The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel by Robert Ludlum
Spaulding kicked the weapon away and gripped the man’s neck with both hands, shaking the head back and forth to keep him conscious.
“Now, you tell me, you son of a bitch! What is ‘Tortugas’?”
The shouting outside the elevator was now deafening. There was a cacophony of hysteria brought on by the screams of the battered operator. There were cries for the hotel management. For the police.
The man looked up at David, tears of terrible pain streaming from his eyes. “Why not kill me, pig,” he said between agonizing chokes of breath. “… You’ve tried before.”
David was bewildered. He’d never seen the man. The north country? Basque? Navarre?
There was no time to think.
“What is ‘Tortugas’?”
“Altmüller, pig. The pig Altmüller …” The man fell into unconsciousness.
There was the name again.
Altmüller.
Spaulding rose from the unconscious body and grabbed the control lever of the elevator. He swung it to the far left, accelerating the speed as fast as possible. There were ten floors in the Montgomery; the panel lights indicated that the first-, third-, and sixth-floor buttons had been activated. If he could reach the tenth before the hysterical voices followed him up the stairs, it was possible that he could get out of the elevator, race down the corridor to one of the corners, then double back into the crowd which surely would gather around the open elevator doors.
Around the unconscious man on the floor.
It had to be possible! This was no time for him to be involved with the New York police.
The man was carried away on a stretcher; the questions were brief.
No, he didn’t know the elevator operator. The man had dropped him off at his floor ten or twelve minutes ago. He’d been in his room and came out when he’d heard all the shouting.
The same as everyone else.
What was New York coming to?
David reached his room on seven, closed the door and stared at the bed. Christ, he was exhausted! But his mind refused to stop racing.
He would postpone everything until he had rested, except for two items. He had to consider those now. They could not wait for sleep because a telephone might ring, or someone might come to his hotel room. And he had to make his decisions in advance. Be prepared.
The first item was that Fairfax no longer could be used as a source. It was riddled, infiltrated. He had to function without Fairfax, which, in a way, was akin to telling a cripple he had to walk without braces.
On the other hand, he was no cripple.
The second item was a man named Altmüller. He had to find a man named Franz Altmüller; find out who he was, what he meant to the unfocused picture.
David lay down on the bed; he didn’t have the energy to remove his clothes, even his shoes. He brought his arm up to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun streaming in the hotel windows. The afternoon sun of the first day of the new year, 1944.
Suddenly, he opened his eyes in the black void of tweed cloth. There was a third item. Inextricably bound to the man named Altmüller.
What the hell did “Tortugas” mean?
21
JANUARY 2, 1944, NEW YORK CITY
Eugene Lyons sat at a drafting board in the bare office. He was in shirtsleeves. There were blueprints strewn about on tables. The bright morning sun bouncing off the white walls gave the room the antiseptic appearance of a large hospital cubicle.
And Eugene Lyons’s face and body did nothing to discourage such thoughts.
David had followed Kendall through the door, apprehensive at the forthcoming introduction. He would have preferred not knowing anything about Lyons.
The scientist turned on the stool. He was among the thinnest men Spaulding had ever seen. The bones were surrounded by flesh, not protected by it. Light blue veins were in evidence throughout the hands, arms, neck and temples. The skin wasn’t old, it was worn out. The eyes were deep-set but in no way dull or flat; they were alert and, in their own way, penetrating. His straight grey hair was thinned out before its time; he could have been any age within a twenty-year span.
There was, however, one quality about the man that seemed specific: disinterest. He acknowledged the intrusion, obviously knew who David was, but made no move to interrupt his concentration.
Kendall forced the break. “Eugene, this is Spaulding. You show him where to start.”
And with those words Kendall turned on his heel and went out the door, closing it behind him.
David stood across the room from Lyons. He took the necessary steps and extended his hand. He knew exactly what he was going to say.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Lyons. I’m no expert in your field, but I’ve heard about your work at MIT. I’m lucky to have you spread the wealth, even if it’s only for a short time.”
There was a slight, momentary flicker of interest in the eyes. David had gambled on a simple greeting that told the emaciated scientist several things, among which was the fact that David was aware of Lyons’s tragedy in Boston—thus, undoubtedly, the rest of his story—and was not inhibited by it.
Lyons’s grip was limp; the disinterest quickly returned. Disinterest, not necessarily rudeness. On the borderline.
“I know we haven’t much time and I’m a neophyte in gyroscopics,” said Spaulding, releasing the hand, backing off to the side of the drafting board. “But I’m told I don’t have to recognize much more than pretty basic stuff; be able to verbalize in German the terms and formulas you write out for me.”
David emphasized—with the barest rise in his voice—the words verbalize … you write out for me. He watched Lyons to see if there was any reaction to his open acknowledgment of the scientist’s vocal problem. He thought he detected a small hint of relief.
Lyons looked up at him. The thin lips flattened slightly against the teeth; there was a short extension at the corners of the mouth and the scientist nodded. There was even an infinitesimal glint of appreciation in the deep-set eyes. He got up from his stool and crossed to the nearest table where several books lay on blueprints. He picked up the top volume and handed it to Spaulding. The title on the cover was Diagrammatics: Inertia and Precession.
