Murder in the CIA Page 2

  “You uncomfortable with this meeting with the Commie big shot in Budapest?”

  “A little, but Zoltán says ‘Not to worry.’ ” They both laughed. “He’s been talking to you too much, David.”

  “Maybe he has. Look, I know you know your business, but greasing palms in a Socialist country might not be the smartest thing to do. You could be set up. They do it all the time.”

  Mayer grinned, then picked up her attaché case from the couch, came to where Hubler stood, and kissed him on the cheek. “You, David, are a dear. You also worry more than my mother does, which puts you in the Guinness class. Not to worry, David. Call me if you need me. I’ll check in with you a couple of times. By the way, where’s Carol?” Carol Geffin was one of two secretaries at the agency. The other, Marcia St. John, was on vacation. The only other two people on Mayer’s staff were away on business, one in Hollywood following through on film rights to Réti’s novel, the other in New York attending a conference.

  “Must have been another heavy night at the Buck Stops Here,” Hubler said. Carol Geffin’s favorite disco closed at 6:00 A.M., sometimes.

  Mayer shook her head. “You tell Carol that she’s got to make a choice between working and dancing. One more late morning and she can dance all day on her money, not mine. Give me a hand, huh?”

  Hubler carried her briefcase and a suitcase Mayer had dropped off in the reception area to the waiting limo. “See you in a week,” she said as she climbed inside the back of the Fleetwood Brougham. The driver closed the door, got behind the wheel, and headed for National Airport and the shuttle to New York. She glanced back through the tinted glass and saw Hubler standing at the curb, his hand half raised in a farewell. One of many things Mayer liked about him was his disposition. He was always smiling, and his laugh was of the infectious variety. Not this day, however. His face, as he stood and watched the limo become smaller, was grim. It bothered her for a moment but quickly was displaced by thoughts of the day ahead. She stretched her legs out in front of her, closed her eyes, and said to herself, “Here we go again.”

  Her suitcase had been checked through to London, leaving her free to grab a cab from La Guardia into the city, where she was let off at the corner of Second Avenue and 30th Street. She walked toward the East River on 30th until she reached a brownstone with a series of physicians’ names in black-on-white plaques.

  JASON TOLKER—PSYCHIATRIST. She went down the steps and rang the bell. A female voice asked through an intercom, “Who is it?”

  “Barrie Mayer.”

  A buzzer sounded and Barrie opened the door, stepped into a small carpeted reception area, and closed the door behind her. She was the only person there except for a young woman who came from an office in the rear and said, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Mayer said.

  “He’s not here, you know,” the nurse said.

  “I know, a conference in London. He told me to …”

  “I know. It’s here.” The nurse, whose face was severely chiseled and whose skin bore the scars of childhood acne, reached behind a desk and came up with a black briefcase of the sort used by attorneys to carry briefs. Two straps came over the top, and a tiny lock secured the flap to the case itself.

  “He said you’d been told about this,” the nurse said.

  “That’s right. Thank you.”

  The nurse’s smile was a slash across her lower face. “See you again,” she said.

  “Yes, you will.”

  Mayer left, carrying the new briefcase as well as her attaché case, one in each hand. She checked into a room at the Plaza that David had reserved from Washington, had lunch sent up, and perused papers from her attaché case until three, when she placed a wake-up call for five, stripped naked, and took a nap. She got up at five, showered, dressed again, took a cab to Kennedy Airport, and checked in at the Clipper Club, where she had a martini and read a magazine before boarding Pan Am’s seven o’clock 747 to London.

  “Can I take those for you?” a flight attendant asked, indicating the two briefcases.

  “No, thank you. Lots of work to do,” Mayer said pleasantly.

  She slid both cases under the seat in front of her and settled in for the flight. It left on time. She had another martini, and then caviar and smoked salmon, rare beef carved at her seat, and blueberry cheesecake; cognac to top it off. The movie came on, which she ignored. She put on slippers provided by the flight attendant and a pair of blue eyeshades from a toiletry kit given to each first-class passenger, positioned a pillow behind her head, covered herself with a blue blanket, and promptly fell asleep, the toes of her left foot wedged into the handle of the briefcase she’d picked up at Dr. Jason Tolker’s office.

