lake Michigan. Low visibility and winter storm conditions, which are believed to have contributed to the crash, are hampering search efforts and all on board have been officially declared lost. Mrs. Richardson is survived by her husband, William Richardson, the junior United States senator from Massachusetts, and their five year old daughter, Chastity. Senator Richardson's office has released a statement requesting "respect for the family at this time of tragic loss." It is believed the senator and his daughter have left Washington D.C. and have returned to the family's summer home in Nantucket. Viewings for the deceased will be held…
--Boston Post, January 2nd, 1951
He rolled from bed at four in the morning at the insistence of the hotel phone on the cheap, pressed-board nightstand.
"Your wake-up call, Sir. Would you like to order room service for breakfast?" the far-too awake male voice inquired.
Not wishing to find out what greasy nightmare might pass for breakfast in his greasy lodgings, he politely declined; the CAA boys would at least have some donuts in the tent. Donuts and gallons of warm, bitter coffee.
He sat on the edge of the bed, feet flat on the ground, and his back straight, running his hands up and down the long muscles of his legs. They ached from the change of barometric pressure, but the muscles were still hard and lean. He'd run cross country in school and would have pursued it at university as well, if the War, and his four year enlistment hadn't intervened.
Slowly rolling his neck until the crackling stopped, he paused a moment to look out at the still dark, mostly sleeping city of Chicago. There was ice painting the edges of the window in crystal webs. Eventually he made his way to the cramped confines of the hotel shower.
The 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan had been leased along with seventy of its brethren to the US government. The car drove smoothly, and soon he was turning north on Broadway.
* * *
Felix Leiter looked out at the frozen ridge surrounding the shore of Lake Michigan. The freezing rain and sleet drove in off the lake directly into his face, and he knew without the goggles he would not even be able to make out the waves crashing against the ice shelf more than a hundred yards away.
Longing for the dry heat of his native Texas, Felix stomped his feet repeatedly into the ground to keep the blood circulating. He'd seen and felt his fair share of snow and ice in Europe, but there was something entirely unforgiving about Chicago in the winter where the wind off the lake was an icy breath from Hell.
Mark Willnow, the chief investigator working the crash for the Civil Aeronautics Authority stationed in Springfield, was out on the ice sheet with some of his team. The early debris field was mostly washing up along Camp Logan and the Illinois Beach Park but was now beginning to spread as the storm grew each hour. So far a few seats, some luggage, and the remains of five distinct bodies had been recovered.
"If the craft is down within ten miles of shore, we might find her in the spring," Willnow had told him over a cup of coffee in the portable military shelter they'd set up on the coast side of the National Guard training facility. "Things don't get much more than a 100 feet deep on this side of the lake until then, but after that…" he made a diving motion with his hand.
The wind had been howling loud enough outside the tent that the stocky bear of a man had to shout to be heard above the clamour.
"So why is Langley interested in this one?" he asked. "I've worked with the FBI on a few of these, but never your crew."
Felix had shouted back, his words coming out in puffs of white exhaust, still tinged with his native, friendly drawl.
"The British lady was from an important family over there, I guess. A lot of connections and a lot of money. They say she's worth nearly seven million pounds, and that's more than enough to shake sabers at the state department. I guess all those Ivy League boys back in Virginia still view me as something of a slow minded **** kicker with the accent and all. I've been bucking for a European placement in the Clandestine Branch since I finished training, but I'm not sure it's going to be in the cards for me. Seems I have a hard time keeping my trap shut when it comes to political savvy, so they shipped me off to the tundra here to be case officer with a staff of none to appease Mother England and give their ears a vacation."
"So I figure, what the hey, I'll have a few of those Big Al dago beef sandwiches on Uncle Sam's dime and try to keep warm for a couple of weeks."
The big man had laughed and ran a hand through his nearly frozen beard.
"So, how's that keeping warm part working for ya?"
Leiter had spent hours on the beach waiting for the debris to be brought in by Willnow's various teams which were comprised of eighteen men up and down the coast. The pieces eventually made their way up to one of Camp Logan's barracks, which had been designated for the use of the salvage squad, but Leiter received first crack at them at the beach tent, looking for any signs of Miriam Kay-Richardson's fate.
