Michael.
When she thought of Michael, a whole universe of déjà vu came upon her to disorient her to the world around her. Thoughts of her lamb, of poor dead Michael triggered thoughts of the night they had made love in a cheap Paris hotel, which triggered the thoughts of his death on the Tiber River bridge in Rome, which triggered so many things. She suddenly remembered Devereaux, who had saved her life. Devereaux had no gentleness either, he was as hard as Henry McGee except there was a quality of pity in him that mitigated all the hardness. He knew what life was, just as Marie did, they saw it in each other and they saw the quality of pity in each other, too. Life was agony, just one long scream from the moment of birth to the final silence.
She realized she was crying.
She usually didn’t cry but sometimes there was a mixture of things, thoughts of Michael, thoughts of what could have been — oh the hell with it, it could never have been like that for her because she was nothing, just a dirty little survivor of the streets of her mother, Berlin, just a girl to be used and to use, just a slut and a whore and feel me up, mister?
Henry had explained it carefully. They were going to steal five million dollars from the man who ran the airline. Trevor Armstrong. They were going to terrorize him first. Part of the terrorism was using this Matthew O’Day to deliver an innocent package to the house and then sending photographs of Matthew O’Day to the SAS. A known IRA terrorist like Matthew O’Day was in London, delivering packages to a respected American businessman named Trevor Armstrong, president and chief operating officer of Euro-American Airlines, which now traded at seventy-six and was on the verge of being leveraged into a takeover by a group led by Carl Greengold. The IRA was going to threaten to blow up Euro-American Airlines. The way it would work, Henry explained to her, was that British intelligence, in the form of the dreaded SAS, would authenticate the threat and where it came from. Only Henry would know the truth, and Trevor Armstrong, who would agree to the blackmail. Marie didn’t understand all of it but she had nodded agreement to Henry that night in the Buswell Hotel in Dublin.
Henry was clever and he wasn’t too concerned with rough edges. That suited Marie. She had never become accustomed to gentleness so she didn’t know what it was.
That was a lie. Yes she did. She had known one lamb in the world and he was dead because the world was too hard for innocence to survive.
Damn her tears. She wiped at her eyes roughly with her hand and her eyes hurt her. Everything she knew was hurt and pain. Why shouldn’t she be rich with Henry? Damn the world and tears.
The photo shop was on the Edgware Road and it was one of those places where the photographs could be had in less than a day. She told the boy behind the counter what she wanted. Henry had explained it: one set of prints as soon as possible. It was all part of his plan and he never explained all the parts of it. Henry said she didn’t need to know everything, it was just important that she trusted him and did what he told her to do.
No. Henry didn’t blow up that police car outside that pub in Ireland and he didn’t have the blood of all those dead people on his hands. Yes, he’d killed a few people in the service of his country — depending on which country it was — but he didn’t take any pleasure in it and he had only killed Brian Parnell who was nothing but a fucking terrorist anyway. Oh, yes. She believed him and held him and let him plunge into her lap with his body and impale her with his lovemaking and, yes, she believed him as she closed her eyes and felt him in her and, yes, she had to believe him and hold him and feel his warmth, even if it was roughly given and full of deceit and lies. Yes, yes, yes.
“And how many prints, miss?”
She thought about it.
“Two,” she said in her accented English. “Two sets of prints will be fine.”
24
Henry McGee broke into the cellar of the house in Mayfair at 11:31 A.M. He placed the small vial on the wooden workbench and dropped in two large tablets. The chemical reaction began immediately. The liquid was turning to gas.
He wore a gas mask.
The gas rose quickly and was at the level of the floorboards of the first floor when Henry made it out of the cellar through the back door. He rushed along the path that led to the alley behind the buildings. There were brick walls between the individual plots of backyards and all the properties had high wooden gates on the alley, to provide privacy and security.
The housekeeper saw him from the kitchen window and thought to call the police.
It was the last thought of her life.
There were three other servants in the house on that final morning of their lives.
25
Hanley did not drive and did not have a chauffeured automobile. It was a perk of office he deserved as director of operations for R Section but he had a curious, populist distaste for the idea of public servants riding in limousines. He was from Nebraska and entering his final years of government service. He had been with R Section since the beginning and had climbed slowly and more or less honestly through the ranks. He had never been “in the field” and had an odd sense of having lost something because of that lack. He had never married; his relatives were all dead; he had his job in R Section and his friendship with the director of R Section, Lydia Neumann; and he had some men he could relate to and even have lunch with at times. He never took a vacation because there was no place to go and a vacation would merely have meant separation from his real life.
No. He was not a friend of the former agent, Devereaux, known in files as November. No, not at all.
The taxi swept through the rain down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. Thunder clapped across the boulevards of the city and filled the circle parks where the dope dealers and homeless mingled under the Southern trees. Hanley studied the beaded seat of the driver.
“What is that thing you’re sitting on?” he said.
“Beads, man. Help you stay cool in summer. Help your back. Sit on beads good for you when you driving.”
“They don’t look comfortable.”
“They are,” the driver said, challenging him in the rearview mirror.
Hanley sighed. He settled back into the discomfort of the dirty vinyl interior. Everything about the day was full of discomfort. Irritation. Damn Devereaux. The man was bound to cause this trouble and Hanley should have seen it coming.
The taxi swept into the square before the Capitol and skidded to a stop in front of the Irish saloon. An Irish saloon, Hanley thought: how appropriate.
Twenty-seven hours before, all hell had broken loose. And it was still loose in the streets. It was all Devereaux’s fault.
Hanley paid and demanded a receipt. He kept his accounts regular; he was probably the most honest employee in the United States government, including the president.
He crossed the sidewalk and pushed into the saloon. It was 11:30 in the morning and only a few drinkers had slipped away from their offices to begin another day with the bottle.
Devereaux stood at the bar. A glass of beer sat on a cardboard coaster in front of him. Hanley came up.
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
Devereaux looked at him. There was no mercy today for anyone. “Because you have to be here. Because you need me.”
“You kidnapped Miss Macklin.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a criminal act, even for an intelligence officer who has involved himself in criminal acts before and been exonerated by his long-suffering government.”