  The cabbie from Heathrow Airport to her hotel was an older man who took more delight in chatting than in driving. Mayer would have preferred silence but he was a charming man, as all the older London cab drivers seemed to be, and she thought of the difference between him and certain New York cabbies, who not only were rude and uncaring but malicious, nervous, opinionated, hyperactive, and who curbed any tendency toward humanity by driving insanely.

  “Here we are, ma’am,” the driver said as he pulled up in front of a row of brick houses on Cadogan Gardens. There was no indication of a hotel on the block. Only the number 11 appeared above a polished wooden door that Mayer went to. She rang a bell. Moments later a hall porter in a white jacket opened the door and said, “Welcome, Miss Mayer. Splendid to see you again. Your room is ready.”

  She signed the guest book and was led to the suite she usually reserved—Number 27. It consisted of a living room, bedroom, and bath. The white ceilings were high, the walls of the living room bloodred. Victorian furniture was everywhere, including a glass-fronted bookcase, an armoire, a dressing table in front of French windows in the bedroom that overlooked a private park across the street, and a gracefully curved chaise and chairs upholstered in gold.

  “Would you like anything, ma’am?” the porter asked.

  “Not this minute, thank you,” Barrie said. “Perhaps tea at three?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be leaving tomorrow for a few days,” she said, “but I’ll be keeping the room for my return.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Tea at three.”

  She slept, and later watched BBC-TV while enjoying scones with clotted cream and jam with her tea. She had dinner at seven at the Dorchester with a British agent, Mark Hotchkiss, with whom she’d been exploring a business link for the past few months, and was back in bed at the Cadogan by ten.

  She arose at seven, had breakfast sent up to the room, dressed and left the hotel at eight. She arrived at Heathrow’s Terminal Number 2 and joined a long line of people waiting to go through a security section leading to a vast array of flights by smaller foreign airlines, including Malev, the Hungarian National Airline.

  She’d been through this before. How many trips had she taken to Budapest in the two or three years? Fifteen, twenty? She’d lost track. Only her accountant knew for certain. The line at Terminal 2 was always impossibly long and slow, and she’d learned to be patient.

  She glanced up at a TV departure monitor. Plenty of time. An older man in front of her asked if she’d “protect” his place while he went to buy a pack of cigarettes. “Of course,” she said. A woman behind her ran the wheel of a suitcase caddy into Mayer’s heel. Mayer turned. The woman raised her eyebrows and looked away.

  The line moved in spurts. Mayer carried her briefcases, and pushed her suitcase along the ground with her foot.

  A loud voice to her right caused Barrie, and everyone else in the line, to turn in its direction. A young black man wearing an open white shirt, black trousers, and leather sandals had gotten up on a trash container and began screaming a protest against British policy in South Africa. Everyone’s attention remained on him as two uniformed airport-security officers pushed through crowds of people in his direction.

  “Barrie.”

  She didn’t
immediately react. Because she, and everyone else in the line, had turned to her right, her back was to a row of counters. The mention of her name had come from behind her.

  She turned. Her eyebrows went up. She started to say something, a name, a greeting, when the hand came up beneath her nose. In it was a metal tube that might have held a cigar. The thumb on the hand flicked a switch on the tube and a glass ampule inside it shattered, its contents blown into Mayer’s face.

  It all happened so quickly. No one seemed to notice … until she dropped both briefcases to the floor and her hands clutched at her chest as a stabbing pain radiated from deep inside. She couldn’t breathe. The airport, and everyone in it, was wiped away by a blinding white light that sent a spasm of pain through her head.

  “Lady, are you …?”

  Her face was blue. She sank to her knees, her fingers frantic as they tried to tear open her clothing, her chest itself in search of air and relief from the pain.

