The Hidden Target Read online

  Arrival in New York was the usual confusion when several major flights descended on Kennedy. It was natural, perhaps, that the attractive young woman who was travelling alone should look so helpless and harried as she waited for her luggage to appear on the roundabout. She had stuck close to Renwick on most of the long journey from the landing area. They had gone through immigration together, so she was American—or at least travelling on an American passport. Customs had separated them temporarily, but here she was beside him again in the main hall with the late-evening sun streaming in from the street outside. The odd thing was that, in all this time, she hadn’t given him one small glance: most of the transatlantic passengers had noticed each other, exchanging the usual cursory look as they angled for the best position to grab their suitcases or compete for the attention of a porter if one did deign to arrive. For someone who was now standing at his elbow, it was strange that she seemed totally unaware of his existence. Their luggage should be arriving any moment now. Would she ask his help, delay him enough to let them leave together? And would she take a taxi to follow his?

  Renwick lit a cigarette as she faced his direction briefly. His lighter missed twice, flamed on his third try. He had just time for a couple of drags before he saw his bag near two dark-blue suitcases, a matched set varying only in size, come circling slowly towards them.

  “Oh!” she said, pointing to the larger of these cases, which lay far up on the conveyor and needed a long arm to be reached.

  Renwick extracted his bag and her smaller case, a nice excuse to let the larger one go majestically on its way. He placed it at her feet. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “The other will come around again.” In four or five minutes. And with an encouraging smile that was met by a look of complete frustration, he left for the door. No porters available, either, he thought with some satisfaction.

  Outside was turmoil complete, taxis and buses and a row of limousines with drivers at their wheels. People on the sidewalk, people darting into the roadway to get hold of a cab. It took him several minutes to secure one, and as he threw his baggage inside to stake his claim, he noticed one limousine in particular. Its driver, impatient, stood by its opened door, scanning the crowded sidewalk. As he caught sight of Renwick about to enter a taxi, he slipped back into his seat. But his way out into the turgid stream of traffic was blocked by a tourist bus that halted, no apologies, in the middle of the road to load a group of Japanese business-men. Renwick’s last glance at the sidewalk showed him the young woman emerging, her large suitcase abandoned in her desperate haste. So was her diffidence as she saw Renwick’s taxi ease through a narrow space and then speed off. Now there were two frustrated people left behind him. How nice for them if she could have emerged on his heels, stepped into the limousine with no bus to complicate the easy following of his taxi. Renwick’s smile was broad. He made sure his lighter was safe in his pocket. He could take photographs, too.

  He might have judged the woman on a hunch, but there had been no guesswork on the man. Fair hair, thick and waved; smooth handsome face, the type that some women, such as poor middle-ageing Luisa, found irresistible. Maartens, definitely, but no longer pretending to be an embassy employee in The Hague, no longer the big hotel man throwing business in the way of an interior decorator in Brussels. Had Thérèse found him irresistible, too?

  Renwick’s smile was wiped from his face. “Grand Central,” he told his driver, “by way of the Queensboro Bridge and down Lexington to Forty-second Street.” And having established the fact that he knew his way around this town, he relaxed and didn’t have to worry about the meter.

  He would find another cab at Grand Central Station and drive to the Stafford, a busy hotel in the East Fifties where he could get his thoughts in order before Frank Cooper paid him a quiet visit for intensive briefing on both sides, and a discussion of tactics. (Strategy would come later, when Frank Cooper had gathered information and put the search for Theo into motion.) And that would be all Renwick would see of Frank, for the time being. Discretion was the better part of safety.

  Tomorrow, he was heading for Vermont and a visit to his parents’ summer cottage on Caspian lake. (Scattered farms, groves of sugar maples burgeoning for tapping at winter’s end; browsing deer by day, bobcats screaming over the hills by night, skunks dodging under the woodpiles, an occasional bear wandering down from the Canadian border.) Two weeks later, he would jaunt to San Diego for an eight-day stay in nearby La Jolla with his young sister and her husband. (Tennis and scuba diving, flowers for all seasons, people from everywhere.) After that, the mountains of Wyoming for a week with his older brother, wife, seven children, five horses, three dogs. Then a return to the East. August would be almost over. Ron Gilman would be arriving from London with full reports. Frank Cooper’s news-gathering should be producing results. And Maartens, with his interest fixed on Renwick, might even be discouraged: what intelligence officer could be taken as a threat when he spent four crucial weeks in holiday pleasures with no communication, no contacts that were in any way connected with his work?

