He had pulled out the fight program.
“Am I supposed to give him that? Do you think he’ll believe it’s thirty thousand dollars? Or a Swiss account book?”
“Damn.” Hanley flushed. He shoved the program back into his coat and then reached into the vest and came out with a brown envelope. He placed the envelope on the bar, between the two glasses. Then he pulled a little notebook from a second pocket and put it in front of Devereaux. “Sign, please, there,” he said.
Devereaux made his scrawl.
“Thirty one-thousand-dollar bills. An account with the State Bank of Zurich containing one hundred thousand dollars in his name. Just in case he has both parts. It’s your judgment, Devereaux, remember. That’s a lot of money—”
“Why not fly him back here?”
“Our Third Man suggested it to him. He wouldn’t buy.”
“Doesn’t he trust us?”
Hanley shrugged. “We’ve always played him fair—”
“Except for recruiting him in the first place,” said Devereaux. “Remember? I was there.” A long time ago. On an island in the Aegean. The last time Devereaux had seen Hastings, the happiness had drained out of that puffy face, the eyes were both mocking and betrayed.
“If that’s all,” said Hanley. His voice was coming from a distance.
Devereaux smiled again. Hanley was irresistible. “One more thing as long as you’re here.”
Hanley glanced at him.
“My American Express card,” Devereaux said quietly. “I picked up my mail this weekend and there was a notice threatening cancellation. I thought you had taken care of it.”
“I’m sure we did.”
“Don’t give me that ‘sure’ shit. Just call up the goddam AmEx tomorrow and get the fucking thing straightened out. They said they hadn’t received a payment in four months—”
“You submitted your bills—”
“Fuck my bills,” said Devereaux, just as quietly. “You think those cowboys in the CIA worry about their credit cards getting canceled?”
“The error is probably on the part of American Express—”
“I don’t care who’s part it’s on. Just fix it.” Devereaux was actually enjoying himself, because Hanley prided himself on the efficiency of the Section, particularly the intricate paymaster system which he had created. Comparisons with the CIA’s lavish budget bothered Hanley as well. All of which put Devereaux in a better mood.
“The Langley people have their problems, too,” said Hanley. Then he saw Devereaux’s smile and refused to play anymore.
They finished their drinks, staring along with the bartender at the silent television screen.
“Oh, yes,” said Hanley at last. “If it’s one or two. Well. Let us know right away.”
“One or two?”
Hanley nodded. “Scenarios. That he’s stringing us or becoming an independent contractor.”
Devereaux was suddenly very tired and drained. He did not want to talk with this vile little man anymore. If it were possibilities one or two, in Devereaux’s judgment, it meant the end of Hastings.
“You pay,” Devereaux said. He got up then and went out the door without another word.
2
November rain, full of ice and bleakness, dashed against the black and gray stones of the old city. Scottish noon: no one had seen the sun for days. Ugly clouds convened above the spires, permitting only varying shades of dull, gray light. Outside, the rain stung faces red and soaked into heavy tweeds and numbed the bones of shoppers bent against the wind whistling down Princes Street.
“Terrible, terrible.”
Hastings muttered like a priest’s housekeeper as he bustled around the room, picking up pieces of clothing and straightening the cover on the creaky couch. The air in the room was close with leftover odors of gin, Scotch, and cigarettes. A sudden puff of wind flung a hail of raindrops against the window.
“Damn it all.” Hastings felt suddenly depressed by his morning-after activity and sat down fatly on the couch. He fumbled as he lit a Player’s.
The smoke did not satisfy him.
He sighed and ran his hand through his thinning brown-tinted hair. Then he expelled a big puff of smoke and sighed again. The chill in the room crept up on him. The place was always damp and musty and always cold.
Not like the islands. Something softened his eyes at that moment, as though he saw the past clearly in the pattern of brown smoke. He had grown accustomed to the heat then. Too much so.
He dashed out the cigarette, ending the mood. After all, the cable had arrived that morning and it was no dream. Money due today.
Money due today. The money. The exit money.
The excesses of his life were obvious in lines on his too-red face and the swell of his paunch. But what excesses, really, dearie? Drank too much? Who wouldn’t with the loneliness of it all. And now this climate — why, duck, half the city is drunk from morning till night in winter. One always needed a little money, just to mitigate the pain. Hanley had once wired from R Section: How do you manage to spend so much money in such a miserable poor country? Hanley’s idea of repartee.
The wind knocked at the window again like an insistent visitor.
Well, there wasn’t anything funny about it, my darlings. It was a miserable and poor country and one needed money just to retain one’s sanity. Just to stay drunk when the night comes at three in the afternoon. The men were stuffy, righteous, close, even pompous in their smug tams and tweeds; the places of pleasure were opened only grudgingly; one felt as though one were a child again living here — only the childhood consisted of a single, eternal Sunday afternoon.
For a moment, a tear appeared in the corner of Hastings’ eye as he thought of that poor child of himself, trapped in tweeds and knickers, staring out the window at the rain on the immense lawn, tiptoeing through the adult house of shadows and too many rooms. Poor darling boy.
He shivered. He rose and went to the gas ring and turned it on. The blue flames hissed evenly and he held his hands over them.
Well, ducks, weep not for Hastings but for yourselves. The money was coming today and Hastings must be up and about his father’s business. His uncle’s business, in any event.
He giggled.
God bless America and all its money and endless need for intrigue and a chance to meddle in others’ business. Yes, bless them all.
He began to hum the old war song as he went to the grim, oak wardrobe by the door. He selected a shabby green Harris tweed jacket and shrugged it over his round, sad little fat-man shoulders. Then the mackintosh. No wonder all this heavy, foul-weather stuff bore Scottish names.
He closed the door carefully, inserting the bit of match just so between the jamb and door. Then he turned and hurried down the musty hall, down the worn stairs to the street. As he opened the outer door, the wind slapped his face in greeting; he joined the other pedestrians in homage to the force of it and bent his uncovered head as he hurried along the narrow mews. Nearly one P.M.
Hastings had the gift to see himself clearly, even when he presented a ludicrous sight. Now he thought of the white rabbit in Alice and managed an odd, twisted smile. Hurry, hurry, old darling. No time to waste.…
He finally emerged onto the broad, windy expanse of Princes Street. On the other side, away from the row of fashionable stores, lay the long gully that carried railway lines out of Edinburgh Station. Above the lines loomed the rocky menace of Edinburgh Castle, carved into the lip of the hill. The rain turned to hail.
“Oh, Christ,” Hastings prayed loudly as the hail began to pelt him. “Give us a rest.”
For a moment, it was too much for him. He took refuge in the doorway of a tailor shop. Not a cab or omnibus in sight, only the thin miserable line of private cars sloshing through the eternal downpour. Clouds boiled up from the west like new stock. What a miserable country.