  “Hey, hey, over here, this lady’s …”

  Mayer looked up into the faces of dozens of people who were crouching low and peering at her, in sympathy or in horror. Her mouth and eyes opened wide, and rasping sounds came from her throat, pleas without words, questions for the faces of strangers so close to her. Then she pitched forward, her face thudding against the hard floor.

  There were screams now from several people who saw what had happened to the tall, well-dressed woman who, seconds before, had stood in line with them.

  The man who’d gone to get cigarettes returned. “What’s this?” he asked as he looked down at Mayer, sprawled on the floor of Terminal Number 2. “Good God,” he said, “someone do something for her.”

  3

  BUDAPEST—TWO DAYS LATER

  “I just can’t believe it,” Collette Cahill said to Joe Breslin as they sat at an outdoor table at Gundel, Budapest’s grand old restaurant. “Barrie was … she’d become my best friend. I went out to Ferihegy to meet her flight from London, but she wasn’t on it. I came back to the embassy and called that hotel in Cadogan Gardens she always stays at in London. All they could tell me was that she left that morning for the airport. Malev wouldn’t tell me anything until I got hold of that guy in operations I know who checked the passenger manifest. Barrie was listed as a reservation, but she hadn’t boarded. That’s when I really started worrying. And then … then, I got a call from Dave Hubler in her Washington office. He could barely talk. I made him repeat what he’d said three, four times and …” She’d been fighting tears all evening and now lost the battle. Breslin reached across the table and placed a hand on hers. A seven-piece roving Gypsy band dressed in bright colors approached the table but Breslin waved them away.

  Collette sat back in her chair and drew a series of deep breaths. She wiped her eyes with her napkin and slowly shook her head. “A heart attack? That’s ridiculous, Joe. She was, what, thirty-five, maybe thirty-six? She was in great shape. Damn it! It can’t be.”

  Breslin shrugged and lighted his pipe. “I’m afraid it can, Collette. Barrie’s dead. No question about that, sadly. What about Réti, her writer?”

  “I tried his house but no one was there. I’m sure he knows by now. Hubler was calling him with the news.”

  “What about the funeral?”

  “There wasn’t any, at least nothing formal. I called her mother that night. God, I dreaded it. She seemed to take it pretty well, though. She said she knew that Barrie wanted immediate cremation, no prayers, no gathering, and that’s what she had.”

  “The autopsy. You say it was done in London?”

  “Yes. They’re the ones who labeled it a coronary.” She closed her eyes tightly. “I will not buy that finding, Joe, never.”

  He smiled and leaned forward. “Eat something, Collette. You haven’t had a thing for too long. Besides, I’m starved.” Large bowls of goulash soup sat untouched in front of them. She took a spoonful and looked at Breslin, who’d dipped a piece of bread in the hearty broth and was savoring it. Cahill was glad she had him to lean on. She’d made many friends since coming to Budapest, but Joe Breslin provided a stability she needed at times like this, perhaps because he was older, fifty-six, and seemed to enjoy the role of surrogate father.

  Breslin had been stationed with the American Embassy in Budapest for just over ten years. In fact, Collette and a group of friends had celebrated his tenth anniversary only last week at their favorite Budapest night spot, the Miniatur Bar on Budai Läszlö Street, where a talented young Gypsy pianist named Nyári Károly played a nightly mix of spirited Hungarian Gypsy melodies, American pop tunes, Hungarian love songs, and modern jazz. It had been a festive occasion and they’d closed the bar at three in the morning.

  “How’s the soup?” Breslin asked.

  “Okay. You know, Joe, I just realized there’s someone else I should call.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Eric Edwards.”

  Breslin’s eyebrows lifted. “Why?”

  “He and Barrie were … close.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “She didn’t talk about it much but she was mad about him.”

  “Hardly an exclusive club.”

  The comment brought forth the first smile of the evening from her. She said, “I’ve finally gotten old enough to learn never to question a relationship. Do you know him well?”

