“Henry is setting up an act of terror for profit. He told you that, didn’t he? He always tells a little bit of the truth to us girls, just to keep us interested.”
Maureen didn’t notice she had lowered the knife. She opened the bottle of vodka and sniffed it.
“What is it?”
“Oh, I’m no chemist, I’m just a little rat girl who lives by her wits and Henry forgot that, forgot that I could steal for him and even kill for him if I had to but I wasn’t a fool. Henry forgot I wasn’t a fool.”
“So what is it?”
“I think it’s a kind of gas. A poison gas. That’s what killed those people in Trevor Armstrong’s house in Mayfair.”
“Jesus,” the Irish girl said. The knife was at her side. She understood the photographs of Matthew O’Day.
“Yes, Jesus and all the saints. I couldn’t understand why we needed Irish terrorists to work for us but I can see it now. Matthew O’Day is the setup.”
The fall guy. It was exactly what Henry had said.
“And you, love, you’re the other lamb for the slaughter.”
“But you were—”
“No, lamb. We both were. Do you see this?”
“What is it?”
“A radio receiver. And this over here is something that looks like caviar but it smells like an explosive, a Plastique of some kind. So the radio receiver gets a signal — did Henry drive you here?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t even bother to come in and see his old German girl and give her a peck or a quick fuck. I suppose you’d taken care of that for him. He likes it very rough sometimes and you’ll have to get used to that.”
“I’m not a whore,” Maureen said.
“You fuck for money. What do you think that’s called? Or do you have other names for it in Ireland?”
“I would have killed you—”
“And we’d both be dead anyway, love, if the radio receiver was still sitting in that Plastique. The Plastique would have somehow turned this liquid into gas and we’d be terminally dead. And when they found us, there’d be me and you and there’d be a link to Matthew O’Day and no link at all to Henry McGee. Did you really think he was going to take you off with him when he shakes down Trevor Armstrong?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I thought he’d just leave me, though, not kill me. I should have thought it would have been enough for him.” Now her voice was bitter and the rasp had returned to her words. The German gutturals cluttered the edges of the English words and made them even harder.
“He’s made me angry, lamb. He thinks I’m so stupid.”
“I was going to kill him,” Maureen said. There was no threat from the knife anymore. Her eyes were empty. “He thought I was a whore but I was going to kill him. He convinced me Matthew betrayed us and I thought Matthew was in it from the first with Henry and it makes me mad to think I was so fookin’ stupid. I was gonna kill him for the money. Take the money back to Ireland and use it the right way. Rebuild the network.”
“You’re a patriot, lamb. That’s the most innocent thing of all.”
“I was gonna even murder you for the money. And all the time he was humpin’ me, he was figurin’ I’d be dead in a couple of hours.”
“It probably made it more exciting for him,” Marie said. “Well—”
The telephone rang. The brisk burr of sound stilled both of them. Marie stared at Maureen. “It’s Henry. He wants to make sure it worked.”
“The bastard, I’ll—”
Marie held up her hand.
She took a step toward Maureen. She smiled again, the grin made into a leer by the harsh kitchen lights.
“We’ll,” is all she said.
38
Hanley closed the door of conference room A. It was totally secure and could not even be bugged because of the silent electronic static emitted along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The room was painted white and had no windows. There was a single table of gunmetal gray with a Formica top and four metal chairs. Rita Macklin sat on one of the chairs with her hands folded on the table. She stared at Hanley and her eyes had pain in them.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Hanley began.
“Cut the lies, cut all the crap.” The voice was stronger than the face would lead you to expect. She was frail and sick but not in her voice. “He called me from London and you know what this is about. He blanked out on me. It’s the aftereffects of the drugs. He’s not well and you sent him on a fucking mission. You are bastards, I’ve known what bastards you are, but not this time. Not when I almost have him back. Not now. I want you to find him and bring him back to me.”
“Miss Macklin, I can assure you—”
She shook her head. “I can assure you, you bastard, that I’ll hang you and hang goddamned Section this time. You can’t booga-booga me and you can’t get me.”
“Miss Macklin.” Hanley sat down across from her. His eyes were mild and his words were soft. “You’ve been under a strain. An understandable strain. You suffered a trauma. You were under neurological treatment as the result of your trauma.”
“And I’m crazy, right?” she said.
“That’s an unfortunate psychological term. Neurological—”
“Cut the crap, I told you that before.” Her voice fell to a monotone. “I want you to go after him and get him. If he goes against Henry McGee and forgets where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll be dead. If he’s dead, you’re dead. D-E-A-D. If he’s dead, I go after you and R Section and your whole spook department, I go after it one by one and I tell everything I ever knew. I tell about the dirty jobs you gave him and the dirty jobs he did.”
“You would implicate yourself… in what you call ‘dirty jobs.’ You would put yourself beyond the pale of the law.”
She said, “You don’t seem to get it, Mr. Hanley. I don’t care once he’s dead. If he’s dead, I’m dead, and then you can’t hurt me. Not with threats or the law or whatever you call it. He’s gone to sanction someone and that’s illegal. I want you to act on this. Right now.”
It was four in the afternoon, four hours after Devereaux made his frightening call to Rita Macklin from Heathrow Airport. It had taken that long to get to Hanley, but only a moment for her to decide what she would do. She had told Mac some of the things she was going to do, in case they stopped her or arrested her or locked her up in a sanitarium. Mac said he would do anything and she believed him.
“Oh, God, Mac,” she had said. “I’m so afraid he’s going to die this time. I really am.”
And Mac had seen how much she had loved him. It had made him sad but he thought he could live with that.
Now Hanley drummed his fingertips on the Formica top of the table. This damned woman and her damned threats. She couldn’t topple Section — Agee couldn’t topple Langley when he spilled his guts — but she could hurt Section because she had been so close to things Devereaux had been involved in. This damned woman was a security problem from the beginning but Hanley had wished it away because there was no way Devereaux would have acquiesced to ending the relationship. And Devereaux had been a continuing problem.
“This is his last assignment,” Hanley said.
“I’ve heard that before.”
“We had begun the process of separation,” Hanley said in the same mild voice. “A disability. He had been a problem for us for a while and this… trauma he suffered provided us with reasonable medical grounds to separate him from active duty. He knew this.”
“He never told me,” she said.
“He knew this. He also told us he wanted to get to Henry McGee. Henry McGee has been a continuing problem for us as well and his… mere existence threatens Section. I had certain information about the whereabouts of Henry McGee—”