The COMPAnY FILES
Book #3 in The Company Files
Agatha Award nominee for Best Historical Mystery
The Devil's Music
Stalin is gone. The Cold War is on.
Better dead than red.
Click. Click. Clickety-click.
There were the thumps of the space bar, the hand to the lever on the left side of the typewriter to slide the carriage over after the bell. Another line, another step toward the bottom of the page. The sound of Walker’s writing competed with a visitor outside his Malibu home. A woodpecker.
The redhead had introduced himself a few days earlier while Walker sat outside on his porch. The bird landed on the railing and assessed Walker with one beady eye, flew off, and then returned moments later, this time on the other side of the patio, to render his approval with the other eye.
They’d come to an agreement, between the bird’s music and his writing. The bird would drum its beat and Walker would peck at the keys on the Remington typewriter Terry Doyle had stolen from Warner Brothers in Burbank as a farewell present after Walker finished his stint at the studio as Walter Thompson for the Company.
Terry assumed he could score the five-finger discount without Jack Warner knowing about it. Wrong. Warner sent Terry a set of replacement ribbons with a handwritten note.
Mr. Doyle,
These ribbons could work wonders around your feet, like chains did for Bo Weinberg. Likewise, the typewriter you stole from me would make a fine anchor for your swim off any pier. Give WT my regards.
JL.
The typewriter was a mark of respect between writers since this particular model was given to senior writers. Novices received black Remington Noiseless Model Sevens, often decrepit and with cracked paint. Walker’s model was a block of green steel. The inside covers of the carrying case were lined with felt. The green keys were silky. The tab and trim were tight. The color suited Walker since he was an army man.
His Friday ritual at the desk was to include a cold bottle of Adohr milk within reach while he wrote. Adohr Milk Farms dispatched the same man his way for deliveries. Walker waited for the blue truck out of Tarzana with Adohr-able Milk, the farm’s slogan, painted on the sides. Drivers wore starched white uniforms, dark bowties, and caps.
Elmo was Walker’s man. In addition to fresh cheese and eggs, Walker paid Elmo extra to bring a variety of newspapers from Los Angeles. Elmo was a sad-eyed vet, a working stiff with a gimp leg and the worst case of nerves around sudden sounds. A navy veteran, Elmo had served in the Pacific theatre. Walker understood the man’s sorrows, even if he had served on the other side of the world.
Walker poured off the cream into a glass for the icebox and placed it next to the bottles of Bull Dog beer. He returned with the milk to his desk. His mother would have disapproved, but time in the infantry in France, Germany, and Italy did away with the courtesy of a glass from the cupboard. Walker saw himself as a grown man and he could do as he pleased. He’d earned numerous combat decorations and deserved his milk straight from the bottle. After the war, he joined Jack Marshall in Vienna and went to work for the Company. They interviewed and recruited former Nazis. When someone wasn’t killing them first.
Mother passed years ago. No woman was around to civilize him, not even Leslie. She’d made that decision for the both of them in Vienna and finalized it in Los Angeles. Walker wondered what Mother would’ve thought of Leslie.
After Vienna, the next big job for Jack was to work at Warner Brothers. A script doctor and intermediary between studios and blacklisted writers had been murdered and a clue suggested Hoover was up to something. That operation ended two years ago. He left the studio on good terms, which was a remarkable feat since Jack Warner turned into a cobra with anyone who poached talent from his studio. Warner, to his credit, extended an open invitation to Walker to work freelance on projects.
Hours later, he rose from his desk, the pages stacked. A day’s work finished. At five forty-five in the afternoon the phone rang. Walker answered it and heard Jack Marshall’s voice. “The Rosenbergs were executed.”
Walker glanced at his wristwatch. Three-hour difference. “What do you need?”
“I need to bring you in. In addition to Jay Edgar and his pet senator from Wisconsin, we have a problem, and its initials are RC.”
“Roy Cohn.”
