Too Many Murders(130)
“So now we know why Smith didn’t send M. D. Sykes’s letter by internal mail before he left,” Carmine said to Delia as they went back to his office. “It had to travel out of the country with him. In Zurich the microdots in it would have been removed and Letraset spots substituted. Once back in Holloman, he could personally hand Mr. Sykes his promotion.”
“Oh, Carmine, I am so delighted for you!”
“Save your ecstasies, Delia. Now I have to call Ted Kelly and tell him what we’ve found. I’m afraid that our participation in the case of Ulysses the spy is at an end.”
An accurate prophecy. The astounded Ted Kelly arrived in minutes, gasping at what he called Carmine’s luck.
“No, it wasn’t my luck!” Carmine snapped, temper flaring. “It was the initiative of Sergeant Corey Marshall that got you your proof of espionage, Special Agent Kelly, and I insist that he be properly credited! If his name and his feat don’t appear in your report, I’ll tear Washington down around your ears!”
“Okay, okay!” Kelly yelled, backing away with palms up. “It will be written into my report, I promise!”
“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Kelly!” Carmine thrust two typewritten sheets of police paper at him. “This is Corey’s report of what happened, and that’s how your own report starts. Fuck the FBI, and fuck you! You’ve piggybacked on our work, and I want that acknowledged.”
“I’m so happy I’d consent to anything,” Kelly said. “Are Smith’s papers here?”
Carmine handed him a Holloman Police Department cardboard box. “Every last one, minus five spots off the Sykes letter. Which, by the way, I photocopied to make sure Mr. Sykes gets it. There’s probably a copy in Smith’s office, but I wanted to make sure. M. D. Sykes has been screwed around enough.”
Kelly took the box as if it contained the crown jewels, then looked enquiring. “Um—the five spots?” he asked.
“Are going, together with a microscope, with me to the chambers of Judge Thwaites. I need proof of wrongdoing to get a search warrant. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll send you the evidence,” Carmine said.
“You can’t do that!”
“Try and stop me. I told you, you’ll get them back. I was not kidding when I said I don’t trust you or the FBI, Special Agent Kelly. As far as I know, the contents of Smith’s briefcase may never come to light, or his person be tried for treason. But he will be tried for at least one murder, and for that, he’ll go to prison for a very long time. Now piss off and leave me to my own business.”
“Do you think they will try Mr. Smith for treason?” Delia asked, looking at a room full of trestle tables.
“I have no idea. Get rid of the tables, Delia. I’m going up to see your Uncle John.” In the doorway he stopped. “Delia?”
“Yes?” she asked, one hand on the phone.
“You did a brilliant job. I don’t know what I’d do without you, and that’s the truth.”
His secretary made a sound like a squeezed kitten, went very bright red, and turned away.
“Once Doubting Doug gets a look at my microdots, John, I should get my warrant,” Carmine said.
“The more so because it vindicates his issuance of warrants after the sniper,” Silvestri said. “No egg on his face. I hope the proof of Dee-Dee’s murder is where you think it is, Carmine, because I have a funny feeling the Feds don’t want this guy tried for treason. The days of the Rosenbergs are over. Smith’s a high-end Boston WASP.”
“I don’t think so,” Carmine said thoughtfully. “There was a Philip Smith, I’m sure, but at some time over the past twenty-five years, a KGB colonel assumed his identity. Sometimes Smith makes weird mistakes about American customs and traditions, and his wife, according to Delia, is not a Sami Lapp. Delia thinks she hails from one of those Stans that comprise Siberia or the Central Asian steppes. Her native language is not Indo-Aryan.”
“Nor are Turkish and Hungarian, for that matter.”
“True. Despite which, John, I’d bet my last buck Smith’s a plant. There is no Anna Smith in the Peace Corps in Africa, and the Stephen Smith who’s doing marine biology in the Red Sea—interesting color choice—isn’t really attached to Woods Hole. He has a kind of honorary status there thanks to hefty donations to projects the Woods Hole people find difficult to fund. As for Peter Smith, petroleum engineer, he was in Iran working for BP, but went off wildcatting to Afghanistan, of all places.”