The Sandler Inquiry Part 55

"Your new beaux" he said.

"Aren't you afraid you might give him a heart attack?"

Her eyes narrowed and focused on him sharply.

"I could ask you to leave for a remark like that' "I'm sure you could.

We'll start again. How was your trip?

"Youe in the plural sense."

"Profitable' ' "Profitable?" he asked, exploring the use of the word.

"I enjoyed myself. I'm getting to know Augie very well Thomas shrugged.

"I have eyes. Why do you have to tell me?"

"Because this is partially for you' "For me? What is?"

"Augiel" she said, as if in revelation.

"And the Sandler case. It all fits together."

"Not for me it doesn't. The power of instant and devastating insight was not one of the traits my father pa.s.sed on "A shame " she said.

"Perhaps that's true. So I'll explain. Augie's a political historian in addition to being a reporter. Political and social ' "So?"

"And his particular field of expertise, if you want to call it that, is intelligence services. Nineteen forties and fifties There was a pause as Thomas sat there unmollified but now interested.

"The fact is'" she continued, 'that he was an intelligence officer in the war." She smiled with a mixture of smugness and self-efficiency.

"I've been plying him with questions," she said.

"Questions beyond the routine ones."

"What are you talking about? The Sandler case?"

"Of course. Espionage systems" She nodded to the direction in which Reid had disappeared.

"That man is a walking compendium of the various intelligence systems.

He taught a course on it at Columbia in the early sixties, before interest in such things went out of vogue. But," she explained further and again that smile returned,

"I have ways of getting him to talk even more than he would to his cla.s.s. A man will answer any question when his mood is properly arranged."

He looked at her with an att.i.tude that bordered on disbelief An instinct for the jugular was one thing. But here was an instinct toward a more remote artery, the secret unspoken recesses of a man's memory. His father would have loved it.

"You're incredible," was all he could mutter.

"Is that all you see in him?"

She opened her hands as if to say maybe, maybe not.

"He's an attractive man in his own way. I enjoy his company. I enjoyed being away for a week with him. Pleasure with business, you could call it."

"There are a lot of things you could call it " "Call it anything you prefer," she said.

"I love this Sandler story.

You're breaking into a terrific story. I want to understand it piece by piece as you uncover it. I have to understand it." She raised her eyebrows.

"You promised it to me, remember? I promised to help you as much as I could. In return, the story's mine."

He nodded.

"That was the agreement."

"What brings you here today? It's Sunday."

"The Times files."

"What about them?"

"Can you get me access to them?"

She pondered it for a moment.

"Yes. Why?"

"I want to find out about an airplane crash in 1971," he said.

"Then I want to go farther back. I want to read everything in the newspaper files pertaining to two men."

"Who?" she asked.

"Sandler's one, obviously. Who's the other?"

He hesitated only slightly before answering.

"Who were we just discussing?" he asked.

"Why not?" she answered.

"Let's go."

The microfilm was both the easiest and the most logical place to begin.

Left by Andrea in the archive room of the rambling old building on Forty-third Street, Thomas wandered for several minutes among the rows after rows of catalogued and categorized files.

Occasionally, at random, he would open a drawer and superficially eye the contents. Obituaries of the remote and long-forgotten. Clippings and news stories of events, important and otherwise, which no living person could remember.

Then, for the time, he moved on to the microfilm room. He obtained a spool for June of 1971 and anxiously cranked it to the fourteenth of the month.