Walker heard Jack sigh. Rare. The first time Walker heard that exhalation was when they had been relieved in Alsace, only to receive orders to march into Germany. Neither of them had known that Dachau was waiting for them, or that men in their unit would execute Nazis on the spot.
“You there?” Jack asked.
“I’m here. An unpleasant thought came over me.”
“Roy Cohn has that effect on people, but it gets worse.”
“Worse?”
“Now that Roy has made his reputation with the Rosenbergs, he has the fire in his belly, and he’ll want to settle old scores. He’s bringing ammunition.”
“Ammo? What more does he need? McCarthy and Hoover back him.” Walker rubbed his forehead, the onset of a headache because of a name. Roy Cohn was the one mortal who’d dare to breach the gates of hell, just so he could throw Old Scratch off his throne. “What’s he thinking?”
“Cohn plans to deliver on McCarthy’s accusation that Reds have infiltrated the military, and Cohn will target government contractors, and there’s more.”
Walker understood the implications. The Company had recruited Nazis and some Soviets in Vienna. These engineers, scientists, and technicians were then rehabilitated and embedded in various companies around the country to beat the Russians in the arms race. Cohn’s sweep for Communists meant exposure, a liability in the Company’s rivalry with Hoover’s FBI.
“You said there’s more, Jack. Who or what does he have?”
“An ambitious twenty-seven-year-old from Boston.”
“Anybody we know?”
Pause.
“Kennedy,” Jack said.
“The leash is off the dog and the lawn just got bigger.”
The name Kennedy irritated people in DC like a cheap wool sweater. Washed up in politics after Churchill threw him off the Cliffs of Dover because he had alienated everyone as an isolationist, courted Hitler and, like Charles Lindberg, disliked Jews, former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy was at it again. Everybody knew the old man wanted a son behind the desk in the highest office of the land. His oldest boy Joe Jr. had died in an accident during the war. His next oldest son was now the US Senator from Massachusetts.
“John Kennedy,” Walker said. “He wants to climb the ladder for daddy?”
“It’s what I was thinking, but not him.”
With victory comes revenge, and both Attorney Roy Cohn and his supporter, J. Edgar Hoover, wish to settle accounts. In a race to protect his associates, Jack Marshall relocates them to off-off-Broadway. Walker, Vera, Leslie, and Sheldon swelter under more than stage lights in New York City.
Before the summer is out, before the strange music subsides, there is a mob war and another unexpected addition to the Company Files.
Reviews
“A tour de force! Valjan recreates the feel and tone of the McCarthy era, a time of living dangerously and a story spiced with real people and real events.” —Rhys Bowen, Internationally bestselling author of The Venice Sketchbook, The Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy series
“Valjan’s sharp-as-a-stiletto, vintage-flavored prose and deft hand with suspense and intrigue earns The Devil’s Music a place on the shelf with classic mystery authors like Chandler and Macdonald.”—Ellen Byron, Agatha Award winner and USA Today bestselling author
“With pitch perfect dialogue and lean but evocative prose, Gabriel Valjan’s The Devil’s Music deftly captures the McCarthy era as the CIA, the FBI and the Kennedys set off on a collision course with the Mafia. Compelling and memorable characters take us from the seductive studios of Hollywood to the harsh realities of New York in this immersive tale of intrigue and divided loyalties. The Devil’s Music delivers action, espionage and romance, with layer upon layer of deception to keep you guessing until the last page.” —Tina deBellegarde, Agatha-nominated author of Winter Witness, a Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery
Book #2 in the Company Files series
Agatha Award nominee for Best Historical Mystery
Anthony Award nominee for Best Paperback Original
The Naming Game
Whether it’s Hollywood or DC, life and death, success or failure hinge on saying a name. The right name.
At seven minutes past the hour, while reviewing the classified documents at his desk, one of the two colored phones, the beige one, rang. He placed the receiver next to his ear, closed the folder, and waited for the caller’s voice to speak first.
“Is this Jack Marshall?”
“It is.”
“This is William Parker. Is the line secure?”
