"I was, but I think I've had enough. Time to turn in. Good luck, and happy hunting."
"Thanks, but I'm not hunting anymore, Mister Madrigal. I found what I was looking for."
He stiffened, and then forced himself to relax. "Well now, what have we here?"
"I'm a messenger, and if I know your name, then you know who sent me."
He stood motionless. "That's impossible. He's dead."
"There are other people who know who you are."
"What's your message?"
"Your assignment has been aborted. At the highest level. It's over."
"That's also impossible."
"Don't give me that crap about Gilbraltar Rules. We're playing by new rules now." I showed him the pistol. There was light enough for that. "My rules."
"Is he up there in that launch?"
"Maybe you didn't hear me, I said that it's over. If you try to get him, I'll have to stop you."
"I'm unarmed."
"Except for that pistol in your pocket."
"That pistol is a toy, a paint gun for the game."
"And the paint is loaded with Saxitoxin-D."
"Christ, how the hell…" He thought about it. "You're a sensitive."
"And you're a murderer, but not this time. Reach into your pocket and take out that toy. Take it out by the barrel. If it comes out any other way, you're dead. Take it out, and toss it over the side."
"I don't give up my weapon, not to anyone."
His voice was hard. I was inside his head, and I could feel the anger there. He was working himself up to make a move.
"Take it out and toss it over."
"And if I don't?"
"This pistol is silenced. It wouldn't bother me one little bit to blow your head off, and dump you over the rail."
"You? I don't think so." He blew out air like a bull snorting. He was still working up to it. "Sensitives are gentlemen, they play by the rules. They don't do cold-blooded murder."
"Let's not find out. Come on, the toy."
He was ready, he had decided to do it. Inside his pocket, his fingers closed around the pistol, one finger on the trigger. I could see it all inside his head. He was no more than six feet away from me, and I knew what a drop of that paint could do.
He shook his head. "No, you'd never do it. Not a sensitive. Not a gentleman."
He started to pull the pistol from his pocket. I shot him twice, and the bullets hurled him back against the rail. The pistol never came out. He stared at me, his eyes wide with shock and surprise. They were starting to glaze.
"Gentlemen don't cheat at cards, either," I told him, but he did not hear me. He was gone. He sagged against the rail, and I caught him before he could fall. I grabbed an arm and a leg, and rolled him over the rail. It was a long way down, and I never heard the splash. I threw my pistol after him, and looked up and down the deck. It was empty.
I heard a scream, and I jumped. I heard another, and another. They were coming from the launch. I sprinted aft, scrambled up the davit, and swung on board. I went through the cabin door shoulder first, and stopped. Someone had turned on a light. Calvin lay flat on the bunk, and he was covered with red and blue spots of paint. Two young women stood over him, toy pistols in their hands. They were screaming at the top of their lungs.
"We killed Calvin, we killed Calvin."
One of them saw me, and said, "You're too late, we got him first."
Calvin looked up at me, grinning, and shrugged.
"You can have him," I told them.
I went back to my cabin and tried for a few more hours of sleep, but I awoke in the middle of a dream. Someone had accused me of cheating at cards, and I was trying to hide under the poker table. I hit my head on a table leg, and that was what woke me up. It didn't take a genius to figure out a dream like that. I tried to laugh it off, and I called Sammy.
"Ball game's over," I told him. "The good guys won."
I heard his breath go out. "What about the bad guy?"
"He tried to go swimming, but he wasn't very good at it."
"Any problems with the suits?"
"None that I can see. Fill me in on the others. How did Snake do?"
"A winner."
"Terrific. Vince?"
"Another winner."
"Martha?"
"She broke her leg."
"Christ. What about the girl?"
"She's safe." He told me what had happened. "Chicken really came through."
"Sounds a little dicey. What if she talks about what happened?"
"What's there to talk about? Nothing actually did happen, did it? Chicken has her convinced that it was a party that got out of hand."
"She bought that?"
"She's not the brightest," Sammy admitted. "Chicken says she'll keep quiet, and I'm going with his judgment. He's changed a lot, Ben. He's grown up."
"As long as she doesn't tell her grandmother."
"I have a different sort of problem with the grandmother." I heard the change in his voice. "Jessup turned it up. It seems that Ogden had an intercept mounted on her mail for years."
"On Violet Simms? What the hell for?"
"He was reading every letter that she wrote, and every letter that she received. Not the agency, just Ogden."
"I don't get it. What does it mean?"
"I'll know more about that after I speak to the lady. I've asked our friends to pull her in for questioning."
20
IT was the day of the imam's weekly visit to the camp in the Libyan Fezzan, and, as always, he had brought with him the letter for The Prisoner that arrived each week at the embassy in Rome. Like all the others, the letter had travelled far, but swiftly, from a small town in New York state to a blind address in Paris, from there to the embassy, and then on to Tripoli in the diplomatic pouch. The Prisoner retreated to the privacy of the squad room, and held the letter in his hands for a while before opening it. It was his one link with the outside world, and his eyes noted all the familiar details. The cheap stationery, the American stamps, the Rockhill postmark, the return address in a spidery script: 29A Linden Avenue. The Prisoner pressed the envelope to his forehead, then to a spot over his heart, and only then did he slit the flap and open his weekly letter from Violet Simms.
Along with the letter, two newspaper clippings and a photograph fell from the envelope. He reached for the picture first, and stared long and hard at the daughter he had never seen in person. She was dressed for skiing, posing in front of a snow bank, and she was smiling at the camera, unaware that she was smiling for her father. He put the photograph aside to cherish later, and turned to the letter.
The weekly letters rarely varied in content, but he treated each one as if the others had never arrived. First there was news of Lila, and all seemed well. Good health, good grades, dances, parties, even a skiing trip won in some sort of a contest. All quite normal for the world in which she lived, and all quite different from the world of her father. No problems, at least for this week.
He read on. Mrs. Simms never failed to follow the form, always reporting on the required subjects. Nothing new to report about Mike Teague, living out his days in the Florida sunshine, frail and in constant need of medical attention, but still alive. Good old Mike, only a trainer on the team, but a surrogate father and any-time-of-the-night confidant to a Lebanese kid in a strange land with strange customs. Without Mike, it would have been hell. Without Mike, it would have been impossible. Hang in there, Mike, hang in there. He read further. No news about Calvin or June, but then there rarely was. What news could there be from the ruts of a marriage grown into a routine? Still, the marriage existed, and that was all he needed to know. Other news? Not much of anything. That world on the other side of the planet, the world in which he once had lived, seemed quite unruffled.
He picked up the newspaper clipping from the Albany Times-Union, and the headline jumped out at him. POLK DEFEATS VAN BUREN 78-62. Damn, a disappointment. For a while it had looked as if the Cavaliers might beat the Bulldogs and go on to the tournament. He allowed his memory to slip back to his own Van Buren days, the frenzy of the game nights, the stuffy gyms, the squeal of sneakers on hardwood, and once, only once, the indescribable thrill of trotting out onto the floor of Madison Square Garden, the blinding lights and the roar of thousands. He had made it, his team had made it, but it had not happened since to Van Buren, and now another chance was gone. He smiled at his emotions, knowing them to be a weakness, and put the clipping aside.