Death of the Falcon Page 11

  “Agent in C car reports that the limousine driver was inside service station eight minutes before going back to his car. During that time, agent observed the chauffeur using a public telephone in the station after obtaining change from attendant. At least two calls were made by driver and one by female passenger, but agent was not close enough to observe numbers dialed. Limousine and occupants are now proceeding south on Cabin John Parkway . . . One moment, sir.” I could hear another transmission, but was unable to make out the message. The AXE operator soon filled me in on what was happening:

  “Subject car has moved onto George Washington Memorial Parkway and still is proceeding south. C car will report again in five minutes unless you wish me to maintain contact, sir.”

  “No. Just inform C car to maintain that schedule of reports.”

  As I broke the connection I was wondering just whom Abdul had contacted. It was logical that one of his calls had been made to the embassy, which meant he now knew about the flap over Sherima’s whereabouts—if he hadn’t already known. But who else had he called?

  The next three reports at five-minute intervals were from our C car, who told me only that Sherima’s limousine was continuing its progress back toward the District on the George Washington Parkway. When I asked the radioman to check the car’s speed, he flashed the query to the C car and soon informed me that Abdul seemed to be maintaining the same forty-five to fifty miles per hour that he had held while he’d been traveling to and from Potomac. I asked for a reconfirmation of that speed and was assured the initial information was correct.

  That threw even more suspicion in the direction it had been building. If Abdul had been informed by the embassy that Sherima might be in danger, he should be getting back to the city as fast as possible. I wished that Hawk had returned to his office so he could check his contact at the embassy and determine if the bodyguard had phoned there. However, since Hawk hadn’t contacted me, I assumed that he was still at the White House. The AXE radioman confirmed the fact for me during his next report.

  “Do you want me to have Communications put out an emergency call on his beeper?” the radio operator asked.

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” I told him, having visions of Hawk’s little receiver suddenly beginning to buzz in the President’s office. Still, it would be valuable right now to know if any of our underground contacts had come up with a lead to Sherima’s disappearance. As the agent in charge of the operation, I had the authority to contact Hawk’s executive office and request the status of any field reports, but I decided that I would wait until the Old Man returned to headquarters. I felt certain, anyway, that he had left orders that I was to be informed of any vital communications bearing on the case.

  Keeping track of Sherima’s car on my map as reports were relayed to me, I traced its entry onto Canal Road and realized it was back in the District. Since I was assuming that Abdul knew something was up with Sherima, I expected him and Candy back at the hotel soon. She wouldn’t have been able to sidetrack him on any errands once he felt “Her Highness” was in danger.

  Just two minutes after his latest report, the AXE radioman was back on the phone to me again. “Sir, something has happened that I think you should know about. C car began transmission ahead of schedule to report that the limousine it was following had slowed considerably. Then C car abruptly broke off contact and I have been unable to raise it again.”

  “Keep trying,” I ordered. “I’ll stay on the line.”

  Over and over I could hear him mouthing the call numbers of the C car. He didn’t have to come on the line to tell me that he was getting no response. Then, suddenly, over the phone I heard some message coming into the radio room and my hopes were raised that the C car perhaps had been in a dead transmission area. They were quickly dashed when the radioman came back on the line:

  “Sir, I’m afraid there’s trouble. Monitoring just picked up a District Police flash ordering patrol cruisers to investigate a crash on Canal Road in the area where our C car last reported in. The police dispatcher sent more than one car and transmitted a code signal that indicated shots had been heard in that area. Are there any orders?”

  “Yes. Get off the line and have Monitoring call me directly. I want to know every word that District Police transmit about that call.” The radioman was sharp enough to break the connection immediately without acknowledging my instructions.

  Ninety seconds later, my phone rang again—the Watergate switchboard must have thought I was booking bets out of my room with so many calls. A supervisor in the AXE Monitoring Section began reporting what they were learning from listening in on the District Police wave-length. The news was not good. A district cruiser apparently had been near the locale on Canal Road and had reached the scene swiftly. Its initial report back to headquarters was that a car was crashed and burning, and ambulances were needed.