He'd been skipping stones from the beach across the ice, something he'd never been able to master with water of the wetter variety, on the afternoon of the third day, when his belt radio crackled loud enough to be heard above the din of the wind and waves. He pulled back on the parka's hood, dislodged his ear-muffs, and barked back a "10-09" command into the set, before pressing the cold metal to his ear.
"Willnow here, I'm bringing you back an object of interest personally, Felix. Didn't want this one getting "lost" like some of the others."
Felix knew what the veteran CAA man was speaking off. All aeroplane crashes brought out the gawkers and the grizzly souvenir collectors, but according to Mark, celebrity fatalities, especially wealthy celebrities, brought out the ghouls in troves. The state police had been doing their best to keep the hundreds of would-be beachcombers at bay, but as the debris-field lengthened it was becoming nigh impossible to manage due to manpower restrictions alone. Willnow had expressed concern to Leiter that he was even worried about some of his own men.
"They're good guys," he said earlier that afternoon over Italian beef sandwiches, which had been spicier, and even better than he'd remembered, although like most meals he'd had since he'd enlisted, it was cold by the time it made its way into their hands. "But government jobs being what they are, the money this stuff brings in from the curio crowd might be disgusting, but it still spends."
Ten minutes after radioing in, Willnow pulled up in a Dodge pick-up, the bed weighted down with several hundred pounds of sandbags to cut down on the rear-end drift, and thick snow chains wrapped about the tyres.
As the man climbed out of the cab, he paused to shake the snow from his clothing.
"Santa," Felix prodded him. "What did you bring me this year?"
Willnow frowned and jerked his thumb to the bed of the truck.
"A sore ass if you don't help me get this thing in the tent."
"The thing" was a large leather luggage case that had been water-logged when pulled from the lake, but was now frozen solid and looked to weigh somewhere north of twenty stones.
"I've known women that packed heavier," Leiter grunted as they struggled to navigate the bag into the shelter.
Once inside, Leiter brought over two of the Perfection kerosene space heaters, placed one on either side of the bag, and lit both through their Pyrex windows.
Willnow had settled down on a bench with a cup of coffee while Felix had tended to the lamps, and the agent joined him.
"So what makes this one of interest?" he asked.
Mark motioned to the bag with his steaming cup.
"You see the saddle girth, the green-red-green web?" he said with a deep cough.
Felix nodded, his own cup pressed between his frozen hands.
"That's Gucci, Italian, maybe out of New York, maybe Milan, probably worth more than a stiff like you or I would make in three months. No Tom, Dick, or Harry bought that baby, more likely it was a Geoffrey, or an Alistair, or a…"
"Or a Miriam Day-Richardson that could afford it," Leiter finished.
Eventually they had to use a torch on the zipper. It was delicate work not singeing the bag, but Leiter took it slowly and deliberately.
The heat lamps had done their work, and the inside of the case now smelled like a fishing pond in high summer.
"Do we have any information on her personal belongings yet?" Willnow asked.
Leiter shook his head.
"No, the good senator is still sequestered on his island with the kid and about thirty servants. All of our requests so far haven't even made it past his office staff. Rumour has it the poor SOB has cracked a little and they've got him drugged up pretty good. So there's no help forthcoming."
It took time to work their way through the still-half-frozen garments, but they seemed to belong to a woman of modest proportions and high-end tastes. Most of the clothes were marked from European designers that Leiter had not only never heard of, but could hardly pronounce, even with his more than workmanlike skills in the French language.
There was no "homerun" waiting for Leiter in the case that would promise him a quick return to McLean, some form of direct identification linking the bag to its lost owner and satisfy the clamouring of both Whitehall and Fleet Street in one fell swoop, but there had been a false bottom to the case that yielded to a flat bladed screwdriver.
Leiter lifted free an inner, black felt case about a foot long by three inches deep, which had been specially made for the cubby space. He gasped as he opened the lid to reveal three broaches and six necklaces that were made up of more diamonds than Leiter had seen in his entire life.
