“Who? What was his name?”
“Ah. I remember.”
He waited.
“Devereaux. Devereaux he says his name was.”
He was frightened now.
He felt the chill of it. Perspiration plucked at the back of his shirt.
As he stepped out of the pub, he looked up and down the street. The mist shrouded silent Belfast. Halos formed around the street lamps.
“Devereaux,” O’Neill had said.
He heard his own steps on the sidewalk. The noise of the public house faded. Utter quiet. He stepped into the blackness of a side street where vandals had blown out the lights of the street lamps.
In the distance, Devereaux could see the tower of the Belfast Continental hotel, looming above the downtown district.
Gloomy, starless night, made gentle with rain.
Doorway, post, parked car. Doorway—
He did not want to think. He wanted to walk, to be alert to every sound, every movement.
Another American knew about O’Neill. And Devereaux. And the Section. Had made a joke about it.
Absurdly, he wanted to be safe.
He had accepted the dangers and the anonymous fact of death long ago; accepted it now. But it frightened him, always, when it was near, when it seemed to breathe on his face.
Bang. A flash before him.
The rattle of a dustbin. A cat leaped across the sidewalk, growled, scurried into darkness. The dustbin rattled against the fence.
He had no weapons.
An auto growled into a turn, flashed onto the side street. Its lamp-eyes silhouetted Devereaux, bore down on him, and then flashed away as the car rolled by. He heard the roar of it.
And, in that moment, did not hear the footstep behind.
Jerked back.
Felt the wire around his neck, suddenly cutting deep.
7
He did not so much wake as struggle upward until he broke the waterline. He could breathe. That was the first thing he was aware of. He lay in the darkness, struggling for breath, and found it.
The second thing was the pain. Searing his throat with each breath. He had not expected pain after death. Not expected anything.
He opened his eyes. Thought he had opened them but saw nothing. He was aware of another presence close to him. If only he could open his eyes, he would be willing to stand the pain. The pain in the darkness frightened him; the sound of his breathing body did not comfort him.
He could not see. New nightmares, phantoms over him. Was this his biblical hell? He was suddenly cast down, a child sitting with Great Aunt Melvina in the ornate old church, Latin mumbled from the altar.
No.
Sometimes, when he dreamed, he would dream that he awoke and then, frightened by the dream, would try to awake really; he would awake again and not be awake, still held in the nightmare.
He opened his eyes.
The room was not dark. There was a lamp on the wall, lit. Television set. Curtain. Window. Hell is a motel room, he thought and tried to turn his head. But there was too much pain.
“Yes.”
Not his voice.
“Your room.”
His room. In the hotel he could not reach. He had been on the street. A pub. O’Neill. And then — what then?
“I can’t see you.” It hurt to speak. “I can’t turn my head.”
“No wonder. It is extremely good fortune to you that you have a head.”
The voice moved away from his blind side, around the end of the bed. Then he saw its owner: A short, thick man with black, flat hair and a flat forehead and clear, childlike eyes behind glasses. And a smile.
Denisov.
“Hello, Devereaux,” said the Russian. “I get a chair and sit down and have a yarn with you.” He pulled the rickety plastic chair from the rickety plastic desk-table and put it by the side of the bed.
“Denisov.” The named caused him pain.
“Yes, me,” said the Russian. His English was nearly flawless in tone, but he was betrayed at times by odd words thrown into the middle of elaborate sentences.
Devereaux did not feel wary, as he should. He could not be on guard. He remembered the blackness on the street, remembered how foolish he felt as he knew he was about to die.
“Are we in hell?”
“Of course not. There is no hell, therefore I cannot be in it,” said Denisov. “I think Descartes said that.”
“Or Woody Allen.”
Denisov frowned. “Very awful to see your neck.”
“Thank you.”
“It is my appreciation.”
Devereaux waited for the Soviet agent to speak. He was thirsty.
“Do you know what occurred?” Denisov finally asked. He had taken off his fashionable rimless eyeglasses and was wiping the lenses on his tie.
“I was killed.”
“No, not hardly. In a second more, you would be killed, but not hardly. I was there. You owe me a life, now. Like the Buddhists.”
“You’ve got it backwards. You saved my life, you must now take care of me.”
Denisov frowned. “That does not sound equitable.”
“Exactly the reason it has been abandoned.”
The Russian placed the glasses back on his face. They illuminated his already saintly eyes.
Devereaux waited still.
“Do you want to know who killed you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it was me?”
“Perhaps.”
“I can rest you, if I killed you, you would have died.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps, perhaps. Is this the way you have learned to say nothing?” Denisov smiled. “It would be better to be quiet then.”
“Perhaps,” said Devereaux.
Denisov would not be put out of his good humor. “A man named Blatchford. Do you know him?”
“The one who garroted me?”
“Yes. Almost.”
“Who was he?”
“Blatchford. I said this. He was at the Royal Avenue Hotel for today. He was in the airplane before you came to Belfast. He came from Edinburgh.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Oh. An American in Belfast is almost made dead by another American in Belfast. A coincidence.”
“We’re a feisty people.”
“Feisty? Never mind. I can understand the meaning. But this is not a coincidence.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Denisov has saved your life.”
Devereaux waited.
“They were in an automobile. A Fiat. Made in Italy. Also, now, made in the Soviet Union. You leave the saloon—” Denisov preferred American terms when speaking English. “They go ahead of you. Drop off Blatchford. They circle the block, come up again as you pass Blatchford and blind you with the lamps. Then Blatchford moves to kill you.”
“And where was Denisov?”
Denisov smiled. He looked like Saint Francis of Assisi, as conceived by an Eastern religious painter. “Where was the cat? Bam, the garbage can, and the cat jumps out. Stupid Denisov banged into the can. Thank goodness there was a cat, or you would have seen me.”
“Goodness?”
“A saying in English.”
“I didn’t want you to revert on me.”
“You would like a drink?”
“Water.”
“Water of life.”
“Water, not whisky.”
Denisov shrugged and got up. He came back from the bathroom with a glass of water. Devereaux sipped it slowly. It numbed his throat but the pain lurked beneath the surface.
“Who is Blatchford?” he said at last.
Denisov smiled and shrugged.
“Don’t shrug.”
“I was following you—”
“You were following Blatchford. You knew when his plane arrived.”
“Perhaps both of you.”
“You have a problem. Professional paranoia. You’re going to have to learn to trust someone.”
“You?” asked Denisov.
“Trust me.”
Denisov smiled. “Trust me, Devereaux. I saved your life.”
“Why?”