  The end of August... It couldn’t come too soon. Suddenly, his mind was jolted out of all those neatly planned prospects as he remembered his promise to Nina O’Connell for the beginning of September: a message to Daddy for money money money, ready and waiting at Türk Express in Istanbul. Hell and damnation, he thought, how do I put in a call to Francis O’Connell at the Bureau of Political-Economic Affairs in Washington when I’m practising non-existence in New York? It’s the last thing I need, making a call to a State Department number, identifying myself by name to O’Connell’s secretary, being questioned by him about Amsterdam, of all goddamn places.

  Then, as the taxi drew up at Grand Central Station and he was hauling his luggage on to the sidewalk, he knew one solution: he’d unload Nina’s message on to Frank Cooper’s broad shoulders. Frank knew O’Connell well. No problem there. Nina, Nina, Renwick was thinking, you do complicate people’s lives in your own sweet little way. In a moment, he had a spasm of sympathy for Francis O’Connell, quickly dissipated as he began wrestling with more practical matters such as counting out the dollars and calculating a sizeable tip. No audible thanks, either. I’m home, he thought as he hefted his luggage out of the pedestrians’ way, and waited for another taxi.

  ***

  A month might not seem adequate enough for a view of America, but on Renwick it had acted like a tonic. No need to judge his country by the headlines any more; now he had a wider frame of reference—people in all their variety, with all their opinions and beliefs and pride in their jobs. Sure there were some weaknesses here and there, even some rents and tears, worrying self-indulgences, but the main fabric was still strong. A good place to live, and worth a good fight. Renwick’s return to New York was definitely upbeat.

  “Raring to go,” he told Frank Cooper over the ’phone. “I’ll be leaving by the end of this week. What about having a drink with me? Or lunch? I know you’re a busy lawyer, but...” He left the suggestion hanging. If anyone were listening in to this call, its vacuity might make it seem negligible.

  “Just let me have a look at my calendar. Let me see...” Cooper’s deep, rumbling voice hesitated, as if he were really consulting his engagement book. “Washington tomorrow, dammit. A prospective client. That could take until Thursday. Then Friday is the start of the Labour Day week-end. Why not join us in East Hampton? The kids and their friends will be there before they go back to school. A full house. But we’ll always find room for you.”

  Renwick had to smile. Frank’s summer cottage had only three bedrooms, a giant living-room where stereo played well into the night, and Frank’s sacrosanct den with everything from trophies to gun rack struggling for space among bookshelves. He took the concealed hint. “I’d like that, but my new job in London begins with September. They don’t allow for Labour Day over there, you know.”

  “What about tonight? There’s a cocktail party at my place. We’ve just won a major decision, so I thought I
’d have a celebration for my staff and our happy clients.”

  “Tonight is pretty well planned—dinner and theatre.”

  “Drop in, if you can manage it. It will be a madhouse; you know how these things multiply. Too bad you didn’t let me know when you were planning to pass through New York.”

  “I really wasn’t sure myself. Next time, I’ll—”

  “The party begins at six. But no one will be there before six-thirty, I hope. I’ve got an emergency meeting midtown at four-thirty—a couple of important clients.”

  “Then you’d better hang up. It’s almost four now.”

  “So it is, dammit. Hope to see you at my place—it’s the old stand on Sixty-first Street. Remember? Good to hear from you.”

  Renwick replaced the telephone on his side table and stretched out on his bed. An emergency meeting at four-thirty... Cooper would just make it from his Wall Street office to his suite at the Stafford, kept for the benefit of out-of-town clients and his own private meetings. Renwick’s room (booked by one of Cooper’s friends) was on the floor below, but the fire staircase near Cooper’s suite had its uses. And Ronald Gilman, who must have arrived from London by this time, would have had similar arrangements made for him. Frank Cooper was a believer in easy access: friends all together under one roof, no visible coming and going.

