This time it entered flesh.
Elizabeth screamed.
Blood appeared on the cloth of her coat where the knife had entered her upraised arm. Again, Elizabeth cried out and pushed against the bulky woman with all her strength.
The face of the Englishwoman was very near, broad and mottled, twisted in some sort of awful mask of hatred. She was so close that Elizabeth saw the little traces of mustache at the ends of lips; her lipstick was crooked and her teeth were stained dark with shreds of chocolate. She seemed overpowering.
Blood was already staining a dark circle on Elizabeth’s raincoat. Her right arm felt heavy.
She pulled her knee up and pushed hard against the woman, sliding the point of the knee between the broad thighs and then pulling it up, cracking hard against her public bone.
The Englishwoman cried out.
The knife came down again but Elizabeth moved under it and pushed up, lifting the bulk of the large body and slamming the woman’s head against the luggage rack behind her.
She reached for the wrist with the knife and, twisting, threw her body into the Englishwoman again.
The knife fell without a sound onto the seat cushions.
Elizabeth felt the blow on the back of her neck and fell forward, onto the seat, the knife under her. She felt the handle pressing against her right breast.
The next blow would kill her.
Her teeth ached, her eyes saw flashes of color, her right arm was numb.
Elizabeth rolled over, grasping the knife with her right arm. The blow came down at that moment onto her collarbone.
The bulky woman cursed and raised her arms again, together, as though she were a fighter raising his arms in triumph. And then came down again, hands together.
Elizabeth pushed the stiletto up, into the tweedy fabric of the short coat, into the breast. The weight of the woman’s blow struck Elizabeth again on the shoulder even as her fat body slid on top of her.
At that moment the train lurched to a start; it was four.
The Englishwoman only stared at her, as though she were asking if she wanted a sweet. And then the line of blood began to form at the corners of her mouth.
Elizabeth pushed — once, twice — and threw the staring body off her. Scrambling up then, she looked down at the stiletto stuck into the fat woman’s body.
She wanted to scream and then she wanted to run and then she wanted to be sick. The feelings came over her quickly and fled as quickly; instead, she pushed her way into the corridor. Empty. Running to the exit door at the end of the carriage, she pushed furiously at the latch. The door opened with a groan.
She was in the last car of the train; the engine was already out of the station’s canopy of iron and glass. The car was near the end of the long platform.
She dropped off the slow-moving train, falling onto the concrete, and rolled forward for a moment. She had lost a shoe as she fell. She scraped her hands and knees and felt dizzy. For a moment, she lay at the end of the platform, in the dusky light of the sky filtering through the glass roof. The train moved on, unconcerned; she saw the red lamps of the last car winking off into the twilight.
Slowly, Elizabeth rose.
There was no one near her. She found her shoe on the track and put it on.
Money and a lipstick tube had fallen from her purse. She picked them up slowly and replaced them, as though still in a dream.
The telegram lay on the platform.
From Belfast. From Devereaux. A telegram sent to kill her. She had worried about Devereaux and the Section; what would they decide about her? Devereaux had said it was safe; that it would be decided later.
She saw the blood darken on the sleeve of her raincoat.
So they had decided. Devereaux and the Section.
Slowly, she began to limp down the platform, back towards the main concourse.
She felt drained, used up. She had killed the one sent to kill her.
Sent by Devereaux.
They had slept together and traded promises. It would be safe. They would not die. He had wrapped his arms around her and she had felt the hardness of his body press against her, his legs against her legs; she had formed herself in the fork of his body. And then they had made love. He had opened her legs and placed himself in her, deeply into her, and stayed there for a long time, holding her, filling, surrounding her.
She saw the dead, staring face of the Englishwoman. Sent by Devereaux. She had never killed before. Killing was something they spoke of in training; she had seen death a long time before, in the dust of Addis Ababa, a slow death of bloated bellies and cries in the night.
And David’s death. So still, lying on the street where he had been struck.
There was no more horror left in her.
Now there was no safe house or way to end the game except to die; there was no way out.
She had betrayed R Section and the ghost Section; or were they the same? It didn’t matter. She was beyond both: Both wanted her dead and there was no way to stop it.
Not that death mattered.
She reached the concourse. A couple stared at her and then walked away quickly. A little girl with a Raggedy Ann doll stared at her and sucked her thumb.
Why did he send someone else?
She would have let Devereaux kill her, easily. She would have waited in the train for him to come to her. They would have gone to a place where he would have made love to her and then fallen asleep with her. She would have slept in the curve of his body, next to him, trusting and open in her nakedness. He could have taken her life as lightly as a whisper. She would have been a gentle victim, taking death like a gift.
Goddam him.
Now there was no safe house; there was no one to go to anymore.
At midnight, the great clock in the dim hallway sounded the sixteen notes of the Westminster chime and then began to boom the hours. Almost unconsciously, Green counted them while he sat in the library with his large glass of vodka in ice and orange juice. There was no more time for posturing drinks or for wearing the façade of an Englishman.
Of course, it was impossible to sleep; impossible to think since the signal from Ruckles.
He had been awakened from a drink-induced stupor an hour before.
The beeper beside his bed had begun the strange chirping sound — rather like a mechanical bird — which meant Ruckles wanted to contact him urgently.
He had struggled out of sleep with foreboding. His mouth was dry. He realized he had been dreaming about the woman with brown hair. Elizabeth. A traitor.
He called Ruckles at the special number.
“She got away,” was all the Virginian said.
Green waited, his hand trembling.
“Took out our agent,” said Ruckles.
No. It was part of the dream. He opened his mouth but could not speak.
“Wake up, boy,” said Ruckles. “Our bird has flown. We can’t find her. The agent was wasted.”
No, not a dream. “What can I do?”
“This is our last contact,” said Ruckles slowly. “We’ve just received orders to close down Operation Mirror.”
“But.” Green began to sputter, stopped, glanced around the darkness of his bedroom.
“Sorry, old man,” Ruckles said. “I wanted to tell you myself. Better get rid of the tape transmitter in the scrambler box. For your sake.”
“You’re closing down the operation?” Green was unable to comprehend the current sentence, only the previous one.
“It’s blown,” said Ruckles.
“Then I’m blown,” said Green. He was awake now. The horror of it began to strangle him.
“Probably. Although I don’t suppose our bird will surface for a long time, if ever. We don’t know though. But the company wants to close it down. We got the message an hour ago.”