Parts.
Hanley had mentioned parts. Parts of information. So much for one part and so much for another. He had given Devereaux the money for both parts.
Hastings had mentioned parts.
There was more to this than the planned assassination of Lord Slough. But Slough must have been a key to understanding the rest of the information.
At last, resigned to the truth he had tried to hide from in his own thoughts, Devereaux took a taxi to the airport.
There were the usual delays at both ends, which was why he did not arrive at the safe house and the R Section London quarters until midway through the English November evening.
Blake House was off Hyde Park in what had been the edge of an earlier, quainter London city. The house was the end one in an attached housing block that wound down off the Marylebone Road. All the houses had been built in 1801, and William Blake, briefly, had lived there in later life, conferring his name upon one house.
After insistently ringing the bell for several minutes, Devereaux was finally admitted. A surly housekeeper with an unpleasant Midwestern accent let him into a bare foyer, where he was told to wait. He stood in the overstuffed warmth and waited while, he knew, someone watched him.
After another ten minutes, the door opened and he was taken silently into a second room and provided with a chair. He was asked to wait again. This time, he sat for a half hour until suddenly the door burst open and a cheerful young man with red hair and — yes, by God — freckles strode in to greet him.
“Sir, this is a real honor, sir,” the younger man said in an accent that sounded insincere because of its apparent sincerity.
Devereaux was unused to handshaking but he let the young man do it.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Martha had to find me, you know. Slipped down to the park for a walk and then to the pub for an… evening drink. Like this kind of weather. This is my first winter in London and I want to savor it all.…” He went on like that for some minutes as he led Devereaux into the library and poured him a liberal Scotch on the rocks. Devereaux noticed the young man was also liberal with his own drink — without the ice.
His name was Green. Not fancy Greene with an E, he bubbled on, just plain Columbus, Ohio, Green, and so he was Devereaux, something of a legend to the younger men, predicted the Tet offensive, a real Asia hand, a bit out of your element here, what brings you to London? No, we never received a message from Hanley—
On and on.
Devereaux found Green’s rattling on did not distract him as he sat in the leather wing chair and mentally composed his message to the Section. It would be difficult to explain to Hanley, especially in code. He decided it would be a very long message. Glancing at his watch, he saw it tick toward 9:15 P.M., 4:15 P.M. in Washington. He would have to catch Hanley before he left for the day. Devereaux asked for the coded transmitter.
“Oh, sir,” said plain Green brightly. “We don’t have one now. Have one of the new double scramblers — scrambles your voice going out twice through two voice baffles and then reverses the process at the other end. Much easier than coding and those tedious signals—”
“What do you do when you want to commit something to paper—”
“Oh, sir,” laughed Green, a member of the nonwriting generation. “Rarely, rarely. And then we use the machine at the embassy, on Grosvenor Square.”
Devereaux was annoyed with Green’s faint trace of English accent. Or perhaps with Green.
“The embassy’s handy—” Green continued.
For you, thought Devereaux — and for the CIA, which undoubtedly read every message transmitted there.
“Right this way, sir,” said Green. He led him to a small, obviously, soundproof room where a simple telephone rested conspicuously on a box with many dials.
Devereaux did not like it but there was no choice. It was already November 14—little more than a month until Boxing Day.
Surprisingly, the long-distance connection with Hanley came off smoothly. Allowing for the distance the voices had to travel and the echo that always occurred — and allowing for the disagreeably tinny voice alteration done by the baffles — it was satisfactory.
For five minutes, Devereaux filled Hanley in quietly, step by step, from the meeting with Hastings in the buffet through the first meeting with O’Neill and the discovery of Hastings’ body in his room. At least Hanley knew how to listen and absorb information. Devereaux could imagine Hanley sitting at the cold steel desk in the unnaturally cold office (the temperature never rose above sixty degrees on Hanley’s special order) tucked in a dead-end corridor in the Department of Agriculture building. He would not be taking notes but listening with his eyes closed and his free hand drumming quietly on the glass top of the steel desk. Hanley remembered everything and was not loath to tell you so.
Finally, Devereaux did not speak anymore. He waited and pressed the receiver to his ear and listened to the pop and crackle of the cable buried beneath the cold North Atlantic.
“What are your recommendations,” Hanley asked at last.
“My first recommendation is that I return. I have no expertise here. My assignment was contact with Hastings. That’s completed.”
“Hardly satisfactorily,” said Hanley. Whatever sarcasm he hoped to transmit in his tone did not communicate itself. Except that Devereaux knew the sound of Hanley’s normal voice.
“My second recommendation is that Hastings’ death implies his information has already been compromised. By the IRA? Possibly. But certainly by someone. And I suggest we turn what we know over to British Intelligence.”
Hanley waited. He knew Devereaux’s computer of logic was undergoing a systems search.
“British Intelligence,” Devereaux continued, as though talking to himself.
“They may have known that he was our agent now and killed him. They may have known parts of Hastings’ information — parts we do not know — and sought to get the rest from him. The IRA or British Intelligence — those are the two possibilities I can think of now. The death was obviously a professional job despite the clumsy attempt to make it seem a homosexual killing—”
Devereaux paused. Saw Hastings’ mutilated body again. Wiped away the image of blood and death.
“What about the Russians—”
“What about them? This seems purely an internal British matter and I suggest we keep it that way. I suggest we turn over our information to British Intelligence to show that we’re good boys, and then we quietly keep a tab on O’Neill and share information with CIA — in case they have any interest in Irish terrorists these days.”
There was silence. Hanley broke it.
“That seems unacceptable.”
“The Section is thin enough without getting involved in the Irish situation,” said Devereaux. “Ireland is England’s problem, not ours. I see no interest in the situation from our end.”
“Lord Slough is an important man—”
“So are half the Italian politicians shot or kidnapped daily by the Red Brigade. So was that Egyptian journalist assassinated by the Palestinians on Cyprus. But—”
“I admit that the irrational actions of terrorists is a fact of life,” Hanley said. “And I admit that it would seem we have little interest in the events in Northern Ireland. But I keep thinking about Hastings. Why the secrecy? Why did he think he could flummox us out of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars? O’Neill’s information is not worth it.”
Hanley had put his finger on the same piece of the puzzle that disturbed Devereaux.
Hanley went on: “We have been trying for years — with little success — to establish our own rapprochement with British Intelligence, separate from the Langley firm. This might be an opportunity, if we could present them with a fuller picture. Perhaps they know of the plot on Lord Slough’s life, perhaps not; but if we could give them the who, what, where, when, why, and how of it — well, perhaps we would have a wedge with them. Which would give us a wedge back home—”