The Sandler Inquiry Part 108

"What is it?" Hammond asked.

Thomas said nothing. He reached into the box, gingerly touching the stained shirt at the collar, carefully avoiding the neck bone

Thomas pulled. Gently, as if in respect for the dead. The skull rolled slightly, as if to change its view. The teeth remained frozen in a grin.

"The ident.i.ty," said Thomas in a voice shaky and not far above a whisper.

"The second ident.i.ty that your missing spy slipped into."

Leslie stared distastefully at the skeleton, a sickened feeling growing in her stomach. Hammond did Dot yet understand. Not completely.

"The spy inhabited the ident.i.ty of another man, Arthur Sandler, in the first nine years after the war," said Thomas.

"Then that didn't work anymore. A new man was put into Sandler's ident.i.ty That man was killed, freeing the spy. But the spy needed somewhere else to go. A little research, a lot of plastic surgery, an ocean of nerve, and he slipped into another man's life. Who'd look inside another man for a missing spy?" Thomas paused.

"How fast can you get a small airplane?" he asked.

"Within an hour or two answered Hammond.

"From La Guardia Why?" Hammond was frowning, ma.s.sive bags forming beneath his eyes.

"We'll need it right- away. Your spy is planning his escape. He may already be gone."

"I don't follow."

"Don't you?" asked Thomas, standing.

"It was all over the front pages of the newspapers this week."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Leslie suddenly gasped.

"The fishing fleets!"

Thomas managed a half smile and a nod.

"Exactly." He turned back to Hammond.

"Shine the light in there)' he said, motioning to the oak box and its crumbling inhabitant.

"It reads like an engraved invitation Hammond leaned over. Leslie, transfixed by the sight as much as she was disgusted by it, peered over Hammond's shoulder. They both crouched for a closer view.

At the collar of the suit was a store label, Dunhill Tailors of New York, dated 1954. It had been a new suit. The man who'd worn the suit had been of the opinion that top-quality clothing would last forever and survive even longer than the wearer. Time had proven him correct.

Beneath the tailoes trademark was another label, the client's name. The letters were faded and stained by blood two decades old.

But they were legible.

Hammond and Leslie read at once.

The letters read simply A. ZENGLER.

Part Eight Chapter 37 "A different man," said Thomas.

"As complex and simple as that."

There was no smile on his face, not even a hint of one. Only tension and fatigue. It was five A.M. They stood, the three of them, on the edge of a small windswept landing field at the Marine Air Terminall" a small sub port of New York's La Guardia Airport. Leslie shivered slightly and pulled her coat tighter. Hammond dropped a half-smoked cigarette, muttered something about having to quit sometime soon, and extinguished the b.u.t.t with a toe. They watched a small plane belonging to the United States Treasury Department, taxiing slowly toward their end of the runway. It had been fueled, a pilot had been hauled out of bed. The craft was ready.

Hammond motioned with his head toward the small plane, the door to which had opened.

"We're ready," he said.

They walked toward the airplane. Leslie boarded first. Hammond and Daniels stood before the steps to the plane. Hammond reached into his coat and pulled from it a small thirty-eight caliber pistol.

"Know how to' use one of these?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, yes' "Take it."

"Will I need it?"

"I doubt it" "Then I don't want it" Hammond slid it into Thomas's coat pocket.

"Keep it as a good luck charm. I'll catch h.e.l.l in Washington if you go along and I don't equip you with something' "What about you? It's your profession' "I'm protected," Hammond said simply. He was. He wore an identical small handgun on his belt. And within the plane, should it be needed, a specially equipped long-range rifle, disa.s.sembled and in its case.

Minutes later, the plane was airborne.

Gradually, his entire life made sense. Thomas understood the man his father had wanted him to become.

As the coastline of the northeast unraveled with infrequent yellow lights below the window of the airplane, Thomas was lost in thought. He had the disquieting sense of having never known his father at all. It was as if he'd spent his life standing too close to a mural, never having stepped back to gain the proper perspective.

The image of the saint in the iron coffin, the one in the church at North Fenwick in Devonshire, appeared before him. The iron image of the man on the outside, the sh.e.l.l presented for the world to see. But within? The soul of an entirely different inner man. And what eyes could see that, obscured as it was by a lead mask and illusory image?

Illusion, never reality, he thought. Distance, never scrutiny. An interior of betrayal and treason, disguised by an iron mask of patriotism.

Thomas understood that his father had never done anything without a reason, other than perhaps being born and dying.

subject to (Thomas examined those events, too; everything was question now.) Equally he understood what sort of a man his father had tried to create in his only son. Tried and failed.

The private schools, the mingling with the very rich, the exposure to the criminal dregs of capitalistic American society, the blood sports, the guise of an extreme right-wing father, the easing into the legal profession, the engendered reaction to white-collar criminals, and the inheriting of a law office with no further criminal clients to represent. It was as if every image of greed, every exposure to opulence, every suggestion of inequality and unlawfulness, had all been carefully Lyeared to create a reaction in Thomas Daniels. A reaction left war4 @ympathy (overt? covert? Thomas could choose) to the destruction of the American system. Sympathy to the beliefs of the father, whether or not those true beliefs were ever known to the son.

Thomas saw the sky brightening in the east. The sky had an illuminated glow, though not yet light, the grayish-blue brightness before dawn.

He looked around the airplane. The pilot was steady at the controls, smoking a cigarette and appearing in charge. Every once in a while the airplane would buffet slightly.

Hammond was wide awake, on edge, an exhausted man with worn nerves and a winding-down body. Too tired to sleep, too sleepy to converse. He was probably thinking of his wife, of his retirement, of the so-called sunset years that would follow. Would he approach them with enthusiasm or fear? Thomas wondered. He studied Hammond in the darkness. He was a tired man, the sort of man who makes mistakes -unthinking and expensive mistakes.

Could Hammond pull a trigger if he had to? Could he pull one fast enough? Or did he carry a weapon simply to inflate his fading courage?

Thomas's eyes moved a quarter inch. He saw Leslie.