“It is,” Jack replied, his hand opening a desk cabinet and flipping the ON switch to start recording the conversation.
“I don’t know you, Mr. Marshall, and I presume you don’t know me.”
A pause.
“I know of you, Chief Parker.”
“Were you expecting my call?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter.” Jack lied.
“Fact of the matter, Mr. Marshall, is an individual, whom I need not name, has suggested I contact you about a sensitive matter. He said matter of security, so I listened.”
“Of course. I’m listening.”
“I was instructed to give you an address and have my man at the scene allow you to do whatever it is that you need to do when you arrive there.”
“Pencil and paper are ready. The address, please.”
Jack wrote out the address; it was in town, low-rent section with the usual rooming houses, cheap bars, about a fifteen-minute drive on Highway 1 without traffic.
“Ask for Detective Brown. You won’t miss him. Don’t like it that someone steps in and tells me how to mind my own city, but I have no choice in the matter.”
Jack ignored the man’s defensive tone. He knew Detective Brown was a dummy name, like Jones or Smith on a hotel ledger. Plain, unimaginative, but it would do. Most policemen, he conceded, were neither bright nor fully screwed into the socket. A chief was no different, except he had more current in him. The chief of police who ruled Los Angeles by day with his cop syndicate the way Mickey Cohen owned the night must’ve swallowed his pride when he dropped that nickel to make this call.
“Thank you, Chief Parker.”
Jack hung up and flipped the switch to OFF.
Whatever it was at the scene waiting for Jack was sufficient cause to pull back a man like Bill Parker and his boys for twelve hours. Whoever gave this order had enough juice to rein in the LAPD.
Jack took the folder he was reviewing and walked it across the room. He opened the folder once more and reread the phrases ‘malicious international spy’ and, in Ronald Reagan’s own choice of words, ‘Asia’s Mata Hari’, before closing the cover and placing it inside the safe. His review will have to wait. He put on his holster and grabbed a jacket.
Betty came out on the porch as he was putting the key into the car door.
“I won’t be long. Please kiss the children good night for me.”
“Can’t this wait, Jack? The children were expecting you to read to them tonight. Jack Junior set aside the book, and you know Elizabeth will be crushed.”
“It can’t wait. I’m sorry. Tell them I’ll make it up to them.”
“You need to look them in the face when you tell them sorry.”
He opened the door as his decision. She understood and dealt him the low card. “Want something for the road?”
“No thanks. I’ll see you soon.”
He closed the door with finesse. He couldn’t help it if the children heard the car. He checked the mirror and saw her on the porch, still standing there, still disappointed and patient, as he drove off.
* * *
Detective Brown, sole man on the scene, walked him over to the body without introducing himself. Jack didn’t give his name.
At six-fifteen, the vet renting a room down the hall discovered the body. Detective Brown said the veteran was probably a hired hound doing a bag job—break-ins, surveillance, and the like. Recent veterans made the best candidates for that kind of work for Hoover, Jack thought. Worked cheap, and they went the extra mile without Hoover’s agents having to worry about technicalities like a citizen’s rights going to law.
“What makes you think he was hired out?” Jack asked.
Brown, a man of few words, handed Jack his notebook, flipped over to the open page he marked Witness Statement, and said politely, “Please read it. Words and writing are from the witness himself.”
“‘The man was a no good commonist.’”
“Nice spelling. A suspect?”
“No, sir. The coroner places the death around early afternoon, about 2ish. Our patriot was across the street drinking his lunch. I verified it.”
Jack viewed the body. The man was fully dressed, wearing a light weave gabardine suit costing at least twenty-five. The hardly scuffed oxfords had to cost as much as the suit, and the shirt and tie, both silk, put the entire ensemble near a hundred. Hardly class consciousness for an alleged Communist, Jack thought.
