It was very late, well past midnight. McGarvey lay on his back in the front bedroom, his windows open to the sea. All afternoon he and Lorraine had avoided discussing Murphy’s visit, just as in the past weeks they had stayed away from talking about Baranov and everything that had happened since En Gedi.
As was their routine, they had gone to bed early, each in their own room, each with their own thoughts and hopes for the morning.
He listened to the sounds of the sea below as he struggled to sort out his thoughts. He had given Lorraine her life, but, as Murphy had suggested, was he now keeping her from it? He loved her, that much he knew. But was it killing her?
He closed his eyes, and immediately he began to see faces, one after the other, floating in a dark void. He knew all of them intimately, as only an assassin could. They were his victims. The men he had killed over the past nine years. My name is Legion, for we are nwny. “There is something missing in you” his sister had told him once, a long time ago. “Some deep hole that can never be filled” He heard a rustle of fabric at the doorway and he opened his eyes. Lorraine Stood there in her nightgown, her body outlined in the starlight filtering in from outside. “Baranov is really dead” she asked softly. “Yes” McGarvey replied. She shuddered.
“He made me
“You don’t have to do this, my darling”
“Kirk, he made me believe in him” she said. “He sat with me on the bed and he talked to me, nothing more. He told me things I didn’t know were possible … about himself, about the world, about … me. And in the end I believed everything he said to me, and everything that he could ever say” McGarvey’s heart was aching not only for her, but for himself.
“Even though I knew he was wrong, I couldn’t help myself. He took me away from me, and replaced it with his own soul”
“He’s dead
“Yes” she cut in. She raised a hand to her heart. “But now he’s dead inside here as well” Slowly she slipped the nightgown off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She stepped away from it, her body shimmering. I believe in you, Kirk McGarvey. And now I want you to make love to me” She came to him, and as he took her into his arms, he knew what had been missing all of these years-all of his life. No one had ever believed in him.
The connection was imperfect. Lieutenant Colonel Vasili Semonovich Didenko sat in his nondescript office on the third floor of the Lubyanka, holding the telephone tightly to his ear. Was it possible? he asked himself. Could it be possible? “I want you to come in” he said.
“It will take me a few days to arrange something, and in the meantime I want you to go to ground. Do you understand” Didenko, who was the newly promoted chief of the KGB’s Department 8 of Directorate S (Illegals)-the department that used to be called Viktor, for Mokrie Dela (Wet Affairs)had been a student of Baranov’s. A gifted student. He saw now, for the first time, at least one portion of his future. “Can you hear me” he shouted into the telephone. The connection between Moscow and Damascus was never very good, but this evening it was worse than normal.
“Tell me where you are, I can help you” Didenko listened closely to what the man was saying. He was not only listening to the words for their meaning, but listening for a weakness. But there was none. There never had been. “Whatare you saying to me” Didenko shouted. “Fuck your mother, you cannot be serious. You need me But the connection was broken.
Didenko slowly hung up the telephone. He sat in his dimly lit office for a long time before he got his coat and left the building. On the way across to the parking lot he pondered the other’s last words. “I’ve become a floater. When I want blood I’ll call you.
This time, you bastards, I won’t let you fuck me up”