A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (23 page)

Was this the sort of house owned by an ex-IRS director? There wasn't a single barred window or TV camera scanning the grounds, or a guy with dark glasses and a hand under his jacket giving me the once-over.

I walked up to the door and rang the bell.

A woman opened the door. She looked about fifty or so, and was wearing one of those casual, pastel-colored shirt-and-shorts combinations that I call rich-girl clothes. Her hair was gray and neat. She wore a gold wristwatch, a gold bracelet decorated with little bunches of grapes, and a simple gold necklace from which hung a golden image of the Vineyard. A pair of glasses swung from a cord around her neck.

She smiled at me. “Yes?”

“I'm J. W. Jackson,” I said. “I'm looking for Kenneth Eppers.”

“I'm Jean Eppers. My husband's in the study. Have we met?”

I suspected that she would have remembered if we had. “No,” I said, “nor have I met your husband.”

She noted that I had no car. “Are you a journalist, Mr. Jackson?”

“No. I'm more or less retired.”

“You're rather young to be retired.”

“Your husband and I have mutual acquaintances. I'd like to talk with him about some interests we may have in common.”

“Ken is retired,” she said, emphasizing the
is.
“He's no longer involved with his previous career.”

“Yes, I know.”

I waited. Her eyes flicked over me.

“Are you living in Washington, Mr. Jackson?”

“No. I live here on the island. In Edgartown. I won't take up much of your husband's time, Mrs. Eppers. I told my wife I wouldn't be gone more than an hour.”

“Where's your car, Mr. Jackson?”

“My wife dropped me off and went on to Menemsha to pick up some swordfish and visit a friend. She'll pick me up down on the road on her way home.”

Jean Eppers's smile had never gone away. I couldn't tell if it was real or practiced. I imagined that having lived in Washington for many years, she'd mastered hiding her true feelings.

She stepped back from the door. “What a busybody I am, Mr. Jackson. Please come in. The study is right down the hall. I'll get Ken.”

She led me into a waiting room furnished with simple, comfortable chairs and small tables. On the polished oak floor was an ornate but worn Oriental rug. Prints of hunting and fishing scenes hung on the walls.

“He might prefer to talk with me in the study,” I said.

She held her smile. “Ah. Then I'll tell him you're here. Make yourself comfortable.”

How many times in the past, I wondered, had Jean Eppers led unknown people to her husband so that they might speak together about unidentified common interests?

I looked down the hall and watched her come out of a side room and walk, smiling, to me.

“Ken says to come right down, Mr. Jackson.” She touched my arm. “And don't let him keep you too long. He's supposed to be writing his memoirs, but he'll do almost anything to get away from his word processor!”

“I won't take up much of his time, Mrs. Eppers. If I'm not down at the road when my wife comes by, I may have to walk home.”

She gave me a chuckle that almost sounded real, and waved me down the hall.

I walked along an Oriental hall carpet and turned into the study.

The walls were lined ceiling high with bookshelves filled with books that actually looked as though they had been read. Between bookcases on three walls were alcoves containing shelves of miscellany: statuary, photographs, folk art from several continents—objects collected over a lifetime. Above the shelves were portraits of people I presumed were ancestors. On the fourth wall, the shelves were interrupted by large windows looking north toward Vineyard Sound. In front of one of them was a large, worn desk topped by stacks of
papers and a computer. Behind the desk sat a man who rose as I came in.

He didn't look like anyone you'd nickname Horrors, but then, Buckingham probably thought John Felton looked pretty innocent, too.

Kenneth Eppers was a slight, balding man who at first glance looked like a part-time clerk in a ma-and-pa grocery store. He had rimless glasses set on a thin nose and was wearing an open white short-sleeve shirt over chinos. Only the slippers on his feet and the Rolex on his wrist belied his otherwise clerkish image.

Until I looked at his eyes.

They were watery blue and surrounded by fine lines, but they were not the eyes of a grocery clerk.