The corpse lying on his side reminded Jack of the children sleeping, minus the red pool seeping into the rug under the right ear. The dead man wore a small sapphire ring on his small finger, left hand. No wedding band. Nice watch on the wrist, face turned in. An odd way to read time. Breast pocket contained a cigarette case with expensive cigarettes, Egyptian. Jack recognized the brand from his work in the Far East. Ten cents a cigarette is nice discretionary income. Wallet in other breast pocket held fifty dollars, various denominations. Ruled out robbery or staging it. Identification card said Charles Loew, Warner Brothers. Another card: Screen Writers Guild, signed by Mary McCall, Jr. President. Back of card presented a pencil scrawl.
“Find a lighter or book of matches?”
Detective Brown shook his head. Jack patted the breast pockets again and the man’s jacket’s side pockets. Some loose change, but nothing else. The man was unarmed, except for a nice pen. Much as he disliked the idea, Jack put his hands into the man’s front pockets. Nothing. He found a book of matches in the left rear pocket, black with gold telltale lettering, Trocadero on Sunset. Jack flipped the matchbook open and, as he suspected, found a telephone number written in silver ink, different ink than in the man’s own pen. Other back pocket contained a handkerchief square Jack found interesting, as did Detective Brown.
“What’s that?” he asked, head peering over for a better look.
“Not sure,” answered Jack, unfolding the several-times folded piece of paper hidden inside the hanky. The unfolded paper revealed a bunch of typewritten names that had bled out onto other parts of the paper. It must have been folded while the ink was still wet. It didn’t help someone spilt something on the paper. Smelled faintly of recent whiskey. Jack reviewed what he thought were names when he realized the letters were nonsense words.
“Might be a Commie membership list. Looks like code.” But Brown zipped it when Jack folded the paper back up and put it into his pocket.
“The paper and the matches stay with me. We clear?”
“Uh, yes, sir. The Chief told me himself to do whatever you said and not ask questions.”
“Good. Other than the coroner—who else was here? Photographers, fingerprints?”
“Nobody else. Medical pronounced him dead, but nothing more. Chief had them called off to another scene—a multiple homicide, few blocks away. We’re short-staffed tonight. The Chief said he’d send Homicide after you leave. They’ll process the scene however you leave it. They won’t know about the matches or the paper. Chief’s orders.”
Jack checked his watch. Man down, found at six-fifteen. Chief called a little after seven. He arrived not much later than seven forty. The busybodies would get the stiff by eight or eight thirty, the latest. Perfectly reasonable, Jack thought. He squatted down to see the man’s watch, noticing light bruising on the wrist and the throw rug bunched into a small hill near the man’s time hand. Intriguing.
“Thank you, Detective. I’ll be going now. If I speak to the chief, I’ll let him know you’ve done your job to the letter.”
“You’re welcome. Night.”
Jack knew he and the chief would be speaking again.
Outside on the street, Jack pulled out his handkerchief and wiped both hands for any traces of dead man as he headed for the parked car. Compulsive habit. He pulled up the collar on his jacket. It was cold for late May.
The street sign said he was not far from Broadway. In this part of town, thousands lived crowded in on themselves as lodgers in dilapidated Gothic mansions or residence hotels, working the downtown stores, factories, and offices, riding public transit and the other funicular railway in the area, Court Flight, a two-track railway climb towards Hill Street.
Los Angeles changed with the world. The war was over and there was a new war, possibly domestic, definitely foreign. Court Flight is gone, ceased operations. Its owner and his faithful cat had passed on. His good widow tried. In ’43 a careless brush fire destroyed the tracks, and the Board of Public Utilities signed the death warrant; and now Jack was hearing whispers Mayor Bowron planned to revitalize the area International Style, which meant dotting the desert city with skyscrapers.
Jack opened the door and sat behind the wheel a moment. He took the family once to nearby Angels Flight. Junior wondered why there was no apostrophe on the sign. Betty tolerated the excursion, indifferent to Los Angeles because she preferred their home in DC. He released the clutch. Betty disliked LA because it changed too much without reason. She might have had a point. He shifted gears. Pueblo city would level whole blocks of thriving masses just to create a parking lot. He pulled the car from the curb.
