“When do you want me to kill you?” Devereaux said.
“There. I see I scored hard, didn’t I? Well, Dev, it’s this way. I shot your girlie and I’m comin’ after you now, but it won’t be a shootout at high noon, I can tell you. I been getting smarts up about how to do things and there’s money in it. So when I come to kill you, you’ll be so surprised there for about one second before you die. It’ll be like that. Meantime, just think about your piece of tail in the hospital, all fucked up by your old friend, Henry McGee.”
The connection was broken.
The beast roared out of his skin and filled the room with its growls and rumbles.
Devereaux did not make a sound. His eyes glittered, even in the dim light. He took the 9-millimeter Beretta out of the bag and checked the clip and put the pistol into his belt holster.
He picked up the telephone and called the operator of the hotel.
“That call was placed from the lobby, sir,” the operator said.
That close. He took the automatic out of his belt and unsnapped the safety.
He walked out of the room to the elevator bank and waited, pacing up and down before the row of closed doors.
Then the middle door opened and he entered the cage and pressed “L.”
The beast scarcely breathed. His breath was very deep, very slow, yet as sensitive as the adrenaline that alerted every muscle and nerve.
He stepped into the lobby and it was empty. The bar off fee lobby was closed. The restaurant was locked and in darkness.
He went to the front desk.
Yes, they had noticed a man calling his room. A dark-haired man, they thought. No, he had gone out the Connecticut Avenue entrance a few moments ago.
The streets were nearly empty. A beggar slept in the doorway of an Italian restaurant across the way. Devereaux slowly panned the street and then walked to the corner. The side streets were in twilight, orange and leafy from trees and street lamps.
He saw a man on the next corner and started for him. Ten feet away, he said, “Henry.”
The man turned. He was the same height and build but that was all. “Whaddaya want?”
Devereaux did not reply. He turned down the block and completed the circle back to his hotel, entering from the side street.
There was only one clerk on duty in the lobby, not the same as a moment before.
“Has anyone come in just now?”
The clerk looked up from the Post. “Are you a guest, sir?”
“Yes. I’m a guest.” He showed the key with the large square top embossed with his room number. “Did anyone come in, in just the last few minutes?”
“Another guest,” the clerk said. He was trying to be annoyed, as though he had other things to do.
“What did he look like?”
“I didn’t take a look.”
“Did he have a key?”
“He had a key,” the clerk said.
“A dark-haired man,” Devereaux said.
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
Devereaux went to the three-door elevator bank and pressed a button. A cage opened for him a moment later. Once the door closed, he pulled the pistol again and cocked it. He held the pistol out from his body and turned slightly, to present a smaller profile.
The door opened at the floor above his floor without a sound. He got off and waited for the door to close behind him. An exit sign glowed feebly at the far end. The hotel was shaped like a V with the point facing Dupont Circle. His room was on the southwest side of the V.
Devereaux went to the stairs and opened the stairwell door. He moved to the concrete stairs and then removed his shoes. He stepped in stocking feet down the stairs, the pistol scanning the next flight at the landing a moment before he peered over.
He held his breath. Henry McGee was very good, and Devereaux had drunk vodka and thoughts of Rita Macklin were pushing clear judgment into emotion. He knew all this and he was very cautious.
He opened the stairwell door at his own floor and waited and then stepped into the corridor. It was empty.
He edged along the gray wall to the point of the V and looked around. Silence. Corridors with littered trays set before some doors. Not a sound but the hum of the building that trembled with the suppressed noise of fans from the cooling and heating plant.
He held the pistol in his right hand and the key in his left.
He unlocked his door and pushed it with his foot. The room was as he had left it, in darkness. He fumbled for the switch on the wall by the door.
He turned the lights on.
The force of the explosion drove him headfirst across the hall into the door opposite. He hit the door with his head and left shoulder and then the rest of his back. The explosion blew the door of his room from its hinges and splattered shards of wood into the man momentarily impaled on the door opposite. The shards of wood tattooed his face and body, driving through his clothes into his flesh.
For a second, Devereaux knew exactly what had happened and how Henry had killed him.
6
Hanley was more tired than he could remember. He sat in the red leather chair in Mrs. Neumann’s corner office in the Department of Agriculture Building. The offices of R Section were located on a floor of the neoclassical building that — officially — did not exist. Mrs. Neumann, director of R Section, stood at the window and looked down the length of Fourteenth Street. Traffic from the bridge was piled against the gridlock of central Washington. It was 8:14 in the morning and the report from the District of Columbia police as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation summary was on her desk. Hanley had brought the two agencies in and lied to them about the nature of Devereaux’s employment. It was enough to tell them that Devereaux was important enough for them to find his attackers.
“Do you have any word?” she rasped. Her voice was always harsh and direct.
Hanley had been called by Tomkins of the FBI at three thirty A.M. The police had found the gray, unmarked credit card in Devereaux’s clothes and notified the FBI. The FBI knew the card was the ID of agents of R Section.
“Nothing. His skull was fractured, his left arm and shoulder were hurt but no broken bones, he suffered extensive lacerations.” Hanley shook his head. “First Miss Macklin and now him. In less than twenty-four hours. This is beyond belief.”
Mrs. Neumann said nothing. She now contemplated the Mall and the 505-foot obelisk on the Ellipse that is Washington’s memorial.
“Did you explain the connection to them?”
“Miss Macklin and Devereaux? Of course not.”
“But we know there must be a connection.”
“No matter what, this matter has to be contained. My God, they’d love it on the Hill to know that one of our classified men was dating a journalist.”
“But not for some time,” Mrs. Neumann said. She probed directly. “And why not for some time? And why would they be killed now? Some delayed reaction from Moscow Center?”
“I don’t know,” Hanley said. She could ask a hundred questions and he wouldn’t know. He shook his head again. It was not a characteristic gesture.
“Can’t we do anything?”
“The Bureau has charter in the United States. We do not.”
“Damnit, Hanley, we’ve broken rules before.”
That was so unlike her that Hanley registered surprise a moment before frowning. “He wasn’t assigned, nothing was pending. Nothing involved Miss Macklin. Maybe it was coincidence.”
Mrs. Neumann didn’t comment.
“Even if he survives, he’s finished. They as much as said that when I first called emergency. They’re not even certain they can save his right leg, and if they can, they’re not certain that he won’t be paralyzed. He broke his neck, Mrs. Neumann.”