"God," Leiter exhaled while slowly shaking his straw-coloured mane back and forth. "If I were a little more dishonest, I'd be a lot happier right now."
* * *
There was something eerily disturbing about flying into an airport when you had just spent the better part of a week investigating a crash site, Felix Leiter decided.
The Douglas DC-4 touched down smoothly at the small, two runway affair that was the newly christened Nantucket Memorial Airport. He'd had a stopover at the airport once before during the war when the Navy had been running the show. Now, the old military structures were in the process of being torn down and replaced with a modern tower, terminal, and hangers.
He was promptly met at the exit gate by a behemoth of a man dressed in the black garb of a chauffeur. Leiter had once been to a circus back in Houston where a gorilla dressed in a bellhop uniform had chased a slew of clowns about the centre ring of the big top. Leiter, who as a child had been terrified of clowns, enjoyed the act immensely. This man brought back memories of the gorilla, with his tight fitting uniform topped off with a diminutive chauffeur's cap on his massive head.
The man was well over six and a half feet tall and was as thick as a mature bull across the chest. He stood at ease with his hands crossed behind his back, and his chiselled chin stuck forward like the missing fifth head from Mt. Rushmore. The face, however, was vaguely familiar and the voice intelligent, polite, and soft spoken.
"Agent Leiter?" the mountain asked.
"Or so my mother claims," he answered.
The man chose to ignore the quip, and motioned with an open palm to a curb where sat a long, black Cadillac Fleetwood limousine.
"I like the senator, already."
Once again, silence from the gallery of one, then, "Your luggage has already been loaded. Would you like me to store your case as well?"
Leiter looked down to his right hand, which held the dark briefcase containing the jewellery they'd found at Camp Logan.
"No, I'm afraid this one is for the senator's eyes only."
"Very well then, Sir."
The trip up to William Richardson's mansion on Branson Point was brief and smooth. It was one of several huge estates that had slowly started to transform the former whaling island into one of the wealthiest postal codes in the entire country.
The mountain escorted Leiter to a library on the first floor.
"He'll be with you shortly," he said before turning to leave. "Please be brief, Agent Leiter. The senator is a brilliant man, but he is in mourning, and not quite himself. His doctor has already forbid him from any formal executions of his duties, and would not be happy to know of this meeting."
Suddenly, Leiter snapped his fingers as he recognized the man.
"You're Special Agent Fredrick Ffaulks, the guy whose knee got blown out by those Puerto Ricans at Blair House last year when they tried to ice Truman. You're a bloody hero, what are you doing in a monkey suit?"
The man paused, his back still facing Leiter, and shrugged.
"The Service doesn't have much need of an agent with a bum leg. The senator needed security, I needed a job, and he pays well." With that, the man left.
Leiter felt bad about the flippant manner in which he'd brought up the man's career ending injury, and made a mental note to apologise later if given the opportunity. The guy was probably carrying a lot of mental scarring along with his knee; he wondered if he would have fared as well as the big man if their roles were reversed.
The library was filled with oak woodworking and shelving and smelled like a bibliophile's illicit dream with the scents of leather, cloth, and paper weaved together in a deep perfume. Rather than take one of the comfortable looking red leather reading chairs, Felix chose to stand and walk among the thousands of volumes that lined the wall.
There were the prerequisite volumes of classics both in English and French, and an entire bookcase devoted to legal texts, many of which were in Latin. What he found interesting though, was that unlike the private libraries he'd encountered in his past, the books in this one actually appeared to have been used; the bindings creased, the covers worn with the sweat and oil from the hands of a voracious reader. There was another bookcase devoted to works of philosophy, the editions of which appeared to each be in the native language of the author; Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft in German, Descartes' Méditations métaphysiques in French, even a slew of Oriental texts that Leiter couldn't even begin to distinguish.
He noticed an edition of Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale that was bound with cracked black leather and looked older than God, and reached out to touch it.
""Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires," said a deep, gravelly voice with a Boston lilt.