  ***

  Four-thirty exactly. The door to Frank Cooper’s suite had its lock released, ready for Renwick’s arrival.

  “You look well,” Cooper told him, studying the younger man, lean and trim, sun-tanned, as he reactivated the lock and closed the door. There was a warm handshake, and then a quick embrace with two hefty pats on Renwick’s shoulders. “Good to see you, Bob. Pick a chair. Sorry about the decor. I take what the hotel offers, but the wives of my South American clients seem to like it.”

  “You still make a good telephone call,” Renwick told him as he chose one corner of a spindle-legged sofa, glanced around the green-and-gold room, and took his turn at studying Cooper, now pouring a couple of scotches at an elaborate serving tray. Cooper was a large bear of a man, big and deliberate; he had lost weight in recent years, and his face—large and craggy— showed permanent furrows. His hair, thick and heavy, was now almost white. His fine dark eyes were more serious, almost sad in expression. His clothes hadn’t changed, though they hung more loosely on his big frame: thin dark-grey suit worn carelessly, and slightly crumpled—enough to drive his custom tailor into a nervous breakdown.

  “Well,” Cooper was saying, “you know what’s expected of the typical New Yorker. He has the best intentions but he’s always too damned busy to spend much time with his friends.”

  “Your ’phone is tapped?”

  “Let’s say that someone likes to listen to my conversations. A recent development.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps it is just someone trying to get inside information on one of our legal battles.” Cooper’s face relaxed as he handed Renwick his drink and then lowered himself into an opposite chair. He stretched out his long legs, raised his glass in salute. “Don’t worry, Bob. We’ll find him. Or her. But it’s wiser, at the moment, to play along with them, give them no hint of suspicion aroused.” He glanced at his watch. “Quickly, any new ideas on Theo? What’s his plan, do you think?”

  “It isn’t clear yet. Could be aimed at America. That’s my hunch. Just a gut feeling, mostly. Didn’t Gilman have any more details on Theo?”

  “He passed on all he knew when I saw him in London two weeks ago. Including something you didn’t mention in our last meeting: the attack on you. That wasn’t pretty, not pretty at all, Bob.”

  “It only proves that Theo’s plan must be damned big.”

  “Any signs of interest in you recently?”

  “Not in the last four weeks.”

  “Then any interest in me must be the result of the inquiries I was making in Los Angeles about Herr Otto Remp and his new West-East Travel bureau.” Cooper pursed his lips. Shook his head: “And I thought I was being careful.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “That Theo is one smart operator. He slipped into Los Angeles, made the necessary appearance, with his lawyer and real-estate agent and his new manager in charge of the West-East office, to sign all the papers at a local bank. Also a hefty cheque for his newly acquired property. He had to use his Otto Remp identity, of course, to keep everything legal for that brief interlude. Then he departed as quietly as he had arrived, the office left in charge of his manager. Impossible to trace, so far— we’ve no idea of the name he used to enter the country or travel around in it.”

  “When did he make that visit to Los Angeles?”

  “Damn quick. It must have been within a couple of days after he arrived here from Germany.”

  Before any of us knew he had disappeared from Düsseldorf. “So all arrangements for the purchase of an LA office must have been made while he was still in Germany. Who handled them? The manager?”

  “No. The manager is a stalwart citizen. So are the real-estate agent and the bankers and the lawyer. It’s the assistant manager who is not quite what he seems to be. He’s the real boss of the Los Angeles branch of West-East Travel, affiliate of Western Travel in Düsseldorf. Theo’s contact man, in fact. Handles the finances.”

  “You found out a lot,” Renwick said, recovering from his initial disappointment. Of course Theo would act as quickly as possible, before any alert about his movements could be given.

  “Not enough. We don’t know if he is still somewhere in America; or has he left us? We’ve quietly circulated his description, of course, but there are a hundred ways of leaving this country without presenting a passport—even a false one.”