“Mr. Jackson.” He came around the desk and shook my big hand within his smallish one. “I'm Ken Eppers.” He gestured to a leather chair and took one himself. “My wife tells me that you believe we have some interests in common. What can I do for you?”

I saw no reason to make an elliptical approach to the issue.

“I'm hoping that you can tell me something useful about the letters threatening Cricket Callahan.”

The watery eyes became ice, but his voice was unchanged. “My wife told me that you claim to have no connection with any government agencies, Mr. Jackson. Did you deceive her?”

“No. I don't work for anybody, in government or out. My interest is personal. Cricket Callahan and I are cousins of a kind. I don't want to have anything happen to her.”

He stared at me. “I'm afraid I can't help you, Mr. Jackson. I don't know what you're talking about.” He started to rise. “If you'll excuse me, I really must get back to work.”

I stayed where I was. “Yes. Your memoirs. I'll be interested in reading your version of what happened when that girl got her face blown away.”

A flicker of emotion touched his face, and he looked at his watch as though to hide his expression. “A most unfortunate incident.”

“Particularly since you and Barbara Miller planned the business and lost your jobs as a result.”

He stared at me with his arctic eyes, then sat down again. “I was thinking of the girl and the others with her, not of my job.”

“You've been with one Washington agency or another for a long time,” I said. “You'd made it to deputy director of operations for the IRS. That was the acme of a lifetime in the business. And Barbara Miller was your prize dog, the pick of the litter. The plan that went wrong was her baby, and yours, and was supposed to be a crowning achievement for you both. Who knows, maybe you'd even make director of the agency someday, and Barbara would make deputy. What a powerhouse pair that would be. But instead, both of your heads went rolling. I find it difficult to believe that losing your jobs meant nothing to you, and that Horrors Eppers is only sorry for the girl and the others, and not for himself.”

Eppers's mouth twitched. “You seem fairly well informed for someone with no Washington connections, Mr. Jackson. I thought the ‘Horrors' title was strictly internal, though I suppose I should have known better.”

“I'm told you earned it.”

He sank into his chair, then dug into a pants pocket and came up with a battered briar and an ornate Zippo lighter decorated with a seal and glittering stones. He tamped the pipe with a finger I now noticed was tobacco stained and lit up, exhaling small puffs of smoke as he got the pipe going. He looked at me, noted my eyes on the lighter, and passed it across. The seal and the language of what appeared to be an inscription were unfamiliar to me, but the inset gems looked real enough. I passed it back.

“The gift of a grateful and still friendly government, which shall be nameless for the moment,” he said, returning the lighter to his pocket.

I said, “I used to smoke a pipe myself, and I had a Zippo, too. But mine wasn't decorated with diamonds or rubies.”

“A reward,” he replied with irony, “for one of those operations which gave Horrors his name.” He gestured at the items that adorned the study. “There are other such items here. I keep them to remind me of the nature of the work I do. Or, I should say, the work I used to do.”

I was surprised by a tone I thought I heard in his voice. Not pride, or indifference, or scorn, but a sadness.

“Were you ever in a war?” he asked.

“Briefly.”

“Vietnam? Combat?”

“A very short tour.”

“I was in the Korean War,” he said. “The Police Action, as they called it. After that I went to work in Washington. Having been in combat yourself, perhaps you'll understand me when I say that in many ways the battles have never stopped. Whatever motivates nations and men to fight official wars also motivates them to
fight unofficial ones. My jobs have had to do with the unofficial ones. The operation you're interested in was one of my failures.” He paused. “Not the first, either.”

“But the last.”

He puffed his pipe and nodded. “Yes. That last operation was well intended, if there is such a thing as good political intent, which is, I imagine, arguable. The object, in any event, was to ensure a victory for a national faction that was probably more democratic than its principal rivals.