Felix turned to find Senator William Richardson standing next to a leather chair, one hand positioned on its back as if he were using it as a cane for support. The man didn't appear to be even a shadow of the vibrant figure Leiter had seen on the television and in articles. For a man barely forty, he looked broken, with deep black wells beneath both eyes, and the slack jawed face of the heavily sedated.
"Senator…, I'm deeply," Leiter began, stumbling over his words.
"Sorry for disturbing me at a time such as this? Yes, I know," the man waived a hand dismissively. He wore a thick green paisley lounge robe that flapped open with the motion, revealing to Leiter that he wore nothing else beneath save his slippers. The agent looked away quickly.
"Melville's Starbuck was from Nantucket, you know," he said absently.
"No, Senator, I did not," Felix said, feeling immensely uncomfortable in the presence of the older man. He had a few stern lessons drilled into him early on in life from his father; one was to avoid a beautiful woman that you made cry, they will always hate you for it; the other was to never see powerful men in moments of weakness, for when they get back on their feet, they will attempt to crush you to regain their face.
"Have you found her yet, Agent Leiter?"
Felix made to reply, but was cut off by another wave of the hand, and another flash of sickly pale and private skin.
"No, no. I can see in your face you haven't. Then why are you here? It would not be wise to take my privacy lightly at the moment; there is a rabid, little doctor running about here who can be more menacing than even F-Squared at his best when it comes to protecting my well-being."
"F-Squared?" he said.
"Oh, excuse me. Fred Ffaulks, my personal chauffeur and head of my private security. I have this habit of giving those around me nicknames; titles of endearment, if you will. So, why are you here then, if not to bring Miriam back home?"
Did he mean her body?, Felix wondered. Dear God, he wasn't under some delusion that the women had survived, was he?
"No, Sir, we are simply trying to ascertain if some of the personal belongings that have been recovered are hers, and if they are, to return them to you for safe keeping. Usually, such items are tagged and retained until the CAA investigation is completed, but due to the value of the items involved, we wanted to return them to the family immediately. If for any reason, they were to be needed again, we would just ask to examine them once more, but that is highly unlikely. You may want to take a seat, Senator."
The man stood there for a moment, his expression empty, and Felix began to wonder if he had even heard him. Slowly, Richardson walked around the chair and sat down.
Leiter brought the black bag over to the low flat table that sat before the senator, took a knee, and then removed the felt jewellery case from within, setting it on the wooden surface of the counter.
There was another long pause before the senator extended a pale shaking hand to the box.
"Yes, it was hers," he said in a whisper. Slowly his hands opened the case to reveal the stunning sea of diamonds. He dug his hand into their brilliance, and brought one of the strands to his cheek.
"It doesn't really matter, you know?" he croaked in a dead and empty voice that said it had no more tears to shed. "The only thing that I ever had of any real value is gone."
Richardson hunched further over the stones, and a violent sob shook his shoulders like an aftershock, only to be followed by a second a few moments later. Suddenly, the empty well had been refilled, and the man began to openly weep.
What had been awkward for Leiter a few moments earlier had quickly become unbearable. He retook his feet, and gave the senator and his grief some privacy by edging out the library door and into the main vestibule of the mansion.
Felix turned to find himself facing a diminutive, older, Chinese fellow with a bald pate and a pair of rounded bifocal glasses. The man looked into the library at the hunched form of Richardson, and then back to Leiter with anger exploding in his eyes.
"Ni gan shenme?" the man shouted, his face and balding head turning red with emotion. "Bie darao ta!"
Felix took a step back, and actually felt himself instinctively reaching to where his Beretta lay nestled under his left arm.
"Daifu, bie dui ta da han da jiao!" came Ffaulks' voice, now booming.
The angry little man raised a fist at Leiter, shook it once, and then skirted off deeper into the mansion.
"The doctor, I presume," said Felix.
The big man, who'd been coming through the front door with Leiter's bags, nodded.
"Just be thankful I came along when I did. Dr. Chow has a distinct lack of bedside manner."
Felix looked at the bags in the other man's hands.
"I really hadn't intended on staying, Ffaulks. I was just going to grab a room in town and catch the next flight back to Chicago in the morning."
