“I don’t suppose I’d get that.”
“What do you want?”
“Authority. A mission directive to the effect that Henry McGee is sought abroad for the attempted assassination of an agent of Section. Named Devereaux. Who is a current employee of Section.”
“You want to come back in?”
Devereaux had no pity now in his gray eyes. “No. I want that authority and when I’ve got him, it’ll be done. Then I’ll retire on disability as you wanted and spend the rest of my life forgetting the first part of it.”
“But it’s authority to try to apprehend a suspect—”
“I’ll kill him overseas, Hanley. I won’t drag the blackbird home and put him on your doorstep. I don’t want your approval for this but it’s one more thing on my side to have a mission directive in my pocket.”
“What will you do with Miss Macklin?”
“That’s none of your business, I told you that.”
“We didn’t mean her harm, Devereaux,” Hanley began. Was he apologizing?
“But you did her harm with that quack Krueger. You did her harm, Hanley.” Now his voice was low, without any edge to it. “If you had meant her harm, I would have killed you as well.”
“You’re crazy. You’ve gone too far. Too many years living by your own rules.”
“There are no rules.”
God, this room was cold and damp and bleak, exactly like an Irish tavern in the middle of winter. Hanley felt withered to his soul.
“When do you want it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Where will you be?”
“Right here.”
“What if Mrs. Neumann vetoes it?”
“Tell her the truth of things if you have to. Or lie to her. It doesn’t matter.”
“And then you’ll quit Section.”
“You’ll never see me again. Or hear from me. As long as you send my disability checks.”
“Government pensions are not great.”
“They’re sufficient.”
“But what will you do?”
Devereaux put down the glass of beer. It was empty. He looked at the foam and then around him, at the walls of gloom and the drawn faces of the morning drinkers. He spoke not for Hanley but for himself.
“Live with Rita Macklin,” Devereaux said.
26
This is what they said in the office of the magazine on L Street on the morning Mac called in sick for the first time in twenty-two years.
“Mac is sick.”
“He hasn’t looked good for a long time.”
“Christ, do you think it might be serious?”
“He drinks too much. He’s an old man. He’s going to have to retire anyway. I don’t understand how people can let themselves go the way he let himself go. Alcohol is a drug.”
“He’s an old man.”
“He must be sixty.”
“So who’s going to get his job?”
“They’re going to have to fill it out of New York.”
“I wish I could move up to New York. I really hate Washington.”
“Where would you live?”
“I’d like to get a co-op on the East Side. I love that city. It’s exciting. I mean, just take Bloomie’s. What have you got in Washington to compare with that?”
“Mac goes and then the new man comes in from New York, maybe he can shake this place up. Mac is… well, he’s just old, you know?”
She pushed strips of toast into the poached eggs on her plate. It reminded her of her mother and of her childhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the winters were long and hard and the summers were festive because of their brevity. When she had a cold and had to stay home from school, her mother made her poached eggs and buttered toast and cut the toast into strips so that she could play with the eggs, and push the strips into the center of the yolks. Oh, God, she was crying again, sitting at the table in this man’s house, and he was staring at her.
“Rita, honey, what’s wrong with you?”
She looked up, blinked, saw it was Mac. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She thought she was home in Eau Claire and she was eight years old. She blinked and wondered why she was sitting in pajamas at a table in front of her boss. My God, why were they in this situation? She had a story to do, a story about something she had forgotten but she probably had it written down in her notes.
“What am I doing here, Mac?”
“Eating breakfast, Rita. Don’t you like poached eggs?”
“I had them when I was a child, when I was sick.”
“I didn’t know that. I just wanted to make you something to eat.”
“I’m sorry I cried.”
“You can cry anytime, Rita,” Mac said.
“I’m feeling… strange, Mac. What are we doing here? Where is here?”
“You slept a long time. Fourteen hours. You dreamed a lot and you were shaking and we watched you.”
“Who? Dr. Krueger?”
“No. Devereaux. Do you remember he took you from the sanitarium?”
She remembered the man then. She remembered him too much. He never came when she wanted him.
“I feel like I’ve lost my mind. Sometimes. I just forget things and then I remember other things. Do you understand?”
“Sure,” Mac said. “You’re in my house. I’m taking a few days off, sick leave. I can take care of you, Rita. He said you’d feel better the longer you were away from the drugs.”
“Who? Dr. Krueger?”
“Devereaux.”
“He never came to see me.”
“He came. He was nearly blown up in his hotel room the night he came. He was in a hospital and they wouldn’t let him call you because they thought it would upset you.”
She blinked. Her hair was dulled by illness and neglect. It fell in unkempt locks around her face. Her eyes were dull. Her cheeks were thin and the gauntness of her body killed Mac. Devereaux had been right. They were killing her to save her life.
“Eat your eggs, they’re good for you.”
“Yes,” she said. She began to eat the eggs and the toast. She felt sick and tired but better than she had grown accustomed to feeling. Even when she had cried just then, it wasn’t a bad thing. She had cried over something sweet in memory, not over a nightmare. There had been too many nightmares, and maybe now she was on the verge of getting rid of them.
Maybe she was going to be all right.
27
“Do you remember?”
She had brushed her hair. She had put on a dress that had belonged to Mac’s wife. She sat across from Devereaux and nodded. “I remember going into the parking lot of my building. I was thinking about you, Dev. I was always thinking about you.”
They were in the darkened parlor of the town house. Mac was at the grocery up the street. He wasn’t used to shopping for groceries; a single man living alone craves company when he dines and his refrigerator begins to resemble an impressionistic painting of single leftovers — a tomato gone bad, a stick of celery uneaten, a bottle of curdled milk.
“I did the wrong thing when I left you. I thought I brought you nothing but trouble and pain. So I left you and brought you nothing but trouble and pain. I won’t leave you ever again.”
She said, “I don’t believe you.”
It was what he feared the most.
“I’m leaving Section. There’s one last matter.”
“There’s always one last matter. That’s why I don’t believe you.”
She thought she looked pretty in the dress. She thought she should buy some lipstick.
“Henry McGee shot you. And tried to kill me. He called me in the hotel the night he blew up the room. He’s crazy and he’s still in the business of terror. Section wants him taken out as much as I do because he has a trail that goes back to Section. You don’t know this because I never told you, I was trying to get away from you.”