  “I don’t know him at all, just the name, the operation. We had some dispatches from him this morning.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing startling. Banana Quick is alive and well. They’ve had their second meeting.”

  “On Mosquito?”

  He nodded, frowned, leaned across the table, and said, “Was Barrie carrying anything?”

  “I don’t know.” They both glanced about to make sure they weren’t being overheard. She spotted a table four removed at which a heavyset man and three women sat. She said to Breslin, “That’s Litka Morovaf, Soviet cultural affairs.”

  Breslin smiled. “What is he now, number three in the KGB here?”

  “Number two. A real Chekist. Drives him crazy when I call him Colonel. He actually thinks not wearing a uniform obscures his military rank. He’s a pig, always after me to have dinner with him. Enough of him. Getting back to Barrie, Joe, I didn’t always know whether she was carrying or just here on business for her agency. She’d tightened up a lot lately, which made me happy. When she first got involved, she babbled about it like a schoolgirl.”

  “Did she see Tolker before leaving?”

  “I don’t know that, either. She usually contacted him in Washington but she had time to kill in New York this trip, so I assume she saw him there. I don’t know anything, Joe—I wish I did.”

  “Maybe it’s better you don’t. Feel like dinner?”

  “Not really.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “Go ahead, I’ll pick.”

  He ordered Fogasfile Gundel Modon, the small filets of fish accompanied by four vegetables, and a bottle of Egri Bikavér, a good red Hungarian wine. They said little while he ate. Cahill sipped the wine and tried to shake the thoughts that bombarded her about Barrie’s death.

  They’d become friends in college days. Collette was raised in Virginia, attended George Washington University, and graduated from its law school. It was during her postgraduate work that she met Barrie Mayer, who’d come from Seattle to work on a master’s degree in English literature at Georgetown University. It had been a chance meeting. A young attorney Cahill had been seeing threw a party at his apartment in Old Town and invited his best friend, another attorney who’d just started dating Barrie Mayer. He brought her to the party and the two young women hit it off.

  That they became close friends surprised the attorneys who’d introduced them. They were different personalities, as different as their physical attributes. Mayer, tall, leggy, had a mane of chestnut hair that she enjoyed wearing loose. She seldom used makeup. Her eyes were the color of malachite and she used them to good ad
vantage, expressing a variety of emotions with a simple widening or narrowing, a partial wink, a lift of a sandy eyebrow, or a sensuous clouding over that she knew was appealing to men.

  Cahill, on the other hand, was short and tightly bundled, a succession of rounded edges that had been there since adolescence and that had caused her widowed mother sleepless nights. She was as vivacious as Mayer was laid-back, deep blue eyes in constant motion, a face punctuated by high cheekbones that belied her Scottish heritage, a face that seemed always ready to burst apart with enthusiasm and wonder. She enjoyed using makeup to add high color to her cheeks and lips. Her hair was black (“Where did that come from, for heaven’s sake?” her mother often asked), and she wore it short, in a style flattering to her nicely rounded face.

  Their initial friendship was rooted in a mutual determination to forge successful careers. The specific goals were different, of course. For Mayer, it was to eventually head up a major book-publishing company. For Cahill, it was government service with an eye toward a top spot in the Justice Department, perhaps even becoming the first female Attorney General. They laughed often and loudly about their aspirations, but they were serious.

  They remained close until graduation, when the beginning stages of their work moved them away from each other. Cahill took a job with a legal trade journal published in Washington that kept tabs on pending legislation. She gave it a year, then took a friend’s advice and began applying to government agencies, including Justice, State, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was first with an offer and she accepted it.

  “You what?” Barrie Mayer had exploded over dinner the night Cahill announced her new job.

  “I’m going to work for the CIA.”

  “That’s … that’s crazy. Don’t you read, Collette? The CIA’s a terrible organization.”

  “Media distortion, Barrie.” She had smiled. “Besides, after training, they’re sending me to England.”

  Now Mayer’s smile matched Collette’s. “All right,” she said, “so it’s not such a terrible organization. What will you be doing there?”