It was then the senator came out of the library, looking slightly more composed.
"Nonsense," he said. "There are twenty empty bedrooms in this house. F-Squared can drive you back out in the morning. Until then, you're our…" he hesitated, and appeared to be on verge once more of falling off an emotional cliff. "Until then, you're my guest. Fredrick, ask Melinda to turn over a bed in the east wing."
Felix gave his thanks and followed Ffaulks to his room for the night.
* * *
He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in a real bed. The sorry excuses in the hotels and motels the Agency afforded him were barely more comfortable than the nights he'd spent sleeping on the frozen ground in France and Germany. Usually the beds were broken, worn things that had seen thousands of amorous nights from people that were enjoying themselves far more than he in his restless slumber.
Dinner had been a simple affair and had been served at a sidebar as opposed to the main dining room which appeared as if it could seat more than the mess hall back at Camp Logan. He and the senator had been joined by Ffaulks and Dr. Chow, who was silent through the entire meal but never removed his eyes from Richardson, except to shoot Leiter a few cold darts of suspicion as if he were about to climb over the table at any moment and stab the senator in the heart with a shrimp fork. There had been a simple fish chowder followed by lamb chops which had been exquisitely prepared and served by a three-person wait staff.
The senator didn't ask once about the crash site, and Leiter steered very wide of any conversation about the man's wife. Instead, they discussed the Red Sox who were preparing for spring training in Sarasota, still clinging to the core players from the '46 pennant winners.
Near the end of the meal, Felix began to wonder at the quiet of the house, and once again made the mistake of opening his mouth.
"I notice that you daughter didn't join us this evening, Senator."
The empty, slackened look immediately returned to the man's face. Ffaulks, who was sitting between the senator and Leiter, turned and gave a small shake of his head for Felix. Dr. Chow, who hadn't spoken a word of English since they'd met, simply increased the intensity of his glaring at Leiter, as if he could make him burst into flame if he only concentrated hard enough.
"Chastity doesn't really understand what has happened," Richardson said after a long pause, his voice a monotone drawl. "She doesn't understand why her mother isn't here; they've never really been separated for any length of time. The doctor suggested we keep her in familiar surroundings for the time being, try not to introduce too many new people. Right now, Melinda, her nanny, is tending to her up in her room. She's been sleeping quite a bit." Another pause. "Sleeping and crying."
Felix excused himself a short time later, and Ffaulks escorted him back to his the door, Ffaulks hesitated a moment.
"You seem to be a swell fellow, Leiter, but the word on you is right; you don't know when to shut the hell up."
Leiter wanted to ask him exactly what "the word" had been on him, and whose mouth had been on the pitching end of things, but judging from Ffaulks' size and general demeanour, he decided it would be an excellent time to start practicing shutting the hell up.
"These people, this family, they've been good to me, and they've been through hell of late. Don't hurt them anymore than God already has. I'll come collect you in the morning, take you back to the airport, and then never see you again."
The big man turned and walked away having left no opportunity for Leiter to comment, even if he had wanted to.
And so it was that Felix had been introduced to his down pillow, his flannel sheets, his firm mattress, and the blissful, odour-free warm water of his personal bath. He soaked the smell and feel of Lake Michigan from his skin, and then settled in early for the evening.
It was two in the morning when he snapped awake certain there had been a noise. He strained his ears and waited for it to sound again.
"Mommy?" came a small girl's voice from the hallway outside his door. "Are you there, Mommy?"
There was confusion in that voice, and a few moments later there was a thudding sound, as if she'd stumbled into something. This was followed by the muffled gasps of quiet sobbing.
Leiter opened the door to his room and looked down the dimly lit length of the east wing. The small form of a child was curled up against a wall about two doors down from his room, and he went to her.
She recoiled away from him, pressed herself harder against the wall, as if she could just push her way through it.
"Who are you?" she said to him.
He could see her now, up close in the muted light. She was a beautiful child dressed in a pink, flowered nightgown, with light brown hair that hung to her shoulders and flat grey eyes. Flat grey eyes that looked as if they were dilated and glossed over.
