The Sandler Inquiry Part 105

"Correct or incorrect, Mr. Hammond? Your Treasury Department was never interested in helping' ' "Right, right," tw.a.n.ged Hammond tiredly.

"Just go on."

"So it continued for years'" said Whiteside, turning from Hammond and seeking an audience in Leslie and Daniels.

"Until we had to take matters into our own hands. Trouble was' he added with an exasperated breath, 'the man in New York running the Russian spy during the war was still active. Frightful! He managed to warn the man in Sandler's ident.i.ty. They put a second double in Sandler's place. And that's the man who was taken down' "Killed, you mean" corrected Thomas.

"He wasn't living en we were finished shooting him, if that sounds better," said Whiteside crankily. He turned to Leslie.

"But there remained a further problem. When Sandler had been recruited in New York, no one had planned on the human side of the man. No one ever imagined that Arthur Sandler would fall in love with a barmaid in Exeter, marry her, and have a child." His longest and most thoughtful pause followed.

"After his 'a.s.sa.s.sination' the Sandler estate started receiving letters from Elizabeth Chatsworth. The escaped spy knew that she was a breach in the carefully secured plans; she could have called into open question the postwar Sandler ident.i.ty. So he set out to Europe to kill her. He succeeded, but was witnessed by not his daughter, but the daughter of the man he was impersonating. Now the daughter became a witness. Years pa.s.sed. And he kept trying to eradicate her, too' "But why did he wait?" asked a fl.u.s.tered Hammond.

"Why did he wait almost eight years to strike at the woman?"

"Silly," snorted Whiteside.

"Sandler's wartime romance was a secret. It was the one facet of the man's life the Russians didn't know about." He cleared his throat slightly, then glared directly at Thomas Daniels.

"And," he added,

"I think by now everyone in this room knows the source of their elaborate background file on Sandler."

Thomas Daniels felt everyone's eyes turn in his direction.

"It was a grand, grand game for the Reds," Whiteside continued.

"Masterful. They swapped their best engraver for our best engraver, inserted their man inside of one of ours. But they'd had the time, that was the crucial part. As early as 1941 they'd known whom they were going to replace. The only way to know that was to know who'd been recruited. And the only way to know who'd been recruited was to have the recruiter in their own control."

Whiteside sighed.

"Their own recruiting sergeant. Masquerading as an American recruiting sergeant."

Thomas felt Whiteside's glare sizzling upon him. He averted his eyes and an image flashed before him of his father, flag pin on his lapel, campaigning for Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Nixon, and vociferously calling for the bombing of Hanoi. What c.r.a.p, Thomas caught himself thinking.

"I suppose," said Whiteside with sudden gentleness, 'that we needn't dwell on the point Whiteside pursed his lips slightly as the truth hung in the air. He seemed thoughtful, while Hunter sized up the audience.

Hammond's face was a disgusted, why-wasn't-I-ever-told-before scowl.

Leslie was transfixed, wanting to believe that the man who'd sought to kill her for so long was not her actual father. Thomas Daniels seemed off on another thought altogether, thinking more of the control, the man 'running' the Sandler impostor, in New York. William Ward Daniels; lawyer, super patriot Soviet spy!

Then Whiteside was glancing around, his eyes making contact.

"Well, gentlemen? Quite a story, isn't it? And true" He laughed, a short popping snort.

"No reason to lie at this point, is there?"

Hammond appeared pensive, not wanting to trust immediately.

"The Department will want to see your 'confirmation material: he suggested weakly.

"Of course' agreed Whiteside.

"So much for Sandler," Hammond professed lamely.

"But not so much for the man who tried to kill me twice," Leslie shot quickly and bitterly.

"He's somewhere" Hammond scoffed.

"But after twenty years?" He shrugged.

"Could be in Manchuria by now."

"I don't think so" said Thomas Daniels, distinctly and coldly.

"Nor I," said Leslie.

Whiteside's eyebrows were inquisitively upraised again.

"Oh?"

he asked, as if he were ignorant of the subject.

"Not with all this counterfeit circulating," Leslie reminded Hammond.

"Certainly not" Hammond was quick to agree.

"In any case' Whiteside said in summation,

"I think we now understand whom we're all looking for. Not Arthur Sandler. But a spy who inhabited Arthur Sandler's ident.i.ty for nine years" Thomas was about to pursue the point. But the chipping of concrete was less in the bas.e.m.e.nt now. One of the agents from below trudged up the cellar 'stairs and appeared, dusty and fatigued, but concentrating on his task.

"We found a wooden box" the man said.

"About nine feet by three feet ' The four men and one woman at the table looked at the man with mixed anxiety and expectancy.

"Itll take another hour to chip it free' he said.

"Then we can open it' He glanced from one face to the 'next, then added sardonically,

"I suspect everyone'll want to be present for the unveiling" A beam of sunlight eased through a torn curtain. It was ten A.M. "Children of the cold war," thought Thomas.

"That's what we are. She and I He was still at the table, looking across at her.

"How insolent we've always been to think we controlled our own lives' "

He considered the events which had brought them to that table, listening to the sinister chipping below. Not simply the events which had touched them directly, but the larger scheme of things.

The Iron Curtain and the purge trials. Korea and McCarthyism.

Hungary. Rudolph Abel. Cuba. U-2 Flights. The Berlin Wall.