The Lucy Ghosts Read online

  'Yes,' she answered. 'Two company cabs. They'll be outside.'

  'Okay. I'll go with Trimmler. You two follow.’

  There were two cabs parked side by side at the entrance. In the style of New Orleans they were large American cars, not the compact or special square bodied that were used in most cities. Like most New Orleans cabs, and like the city itself, they were of a shabby appearance, old in design, a reflection of a greater age past. One was a blue 1988 Chevrolet Impala, the other a white 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood with a 1927 Chevrolet Qouta Trophy mascot on its bonnet, a cast zinc model of Lindbergh's Ryan monoplane supported by the spirit of Victory.

  They both bore the logo of the Mayfair Cab and Taxi Company.

  Billie walked up to them as the driver from the blue car got out. He was black, in his early sixties, and his name, Marius Beiderbecque, was painted on the rear wing of the car in a classic Gothic style.

  'Miss Billie,' he greeted warmly.

  'Hello, Marius,' she smiled back. 'This is Adam Nicholson. He's with us.'

  'Mister Adam.'

  'Hello.'

  'Put the cases in Frankie's cab, please,' said Billie. 'We'll travel with him. We've got three more. They're getting their cases. You take them.'

  'To the Hilton?' asked Marius as he opened the trunk of the white Cadillac and put the cases in.

  'That's the one.' Billie walked to the driver's door of the Cadillac and spoke to the driver. His name, Frankie Mistletoe, was emblazoned on the side of his cab, in the same style as that on the blue Chevrolet. 'Any problems?' she asked Frankie.

  'No. Apart from a ticket happy cop who tried to move us.'

  'This is …'

  'I heard. Hi Adam. I'm Frankie.'

  'Hello Frankie,' Adam came up to the car.

  'You English?'

  'I am.' As Adam leant forward he realised the driver was a cripple, his wheelchair folded and wedged in the passenger seat next to him, his hunched back pushing his head forward towards the windscreen. His hands were arthritic, his fingers arched stiffly. On the steering wheel there was a large plastic knob with which he steered the car. The column gearshift, an automatic box, had a long L shaped extension which made gear changing simple. He was no more than thirty years old.

  'You never seen a cripple before?'

  'Not one that drives cabs.' Adam tried to lighten the situation. He was annoyed with himself. The driver had surprised him and he let it show.

  Frankie laughed. 'Best driver in New Orleans,' he drawled.

  'Bet you get the biggest tips.'

  'Damn right. Works every time. Get in, limey.'

  Adam climbed into the back of the car leaving Billie to wait for the other three.

  'Now I don't want you worrying about me,' Frankie continued. My right foot's my good foot. Works the accelerator and the brake.'

  'If you got here to pick us up, then I'm sure you'll get us to wherever we're going.'

  'Well said. What you clutching there?' Frankie asked. 'Got to be important, the way you hanging on to it.'

  'I've heard about the muggings in this town. I'm carrying twenty hand grenades, a sawn off shotgun, three Kalishnikovs and a rocket launcher.'

  'In this game nothing surprises me. Nothing.' The two men laughed, sharing their humour. 'I've been to England, you know. Oxford. You been to Oxford?'

  'Yes.'

  'Pretty place. I toured all round. About seven years ago. Spent two months there. Pretty country. But Oxford, that was the prettiest of all. What're you doing here, with our people?'

  'Helping out.'

  'That right? You must wonder what someone like me's doing here.'

  'It crossed my mind.'

  'Crossed your mind. Huh! More likely smacked you across your face. Ha! You heard of the Mayfair Cab and Taxi Company.'

  'Billie told me. Big company. Across America, in most of the large cities. It's used by the Agency who put agents in as drivers.'

  'Great network. Amazing what you pick up in a cab.'

  They saw Tucker and the Trimmlers come out of the terminal entrance and Billie walk towards them.

  'That them?' asked Frankie.

  'Yes.'

  'Good, we can get going. And don't let this body fool you, limey. It's supporting a brain up here...' he tapped his forehead as he spoke, '...that's smarter than you think. You just call when you're in the shit, and I'll save your arse every time.'