David knew it would be all right.
It was past six o’clock.
Kendall had gone; the receptionist had bolted at the stroke of five, asking David to close the doors if he was the last person to leave. If not, tell one of the others.
The “others” were Eugene Lyons and his two male nurses.
Spaulding met them—the male nurses—briefly in the reception room. Their names were Hal and Johnny. Both were large men; the talkative one was Hal, the leader was Johnny, an ex-marine.
“The old guy is on his real good behavior,” said Hal. “Nothing to worry about.”
“It’s time to get him back to St. Luke’s,” said Johnny. “They get pissed off if he’s too late for the night meal.”
Together the men went into Lyons’s office and brought him out. They were polite with the cadaverous physicist, but firm. Eugene Lyons looked indifferently at Spaulding, shrugged and walked silently out the door with his two keepers.
David waited until he heard the sound of the elevator in the hallway. Then he put down the Diagrammatics volume the physicist had given him on the receptionist’s desk and crossed to Walter Kendall’s office.
The door was locked, which struck him as strange. Kendall was on his way to Buenos Aires, he might not be back for several weeks. Spaulding withdrew a small object from his pocket and knelt down. At first glance, the instrument in David’s hand appeared to be an expensive silver pocket knife, the sort so often found at the end of an expensive key chain, especially in very expensive men’s clubs. It wasn’t. It was a locksmith’s pick designed to give that appearance. It had been made in London’s Silver Vaults, a gift from an MI-5 counterpart in Lisbon.
David spun out a tiny cylinder with a flat tip and inserted it into the lock housing. In
Kendall’s office had no file cabinets, no closets, no bookshelves; no recesses whatsoever other than the desk drawers. David turned on the fluorescent reading lamp at the far edge of the blotter and opened the top center drawer.
He had to stifle a genuine laugh. Surrounded by an odd assortment of paper clips, toothpicks, loose Lifesavers, and note paper were two pornographic magazines. Although marked with dirty fingerprints, both were fairly new.
Merry Christmas, Walter Kendall, thought David a little sadly.
The side drawers were empty, at least there was nothing of interest. In the bottom drawer lay crumpled yellow pages of note paper, meaningless doodles drawn with a hard pencil, piercing the pages.
He was about to get up and leave when he decided to look once more at the incoherent patterns on the crumpled paper. There was nothing else; Kendall had locked his office door out of reflex, not necessity. And again by reflex, perhaps, he had put the yellow pages—not in a waste-basket, which had only the contents of emptied ashtrays—but in a drawer. Out of sight.
David knew he was reaching. There was no choice; he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, if anything.
He spread two of the pages on top of the blotter, pressing the surfaces flat.
Nothing.
Well, something. Outlines of women’s breasts and genitalia. Assorted circles and arrows, diagrams: a psychoanalyst’s paradise.
He removed another single page and pressed it out. More circles, arrows, breasts. Then to one side, childlike outlines of clouds—billowy, shaded; diagonal marks that could be rain or multiple sheets of thin lightning.
Nothing.
Another page.
It caught David’s eye. On the bottom of the soiled yellow page, barely distinguishable between criss-cross penciling, was the outline of a large swastika. He looked at it closely. The swastika had circles at the right-hand points of the insignia, circles that spun off as if the artist were duplicating the ovals of a Palmer writing exercise. And flowing out of these ovals were unmistakable initials. JD. Then Joh D., J. Diet.… The letters appeared at the end of each oval line. And beyond the final letters in each area were elaborately drawn ???
???
David folded the paper carefully and put it in his jacket pocket.
There were two remaining pages, so he took them out simultaneously. The page to the left had only one large, indecipherable scribble—once more circular, now angry—and meaningless. But on the second paper, again toward the bottom of the page, was a series of scroll-like markings that could be interpreted as Js and Ds. similar in flow to the letters after the swastika points on the other page. And opposite the final D was a strange horizontal obelisk, its taper on the right. There were lines on the side as though they were edges.… A bullet, perhaps, with bore markings. Underneath, on the next line of the paper to the left, were the same oval motions that brought to mind the Palmer exercise. Only they were firmer here, pressed harder into the yellow paper.
Suddenly David realized what he was staring at.
Walter Kendall had subconsciously outlined an obscene caricature of an erect penis and testicles.
Happy New Year, Mr. Kendall, thought Spaulding.
He put the page carefully into his pocket with its partner, returned the others and shut the drawer. He switched off the lamp, walked to the open door, turning to see if he had left everything as it was, and crossed into the reception room. He pulled Kendall’s door shut and considered briefly whether to lock the tumblers in place.
It would be pointless to waste the time. The lock was old, simple; janitorial personnel in just about any building in New York would have a key, and it was more difficult inserting tumblers than releasing them. To hell with it.
A half hour later it occurred to him—in an instant of reflection—that this decision probably saved his life. The sixty, or ninety, or one-hundred-odd seconds he eliminated from his departure placed him in the position of an observer, not a target.