When Charlie Loew is found murdered in a seedy flophouse with a cryptic list inside the dead script-fixer’s handkerchief, Jack Marshall sends Walker undercover as a screenwriter at a major studio and Leslie as a secretary to Dr. Phillip Ernest, shrink to the stars. J. Edgar Hoover has his own list. Blacklisted writers and studio politics. Ruthless gangsters and Chief Parker’s LAPD. Paranoia, suspicions, and divided loyalties begin to blur when the House Un-American Activities Committee insists that everyone play the naming game.
Reviews
“Brilliantly written, Gabriel Valjan’s The Naming Game whisks the reader back in time to postwar Los Angeles. Spies, Communism, and Hollywood converge in a first-rate thriller.” —Bruce Robert Coffin, Agatha Award nominated author of Beyond the Truth, A Detective Byron Mystery
“With crackling dialogue and a page turning plot shot-through with authentic period detail, Gabriel Valjan pulls the reader into the hidden world of the 1950’s Hollywood studio scene, involving murder,McCarthyism and mayhem.” —James L’Etoile, author of At What Cost and Bury the Past
“Terrific historical noir as Gabriel Valjan takes us on a trip through postwar Hollywood involving scandal, McCarthyism, blacklisting, J. Edgar Hoover and, of course, murder. Compelling story, compelling characters.” —R.G. Belsky, author of the Clare Carlson Mystery Series
Book #1 in the Company Files series
The Good Man
One war has ended.
Another world war has begun.
Two men must form an uneasy alliance, but can they trust each other?
Nothing good comes from a call in the middle of the night.
At 0300 his little black beauty warbled from the nightstand, and stirred Walker from an erotic embrace of his pillow. Grable, his .45, slept next to the receiver. She could sleep through anything. He was jealous as he fumbled for the phone.
“Awake?” Jack’s distinctive voice came over the wire.
“I am now.” Walker’s eyes focused on becoming alert.
“Meet me at the Narrenturm, ninth district.”
“Why?”
“The IP are here already.”
Walker washed a hand over his face, still in the fog. “What is it, Jack?”
“Dead body in the Fruitcake House.”
The informative sentence ended with a click. The IP, the International Police, was a guarantee that the crime scene would not be kept contained.
Walker threw his legs over the side of the bed.
His room was square, clean, and impersonal. There was no pretension to domesticity, like paintings, books, or excess furniture. The room measured 50 square meters. His bed was the bedroom, the upholstered chair, his living room, and a hot plate for his kitchen. A walnut armoire rested against the wall, next to the bathroom door. There were doors to a balcony so small that it would make suicide difficult.
Each night before bed Walker draped a towel over the chair, and he placed a pail of water on his balcony. Then he’d inventory the room. He would know if something was moved in the monastic cell that he called home. Out of habit he slept barefoot, his feet in the open air, so he could sense if someone had entered the apartment.
He dropped his shorts, went out onto the balcony naked in the cold air, picked up the pail of now freezing water and poured it over his head.
He had learned this trick from a Russian POW. Cold water forced the body to discharge negativity and disease. The same POW, he was told through a translator, did this ritual every single day without fail regardless of season. Walker never got used to the shock. The water made his skin scream. Any heaviness escaped him through his heels and his mind focused. He was awake, ready for whatever Jack Marshall had for him at the insane asylum.
He toweled off, dressed, and coaxed Grable out of her sleep and under his arm.
***
The Narrenturm sat next to the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the largest hospital in Austria. The first lightning rods in Vienna were installed on the roof, and this institution was where blood groups were first typed. The Narrenturm was the second mental hospital in Europe after Bedlam in London. The German word for the place was Gugelhupf for its architecture, which was why Jack called it ‘Fruitcake.’ Like the dessert Jack had referenced, the building had a corkscrew circular corridor and twenty-eight patient rooms on each of its five floors. Each room displayed a slit window that only a starving bird could contemplate for roosting. Escaping the place was as formidable as finding it.