  'You're on.'

  The drive into New Orleans was slow, the traffic heavy.

  New Orleans is a faded city, shabby in its disrepair and peeling past. Known as 'Big Easy' and sometimes 'Sin City', the city conjures up images of carnival, jazz, voodoo, sex and fun set against a Caribbean Gallic heritage in a predominantly Anglo Saxon culture. This confusion of spirit was once described as a cross between Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and Patterson, New Jersey with a culture not dissimilar to Genoa, Marseille, Beirut and Egyptian Alexandria. This is reflected in the names of the various city boroughs, Algiers, Arabi, Gretna, Westwego, Bridge City, Cajun County and the French Quarter.

  Its aura of decadence is a true reflection of its poverty. And where there is poverty, there is invariably crime. Paid-for sex, paid-for drugs, paid-for violence and paid-for eroticism is the currency of the city, openly on display amongst the swirl of tourists on the look-out for that which is unattainable in the suburban homes, but openly on display where it can be watched from the safety of the crowd on the pavement.

  Sixty percent of the city's population is black, the highest ratio of any city in North America. With strong religious roots dating back to the discovery of Louisiana in 1699 on Mardi Gras Day by a group of French Canadians, this mixture of Roman Catholicism, Bible Belt Protestantism and mass slavery resulted in a voodoo culture that still grips the dark side of the city.

  New Orleans. Where everything is easy, where nothing is impossible.

  Adam sat quietly in the back of the white Cadillac. In the front Billie listened to Frankie giving a guided tour of their route into the centre, his wheelchair now sharing the back seat with Adam.

  'French Quarter's okay,' he heard Frankie expound, 'but you gotta remember it's for the tourists. Easy money country. A jerk on every street corner, ready to be taken. If you get up there, just watch out for the hustlers. And don't go up Basin Street alone, not north of the Quarter. Even the two's of you. That's bad terrain. Bad people. Cut you for a dime. Hell, cut you for nothing, just for the fun of it.'

  They came in on 61, the Airline Highway. It was a flat land, the city having been built on the wetlands and bayou next to the Mississippi river. They turned off the 61 at the Charity Hospital and continued down Common Street to the Trade Centre where the Hilton Hotel was located.. Ahead, as they drove down Common, he glimpsed the mighty Mississippi, 'ole man river', as it wended its way through the southern half of the city. He saw the busy river traffic, barges and tugs and steamers and pleasure craft, working the water as they had done since man first stumbled on the Mississippi; the main artery and heartbeat that was the south.

  The Hilton, twenty-five storeys of twin towers, sits on River Walk, on the banks of the Mississippi.

  The two cars pulled up at the entrance, Trimmler, in his usual hurry, being the first to exit the lead cab, his wife scurrying behind him. By the time Adam had climbed out of the Cadillac and collected his small case, Tucker was organising the bellboy to deal with the luggage. Adam followed Trimmler into the building and took the moving staircase to the third floor where reception was. He kept his distance as he took in the lobby and its occupants. There was nothing to alarm him, all things seemed fairly quiet at this time. He watched Trimmler book in, then turn and go to the lifts.

  'I'll get your key,' said Tucker from behind him. 'We're all on the eighteenth floor. You stay with Trimmler.'

  Adam crossed the lobby area and joined the small group waiting to take the lifts. When the doors finally slid open, he followed the Trimmlers in. It was a viewing lift, glass sided and fixed to the outside of
the building so that hotel guests could look out on the city as the lift climbed up to the twenty fifth floor.

  Trudi smiled at Adam, but Trimmler ignored him. He had made a point of pointedly ignoring the Englishman ever since the wedding incident. That didn't worry Adam, in fact it made life easier as he could concentrate on keeping a watchful eye on the situation rather than get involved in idle small talk.

  He returned Trudi's smile, then turned and watched the city fall away below him as the lift shot up, stopping twice before it reached the eighteenth floor.

