Free Nightmare Time by Hugh Pentecost Page A

eleven-year-old kid for a chance to win? You’re damn right I would, and so would you if you’d think about it for a minute.”
    Hardy didn’t react one way or the other. His face was chiseled out of stone. “Who is with the boy now?” he asked.
    “Mrs. Haven—Victoria Haven,” I said.
    Hardy nodded.
    “Who is Mrs. Haven?” Zachary asked.
    It would have taken a whole book to answer that question. Victoria Haven is the eighty-odd-year-old widow lady who owns and lives in Penthouse Number Two on the roof. She is a tall, still handsome ex-show girl, several times divorced or widowed, with hair dyed a color of red that even God never invented. She lives alone except for what she calls “my Japanese gentleman friend,” a nasty-tempered little black-and-white Japanese spaniel. Her penthouse is wildly disordered, a storehouse for mementos from a long and exciting life.
    “It looks like disorder,” Chambrun once said to me, “but if you want the details of some important news story from fifty years ago, Victoria will just reach out and hand you the clipping. That disorder is complete order as far as she’s concerned.”
    “Chambrun’s so concerned about the kid’s safety,” Zachary said, “that he leaves an eighty-year-old woman to protect him?”
    “Mrs. Haven isn’t protecting Guy, any more than I was or Betsy. Rooftop security keeps anyone from getting up there without an okay from Chambrun or Jerry Dodd. Like Betsy and me, Mrs. Haven is just there to keep the boy company. Listen to anything he may have to say or may remember that might be useful. Lets him know that he isn’t alone and that there is someone who can reach Chambrun, the only person he really trusts.”
    “How very nice,” Zachary said, his voice a sour rasp. “You make sure a kid isn’t lonely, when, if properly used, he might lead us to a way to save this country from destruction by the enemy.”
    “Chambrun sees it another way,” I said. “Don’t risk letting the enemy use the boy, and your secrets are safe. Major Willis will never cave in under threats or physical torture to himself. Attack the boy in his presence and he just might—”
    “A stalemate,” Zachary said.
    “So neither side wins,” Hardy said. “Let’s keep it that way until we can figure out how to win.”
    The office door opened and Chambrun, a man looking dead on his feet, joined us.
    CHAMBRUN CAUGHT US up on what Betsy’s apartment had revealed. The main conclusion, as far as he was concerned, was that Betsy had let someone she knew and trusted into her apartment and had been double-crossed and betrayed.
    “It wouldn’t be some friend just interested in fun and games,” Hardy said. “Not at four or five o’clock in the morning.”
    “Not this day, not this particular morning,” Chambrun said.
    “Someone connected with hotel security, or the police,” Zachary said. “A bad apple in one of your barrels.”
    Chambrun ignored that comment as though he hadn’t heard it. There were no bad apples in his barrel. If he wasn’t sure of that he would have retired long ago.
    “You and Alexander Romanov were talking a while back about lists of possible enemy agents who might be staying here or be regular customers of the hotel,” he said to Zachary. “Make your list for me, please, Zachary.” Then, to me, “Mark, go to Romanov and ask for his list. Maybe between the two lists we’ll come up with someone that Betsy would know and trust. That would certainly be someone that I, too, would know and trust. If there’s such a name on either list, we may have a starting point.”
    “Don’t let Romanov know why you want the list,” Zachary said to me. “If you tell him he’ll know who to cover for.”
    “If he deserves your suspicions, Captain, he’ll know in advance why we want the list,” Chambrun said. “If he doesn’t deserve those suspicions, knowing why we want the list may head him in the right direction. Tell him, Mark.”
    I left the office,