Death Is My Comrade by Stephen Marlowe Page A

Laschenko’s case that didn’t make sense.
    â€œWell, Chester,” Pappy intoned, “it has been decided in the high stratosphere of the upper echelon of top government circles—”
    â€œMeaning Pappy and me and a few other guys in lampblack suits,” Jack cut in.
    â€œâ€”that Laschenko can’t hop a jet back to Russia, not for a week or so anyway.”
    I asked: “Was he going back?”
    â€œHe was,” Jack said. “He had served a double mission here. One: to help get things ready for the Russian Exhibition in New York. Two: to act as host for the top brass of the American Exhibition in Moscow. They leave for Moscow on Tuesday.”
    â€œThe trouble is,” Pappy picked up the story, “we don’t want Laschenko recognizing one of the members of the American team. So Laschenko goes around the horn.”
    â€œClear?” Jack asked me.
    â€œClear as the nose on his face,” Pappy answered for me.
    I said: “The hell it is. What member of the American team would that be?”
    â€œIt would,” Pappy said, “be the new chief of security.”
    â€œYou,” Jack said.
    I looked at him. I looked at Pappy. They’d been playing it for laughs, but they weren’t kidding now.
    Jack said: “Let’s get over to Foggy Bottom.”
    Pappy used my phone to call a messenger to deliver my yellow roses.
    Their faces told you nothing.
    They were the new breed of young Washington careerists, Pappy with his bland plump face and mild blue eyes, Jack dark and gaunt with his shell-rimmed glasses, and two other guys about our age I’d never seen before. One of them was the number-two man of Q Section in Central Intelligence, a slat-thin carrot-top named MacReedy. The other was a rangy ex-Davis Cupper named Larned, who was connected with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
    They were waiting for us in an office on the second floor of the State Department Building at Foggy Bottom, MacReedy smoking a pipe, Larned pacing a groove in the carpet. Like Jack and Pappy, they both wore lamp-black suits. It is the uniform of the new Washington careerists, and my wash-and-wear suit made me feel like an interloper who didn’t know the secret fraternal handshake.
    CIA’s MacReedy sucked on his pipe. “The big man will be here in a few minutes,” he told Jack after the introductions. He scowled at the pipe, tamped it out in a big copper ash tray and asked Jack: “What about Alluliev’s murder? Can it stay under wraps?”
    â€œYes and no,” Jack told him. “The papers have it. But the story they have is that Alluliev wanted asylum in the West, was trying to barter Russian rocket secrets for it. As for Drum’s office as the scene of the crime—” Jack grinned wryly—“we just change the chronology and make one Jack Morley out as a damn fool. I got there before Alluliev did. He’d contacted me in my office, I hadn’t taken him seriously. I’d dropped in on Chet. Social call. Alluliev tagged after me, desperate.”
    â€œAnd got conked inside the office?” Pappy asked doubtfully.
    â€œOutside,” Jack said. “That’s been taken care of.”
    MacReedy said: “And the kidnaping?”
    â€œNo tie-in there, as the papers have it,” Pappy told him crisply, dropping the drawl entirely. “Commissioner Mann’s co-operating straight down the line. It was a money snatch plain and simple. The thug on ice is a merchant seaman named Bock, a two-time loser who nobody’s going to make a fuss over. The dead one was a Commie.”
    â€œLeo Ring?” MacReedy asked.
    Pappy nodded. “Ring was a Commie, but he didn’t work up a sweat over it. The only one who knew why Ring was hired to kidnap the Baker twins is the man who did the hiring. That would be Semyon Laschenko, and friend Laschenko is busy going around the horn. You-all see how pretty it