“Damn!”
Then Dogan was running, hurdling one table and slithering between tight groups of people. By the artist’s booth, Keyes and others were hustling the man in the black overcoat away.
“Follow me!” Dogan shouted as he passed him.
Keyes hesitated only slightly, then took off. He had almost caught up with Dogan when the man with the walkie-talkie sped by them and screeched to a halt.
“Assholes,” muttered Dogan, shoes clip-clopping atop the cobblestone.
The head of the Place du Tertre was in sight with the dome of the Sacré-Coeur basilica in the background. But so was a white-haired man who might have been a twin of the one agents were holding at the booth forty yards back, except he wasn’t wearing an overcoat. Dogan watched helplessly, still too far away to respond, as a well-dressed man grabbed him on either elbow and spirited him toward a waiting Peugeot. The real defector resisted only slightly before giving in. The car sped off.
Dogan’s eyes locked on the blind beggar who had somehow gotten fifteen yards ahead of him and apparently was no longer blind. The man tipped his cap.
Vaslov!
In spite of himself, Dogan made the semblance of a wave. He didn’t even consider going for the pistol in his belt.
Keyes roared to a halt just in front of him and digested the scene, eyes blazing.
“That’s Vaslov!” he screamed. “Vaslov!” The man dressed as a beggar was strolling away from the Place du Tertre, drifting into a crowd. “You’re letting him get away!”
Keyes rushed forward, drawing his pistol. A goddamn cannon, Dogan saw.
“Let him go!” Dogan ordered. “Let him go!”
Keyes was hearing none of that. He sped into the street and angled for a shot into the crowd the blind beggar had become a part of. The young bastard was violating a direct order and you just didn’t do that to Grendel. Sure, the kid was a pro; he had recognized Vaslov from file pictures, after all. He was good, far better than Dogan had estimated. But he was too green to understand.
Passersby saw Keyes’s cannon and started screaming. Dogan crashed into him and shoved him aside but the kid pushed back, still aiming the gun, ready to fire.
“I said let him go!” Dogan repeated, and something in him broke. He grabbed the younger agent’s wrist at its weakest point and twisted. There was a snap and Keyes howled in pain. He started to swing his free hand at Dogan.
Dogan’s defense was just as fast. He blocked the strike effortlessly and crashed a set of rigid fingers under the youth’s jaw. Keyes’s head snapped backward and he went down, eyes dimming. His jaw would probably never work right again and his days of bare-hand kills and quick draws were finished as well. All in ten seconds of Dogan’s wrath.
The rest of the agents had caught up with the scene by this time, two still holding the imposter Vaslov had planted. Passersby stopped, crowding together to observe two men huddled over an unconscious third.
“Get an ambulance,” Dogan ordered.
There’d be hell to pay for this, he knew. Keyes represented a substantial investment on the Company’s part and he had ruined it just like that. Probably did them a favor, but they wouldn’t see it that way.
He walked away from the crowd disgusted, wondering if Vaslov was still watching.
Chapter 6
Locke found himself unable to sleep during his flight. He was going back to England, his place of birth but never his home.
His memory of those days was sketchy. So as the 747 streaked across the Atlantic, he patched the story together for the thousandth time in his mind, taking what he remembered and mixing it with the bits he had been able to pry out of his father as the years wore on. The old man had died at eighty just the year before in a Virginia rest home.
It was in his last days that the old man became most lucid about their years in London and flight to America. He rambled on and on, jumping from year to year with the passing of a minute and making no connections. It was left to Locke’s scholar’s mind to string events together and put them in context.
Locke’s father was an English diplomat assigned to Germany in the mid-thirties. He knew in a matter of months what was coming, and his reports were listened to but not acted upon. He married a young German girl and spirited her back to his homeland when channels of diplomacy broke down and Hitler’s war machine started to roll.
Their son, Christopher, was born in London in 1942 amid the turbulence and despair of a battered country. By then his father had become an advisor to Churchill’s cabinet, disappearing for long days at a time without contact, always to return to the loving arms of his wife. Charles worshipped her and the feeling seemed mutual, for Chris’s mother, Rosa, was forever grateful for being saved from Hitler’s wrath. Chris could vaguely recall the lingering hugs his parents shared.
In his final ramblings, the man who became Charles Locke when he reached America told his son tearfully of the pain memories of those hugs evoked, because any love his wife ever showed him was part of her cruel disguise. For years Hitler had operated a remarkably successful spy network within England capable of betraying British plans to the Fatherland almost as soon as Churchill passed them on to his subordinates. All members of the British Cabinet and ministry were urged to take special precautions against the possibility of someone close to them being a turncoat.
Those last days in the nursing home had brought back to Charles Locke all the agony of his subsequent discovery in cruel, vivid strokes. He told his story to his son as if to purge himself. He talked of suspicions arising from the peculiar number of walks Rosa took late at night when she thought he was asleep. He spoke of waiting outside their house one night after pretending to rush out for an emergency Cabinet session and watching his wife emerge into the street dressed in dark clothes. He had followed her to a warehouse where he watched in horror as others arrived, all apparently subservient to her. The meeting was held in German, and although Charles Locke was too far away to pick up details, it was obvious that his beloved Rosa was the head of a subnetwork operating in London not two miles from their home!
Charles Locke returned home that night and loaded his gun, fully intending to use it first on his wife and then himself. It was the sight of his son sleeping peacefully in his crib that changed his mind. The boy could not grow up an orphan, especially amid war. Nor could he grow up in the shadow of a man who had killed his mother for whatever reason. Charles Locke doubted anyway that he could have shot his beloved Rosa. He still loved her too much, but he also loved his country. The choice was excruciatingly simple: Ignore what his wife was or turn her in. He couldn’t see himself living with either alternative, but a choice had to be made. When Rosa returned hours later, much surprised to find him waiting in his study, Locke told her he was going to call the proper authorities and would give her a two-hour headstart. There were no tears, no pleas. Just hushed whispers exchanged as Rosa packed one small suitcase. They were professionals, after all. Charles waited the promised two hours, made the call, then cried well past sunrise.
The worst thing of all, he told his son from his deathbed, was that Rosa hadn’t as much as kissed Chris good-bye. Her love for him was nothing more than a facade to better enable her to perform her role as spy. Charles had hoped nevertheless that the headstart would be sufficient for her to escape the country. The British authorities, though, responded quickly and apprehended Rosa even as a German submarine was approaching to pick her up. She was tried, sentenced, and hanged all in three days. Charles was the only one who attended her funeral, not bothering to argue over the lack of a headstone. She was above everything a spy who had betrayed his love and his country. He felt the pain of emptiness, of losing something he never truly had.