  “Hold it a minute, sir,” my new contact said, and, once more, I could hear radio cross-chatter in the background. He soon came back on the line with an update. “It looks bad sir,” he said. “The DP cruiser just requested that Homicide respond to the call and that all available back-up cars be sent. The patrolman making the call said a second cruiser has arrived, and they are attempting to put out a fire, but a fire engine is needed, too. Also, he said there is evidence of automatic weaponsfire.”

  “No indication that there is a second car at the scene —a limousine?” I asked.

  “Nothing so far. Hold it, here’s more coming in . . . Cruiser reports three dead, sir. We had three men in that C car; it looks like they’ve bought it,”

  I instructed him to relay word to our radio room to dispatch the closest available AXE unit to the scene. “I want a complete rundown on what happened as quickly as possible. Somebody must have seen it or District Police wouldn’t have gotten the word so fast.” When he was back on the line after passing on my orders, I had more for him to do: “Get on another phone and find out if the Old Man is back yet . . . No, better yet, have an emergency signal put out on his beeper. I want him to contact me here as soon as he can. I’ll get off the phone now so he can call me.”

  No sooner had I hung up than my phone rang again. Scooping up the receiver, I asked, “Have you heard, sir?”

  The voice that responded wasn’t Hawk’s.

  “Nick? It’s me, Candy.”

  Stunned, I almost shouted “Where are you?” at her.

  “At a little boutique on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown,” she said. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Where’s Abdul?” I demanded, not taking time to explain.

  “Sitting out front in the car. Why, Nick? What’s wrong?”

  “Are you sure he’s there?”

  “Certainly, I’m sure. I’m looking out the window at him right now. Nick, please tell me what’s wrong. I did as you said and had him stop here, supposedly so I could pick up a sweater that Sherima saw in the window last night and mentioned she wanted. Was that wrong? You said to delay his getting back to the hotel as long as I could.”

  I was sure that Hawk must be trying to reach me by that time, but I had to find out something from Candy. “Honey, don’t ask me right now how I know, but you and Abdul stopped at a gas station and he made some phone calls. Do you know to whom?”

  She started to ask how I knew about the roadside stop, but I interrupted her and said sharply, “Not now, Candy. Just tell me, do you know who he called?”

  “No, Nick. I didn’t go into the station. I tried to keep him from stopping there, but he insisted that we needed gas, and—”

  “You know I’d like to hear all about it, but right now I’ve got to hang up. Just do me a favor and keep Abdul occupied for as long as you can. Promise?”

  “All right,” she said and sounded hurt that I was brushing off what sounded like a good effort on her part. “Just tell me one thing,” she went on, “is there any word about Sherima?”

  “No. But don’t worry. Now I have to hang up.” I could hear her say
ing something as I pressed down the button that disconnected us, but at the moment, I couldn’t worry about what it was. And, once more, the phone rang immediately. This time I waited until making certain that the voice responding to my hello was Hawk’s before I asked, “Have you heard what’s happened, sir?”

  “Yes. I was just coming into the office when my pager went off. I’ve been trying to get you, but your line has been busy.” The last was almost a reprimand.

  “It seems to me that I’ve spent my whole life on this phone,” I said grimly, “while other people have been murdered.” Then I launched into an explanation of what I knew about Candy’s trip to Potomac and the events that followed my contacting her there and arranging for her and Abdul to return to the city. “I’m sure that those calls he made had something to do with what happened later on Canal Road,” I said, concluding my report.

  “You’re probably right,” Hawk agreed. “Let me tell you what I’ve been able to find out in the few minutes I’ve been back . . .”