He put on the Rogers Peet overcoat, turned off the lights, and walked into the corridor to the bank of elevators. It was nearly seven, the day after New Year’s, and the building was practically deserted. A single elevator was working. It had passed his floor, ascending to the upper stories, where it seemed to linger. He was about to use the stairs—the offices were on the third floor, it might be quicker—when he heard rapid, multiple footsteps coming up the staircase. The sound was incongruous. Moments ago the elevator had been in the lobby; why would two—more than two?—people be racing up the stairs at seven at night? There could be a dozen reasonable explanations, but his instincts made him consider unreasonable ones.
Silently, he ran to the opposite end of the short floor, where an intersecting corridor led to additional offices on the south side of the building. He rounded the corner and pressed himself against the wall. Since the assault in the Montgomery elevator, he carried a weapon—a small Beretta revolver—strapped to his chest, under his clothes. He flipped open his overcoat and undid the buttons of his jacket and shirt. Access to the pistol would be swift and efficient, should it be necessary.
It probably wouldn’t be, he thought, as he heard the footsteps disappear.
Then he realized that they had not disappeared, they had faded, slowed down to a walk—a quiet, cautious walk. And then he heard the voices: whisper-like, indistinguishable. They came from around the edge of the wall, in the vicinity of the unmarked Meridian office, no more than thirty feet away.
He inched the flat of his face to the sharp, concrete corner and simultaneously reached his right hand under his shirt to the handle of the Beretta.
There were two men with their backs to him, facing the darkened glass of the unmarked office door. The shorter of the two put his face against the pane, hands to both temples to shut out the light from the corridor. He pulled back and looked at his partner, shaking his head negatively.
The taller man turned slightly, enough for Spaulding to recognize him.
It was the stranger in the recessed, darkened doorway on Fifty-second Street. The tall, sad-eyed man who spoke gently, in bastardized British-out-of-the-Balkans, and held him under the barrel of a thick, powerful weapon.
The man reached into his left overcoat pocket and gave a key to his friend. With his right hand he removed a pistol from his belt. It was a heavy-duty .45, army issue. At close range, David knew it would blow a person into the air and off the earth. The man nodded and spoke softly but clearly.
“He has to be. He didn’t leave. I want him.”
With these words the shorter man inserted the key and shoved at the door. It swung back slowly. Together, both men walked in.
At that precise moment the elevator grill could be heard opening, its metal frames ringing throughout the corridor. David could see the two men in the darkened reception room freeze, turn toward the open door and quickly shut it.
“Chee-ryst Almighty!” was the irate shout from the angry elevator operator as the grill rang shut with a clamor.
David knew it was the instant to move. Within seconds one or both men inside the deserted Meridian offices would realize that the elevator had stopped on the third floor because someone had pushed the button. Someone not in evidence, someone they had not met on the stairs. Someone still on the floor.
He spun around the edge of the wall and raced down the corridor toward the staircase. He didn’t look back; he didn’t bother to muffle his steps—it would have reduced his speed. His only concern was to get down those steps and out of the building. He leaped down the right-angled staircase to the in-between landing and whipped around the corner.
And then he stopped.
Below him, leaning against the railing, was the third man. He knew he’d heard more than two sets of feet racing up the staircase minutes ago. The man was startled, his eyes widened in shocked recognition and his right hand jerked backwards toward his c
David sprang off the landing straight down at the man, making contact in midair, his hands clawing for the man’s throat and right arm. He gripped the skin on the neck below the left ear and tore at it, slamming the man’s head into the concrete wall as he did so. David’s heavier body crushed into the would-be sentry’s chest; he twisted the right arm nearly out of its shoulder socket.
The man screamed and collapsed; the scalp was lacerated, blood flowing out of the section of his skull that had crashed into the wall.
David could hear the sounds of a door being thrown open and men running. Above him, of course; one floor above him.
He freed his entangled legs from the unconscious body and raced down the remaining flight of stairs to the lobby. The elevator had, moments ago, let out its cargo of passengers; the last few were going out the front entrance. If any had heard the prolonged scream from the battered man sixty feet away up the staircase, none acknowledged it.
David rushed into the stragglers, elbowing his way through the wide double doors and onto the sidewalk. He turned east and ran as fast as he could.
He had walked over forty city blocks—some two miles in Basque country, but here infinitely less pleasant.
He had come to several decisions. The problem was how to implement them.
He could not stay in New York; not without facing risks, palpably unacceptable. And he had to get to Buenos Aires at once, before any of those hunting him in New York knew he was gone.
For they were hunting him now; that much was clear.
It would be suicide to return to the Montgomery. Or for that matter, to the unmarked Meridian offices in the morning. He could handle both with telephone calls. He would tell the hotel that he had been suddenly transferred to Pennsylvania; could the Montgomery management pack and hold his things? He’d call later about his bill.…
Kendall was on his way to Argentina. It wouldn’t make any difference what the Meridian office was told.
Suddenly, he thought of Eugene Lyons.