Spy and the Thief Read Free Page A

have met Corbin at some time, though—perhaps over a few beers at a pub one night. Maybe that’s how he learned about the size and binding of the code books if he didn’t learn it from another agent. We’ll have to question Corbin when he returns. Even a completely trustworthy person can let things slip at times.”
    Toward mid-afternoon a phone call from Scotland Yard brought news of O’Neill’s killer. He was a suspected Communist named Ivar Kaden, an unemployed dockworker with a long criminal record. On the morning of the murder he’d been visited at his flat by a minor official of the Russian Embassy.
    “All right,” Rand conceded reluctantly to Parkinson. “So the Russians order a man killed just as he is about to steal our code book for them. Why? Was it a mistake, or what?”
    “They don’t make many mistakes, sir,” Parkinson said.
    “Then why did they have O’Neill killed?”
    “Because he knew too much. Spies always know too much.”
    “Too much about what?”
    “I don’t know, sir.”
    Rand was still enough under forty to resent being called “sir,” but he never corrected Parkinson. The fellow did his job, and he was acquiring a good knowledge of the intricate world of Concealed Communications. But just then Rand wanted to think, so he sent Parkinson away.
    Alone, staring out the window at the great sweep of the muddy Thames, he wondered how the weather was in Moscow that day. He often wondered about Moscow, and sometimes he tried to visualize the man in the Kremlin who was his counterpart. He knew nothing about Taz except his name, which was the same as a river in western Siberia. Sometimes he pictured a gentle little man who worked eight hours a day over coded messages and secret writings, and then took the Moscow subway home to a wife and four waiting children. On days like this, though, when Taz became the, shadowy figure on the other side of a giant chessboard, Rand pictured something quite different.
    Was it Taz who had pressed a button in Moscow and ordered the death of Barton O’Neill on a London street? The same Taz who went home every night to his wife and four waiting children? Rand sighed; he knew there were men in London and Washington and Paris who did the same thing.
    There was a soft knock on the frosted-glass door and Hastings entered, carrying a folder of reports. “I have an idea about this O’Neill thing,” he said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Well, he was an actor. And actors often have stand-ins or doubles, don’t they? Look, the Russians have been after one of those code books for five years now. They certainly wouldn’t murder the one about to get it for them, would they? I think the man they killed was O’Neill’s double, and the whole thing was some sort of diversion to cover the real theft of a code book.”
    Rand smiled. “They’ve checked the dead man’s fingerprints. It was O’Neill, all right. Besides, a bit-part character actor wouldn’t be likely to have a double.” He paused to light a cigarette. “In any event, I was prepared for a possible diversion. The real code books were moved to a room upstairs on Monday. The Message Center has just been going through the motions since then, sending messages upstairs still encoded.”
    “Maybe that’s it,” Hastings said. “The Russians found out you were setting a trap and killed O’Neill.”
    But Rand would have none of it. “Everyone in that Message Center is completely loyal—I’d stake my life on it. Besides, if there is a spy there, O’Neill’s complex plot would have been completely unnecessary.”
    “What about the girl who saw O’Neill take the impression of that lock?”
    “Audrey Fowler? We’ve checked her. She’s a bit naive, but perfectly trustworthy. She’d hardly have reported O’Neill in the first place if she weren’t.”
    “So what do we have?”
    Rand shrugged. “A dead spy.”
    “Why?”
    “Perhaps because he knew too much. About something.”
    The next day, Friday,