“He shot her.”
“Is she dead?”
“No.”
“Then you got a girl, lamb? Could you spare a little of yourself for me?”
“I want Henry McGee.”
“What do you want to do with him?”
“I think I know now,” Devereaux said. He still held the empty pistol and he was staring straight into her mad eyes.
And it was enough.
She took a step back and slowly folded her arms across her chest and still held the pistol but not pointed at him. She leaned against the wall and cocked her head and they stared at each other for a long moment.
Then she said, smiling, “Tell me.”
46
Why was this so easy?
It was the only question that still bothered Henry McGee as he took the elevator to the sixth floor of the Hilton Hotel in west central London.
In his right pocket was a pistol but he didn’t expect to use the Walther. In the left jacket pocket were the makings of a bomb.
Second time lucky, he thought. And he smiled at the thought while facing a drab American man with travel-tired eyes and bags in his hands and under his eyes. The man did not understand the smile and did not respond to it; his mind had been dulled by days of business and incessant travel to the point where every hotel was the same, every airport was really one big airport, and the taste of food was even gone.
Henry would never feel such tiredness. He had traveled everywhere in the world, eaten every food, slept with every kind of woman, pretended to be on one side and then the other, and the zest of living every moment was enough to keep his eyes shining, even during the deliberate grind of the nearly two years he had been forced to spend in prison. In prison. Because of that bastard, Devereaux. That was why he came back and would come back and back and back until Devereaux was meat for dogs.
Devereaux had registered here under the name of Dever. That was easy enough to get out of the store of memory in London Station. The trouble with R Section was that it was so fucking penetrable, especially by a former agent turned traitor named Henry McGee.
The Hilton would be right. It was the kind of place — big, anonymous, American to the core — where Section would put its agents on missions abroad. The mission was fairly obvious. To get Henry McGee. A wet contract of the sort that the United States was never supposed to put out.
Henry smiled at that thought, too. He stepped off the elevator at the sixth floor, leaving the tired salesman still in the cage. He went down the hallway to the door of the room.
It was almost too easy, he thought. So he also thought it might be some kind of a setup.
He knocked at the door and waited. He had not expected an answer.
A long moment passed. He used a thin piece of steel shaped like a credit card with various edges cut out of it to pull open the lock. The card was his own invention, something he had learned to make in the prison machine shop. It opened bottles, cans, and doors. Clever old Henry; he’d have to get a patent for it someday if he ever needed money again. Call it the Real McGee, tell people don’t leave home without it.
The room contained a suitcase on a sideboard. The case was open. Henry went through it with considerable efficiency. The second case was on a writing desk. He recognized it for what it was; hadn’t he used such cases when he was in Section, let alone when he was traveling for KGB? It was the case of a killer on a mission that was deniable from the beginning.
“Fuckin’ R Section,” he muttered. He touched the extra rounds banded in automatic clips. They had exploding tips that blew apart the hollow aluminum on contact and shredded into the body of the person contacted. Tips for murder most extreme, no matter where they hit you.
Henry realized he was working himself up. He didn’t care. He enjoyed it the way he enjoyed everything, even killing Maureen and Marie with that gas device in the flat.
He took the makings of a bomb out of his left pocket. The bomb was simple Plastique. You could form it in your hand like clay. It was malleable and patient.
The second part of the bomb was the wire that led to the triggering device. The triggering device was actually plastic and aluminum. Once the parts were together, the device was armed. When Devereaux opened the door of the room, he would pull the trigger on his own bomb and send himself to his own death. It had not worked in that room in Washington but Henry McGee didn’t have time to fool around with Devereaux, time to stalk him and shoot him down. This was going to have to do. It would do. Even a cat runs out of lives; Devereaux wouldn’t survive again.
And the beauty part was that Devereaux wouldn’t expect it again. Not twice. Not from the same man.
Henry McGee began to hum as he worked in the half darkness of the anonymous hotel room. Great London was mute beyond the double-paned windows and the throb of traffic stilled.
Arming the trigger was like operating a money clip that has a spring to hold the money against the metal side. Once the spring is pushed down, the tension holds the paper currency tight; and once the spring is released, the money slips away.
He was humming “Amazing Grace,” he realized. What dim time in memory of childhood had the song been retrieved from? The Methodist church in the village in the bleak Alaskan tundra where he was raised?
There. It was finished. He got up from the chair and went to the door.
He paused at the knock.
Who the hell was knocking at the door? Devereaux wasn’t knocking at the door of his own room. The bed was made, it was late morning, it couldn’t be the maid again.
He listened to the knock again. And then he heard the voice.
“Dev.”
Jesus Christ. He smiled. A fucking girl. Devereaux was nearly as much of a cocksman as he was.
He went to the door and opened it.
It was her.
The girl in the parking lot. The girlfriend. Rita Macklin. They both fucking didn’t die. He had killed them both and they both didn’t die.
She just stared at him because she had never seen him before but she knew — knew right to her heart — exactly who he was. She was before the beast and it took her breath away for a moment and then she realized the beast could move.
He reached for her arm just as she had decided to turn and run down the hall.
He pulled her into the room and slammed the door with his foot. She started to scream and he slapped her very hard across the face and the blow stunned her to silence. He pushed her down on the bed and knelt over her and grinned down at her.
“You got more than one life, too, huh, honey? You know I was the one shot you. You went down easy enough, you must be a late kill, huh? You and Devereaux. What’s Devereaux’s girlfriend look like under those clothes?”
He had knelt on her arms and all she could do was shake her head back and forth in struggle. Henry grinned at her helplessness and then he thought about it. He really didn’t know how much time he had and the girl was a complication.
Damn, he nearly said aloud.
Slowly, he crawled off her. He could use the sheets, he decided, and pulled a knife out of his pocket. She gasped and thought it was meant for her.
Henry smiled. “No, honey, I ain’t got time for folderol today. After tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of time and money but you won’t be around after tomorrow. So why don’t we just end it here, what do you say?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He grabbed the top sheet and started a tear with the knife. She was dressed for travel — jeans, sweater, flat jogging shoes — and she started to get up from the bed.