Goodbye California - Alistair [59]
‘Russian?’
‘Apparently. A simple variation – well, simple to them, I suppose – of a well-known Russian code. Reds lurking in the undergrowth again? Could mean anything, could mean nothing. Another reason, I suppose, for the keen interest being shown by the CIA. I should imagine, without actually knowing, that the bulk of Washington cryptographers are on the CIA’s payroll, one way or another.’
‘And LeWinter’s secretary is Russian. Russian descent, anyway. A cypher clerk?’
‘If this were any of a dozen countries in the world I’d have the fair Bettina in here and have the truth out of her in ten minutes. Unfortunately, this is not one of those dozen different countries.’ He paused. ‘And Donahure has – had – Russian rifles.’
‘Ah! The Kalashnikovs. Import permit –’
‘None. So officially there are none of those rifles in the country. The Pentagon do have some, but they’re not saying where they got them from. The British, I imagine – some captured IRA arms cache in Northern Ireland.’
‘And Donahure is, of course, a second generation Irishman.’
‘God, as if I haven’t got enough headaches!’ To illustrate just how many he had Dunne laid his forehead briefly on the palms of his hands then looked up. ‘Incidentally, what was Donahure looking for in your house?’
‘I’ve figured that out.’ Ryder didn’t seem to derive much satisfaction from the thought. ‘Just give me a lifetime and by the end of it I’ll add up two and two and come pretty close to the right answer. He didn’t come because Jeff and I hadn’t been too nice to his stake-out and deprived him of a lot of his personal property, including his spy-van; he’d never have dared connect himself with that. He didn’t come for the evidence I’d taken from San Ruffino because he didn’t know I’d taken any and, in the first place, he hadn’t even had time to go to San Ruffino. By the same token he didn’t have time to go to LeWinter’s for a search warrant either. He wouldn’t have dared to, anyway, for if he’d told LeWinter the real reason why he wanted the search warrant LeWinter might have considered him such a menace that he’d not only refuse such a warrant but might have had him eliminated altogether.’
Dunne wasn’t looking quite so brisk and alert as when they had arrived. He said in complaint: ‘I told you I’ve got a headache.’
‘My guess is that a proper search of Donahure’s home or office would turn up a stack of warrants already signed and officially stamped by LeWinter. All Donahure had to do was to fill them in himself. I’d told him about the dossier I had on him. He’d come for that. So obvious that I missed it at the time. And I’d told him he was so bone-headed that he just had to be acting on his own. So he was, because it was something that concerned only him personally.’
‘Of course it has to be that. The two of them might run for cover.’
‘Don’t think so. They don’t know the evidence is in our hands. Donahure, being a crook at heart, will automatically assume that only crooks would have stolen the money and the guns, and they wouldn’t be likely to advertise the fact. And I don’t think that LeWinter will run either. He’ll have been worried sick at first, especially at the thought of the stolen code-book and the fact that his fingerprints have been taken. But when he’s found out – if he hasn’t already found out – that the dreaded picture of himself and his accommodating secretary has not appeared in the Globe, he’ll have discreet enquiries made and find out that the two men who had come to photograph him were not employed on the Globe and he will come to the inevitable conclusion that they were blackmailers, perhaps out to block his appointment as Chief Justice to the State Supreme Court. You’ve said yourself he has powerful friends: by the same token such a man must also have powerful enemies. Whatever their reason, he won’t be scared of blackmailers. Blackmailers wouldn’t know a Russian code. True, fingerprints have been taken, but cops don’t wear hoods and take your prints in bed: they