Denisov realized at once that O’Neill did not know Devereaux by his real name — that, in fact, the dead Blatchford had been Devereaux to O’Neill. He tried again.
“There’s another fellow,” he started.
O’Neill looked at him with a dawning suspicion.
“One you met in Scotland. An American.”
“He didn’t say his name was Devereaux. There might be two, I suppose—”
“Mr. O’Neill. I want to be honest to you. I am a representative of my government—”
“I thought you said you was a commercial traveler, too.”
“In a sense, I am,” said Denisov. “But I am buying, not selling. And I have the money to prove it.”
He opened his wallet and showed a thick ream of pound notes. O’Neill stared at them in a glazed way. Denisov carefully left the wallet on the table.
“So.” O’Neill swallowed. “What is it ye be after buyin’ then?”
“Information,” said Denisov carefully.
“And yer come to me?”
“I want to know what you told Devereaux. Rather, the man in Edinburgh.”
“There were two men in Edinburgh,” said O’Neill, his eyes hooding themselves in a gesture of shrewdness.
“Yes. I know. The other man was Hastings. He’s dead.”
“And Devereaux killed him. The second Devereaux. The one in Edinburgh.”
Denisov weighed that and decided there was no reason to tell the truth. He shrugged in confirmation.
“He’s a cold bastard,” said O’Neill. “He broke me bloody nose. And he cheated me on me money—”
“How much did he give you?”
O’Neill glanced down at the wallet. “Five thousand American dollars—”
“There is one thousand in pounds in that wallet,” said Denisov. “I want to know what you told the man in Edinburgh.”
“Why should I tell ye fer less what he tol’ me fer more?”
Denisov shrugged. “It is second-used.”
“Yer mean it’s old information?”
“Precise.”
They waited. Finally, Denisov reached for the wallet.
“Now, now, not so fast,” said O’Neill.
“Yes?” asked Denisov. He held his hand over the wallet.
“It’s not as though I’m not bein’ loyal,” said O’Neill to himself out loud. “Me loyalty was forced from me t’begin with. But I’m not a Communist. I’ve never been.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Yer people ain’t about to try to take over Ulster, are ye?”
“Of course not.” Denisov smiled to himself: We wish Northern Ireland on the English forever.
“Well, then.”
The bulging wallet seemed to beckon voluptuously.
“Well, then,” O’Neill repeated.
Denisov looked at him mildly. He took his hand away from the wallet.
“Ah, it doesn’t matter anyway now, does it?”
O’Neill reached for the wallet and opened it and looked at the pound notes inside.
“A thousand yer said?”
“A thousand,” said Denisov.
“All right. It’s a bargain, then.” He spat on his hand like a farmer and shook Denisov’s hand. Discreetly, Denisov wiped his palm on the raincoat. The wallet had already disappeared into O’Neill’s clothing.
O’Neill began and told as much as he knew about the plot against Lord Slough. The information seemed to disappoint the Russian, so he tried to elaborate on it, but there was little. O’Neill had spent the past two days on a roaring drunk and he had not gathered more information; and, when he had heard about the assassination attempt on Lord Slough that afternoon, he had assumed he would never see the mates of those torn thousand-dollar bills. With a fatalistic nonchalance, he had spent the night drinking to his bad fortune. And now here was a Russian, wanting the same information.
Denisov could not believe it. Why would Devereaux have come to Ireland? For this? And why had the CIA plotted against his life — for the sake of protecting an assassination attempt three thousand miles away? It was craziness.
Further, how would he justify the paying of one thousand pounds for such worthless information? They had been brutal about expenses on the last assignment and Denisov feared they suspected, correctly, that Denisov was secretly putting expense money into his own Swiss account. Would they believe he gave this foolish Irishman a thousand pounds for information so scant — and so old — that it would not have justified any payment at all? He wondered if he should kill O’Neill for the money.
“There’s nothing more?”
“More? More, ye bloody man? I’ve given ye a bargain — five thousand pounds they paid me—” O’Neill, believing for a moment his own hyperbole, was indignant.
“Devereaux would not come here for that—”
“Oh, aye. He seemed disappointed, too — but yer see, that’s not me fault. There were other parts and Hastings had put it all together. Hastings understood everything and that’s why he wanted me to meet him in Edinburgh. I was just one of the parts he was sellin’ the Americans.”
“Did Devereaux — did the American in Edinburgh — have the other parts of information?”
“How the bloody hell should I know that?” O’Neill took a deep gulp of Guinness.
“For my thousand pounds I would think you know,” said Denisov. He was annoyed both with O’Neill and with the thick black beer. And he was already worried about his expense report.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I do know that he seemed t’question me like he didn’t know much more than I told you. He seemed bloody sad in the puss like you are now. It’s only money, man; c’mon, I’ll buy you a jar of whisky—”
“No.” He waved his hand. But O’Neill pressed him and he finally let the Irishman buy him a large glass of Irish whisky — with his own money.
“T’yer health, sur,” said O’Neill, and he took a large swallow.
Denisov drank silently. Gloomily.
“It’s funny about it all, though,” said O’Neill at last. His mood had become quiet. “I tell yer what I know and yer sad in the puss. I tell the fella in Edinburgh, whoever the hell he is, and he’s down in the mouth. But when I tol’ the other fella — Devereaux, the one what come t’me house in the mornin’—I tol’ him just what I had tol’ his partner in Edinburgh — why, he seemed almost bloody cheerful!”
Denisov looked up: Blatchford had seemed cheerful.
“It was bloody strange, yer ask me. I was hardly half awake and me nose was painin’ me from where the fella in Edinburgh had broke it on me — and so I’m not in a good humor yer might say, and this fella starts on me, askin’ the same bloody things the other one did. Well, when I tol’ him what I knew — why, I thought he’d bloody laugh he looked so bloody happy! Like a bloody child on Christmas Day! Well, there’s no accountin’, is there?”
Denisov nodded.
O’Neill took another sip of whisky. “It was just as if he knew all about what I was tellin’ him but was just happy that was all there was. If yer understand me, sur?”
Denisov nodded.
He thought he was beginning to understand.
Devereaux had not left her until he had it all. He picked through her life carefully from the time she had been in the Peace Corps (that had been true), and into her marriage to a government lawyer and her divorce and the death of her son. That had been difficult but he had pulled that out as well. Then into her struggle for jobs in the circles of government in Washington. Up to the day she met the man called Hanley.
She described R Section. Wearily, she went over the same ground again and again. She got up once and went to the window and looked out at the ring of hills around the old city; she talked dreamily of her past life — of her child, of her husband — and crisply of the life of R Section and the cover with Free The Prisoners.