Chinaman’s Chance
- Автор: Томас Росс
- Серия: Arthur Case Wu #1
- Год: 1978
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon & Schuster
- ISBN: 978-0-671-24070-7
- Жанр: Политические детективы
Электронная книга - «Chinaman’s Chance». Краткое содержание книги:
“And now?”
Durant shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “It all happened a very long time ago, didn’t it?”
James brushed a few crumbs off the table. “That was quite a mess you two left behind.”
“But you cleaned it up, Whittaker,” Wu said. “You sat on it and most of it never got out.”
“After Cambodia, Simms kept operating, you know. Right up until the very last. In Vietnam.”
“Till ’75, you mean?” Durant said.
James nodded. “Lopinot finally got killed in rearguard action during the retreat from Phuoc Long.”
“We heard,” Durant said.
“He’d become an anachronism by then, almost. Simms, I mean. He showed up at the embassy at almost the last moment. From what I’ve been able to gather, he was considerably shaken. His world was collapsing around him. He still had a lot of friends, of course, so to keep him busy — almost therapy, I suppose — they let him burn the money.”
“Six million dollars,” Wu said.
“Yes. They bagged it first, you know.”
Wu shook his head. “I didn’t.”
“They used green plastic garbage bags.”
“And he pulled a switch, right?” Durant said.
“He and your young friend. The Marine.”
“McBride.”
“Yes. McBride. Who still thinks it’s there.”
“How’d he get out?” Wu said. “Simms, I mean.”
James shook his head. “We can only speculate. He waited until the embassy was completely evacuated, of course. But getting out of Saigon would have been no problem. Not for him.”
“The name he was using then?” Durant said.
“It was the same one he’d used all through the war,” James said. “Childester. Luke Childester.” He cleared his throat for the third time and patted his hair again. “Tell me, how did you two feel about it?”
“About what?” Wu said.
“The war.”
Wu glanced at Durant, who shook his head and shrugged. “What did we think about it?” Wu said, not caring about the amazement that coated his tone.
“Yes.”
“Tell him we were steadfast in our opposition,” Durant said. “That’s what he wants to hear.”
“You would grant that it was an immoral war?”
“Immoral?” Wu said. “What the hell has morality got to do with it? The only moral wars are the ones you win. After that you can have a parade and make speeches about not dying in vain. But if you lose one, you try to forget it like a bad mistake — which, because you lost, it sure as hell was.”
“You just made a speech,” Durant said. “Although I thought you might have had a line or two in there about the Yellow Peril.”
“You share Arthur’s views, I take it?” James said.
“Oh, sure, I’m opposed to war — along with famine, pestilence, flood, earthquakes — the lot.”
“Yet you went?”
“To the war?”
“Yes.”
The smile that came to and went from Durant’s face was so bitter that it almost made James flinch. “I didn’t have to go,” Durant said. “If they had tried to make me go, I probably would’ve gone somewhere else. Sweden, most likely, for the girls and the politics, which I find rather sensible. The girls, I mean. But I went to the war to make money, not to get shot at. When I got shot at, I went home.”
James shook his head several times in what seemed to be both disbelief and disapproval.
Durant watched him, then smiled again, quite skeptically this time, and said, “What about you, Whittaker? Any regrets?”
“No,” James said. “None.”
“If you hadn’t gone on record against it,” Durant said, “at least not quite so vehemently, you probably would’ve been Director today. You had a clear shot at it. There was no one better qualified — according to all the pundits.”
“I’m enjoying my retirement,” James said.
“Sure,” Wu said. “Lots of time to read, I bet.”
“We want Simms stopped,” James said, ignoring Wu.
Durant nodded. “We know.”
James rose and paced toward the window that looked out over Wilshire Boulevard. He peered out, then turned and paced back to the table. He was on his way back toward the window again when he said, “We had a meeting just before I came out here.”
“The Fudge and Philosophical Society?” Durant said.
“Yes. Something bad is about to come out.”
“About the Agency?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“Lies and more lies.” James sighed. “He was such a liar, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re trying to put a lid on it. We’re not sure that we’ll succeed. If not, I suppose the Agency will survive. But if something happens out here with Simms and all this comes out, well, it might be the last straw.” He stopped his pacing to turn and face Durant and Wu. “Despite your sophomoric nihilism, can you bring yourselves to agree that this country does have need for a workable and effective intelligence-gathering organization?”
Wu sighed. “Don’t make us a speech, Whittaker. Not us.”
“No. Of course not. I should’ve known. We want him stopped.”
Durant nodded slowly. “Fine. We’ll stop him.”
James stared at them for a moment. “You two don’t need any frosting, do you?”
Wu stuck a fresh cigar into his mouth. “We never did.”
“All right. Then I’ll give you the tidbit that I’ve been saving. Simms and his new associate, Mr. Imperlino. I thought you might be interested in the fact that they were roommates at college.”
Durant nodded, digesting the information. “That might explain a few things.”
“Yes, it should, shouldn’t it.”
“At Bowdoin?” Wu said.
“Yes, Bowdoin.” James brought a small notebook out of his pocket, tore off a sheet, and handed it to Wu. “When you have something to report, call me at this number.”
Artie Wu glanced at the area code. “That’s Santa Barbara, right?”
“Yes,” James said. “It’s a bit more civilized up there, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” Durant said.
Chapter 18
If Pelican Bay was a long and grimy finger that poked itself up into what some often charged was the backside of Los Angeles, then that finger’s dirty fingernail was Breadstone Avenue.
It wasn’t an avenue really. It was just a street that served as a line of demarcation between the two cities, and for a long time it had been called simply Division Street. Then an unpopular Los Angeles city councilman, one Noah Breadstone, had died back in 1936 and the street had been changed to an avenue and named after him. The mayor of Los Angeles at the time had called it a fitting memorial. The Breadstone family had called it cheap, because Pelican Bay had had to pay half the cost of putting in the new street signs. Shortly thereafter the Breadstones had left Los Angeles — some said in a huff — and settled up north in San Luis Obispo.
Breadstone Avenue in its 2200 block had long been about half residential and half commercial. The residences were mostly fifty-year-old squatty bungalows jammed up against each other on forty-foot lots. Occasionally, there would be larger, two-story houses that usually wore a ROOM FOR RENT sign. Nearly all the houses boasted a porch or veranda of some kind, a sure indication that they had been built long before the almost twin advent of smog and air conditioning.
It was now a mixed block racially, integrated by economic necessity rather than choice. The Mexicans had come first, followed closely by some blacks, some Chinese, and now some Koreans. The sprinkling of whites who remained sighed often and kept their doors locked. As in nearly all poor neighborhoods, there were many children, most of them with enormous eyes.