They were approaching a village. Along the narrow roadway, men and women in a straggly stream were walking away from the church. The men were tall and thick-bodied; the women seemed smaller but not frail. The little car roared past them.
“Look at them.” Cashel spoke again in the same soft, urgent voice. “They may have heard of Lord Slough on the telly or one of them may get the Dublin paper he owns in the post. But he’s no more to them than he is to you. A curiosity perhaps, like all great men. But he loves them and he’s put it in ways they’ll understand someday. Those oil derricks, y’heard about them off the western coast? There’s oil there, in the western sea. Ireland’s oil. And Lord Slough is for findin’ it and then you’ll see the change in these poor people.”
Devereaux still did not understand, but he waited. He thought again that the Irish seemed to speak in circles that grew gradually smaller until the center was apparent.
“So one day they’ll all have a telly in their cottages and they’ll have the price of a pint without lookin’ at the coins in their hands,” said Cashel. “Because of that oil that Lord Slough is after findin’ in the western ocean.”
They entered the village. Devereaux pulled the car to the side of the road and turned off the engine. But he sat still and waited.
“But what about you, Mr. Devereaux? Or your government? You don’t care about Lord Slough fer yerself and I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said otherwise. But what about America? What’s your country’s stake in all this then? Y’see, I cannot believe everything you told me back there in MacDermott’s place. You understand, I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m just a policeman from Dublin and you are a great representative of the Central Intelligence Agency. D’ye understand, sir? Lord Slough is important to Eire. And to these poor Clare folks, whether they know Lord Slough or no. He’s an Englishman and all — and that’s what those terrorists care about because they’re young and they’re fightin’ the right cause the wrong way — but he’s important to Eire.”
Devereaux turned in his seat. Something in Cashel’s calm, almost sleepy Irish face had changed; there was a hardness and cold warning in his voice now.
“So there’s no misunderstandin’, Mr. Devereaux. You gave me good information. I thank you, for the nation. But I don’t know your game yet, Mr. Devereaux. D’ye understand now? I know y’have a game but I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it don’t concern me, which is just as well. But do not let your game bring harm to Lord Slough because then y’ harm Eire. And then you’ll have abused your rights as a guest of the nation. D’y understand now, sir?”
Devereaux nodded. So the simple policeman with his ridiculous hat and bristling mustache knew it was more than a game.
17
Hanley had not thought to shave and now he was acutely aware of it. The bristles — brown and gray — on his thin chin somehow made him more tired than he was; he rubbed at them as he drove down the deserted Sunday morning stretch of Wisconsin Avenue into Bethesda.
He had been up all night.
He had, in fact, not left the Section in the Department of Agriculture building since Devereaux’s telephone call over thirty-six hours before. He had not been aware of sleep or human needs or food for two days; he had merely been the hunter, searching through the records and reports and magnetic tapes on the big computer for clues to the leak in the Section and a clue to the mystery left by Devereaux.
Part of that mystery had been in the message found on the body of the dead agent. The man Devereaux had eliminated in a Belfast hotel stairwell.
The message: ETRAYSDVERDANTYGER
He had used the computer to break the code. Effortlessly, it had hummed through the variants possible in routine codes — the letter plus one, the letter plus two, the letter plus three… E became H in the plus-three code, T became W, R became U, and so on. The machine had tried all the plus combination up to forty and printed out the variants, and then it had been programmed to use the minus codes — letter minus one made E become D and so on. The machine tried “book” codes.
The message was meaningless.
The message was not meaningless. What was it? Did it name the leak? Was it a code within a code?
And all the time, he had burrowed into the other files with the loyal secretaries and with Hallman of the Asian desk borrowed for the hunt. Hanley was like a man who had mislaid his eyeglasses: Half blind with fatigue, worry, and frustration, he pawed through familiar things in familiar places again and again, always with growing irritation at his own stupidity. It must be there in the piles of manpower reports, training reports, recommendations of new agents, reports from field agents, 201 files. In all those familiar things, there must be the mark of the traitor.
Hanley spurred the others on ruthlessly. He had no life outside the Section; it was home and hearth, wife and child to him. If Hanley were to admit it, the endless hours thrilled him as well. The Section had caught a kind of wartime fever, an excitement that Hanley had not felt since the days he’d served in the old O.S.S.
Chief-of-Section Galloway had called four times during those hours.
As usual, the voice was mild but clearly disapproving of the delay in tracing the leak in the Section. Rear Admiral Galloway (USN Ret.) was at the best of times a frustrating man to work for but now it was much worse: He was the type who said little but expected you to catch intricate meanings in and shadings to his few words.
Of course, Hanley had considered that Devereaux himself was wrong. That Devereaux had relayed a bogus message. That Devereaux, for unclear reasons, was playing a game with the Section.
That thought had occurred to Hanley but he told no one.
It had occurred to Galloway and he chewed on it and then finally relayed it on to Hanley in the second telephone conversation.
And there was the business with Miss Elizabeth Campbell. Formerly Mrs. Donald Frieze. Mother. Child deceased. Divorce. Who was Frieze? That was part of the hunt as well. Inquiries were made about Frieze in the Justice Department, where he worked in the civil rights section. A tap was set on his telephone. It recorded only inanities — two calls from salesmen, one selling subscriptions to a Washington newspaper, the other offering central air conditioning. And a long, late conversation with a Margo Cole of Fairfax in which sexual relations were suggested and agreed to.
Elizabeth Campbell. Born in Buffalo, New York. Raised in New York City by Thomas A. Campbell, patent attorney. Mother dead. Columbia University. Peace Corps — Addis Ababa. Married Donald Frieze in Bergen, New Jersey; one child, David. Killed at six years of age by Mrs. Eleanor Hodkins, 64, of 122 Briar Lane, Arlington, Virginia, at 3:45 in the afternoon. Automobile accident. Divorce.
Everything was checked.
Hanley finally came to Devereaux’s own 201 file.
Peter Devereaux. Born in Chicago. Orphaned at four. Raised by an elderly aunt. Two arrests while a teenager, one for assault and battery, the second for assault. Scholarship to the University of Chicago. Graduate, postgraduate. Ph.D. Professor of history, Columbia University, New York. Recruited to the Section. Four attached recommendations; three attached letters of demerit.
But Hanley already knew everything about Devereaux.
And the message: ETRAYSDVERDANTYGER
In the twenty-seventh hour, half dozing at his desk while his eyes dimly perceived the manpower reports in his hands, Hanley understood. The thought came to him and lingered just long enough for him to become alert again. He put down the manpower reports and got up from the desk and went into the hall and drank a long sip of water from the fount.