  He waited for the Trimmlers to exit before he followed them, skipping through the lift doors as they started to close. When the couple reached Suite 1844, Trimmler inserted his pass key and entered the room with Trudi behind him.

  The loud slam was for Adam's benefit.

  He walked back along the corridor and waited by the lift for the others.

  'Everything okay?' asked Tucker when he emerged with Billie five minutes later, a bell boy with a loaded luggage trolley following them.

  'Fine.'

  'Good. You're in 1842. Billie's in 1840 and I'm the other side of the Trimmlers. We'll work out a schedule when we're unpacked.' Tucker turned to the bell boy and pointed at the luggage. 'That's for 1844, so's that. The blue valise...'

  Adam took his luggage and Billie's from the trolley and turned back down the corridor. She followed him, leaving Tucker to sort out the remainder.

  'Welcome to New Orleans,' she said.

  'Is there something I don't know?' he asked suddenly.

  'Like what?'

  'Like why're we guarding someone who doesn't seem in any real danger.'

  'We don't know that. Why?'

  'Because if he's a prime target, then we need more cover. Unless one of us is going to live in that room with him, we can't guarantee anything.'

  'It's how they want it.'

  'They?'

  'Top brass.'

  'I know I'm not being told everything, Billie. I just hope, if anything does happen, that I'm ready for the unexpected.'

  Ch. 30

  The Lincoln Memorial

  Washington.

  A blistery morning. A cold morning. The sort of morning when the air stays chilled in your lungs and your cheeks burn with the cold of it.

  It was also a sunny morning and the two diplomats had decided to meet in the open and enjoy the brief sunshine before the bad weather moved in again. Both men carried briefcases, two office workers on their way to a meeting.

  A group of tourists stared up at the vast statue of a brooding Abraham Lincoln and the two men decided to walk in the open where they could enjoy their conversation in privacy.

  'Moscow is worried that you might hold something back,' said Sorge, his feet crunching in the ice hard snow.

  'Just what my people said,' replied Nowak.

  'Old habits die hard.'

  'They said that, too.'

  'How honest are your people with you?' asked Sorge, sharply.

  'Well, they haven't seen me eat pussy, like some have,' Nowak laughed. 'Sort of gives you a common bond. Hell, Dimi, I don't know. I mean, we all know that we get set up at times. But they're really nervous. They genuinely seem to want to know what's going on. I think they're being pretty straight.'

  'I feel this also.'

  'Have you been told everything by Moscow?'

  'Yes. But they told me to let you speak first. To see how much you knew before I committed myself.'

  'My lot read me the same scenario.'

  'So who starts?'

  'Okay. As long as I have your word.....'

  'I will tell you everything. At least we're honest between ourselves.'

  Nowak walked over to a wooden park bench beside the path. He wrapped his coat round himself and sat, Sorge joining him immediately.

  'One thing I didn't tell you last time was that our agents, the ones who had been killed, were also in their sixties,' Nowak started off.

  'So you also employ pensioners.'

  'In our case, they're all pretty ancient.'

  'Why?'

  'Because of President Carter. Once the National Security Agency went for satellite surveillance, the whole administration pulled back on agents in the field. But we kept a lot of the ones we had in place out there. It was easier than trying to get them back. Just low grade, maybe-we’ll-need-them-one-day sleepers. Growing older by the minute.'

  'For both of us it is impossible to bring them back. How would we do it? Have an amnesty day. Hundreds of people all heading for borders. With wives, children, belongings. We don't even have borders to cross any longer. Not like the old days. All we can do is leave them to fade away.'

  'So why's everyone going out with a bang instead of a whimper?'

  'That, my literary friend, is what this is all about.'

  'We lost another one. Just before Christmas. In Portugal.'

  'Portugal? I thought they were on your side.'

  'We had people everywhere. Allies have been known to change sides.'

  'To our knowledge there have been no more deaths.'

  'That you know of.'

  'That we know of. What was the problem with your records that prompted you to suggest this meeting?'