  For one thing, three of our men were dead, it appeared certain. Hawk had reached his contact on the District Police force, and after some hasty radio queries to and answers from officers at the scene, it was learned that the car was ours and that the corpses had either been in it or close enough to have been passengers. “And it didn’t crash,” Hawk continued. “The original report was wrong. It blew up—or, rather, a grenade was thrown under it and exploded, flipping it into a ditch. Then, according to the man who reported the incident originally—he’s a tow truck operator who has a radio in his truck and that’s how the police got the word so quickly—a VW camper stopped beside the burning C car. Two men got out of the camper and sprayed the wreck with automatic rifles.”

  “Did the tow truck operator get the license number of the camper?”

  The witness had been too stunned by the sudden violence that erupted to notice the VWs plate number, Hawk had been informed, but he had managed to provide a pretty good description of the ambushers’ vehicle. Working out of a garage, he was familiar with most models of cars and trucks and the information he supplied already had been put out on an all-points bulletin in the District and surrounding area. Roadblocks were being set up on all bridges and main highways out of Washington, while state police in adjoining Maryland and Virginia were maintaining a steady surveillance on all the principal thoroughfares and had dispatched cruising cars to the less-used roads.

  I hadn’t had time to tell Hawk of Candy’s call from Georgetown, and when I did so, his conclusion was the same as that I had reached. “He’s sticking to routine,” Hawk agreed, “to keep from appearing to have had anything to do with setting up the attack on our C car. He probably doesn’t know that one of our men trailing him had come forward on foot and watched him making the calls at that service station. So far as he knows, the C car just halted out of sight and waited for him to proceed back out onto the highway again.”

  Something that Hawk just had said rang a bell in my memory, but I didn’t have time to concentrate on it, because he had some instructions to give me. “Stick in your room, Nick, while I coordinate the hunt for that VW camper. I want to be able to reach you when it’s located, then I’ll have a job for you.” The way he said it left no doubt in my mind as to what that job would be once the killers were pinpointed. “And I want you waiting when Miss Knight and that bodyguard Abdul Bedawi return to the hotel. If he sticks to his pattern, he’ll come up to Sherima’s suite to see how she’s feeling.”

  “I’ll be here, sir,” I assured him as our conversation ended.

  With Hawk taking over control of communications, I expected my phone to be still for a while, but I was wrong. It rang almost instantly again, and when I answered it, the caller identified herself as a clerk in a boutique in Georgetown—the name sounded like something Sly.

  “Mr. Carter, I’ve been trying to get through to you, but your line has been busy,” she said. “A lady gave me twenty dollars for promising to phone you and give you a message. She ran out of here so fast she didn’t have time to call herself.”

  “What’s the message?” I asked, knowing who the lady had to be.

  “She just told me to tell you that Candy said to call you and say that somebody—I just don’t remember the name, she was in such a hurry I didn’t catch it—anyway, somebody drove off and she was going to try to follow him and she would call you later. Does that mean anything to you, Mr. Carter?”

  “It certainly does,” I told her. “It means a lot. Did you happen to see which way she went?”

  “No, I didn’t. It all happened so fast that I didn’t think to look. She just grabbed a pencil off the counter here at the cash register, wrote down your name and phone number, gave me a twenty-dollar bill and took off.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said, asking again for her name and address and making a note of it. “There will be another twenty dollars in the mail for you in a day or so.”

  She insisted it wasn’t necessary, then asked me to hold the line. I could hear her talking to someone before she turned back to the phone to tell me: “Mr. Carter, one of the girls who works with me here was watching the lady when she left the shop. She says that she saw her get in a cab and that it took off fast.”

  I thanked her again, then hung up and phoned Hawk to report the latest development. He decided to ask District Police to radio an alert for all cars to be on the lookout for Sherima’s limousine. I suggested that, if the car were spotted, it not be halted, but that an attempt be made to keep it under surveillance until it stopped. He issued the orders, then said: “What do you make of it, N3?”

  “I think Abdul must have seen Candy phoning from that boutique and realized his plans had to be changed. He must know that she is helping someone to cover up Sherima’s disappearance and probably figures it’s me. That is, if he had anything to do with her abduction.