The local Viennese called the place ‘The Fool’s Tower’ because the psychiatric hospital has housed the mentally ill, the criminally insane, and political prisoners. Patients, chained to lattice doors, screamed like unrepentant heretics in medieval dungeons well into the nineteenth century.
After Walker flashed his papers and asked for directions, the MP told him in factual German that Courtyard 6 was accessible from one of several entrances. ‘Take Alserstrasse, Garnisongasse, or Spitalgasse, and then consult the map.’ It was just the right amount of sibilants and consonants in German to confuse him.
In darkness and frustration Walker found the wrought-iron gate with the curved snake. He ran his fingers over the Rod of Asclepius, the diamond-shaped iron fixtures for snakeskin. Old man Hermes must have taken back one of his snakes. The Caduceus of Hermes, he remembered, had two serpents.
He climbed steps, heard voices above him in the darkness. He saw Jack, some members of the International Police around him, the air charged with a Babel of languages. Even in a crowd Jack Marshall stood out as a man not to crowd.
Hands behind his back, Jack whispered to Walker. “The German word for magician is Der Zauberer. Whoever did this is a magician. He performed his trick, and then poof, gone.”
Approaching them were the four policemen, one representative for each of the countries that controlled the city. They reported to an Inspector, each in their respective languages. Walker knew the Inspector would summarize the scene for him and Jack in English.
The French IP, with the long haggard face from smoking too many cigarettes, spoke with a phlegmatic bass. The Brit talked details in a reedy voice and posh accent. The Russian, after he had spoken, stood at attention, winter in his face, whereas the American, a young kid, gave a report, about as graceful as a southpaw in a room of righties. Walker’s ears listened for any German, keen for the second verb at the end of the sentence so he could understand what was being said. The Inspector scribbled notes with a very short pencil that took brevity to an art form.
In a lilting Austrian-inflected English, he said, “Gentlemen, it appears we have an unfortunate scenario here. The victim was discovered two hours ago. The IP arrived at the scene after hearing a tip from an informant who said this facility was being used for illegal activities. Thinking that they might discover black-market penicillin or some other commodities popular these days, the IP found the body. A medical examiner is with the deceased as I speak.”
The man continued as the four policemen lingered behind him.
“The victim in question was, according to our preliminary findings, a man of the medical profession with questionable ethics.”
Jack, hearing the euphemism, said, “You mean a Nazi doctor.”
The Frenchman behind the Inspector coughed, “Bosch.”
The Inspector’s eyes acknowledged the profanity without turning his head. “The deceased is said to have performed medical experiments on prisoners in the camps. He did horrible things to children, women, and particularly, Russian prisoners of war. Unconscionable.”
The Russian, a silent Ivan, stared ahead without a flinch.
The Inspector with a modest bow of the head and genteel click of his heels handed Jack a piece of paper. “It’s all there,” he said. Jack said nothing, accepted the paper and began the short walk to the scene.
Jack and Walker entered the patient’s cell. The room smelled of something tarry. Some other men there left in whispers, leaving them alone with the doctor and the corpse.
“How’s the patient?” Jack asked the man.
“Dead a day or two according to his liver temperature. Rigor has set, as you well can see from the positioning.” The doctor made his own notes while he talked.
“Any thoughts to cause of death, Herr Doktor?” Walker asked.
The doctor used his fingers to show an invisible syringe and did the motion of pressing the plunger. Abgespritzt. Lethal injection. I would say, carbolic acid.”
“Sounds to me that would be a fast way to go, Doctor,” Jack said.
“Not necessarily. Ten to fifteen millimeters of the liquid, if injected directly into the heart, should induce ventricular tachycardia in, say, fifteen seconds. Our man here was not so lucky. First, I found no such puncture in the chest. I did find, however, a puncture in his arm. I would say this man took an hour to die.” With this pronouncement, the small birdlike man clicked his little black bag shut and left Jack and Walker inside the cell.
Walker imagined the history within the room. He estimated that the chamber was tall enough, walls thick enough, that a man could scream all he wanted and nobody would know he existed. He imagined centuries of torment within the cell and maybe some claw marks on the walls, too. “How did he get in here?”