  Nowak told Sorge of the computer virus, of the electronic enemy within which was steadily wiping out their records. When he had finished, he leant back and watched the Russian who was playing noughts and crosses with his shoe toe in the snow. When he had beaten himself, and connected the line that joined the three crosses, he finally told Nowak of the fire in KGB Headquarters.

  'Deeper and deeper,' commented Nowak when Sorge had finished.

  'Someone has their tentacles in both our organisations.'

  'Yeah. Who? Unless one of us is being set up. By our own people.'

  'Or both of us.' Sorge shrugged, opened his briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. He handed them to Nowak. The American took the bundle, opened his briefcase and repeated the exercise.

  There was nothing else to say, they had known each other too long and both were aware when the other was telling the truth.

  Ch. 31

  New Orleans Hilton

  New Orleans

  Louisiana.

  Just after nine a.m., Billie watched Adam through the glass entrance doors of the hotel fitness centre. He was working out on the multi-gym, that modern torture chamber of pulleys, bars and stacked weights. He wore a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt, a towel wrapped round his neck to keep the heat in. He was on his back, tilted head down, on a padded board with his feet tucked under a bar above him. His hands were clasped behind his head and he pulled himself upright into a sitting position before lowering himself down again. It was a painful exercise, one she did herself on her short morning sojourn in the gym at home. She usually managed twenty before her stomach muscles demanded that she rest before attempting any more. She knew Gary did one hundred every morning and another hundred at night. He had told her how difficult the last twenty were, how painful the exercise.

  She watched Adam effortlessly on the board, counted him to a hundred and nine pull-ups before he swung his legs off and sat cross-legged on the floor. He saw her as he wiped his face with the towel, grinned and beckoned her in.

  'Don't you ever sleep?' she asked, when she had let herself in.

  'Not a lot. Waste of time.'

  'Didn't know you were a fitness freak? Quite Californian.'

  'Very funny,' he said, standing up. 'Goes with the job. Usually, when I'm in the field, it's easy to stay fit. But here, with all this soft living, this is the only way. You going to have a go?'

  'No. I just wanted to check you knew what was happening.'

  'The boat ride.'

  'Yes. It leaves at twelve.'

  There was to be a meeting between the American and Soviet scientists later that afternoon, but Trimmler had insisted he wanted a trip on a Mississippi riverboat before that. The boat, the Creole Queen, left from the wharf next to the hotel and Tucker want
ed Billie and Adam to accompany the Trimmlers. 'At a discreet distance,' he had instructed.

  'I'll be in the lobby at eleven thirty. Do we need tickets?'

  'I'll get those.'

  'Come on. Go get changed and then jump on one of these machines. It'll do you good.'

  'Okay,' she replied. 'See you in ten minutes.'

  She left the exercise room. It would be fun exercising with someone else, Gary always took it so seriously. She was beginning to enjoy the Englishman's company. Maybe he wasn't as hard nosed and arrogant as he had first appeared. Then she remembered the bag by the side of the exercise room, remembered the weapons.

  That was the difference between him and Gary. Gary worked at his exercises for self-achievement, for his own gratification. To Adam it was the difference between life and death.

  And she, old collector and disseminator of information, was part of a real life and death struggle. The realisation suddenly hit her, she felt the excitement rush through her.

  She really was in the field.

  And of all things, it had been the Fitness Centre that had brought about that realisation. With Gary, exercise was something to do. With Adam it was for real.

  She was a secret agent and she wanted to tell the world.

  Twenty minutes later, as Adam watched her on the jogging machine, with her small breasts bouncing up and down under her tight T-shirt, he hoped she wouldn't be faced with what he knew could well happen. Violence was his estate. If it came, sudden and harsh as is its nature, he knew she couldn't cope.

  What he didn't say, his real reason for coming down to the exercise room, was that he had sensed that instinct, that flash of the unexplainable, that warned him of danger. He needed his fitness, his agility, his strength.

  He knew things were suddenly going to change.

  He didn't try and define his feelings.

  His instinct had held good in the past.

  The road was about to become rocky.

  Ch . 32

  The Creole Queen is a paddle bashing, white painted, single smoke stacked, river boat.