Now it was Leiter's turn to get angry. Who drugged up a five year old kid? Someone wasn't trying to make the girl's life easier, they were trying to make their own life easier by not dealing with big questions from a tiny mouth.
"Who are you?" the girl repeated.
"I'm Felix," he whispered back to her.
"Felix?" she said. "Like the kitty cat?"
Leiter smiled as he thought of the black and white cartoon animal that had caused him so much taunting and grief on the playgrounds of his youth.
"That's right, Darlin'," he told her, and she beamed at this. Then the grin quickly faded away.
"Why are you whispering?" she asked him.
Felix had knelt down next to her so he would be at her height. Now, he shrugged in reply to her question.
"They wouldn't be happy if they found out you were awake, and I don't think they'd be happy with me if they knew I was talking to you."
The girl let this new information sink in.
"I can't find my mommy," she finally said.
"She's not here right now, Darlin'," he told her.
"Where did she go?"
Leiter didn't spend that much time around children any longer, but their amazing capacity to ask unending streams of questions was quickly coming back to him.
To the bottom of a huge, cold, dark lake, he thought to himself.
"Away," he answered.
This seemed to placate her, but only for a moment.
"Where's my daddy?"
"He's about," he said. "He's sleeping right now, just like you should be, Chastity. That's your name, right? Chastity?"
There was a hesitant moment, and then she slowly nodded. How could they drug such a beautiful kid, was all he could think
"That's what they call me," she whispered to him.
"Well, Chastity, why don't you show me where your room is and we'll get you tucked back in?"
The girl thought for a moment, and then she nodded and stood up. Felix did the same and she took two of his fingers on his right hand and led him back to the west wing.
She paused a moment between two of the doors, as if trying to remember the correct one. Leiter wondered what it would be like to grow up in such an incredibly wealthy world where there were so many rooms in your house, hell, houses, that you couldn't remember which one was yours.
Finally she made her choice, and he followed her in. Even in the dark, he could make out the images of pastures filled with ponies that adorned the walls. Felix nearly tripped over a small table where sat a miniature tea set, but finally managed to navigate the girl to the small bed in a corner of the room.
She climbed in, and he pulled the covers up to her chin, giving her a light kiss on her forehead.
As her grey eyes closed, the last time he would see them for nearly twenty years, she asked a soft question.
"Will my mommy be home when I wake up, Mr. Cat?"
"That's one you'll have to ask your Daddy, Honey," he told her, feeling sick inside.
He watched her for a few moments, making sure her breathing evened out and that she was back in the land of Nod.
Felix quietly closed the door to the girl's room behind him. As he released the handle and turned to go back to his own bed, a fist attached to an arm as thick as a log slammed into his stomach and knocked the air from his lungs.
He curled up from the punch but managed to stay on his feet. That turned out to me a mistake. A huge hand grabbed at his nightshirt in the middle of his back, and then the enormous fist of his assailant's other arm returned to his stomach like a crushing, graceless hammer.
"I told you to leave them alone," Ffaulks' voice growled at him.
Leiter felt himself being lifted in the direction of the blow, sandwiched between the two giant arms. The huge man swung him up in the air, his legs dragging across the ceiling, before allowing the momentum of the arc to bring him crashing down on the far side of his assailant.
Unlike the movies, fights that began with a sucker punch were usually over in a matter of moments. And so it was Leiter found himself being drug along the floor by the back of his nightshirt's collar, being half choked in the process.
He was only half conscious as he was hauled across the smooth tiles of the foyer, and then down the not so smooth stone steps of the front porch.
"The man extends the hand of hospitality to you, and you creep about his home like a burglar in the middle of the night. You're scum, Leiter."
Leiter tried to gain his feet again but still found himself stumbling awkwardly forward at the physical insistence of his assailant. Through bleary eyes, Felix looked up to see that he was approaching the Fleetwood limousine which was still nestled against the front curb. Approaching it far too fast.
Fredrick Ffaulks drove his face into the rear quarter panel of the stretch, dentingthe car severely in the process.
