“Yes,” Marie said. “No matter what. But if we off him right away, we’ll screw up the rest of the plan. The city will be crawling with coppers, SAS men, army people; they’ll stop everyone and especially foreigners. That’s you, love, and me. So let’s not do this thing right away.”
“So what do we do?”
“Tie him up first and decide later about it. We got things to do first,” Marie said. She was staring at Devereaux and smiling at him in a mean way. “Would you like a little bondage, mister? I remember you liked bondage in Berlin. You liked to tie me up and spank me; would you like it the other way around?”
“I’d never let a man do that to me,” Maureen said.
“Oh,” Marie said, coming out of a reverie of events that never happened. “It’s not so bad. It’s not the worst thing. When you get hungry enough, nothing is that bad anymore.”
Devereaux said nothing. This was all Marie’s game, her fantasy and her show. She had just saved his life but not promised not to take it in the long run. Was she just giving him a little time or was she giving herself time to decide something?
“Get down the hall, lamb,” Marie said. She had one pistol, the one taken from him, and Maureen had the other. The women were dressed alike, in black and without makeup, and their faces were cold and murderous. They might have been sisters.
They made him strip to his underwear. There was kitchen clothesline and Marie cut it into pieces just long enough to tie his wrists to the headboards and his feet to the footboard. And then she wrapped a scarf around his eyes and around his mouth.
Marie sat down on the bed next to him then. She ran her hand on his chest. She had seen the scars of the operations, still healing and angry.
“Let me alone with him, I want to play with him,” she said to Maureen.
The other woman left the room and closed the door.
Marie came very close to his ear. “Who hurt you, lamb? You’re all scars. They hurt you bad, didn’t they, whoever it was?”
She took the gag out of his mouth.
She waited.
“Henry,” he said.
“Why did you come here?”
“To kill him.”
“You didn’t kill him before. Why now?”
“Because I had no reason.”
“Why do you have a reason now, lamb?” And she stroked his naked chest with her hand in a soft, sensuous way.
“Where is he, Marie?”
“The other one knows. We don’t trust each other too much so we’re waiting on each other. On Henry’s game.”
“What’s the game, Marie?”
“What’s it always, love? It’s money.” And she kissed him, a long and lingering kiss, and he received it and returned it. And when she was finished, she pulled her head back and laughed in a low voice. “Do you want to seduce me, lamb? Make me untie you?”
“Untie me,” he said.
“I can’t do that, lamb. I owe Henry McGee too much to let you get him. The other one. She’s insane, you know, a patriot. An Irish patriot. She wants to get the money to save Ireland from England. If that isn’t insane, tell me what is.”
“What’s the money, Marie? Is it from Trevor? What’s it for, Marie?”
“To stop the terror, love,” she said, stroking his chest again. She traced the line of a scar. “Henry did all this to you? How did he do it?”
“A bomb,” Devereaux said.
“He killed those people in Trevor’s house. You knew that.”
“I guessed that.”
“But does everyone else know?”
“No.”
“Who sent you, Devereaux?”
“I sent myself,” Devereaux said.
“A pure matter of revenge. Well, don’t worry, love. I’ll take care of Henry McGee and he won’t get away and there won’t be any second thoughts from me. Henry is dead and that crazy girl out there is going to be dead and I’m going to live. The only problem is you, Devereaux. You did save my life and that was important to me. Maybe not then but it is now. Now that Henry wants to take it. He could have left my life, I didn’t expect anything out of the bastard but he could have left me a shred of life. So much the worse for him.”
“And what about me, Marie?”
“That’s the problem. If I save your life this time, you’ll turn on me when you get the chance. You’re just a policeman underneath everything and policemen are scum and they are the enemy all the time.”
“I won’t turn on you.”
She kissed him again, very hungry and wet, and he let himself be kissed. And when she pulled back, her eyes were wild. “You won’t huh? You promise, lamb? You truly promise? Will you take an oath on it? I’m sorry I don’t have a Bible with me but then, this isn’t a hotel room. If we were lying together in a hotel room all naked and sweating, I could go and get a Bible out of the dresser and have you make an oath while you’re screwing me.”
She laughed at him then. He couldn’t see her but he felt her weight shift on the bed and then she was off the mattress and she wasn’t touching him anymore. “I’ll think about it, lamb, while I’m doing what has to be done. I’ll think about killing you or not killing you. I really will. But I think I know what I’m going to do and I want to apologize for it now because you did save my life. But that’s the way it is, love. That’s just the way of the rotten fucking world.”
44
“Good morning, Mr. Armstrong. Cassidy here.” The absolutely terrible British accent was back with the familiar voice and Armstrong was waiting for it this time. It was Thursday morning. He had assembled four of the five million dollars and Dwyer was in Zurich at this very moment making the final withdrawal. But Trevor felt more in control than he had before.
“Good morning, Henry McGee. You can drop the accent.”
A long silence followed and Trevor smiled. He was alone in his big office on the sixth floor off Oxford Circus.
“Who gave you the name?”
“A man named Devereaux. Do you know a man by that name?”
Another long silence.
When Henry spoke again, his voice was careful. “It can’t be,” Henry said.
“He said that was his name. He was from some section with the letter of the alphabet as a name. I don’t believe in that but I do believe you’re a wanted criminal. A known felon, as it were. At least, he showed me your arrest photograph.”
“Devereaux is dead.”
“He didn’t look well but I can assure you he wasn’t dead.”
“Describe him.”
He did.
Yet another pause. This time Trevor broke the silence: “Are you there, Henry? Hope I haven’t given you too much of a shock.”
“Nothing shocks me,” Henry said in his old voice. “So Devereaux’s here. That don’t change nothing. You got the money?”
“I got the money. You got the other thing?”
“Matthew will be on the plane at two P.M. I thought we might watch him from the departure lounge.”
“That’s agreeable. How are you going to do it?”
“The bomb? That was simple. He gets a suitcase and he gets his money in it. He goes into the little boys’ room and opens the case. That arms the bomb. He takes out the money and closes the case. That triggers the bomb on a six-hour fuse. He checks in his baggage, goes to the departure gate, gets aboard. The plane takes off. The trigger and timer are in the brass locks on top of the case and the explosive is in the lining. Fuckin’ brilliant, don’t you think?”
“And he suspects nothing?”
“He suspects everything, so what? He’ll see his cut in front and cream.”
“How much is it?”
“A hundred grand total, counting the first payout.”
“My God, you’re going to blow up a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Pounds. And yes, I am. You gotta spend money to make money. It’s the way to get Matthew on the plane. And by the time it goes off, you’ll be back at the office and I’ll be someplace where you can’t get second thoughts about me.”