“The purpose of the operation was to weaken the leadership of the most powerful rival faction, but at the last moment things went awry, as can happen. . . .” His voice drifted to a stop as he drew on his pipe.

I could hear the sarcasm in my voice when I said, “And the explosives intended for the rival leadership went off in a public market instead.”

“The particulars are in files that will be unavailable to the public for at least fifty years,” said Eppers with a thin smile. “People in my business are very reluctant to have the details of their activities and the line of command—responsibility, that is—known to anyone, especially taxpayers and critics in powerful places.”

“Always in the national interest, of course.”

“Of course. We have secrets that are so secret that even their classifications are secret. You may recall that when the Iron Curtain fell and previously secret Soviet documents began to be made public, a lot of people in Washington got very worried for fear that secrets the Soviets had stolen from us would now become known to our citizens. Bad enough that our enemies should know what we've been up to, but incredibly worse if our own people should. Even the secret keepers are aware of the irony, by the way. Some of them, anyway.”

Eppers was, at any rate. I said, “But now we have these letters threatening the president's daughter. The logical suspects are people morally offended by that last failed operation, or people who suffered as a consequence. You're in the latter category: a man whose career was cut off because of it. Do you know anything about the letters?”

Eppers's cold eyes sparkled. “The Secret Service, the FBI, and some other people have asked me the same. I told them no, and I'm telling you the same.” He drew on his pipe and blew a puff of smoke. “Are you a wealthy man, Mr. Jackson?”

“No.” I wondered if my face somehow showed that I was actually feeling a bit poor of late.

“Well, I am,” said Eppers. “I am what is known as old New England money. A lot of people like me have been involved in the intelligence business, going back to World War II and even before that. You might have heard of the OSS, for instance. We're well educated, well connected, influential, and patriotic. And we know other wealthy, connected, influential people much like ourselves in other countries. A lot of us went to the same prep schools and universities. We sometimes married one another's sisters or brothers. We are, in short, volunteers who have the time and talents to do the work because we don't really have to earn a living. We're the old-boy network you've heard so much about, and we've done a lot of good work for our countries, along with the bad that gets publicized sometimes.” He looked at me through the smoke of his pipe. “Do you follow me, Mr. Jackson?”

“I think so.”

“Then you may understand this, too. We work and we win some and lose some, but eventually quitting time
comes. Maybe we just get old, or tired, or bored; or maybe something happens that makes us decide to retire. The last straw, as it were. It might be something big, or it might be something little, but it's the last straw.” He contemplated his pipe, then raised his eyes again. “For me the girl's face was the last straw. I submitted my resignation immediately and came here. I feel ten years younger.”

I studied his face, trying to penetrate behind those watery eyes that now seemed to have lost their icy sheen.

“Are you saying that you harbor no ill feeling toward the president and his family?”

That little smile flickered across his mouth. It struck me as a disguise for pain. “For what? For okaying an operation that my staff and I designed? The president did not get my vote in the last election, but he's in no way to blame for the failure of the plan. If anyone is responsible, it's myself.”

The smile that had flitted across his lips reminded me of Byron's phrase: “And if I laugh at any mortal thing, it is that I may not weep.” I was also reminded of why I'd left the Boston PD. After being shot by and then shooting to death the robber I'd met in that alley, I had hung up my badge and come to the Vineyard to retire. Maybe Eppers and I had more in common than might be guessed.

“What about Barbara Miller?” I asked. “I'm told that she was the agent in the field. Does she feel the same way as you?”

“I'm afraid I can't speak for Barbara,” replied Eppers.

“Do you think she might be the letter writer?”

His eyes cooled. “I think not.”

I looked at my watch and got up. “I have to go. Thanks for your time.”

He stood. “I hope I've been helpful.”

“I know more than when I came in,” I said. Then, somewhat to my own surprise, I added, “I wish you a happy retirement.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jackson.”

“I look forward to reading your memoirs.”

He smiled. “If I ever get them written.”

“Your wife will see to it that you do.”