“And what does the way the body was staged mean?” Jack asked.
The dead man had been propped up on a stool meant for prisoners, naked. A metal T behind him formed a cross bar. His left arm was secure to iron while his right hand was placed over his heart. The elbow of the left arm displayed the injection site. The head was cocked back, the throat muscles taut but the mouth closed shut in typical Germanic stoicism. The eyes had clouded over, the light gone from them when the heart stopped.
Walker and Jack walked around the body without saying a word. In front of the dead man was an SS uniform, folded neatly in a stack. The shirt’s right collar patch bore the runic double lightning bolts, the left patch and matching right shoulder board said, with its three diamonds and two double bars, Hauptsturmführer, Captain. His .32 was holstered and at his feet, next to his shined boots.
Jack had already processed the scene. “Ready?”
***
They descended the stairway towards the exit. Both stopped to look at the display of the hydrocephalic baby inside a formaldehyde jar. They each contemplated it for a few seconds and said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
“What do you think, Walker?” was the question once they were outside.
“The Inspector said our stiff was a medical man but there was no serpent badge on the uniform. That tells me he wasn’t in the Medical Corps. He was standard SS, maybe with some medical knowledge, but no doctor, so I don’t know why the Inspector would say he did medical experiments, unless that report he handed you says something different.”
“Anything else?”
“Those slacks,” Walker said. “They had cat hair on them.”
“So the dead guy either had a cat—”
“Or the killer has one. And another thing: those clothes were pressed and regulation-folded. The killer knows how the Nazis folded their uniforms. Since those clothes were ironed and starched, our stiff wasn’t wearing them when he was killed. Day or night, nobody would walk through Vienna wearing that uniform. The clothes either were placed in front of him as he was dying, or after he was dead. It’s staged to make a statement. Question is, where did his street clothes go?”
Jack touched his breast pocket, where the Inspector’s report rested. “We have another problem, Walker.”
“And what might that be?”
Jack was quiet.
“What? You want me to chase down an orange cat?”
“Relax, Walker. The Inspector’s report was in German, which is why I didn’t show it to you.”
“So my German isn’t perfect, but I can manage. What does it say?”
“It gives us the man’s name.”
They stood outside together as the sun came up. Jack glanced upward to the stone turret from hell. “The man was on our list. Either way we’ll never be able to talk to the Captain.”
They walked to the curb together. Jack hailed a cab, opened up the suicide door, got in, but delayed the driver with a few words in German, and from the car window gave an order to Walker.
“There’ll be a report on your desk in the morning. Read it then, and we’ll talk”
He banged on the side door as a signal to the driver to take off.
When Jack Marshall is made station chief in Vienna, Austria, in 1948, his task is to locate former Nazis, question them about the Soviet atomic program, and send information to The Company, aka CIA. However, a Nazi on Jack’s list is found murdered – and he’s just one of many The Company had wanted to investigate.
Even with help from an unlikely source, Jack is running out of time: sensitive information is stolen, a member of his team is missing, and one of Jack’s superiors demands answers, and Jack isn’t sure he can trust the man asking the questions. Everyone has an agenda, be it money, revenge, recognition, or political advantage. Staying alive in Vienna may just be harder than the battlefield.
Dark allegiances, murder, and espionage in the early days of the CIA begins with The Good Man, the first book in The Company Files series.
Reviews
“The story has classic elements of noir fiction with hardboiled main characters, a post-war setting, espionage and crime with an unexpected femme fatale that surprised me. I’m also happy to say that unlike the norm in this genre, there is no profanity or excessive violence in this novel…If you like noir fiction, espionage historical fiction that is atmospheric and leaves one pondering moral dilemmas then this one’s for you. An absorbing read to be sure, one that immerses the reader into a world filled with political intrigue, shady characters, and the need tofind one’s place in a world struggling to regain its footing in the aftermath of WWII.”—Library of Clean Reads