The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [158]
“They got him, all right,” Cornish told him. “And Abyss. The info came through this morning from Istanbul. It’s all in the NID, waiting on your desk. Yes, Abyss is very dead—with the dagger still sticking out of his back and ten thousand dollars in his pocket. Pretty gruesome stuff, uh?”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cal said thoughtfully.
Cornish laughed, a hearty belly laugh, and Cal winced, holding the phone away from his ear. “That’s a pretty mild statement, considering,” Cornish said.
“You’ve heard cusswords before, no need to hear more from me this early in the morning.” Cal bit into his whole-wheat toast thoughtfully and said, “So I was right about Istanbul, he was there all the time.”
“Good a place as any for a man to hide out, I guess. And the ten thousand must have been his payoff.”
“It’s not enough. Abyss had to have been paid more than ten grand. But the fact that he had it in his pocket must mean he had only just been paid. So where is the rest of the money?”
“A bank account?” Cornish guessed.
“Exactly—and a brand-new bank account, I’ll bet.” Cal’s mind raced ahead. “Do me a favor, Cornish, will you? Check all the banks in Istanbul and see where Mr. Georges Gerome opened a new account. Or maybe the bank manager has already come forward and told the Turkish police?”
“Doubtful. The mention in the papers was a small one, anyone could have missed it. But okay, we’ll follow that up.”
“And when you find the account, ask how the money was paid. A check? A banker’s draft? Find out if it was from a Swiss bank and if so, which one.”
“Will do,” Cornish said irritably; he didn’t like to be told how to do his job.
Washington sparkled under a bright blue sky as Cal drove along Virginia Avenue. He cut across Eighteenth Street and made a right on Seventeenth, heading for his office in the West Executive Wing of the White House.
A bunch of reporters were hanging around the west gate, and as he nosed his car through the crowd he wondered who they were waiting for. Lights blazed as TV cameras focused on him, and he suddenly found himself staring into a microphone thrust through his open window.
“Mr. Warrender, can you tell us what you were doing in Geneva?” someone demanded.
Cal remembered Valentin had kept his mouth shut at the airport and simply shook his head.
“What’s the story on Markheim’s murder? And we’ve just heard about Abyss. Who do you think is knocking them off? And why?”
Cal shook his head again thankfully as Security let him through. As the gates clanged shut behind him he could see the cameramen outside still filming. He wondered if Genie Reese was home yet. He’d bet his bottom dollar hers would be the first call he would get this morning.
After asking his secretary to get him some coffee, he sank wearily into his chair. A copy of the NID Cornish had mentioned was waiting for him. The National Intelligence Daily contained a summary of the latest reports from American agents all over the world, using electronic eavesdropping equipment and satellite spy photography as well as news reports. Sometimes what it contained was useful, sometimes not. The NID with its red and black flag emblem was sent to the President and circulated to officials with top-secret clearance or higher at the Defense Department, the State Department, and the CIA. Today there was one page devoted to the latest on Markheim’s murder: that all his business ledgers and diaries were missing and that intelligence suspected it was a “wet” affair—Russian slang for an assassination, “wet” meaning “blood.” There was also the pick-up on the Georges Gerome/Abyss murder in Istanbul.
Cal knew that the “Early Bird”—the cut-and-paste distillation of the major news articles and hot information taken from the nine major newspapers as well as the wire services and the three TV networks and also circulated to the top brass—would not have picked up on it yet. But by tomorrow everyone on “the loop”—the important short list of people who received high-level information