* * *
When Leiter awoke, he was laying on a terminal bench outside Memorial Airport, his luggage strewn on the sidewalk about him, his memories of a comfortable bed having long been forgotten.
* * *
He spent the flight back to Chicago, and the subsequent drive back to the ice, thinking of how the agency was going to let him go. How long would it take? Would there be a mock tribunal before they dispatched him? He still had several years left on his GI Bill option, so chances were he could resume his life where he left off seven years earlier, before the Marines and The Agency has waylaid him into a life of service.
The first thing that struck Felix as odd was the lack of activity as he pulled into Camp Logan. It was six p.m. when he manoeuvred the Cosmopolitan up to the converted barracks, and the only other vehicle in sight was Willnow's truck.
The inside of the barracks smelled ungodly, like a fishing wharf at low tide. There were piles of debris everywhere, in various stages of inspection and tagging. After a day's absence, Felix could tell the piles had grown and wondered what new hells awaited him if he wasn't already canned.
He found Mark Willnow sitting in the rear of the barracks. The desk's lamp was the sole island of light in the cavernous building, and the man was updating a debris inventory ledger while placing small numbered notes on a map of the ever expanding field.
"Where is everybody?" he asked as he entered the light's radius.
"They've all gone…" Willnow began, halting when he looked up at Felix's bruised and freshly scabbed face. "What in Sam Hill happened to you? You look like some critter my cat would leave on my porch."
Leiter tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a grunt.
"Turns out the good Senator might be the sanest person living in that house, and that isn't saying much."
Willnow took a moment to digest the titbit, and then shrugged.
"Doesn't matter much, anyway. The CAA called this afternoon, Washington is shutting us down immediately."
Felix was shocked. There were still bodies washing up on public beaches, and they were shutting them down.
"What about the…"
"The local authorities have been given jurisdiction. They're not going to bag and tag, they're just going to clean the mess up. We were given an immediate C&D, so I sent the boys home. I'm only still here so I could deliver a message to you."
"And that would be?" Leiter asked, knowing full well what he was going to say.
Willnow uncradled the phone sitting next to him on the desk and handed the handset to Leiter.
"You are to call the operations officer handling you immediately. Apparently they're a little more clandestine than you are, they didn't leave any names."
He looked down at the black dial of the telephone and couldn't believe they would do it like this. Maybe they were going to call him back to McLean so they could do it up close and personal.
He dialled the number to the main exchange.
Two transfers later and a gruff voice barked a question into his ear.
"Leiter, Sir," he answered, and that was all he could squeeze in for the next five minutes. His face must have changed expression a hundred times during that conversation. Willnow stared at him when he finally hung up the phone with a robotic, "Yes, Sir."
"What was all that?"
Leiter swallowed hard before speaking.
"They're pulling me out tonight. I shouldn't be saying this, but they granted my preferred assignment. I'm going to be working out of Paris. I've got just enough time to get back to Virginia and pack my bags. Parris Island to Paris in seven years; Momma Leiter would be proud."
"I guess congratulations are in order," Willnow stood up and took his hand, one of the few parts of his body that still worked free of pain. "There is something I should show you though, even though the official whistle has been blown."
Leiter frowned. One thing that had been made very clear to him was that he should drop his present assignment immediately.
"You remember Jenkins?" Willnow asked.
"Yeah, the bald guy on the North Beach crew. What about him?"
"He was shot this morning," the big man said. Seeing Leiter's reaction, he continued. "No, no, he's going to be OK. His crew found two guys hauling stuff out of the water down in the marsh area. They radioed it in to the police, and then moved in. The beachcombers opened fire immediately and took down Jenkins with a shoulder wound. They had the crew pinned down until the cops showed up and started returning fire, at which point the idiots surrendered."
"That's insane," Leiter said. "Who would be willing to shoot someone over this crap?" he waived an arm about the piles of flotsam and jetsam surrounding them.
"No, the strangest thing is what they pulled out of the car after the arrest," Willnow told him, a dark look rippling across face. "I know you have your travelling papers, Felix, but I think you might want to see this."
Willnow took a flashlight from his desk and then headed out to his truck. Felix followed.