Michelle slipped silently into the carpeted hallway. She glanced back a last time at Ritter, curled up peacefully, innocently, contentedly in the double bed. She closed the door softly. Ritter would not wake for another few hours at least. They’d never prepared her for this. During the long months of training at Camp Perry, no one had adequately warned her about getting personally involved.
She rode quietly down in the elevator, tears sliding unprofessionally off her cheeks, thinking back to her recruitment almost ten years ago. The man had been a friend of her father’s years before. At least he had claimed to be a friend. That had been enough to convince her to accept a dinner invitation.
The man talked about her father, what a fine, patriotic person he had been. How he voluntarily had given up a secure noncombat executive job with a safe defense clearance to join the fight against the Germans.
He talked about the dangers to the world, the growing Communist threat, the continuing challenge to the West, to democratic insitutions and freedoms. Her father had accepted and died for the same challenge. Two decades later the fight was far from over. The fight for freedom would never end. She was needed to help.
At first, Michelle hadn’t quite understood. But as the man continued to talk, she slowly realized what he was offering, what he was asking. He didn’t say exactly whom he represented, but it was increasingly obvious.
The idea of working for the Central Intelligence Agency excited her. Kennedy was dead, but the nation more than ever needed the enthusiastic participation of its youth. Her marriage had just broken up. She needed something to fill the vacuum. The prospect of a career with the CIA was appealing.
Following the harrowing months of training in Virginia, they decided she should resume her studies in France. She was in a perfect position to keep tabs on the leftist student groups increasingly infiltrated by militant Communists threatening France’s and thus Europe’s basic stability.
Life in the university community was challenging. The leftists wanted to bring down France’s entire political and economic structure. She felt they offered nothing but hollow slogans as a replacement. She was proud of her small role in trying to thwart them.
During a student crisis, it became clear she had fallen under suspicion of one of the more radical and dangerous groups she had infiltrated. It was decided to transfer her for her own safety to London. Her assignment was similar—to infiltrate the leftist university groups.
During a quiet period, the station chief asked her to try her hand at finding a lead on the First Armored Brigade gold. It was one of the London station’s unfinished projects, low on the list of priorities. But it was a quiet period. Her boss asked her to take a week or two and poke around, see what she could find. Maybe they could at least get it off the books. That was when she ran into Ritter in the library. The rest of it had fallen into her lap before she realized what was happening. The chief told her to follow along, try to bring back the gold to a point where the agency could retrieve it.
She knew she would have to seduce Ritter to make the trip. It was an enjoyable task. But she never counted on falling in love. She had believed she was too professional.
The big lovable trusting oaf. He’d waited his whole life for a strike like this, and now she was pulling it out from under him. Of course, the gold wasn’t his to begin with. In one of the first of many secret deals under the Lend-Lease Act, President Franklin Roosevelt had arranged for it to be flown secretly to Greece to be used by the hard-pressed British to pay their Greek allies and to set up partisan groups to resist the Germans, particularly in the case of an invasion which everyone knew would come. The British never had a chance to use the gold the way it was intended. In a top-secret report that eventually reached Washington, the British had reported its loss.
Michelle watched the lights blink as the elevator sank slowly into the bowels of the hotel. Why should the gold be returned to the government now? They didn’t need it. It was financial peanuts where budgets were counted in billions. It was strictly a paperwork exercise, clearing up a still-open file at the request of a faceless Washington bureaucrat. If she hadn’t met Ritter, he and Khoury would have gone to Greece without her and the agency would never have heard about it. By right, the gold belonged to whoever found it.
The elevator door slid open. She stepped out into the neon-lit concrete garage. There was the camper, undisturbed.
She reached inside the vehicle, which still smelled faintly of lacquer. Everything was in order. Yes, the gold really was Ritter’s. After all, he had found it. He had recovered it. That was the universal law of treasure hunters. But she was under orders. The success of this assignment would look good in her record. It would help her career.
Perhaps they could take it together to the embassy. Ritter would get a hefty finder’s fee. They would pay him a third, maybe half. Yes, to hell with it. Back upstairs and explain everything. She was in love with him. And he felt the same way about her. She knew it. If she took off with the gold now, he would be out of her life forever. She had to talk to him. She just couldn’t run out like this. No. It wasn’t worth it. Life could be very long.
She turned to hurry upstairs, before he woke, before he saw the damning note.
“Just a moment, my dear.” A voice came from behind the car in the shadows next to the camper. She hardly knew the man, but she realized immediately who it was. She looked around at the sad mousy face with wire-rim glasses.
J. Alfred Thompson stepped cautiously forward. The pistol, a Webley & Scott .45 partially concealed under a newspaper, was pointed directly at her.
“Just going up to get Brian,” she said, vainly trying to bluff. “He said we weren’t meeting you until ten o’clock.”
“As you can see, I’ve come a bit early. It was good of Brian to call from Italy. A most conscientious partner. But I’m afraid I can’t wait until ten. In fact, my dear, it almost looked there for a moment as if you yourself were considering dissolving your relationship with Brian and me. Indeed, that time has come, I fear. But it must be under slightly different circumstances than you were planning. The banks will be open in a few hours, and I want to make an early deposit in one of those wonderful, untraceable secret numbered accounts. Now, let’s get in.”
Michelle glared at Thompson. The old fox. If the arthritis Brian had mentioned was bothering him now, he certainly was not letting it show. The Webley looked very menacing. His hand was steady. She might be able to disarm him, but the odds were not good. He was aging and his reflexes would be slow, but he had a clear, easy shot at her. The .45 was powerful. One shot would do it. It would be best at this point to open the camper, wait for a chance to get the old bastard. Slowly and deliberately she pulled the keys from her pocket and opened the door. Thompson motioned her to the driver’s side. He followed, still pointing the pistol at her.
“You take it from here, my dear. I’ll let you know where we’re going as we drive along.”
Thompson concealed the Webley under the newspaper as they paid the parking fee and drove out of the garage.
“We’ll go for a little drive into the country,” he said calmly. “It’s just until the banks open, you understand. Perhaps we can find a nice quiet spot, out of the way. We can rest and wait. Yes, a very quiet spot. I don’t want to have to trouble you with all that boring old banking business.”
* * *
Merde! Rudolf Margion had rarely been so angry. He had been with the company nineteen years and the boss had just given the pleasant lake route to a man who had been with the company only twelve years. By right of seniority, Margion felt the highly desired lake run should be his. It was a shorter run and there were fewer stations. The job was much easier than the Geneva-suburb route he was stuck with that took him every day through heavy city traffic and the dangerous hard-to-drive, twisting rural roads. He was sick of it. After all these years, they should have given him the lake run. He would talk to the union. Launch a protest. Maybe a strike. That would do it. That would bring them to their knees. That was the only kind of reasoning the bastards understood. Damn. The more he thought about it, the more furious he became.
Margion was still cursing his luck and his boss when he carelessly ran through the red light. From the side, the camper seemed to leap through the intersection into his path. Whoever was driving obviously wasn’t looking. Too late he leaned on his horn, simultaneously trying to brake and swerve the big rig out of the way. But he was going too fast.