  Circulated his description.... “You’ve put yourself in some danger, Frank.”

  “Well—like you—the more I studied Theo’s case, the greater my gut feeling that this man is worth stopping. Whatever it costs us.” Cooper laughed off his touch of drama, but his eyes held something of the old zest. He glanced at his watch, pulled himself out of his chair, lumbered towards the door and unlocked it.

  Gilman, guessed Renwick: arrivals spaced twenty minutes apart? Frank and his experience—OSS agent dropping into unfriendly territory, CIA analyst in its early years, National Security adviser, and now a corporation lawyer on the international scale—might just discourage Theo’s recent interest in him. Renwick couldn’t be sure, though: the inquiries around Los Angeles must have been extensive even if discreet. And the innocent civilian was often an ignorant one, too: he never knew when to keep his trap shut, not indulge in a little gossip to enlarge his self-esteem. Some people just couldn’t resist confiding.

  “He’s late,” Cooper said, glancing once more at his watch.

  “Is he staying in the hotel?”

  “Sure. He has brought Gemma with him.”

  Gemma was Gilman’s wife. “Cosy,” said Renwick.

  “Nice and normal. Probably they’ve gone shopping.”

  Or something, thought Renwick.

  “Maggie used to try to drag me around the stores when we were abroad.” Cooper’s voice had softened at the mention of his wife. Even if she had been dead for eight years, her memory was still alive.

  Quickly, Renwick drew him away from the past by saying, “About Theo—isn’t it possible he would have invested in a furnished house somewhere in Southern California? A safe house, where his agents could stay and be subsidised by payments through his travel bureau in Los Angeles? I mean, why else would he have chosen LA if it weren’t convenient for the payment of his people’s expenses? That was the pattern he set up in Essen.”

  “Somewhere in Southern California,” Cooper said thoughtfully. “That covers a lot of territory.”

  “Somewhere within easy driving distance of LA—two or three hours away.” A hundred miles, as Renwick had discovered on his visit to La Jolla, was considered an acceptable distance to drive out for dinner. “He’d have negotiated th
at deal, of course, well in advance—like finding the premises for his West-East Travel branch.”

  “Using the assistant manager?” Cooper’s interest had quickened. “Who would, perhaps, employ the same real-estate agent? But the house wouldn’t be bought under Herr Otto Remp’s name.”

  “Nor under the assistant manager’s name. He’d choose something mythical: his cousin or a good friend from the East needs a winter home in sunny California.”

  “Could be. We’ll start some checking.”

  And be careful, thought Renwick. Tactfully, he didn’t offer Cooper that advice. Instead, he took out two snapshots. “You should look out for these, Frank. The man is definitely one of Theo’s. Maartens by name. The girl? Possibly working with Maartens. They were both in New York on the day I arrived from London.”

  Cooper studied the photographs: the blond man sat at a café table; the girl’s picture was clearer, taken close up. “I’ve seen—” he began. But at that moment the door opened quietly and Gilman slipped inside. “Put that lock to work, Ron. And welcome!”

  “Four minutes late. Unforgiveable.” Gilman was definitely annoyed with himself. “But Gemma went shopping and brought back two dresses. She had to try them on for my approval. You know how it is.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Renwick said with a grin. I like Ron’s style, he thought: no false excuses about waiting on a back staircase until the corridor cleared of people. Gilman’s equanimity returned. He was, as usual, immaculate; tall, thin; his pleasant face made solemn by horn-rimmed glasses, and not one blond hair out of place. The perfect picture of a quiet civil servant in one of Her Majesty’s less glamorous departments. Renwick rose and joined in the general hand-shaking.

  “Hope I didn’t hold up the proceedings,” Gilman said, noting the snapshots in Cooper’s hand, ignoring them politely.

  “Just discussing Theo and Los Angeles,” Cooper said. He had briefed Gilman in London about them.

  “And as you were saying, Frank—” Renwick pointed to the snapshots—“you’ve seen one of them? Which?”