  And his taking off that way makes it pretty certain that he did. My guess is that he’s probably heading to wherever they’re holding Sherima. If she’s still alive. I hope the District Police get a line on him soon. Is there any word on the VW camper?”

  “Nothing yet,” Hawk said dejectedly. “I’ll call you back if I get anything. You have to wait there now, anyway, in case Miss Knight calls.”

  “I know,” I said grimly, feeling resigned to wait in my room forever. “I just hope that she doesn’t try to play detective and get too close to him. I think it’s safe to assume she must still be on his trail somewhere. If she had lost him, she would have been in touch with me herself.”

  Though just a short time before I had begun to feel irritated over the continual ringing of my phone, now I kept hoping it would peal again after Hawk hung up. It didn’t, and I sat there watching the seconds turn into seemingly endless minutes, knowing that once they started becoming hours, the time soon would arrive when I was due to have Sherima at the Secretary of State’s house for her radio conversation with Shah Hassan. And knowing, too, if we didn’t keep that date the whole world could start coming apart in explosions that would expand from the Mideast to the fringes of space.

  I had paced about an inch of nap off the Watergate’s lush carpeting by the time Candy phoned just after four o’clock. Hawk had called twice in the interim with disheartening reports that neither the killers’ camper nor Sherima’s limousine and driver had been located. I could understand the limousine being hard to find among the thousands in public and private use in Washington, but the camper should have been easier to pin down, unless it had been stashed somewhere before the bulletin went out on the police network.

  Candy’s words tumbled out like water from a dam giving way; she didn’t even wait for me to answer her questions:

  “Nick, it’s Candy. Did you get my message? Abdul took off and I grabbed a cab and followed him. We’ve been all over the place. It cost me fifteen dollars, because the cab driver said he shouldn’t be doing it. Anyway, Abdul parked about a block away from the Adabian Embassy and just sat there for a whil
e, then a man I didn’t recognize came out and got in the car and they drove off. I followed them and they rode around in circles for a while and then—”

  “Candy!” I finally was able to break into the torrent of explanation when she paused for breath. “Where are you now?”

  “At St. John’s College,” she replied casually, then, as I repeated the name incredulously, she continued, “I just came in here to use the phone. They were very nice about it and let me use one without paying, after I said it was an emergency. The lady said—”

  When I yelled “Candy” again and demanded that she tell me where Abdul was, she sounded hurt again, saying, “Nick, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. He’s at a house just about a block from here on Military Road.” She said Sherima’s bodyguard had driven the limousine right into the garage behind the house. “I saw him because I had the cab driver go past very slowly when I saw Abdul swing into the driveway. I had him let me out at the next corner, at Utah Avenue, then I walked back past the house, but I guess he and the man from the embassy already had gone inside.”

  “Nick, do you think Sherima might be there?”

  “That’s just what I intend to find out,” I told her, asking for the address on Military Road.

  She gave it to me, then said, “Nick, are you coming out yourself or going to send the police?” When I told her I would be on the way there as soon as I could get downstairs and into a cab, she said, “That’s good. Sherima might be embarrassed if the police come and there’s a big fuss.”

  I would have laughed if it hadn’t been so serious a situation; just a few hours earlier, Candy had been all for calling out the Army and Navy and anyone else to help find Sherima, but once it looked like the former Queen might have been located, she was concerned about protecting the reputation of her friend and employer.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll try to keep Sherima’s name out of the papers. Now, you just wait for me at that school. What’s the name again? St. John’s College . . .” I ignored her protest that she wanted me to pick her up and take her with me to the house, insisting instead, “Do as I say. I don’t know what Abdul and his friend are up to, but there might be trouble, and I don’t want you hurt.” Better that she didn’t know for the time being how many men already had died that afternoon and that it was almost certain more would follow them. “I’ll come for you as soon as I can. Now, I’ve got to get started.” I hung up before she could argue any further.