“Yes. That’s true.”
“LSD.”
“Yes.”
“It was a suicide—”
“No. At least, they don’t think so now. They’re a little confused. Let’s not talk on the phone,” Devereaux said. “Could we meet?”
“Ah.” She was smiling and her voice reflected it. “You want to ply me with breakfast, is that it?”
“Of course.” He grinned and she might have been pleased to know it.
“Smooth talker.”
“It’s a part of my careful line. I feed you again and again until you’re so fat you have to give in to me, there’s no one else.”
“You like fat women.”
“No. But I like you and I’m willing to sacrifice the aesthetics of the situation in order to have you.”
“All right. Meet me here. On the beach, in ten minutes.”
Like his hotel, her place faced the Gulf on the north end of the public beach. It was a low, ugly place full of Canadians and Germans on a budget and the room rates were a quarter of what Devereaux paid in his high-rise hotel. But then, he told her, he was writing it all off on expenses.
The sun was up and the day was clear and fine and the slight breeze from the Gulf was warm. He walked along the beach to her hotel a mile away.
In a little while, the beach tractor would be rumbling along the white sands, sifting and cleaning the beach of impurities left behind by the previous day’s sunbathers. Then the tractor would pull along a cartload of colorful sun umbrellas to be set up on the length of the beach as far as the fishing pier; these would be rented out by the day to the bathers. Devereaux remembered that once he had been assigned to Nice in the south of France, along the Côte d’Azur. That white beach full of sharp rocks had been a monument to class and caste distinctions. Parts of it were sandwiched off into exclusive clubs and only the rich could afford to sunbathe in comfort on air mattresses and deck chairs set up on the beach. But then, the French were such snobs about the privileges of the wealthy; this beach, Devereaux thought, cleaner and more comfortable, had a rough, jovial equality about it that seemed to make the idea of sunbathing so much easier.
Since that first planned meeting at the tiki bar, Devereaux had met Rita Macklin twice.
They had hit it off. If she had any lingering suspicions about him, they had been put away for the moment. She seemed more open to him.
Trust me. Believe me.
Devereaux had not known about the existence of a journal until his second meeting with Rita. That would have been worth the risk of contact, he would explain to Hanley. There was a journal and Tunney was putting it together under the supervision of the man from Rome.
And then the Vatican agent died.
Was killed.
So there had to be a secret from Leo Tunney worth having, after all; at least, worth a death and worth this gathering of spies in the middle of Florida.
And Rita Macklin was his unknowing agent.
She would get the story.
And Devereaux would take it from her. At endgame. It was all so clear to him. The only puzzle now was who killed Martin Foley? He was not concerned with justice or with murderers; he was a killer himself. He just could not understand the purpose of killing Foley. Rice could not have been behind it. But someone else in the Agency?
Or was it Denisov?
Devereaux had not told Hanley about the “proofs” that Denisov had given him. No agent in the field ever gives everything to Control, not at first. He refrained from mentioning the papers to Hanley as well as Denisov’s presence here in Florida. Aces to be played at a later date.
Devereaux crossed the beach under the concrete pilings of the fishing pier which stretched into the shallow Gulf waters. Leaning against two pilings were a pair of young drifters with thin, sallow faces; they sat on the dry sand and stared at him as sullenly as sea gulls.
“Hey, man,” one began.
The other picked up the ritual greeting. “Hey, man.”
Devereaux barely glanced at them as he passed.
“Hey, man, you got some money?”
“Sure. A lot.”
They watched him, their faces stupid, and they did not reply because they did not know what to say. In a moment, Devereaux was beyond them.
Minutes later, he saw Rita emerge from the beach door of her hotel. She looks so fresh, he thought, with something like regret.
In the endgame, she was merely to be used and discarded.
Her bright face broke into a smile as he approached her across the thicker sand away from the shoreline. She waved at him and he waved back, once, gravely, and thought again of how unsuited he was for this, unprepared in emotion, in the well of feeling she had uncovered in him, unprepared for the honing anew of sensitivities in his nature he had long ago blunted down in order to survive.
They were like two galaxies passing through each other, stars and planets millions of miles apart, passing in and out of each other’s lives without colliding. She would never understand his world, but he had once been part of hers.
He had killed men in order to survive and to complete missions. He knew from the first meeting he could never explain that to her, or justify it. Killing had stained him and the thought of killing and of being killed had marked him; his dreams had become dreams of blood and death, of fears like poisons seeping into him moment by moment, paralyzing emotions; his nightmares did not flee in the morning. He dragged around the memory of dead men like chains.
She, unconsciously, with a smile and the empathy of her words, had broken through all these layers of death in life and had silenced his bad dreams without even realizing they existed. She had touched him.
“You look tired,” she said with easy concern.
She did not. Her soft red hair blew away from her lively face, from the green, sparkling pools of her eyes, in the gentle wind.
“Hello.”
Then she kissed him.
She had not kissed him before. He had not moved to touch her, not for the sake of the mission — what had he not done for missions in the past? — nor for the sake of the inevitable betrayal that he saw coming, but because the fragility of their relationship had become too exquisite, like a small glass animal in an old woman’s collection, a beautiful thing that caught the light in a dark room but was never touched, only caressed with the eyes.
But her kiss broke nothing, Devereaux realized. It was as soft as morning light.
He held her for a moment, his arm around her thin waist, staring down into her face. “Why did you do that?”
She kissed him again, lightly. “Because you are so grave and formal. ‘Hello.’ A gentleman of the old school, a man for the ladies.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely. “The old school.”
She laughed and they held each other a moment longer than they had planned. And when they turned to walk away from the beach to the little row of shops and restaurants on the commercial strip, they were arm in arm.
They had found a little place that served breakfast without a jukebox or radio blaring. “I hate music in the morning,” she had said. The breakfast was not very good but they liked the silence and staring at each other.
She ate eggs and bacon, potatoes, and two orders of toast.
Once, she smiled at him as she raised the fork to her lips. “Just a farm girl.”
He sipped coffee and stared at the remains of a poached egg on his plate. He did not want to eat this morning; he never ate for pleasure, not since he was a child. He ate for fuel and for social reasons.
“You’re just healthy,” he said. “All that butter you ate as a girl in Wisconsin.”
“I must have clogged arteries by now.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“And you’re a coffee-and-cigarettes type. Very Bogart.”