“Why did he kill himself?”
“Stupidity,” Devereaux said. The gray eyes did not turn to her. “It was too much for him; or he wanted to give you a chance; or both. To keep them off you. He knew he was their link to you, and he tried to break it. Originally, he destroyed your employment file to keep them away from you. That gave you two extra days. And then it was too much for him, all of it. He told them where he rightly suspected you were, where he himself had told you to go. He thought they were on to you, after you in any case; that they would find you. And he thought that he had killed you.”
“How do you know all this? How can you?”
“He explained it all in a letter. He must have mailed it to you in the morning, and then killed himself last night. The letter was delivered to your apartment this morning. It lays out quite a lot that didn’t make sense before. Kaiser was a good enough reporter.”
“You took my mail.”
“It’s the least I’ve done.”
“You’ve got the letter.”
“Yes. It’s one of the documents I need. You have the other.”
“I don’t have the journal.”
“That’s a lie, Rita. The time for lies is over. You were going to the newspaper office. They presumed you had the journal so they were willing to jump you then.”
“I’ve been here for nearly a day and a half.”
“Yes. You were staying on Smith Street, but they still had a little time when they found it out. They didn’t want to involve your girlfriend, nor the people who lived downstairs, if they could help it. By the time you called the paper, they were tapped into your line. They were ready for you, Rita. They knew you had the book.”
Rita stared at him.
It began to snow. The large flakes drove blindly against the windows, lashing them like small white meteors blowing through space.
Devereaux turned on the wipers; through the streaky windshield more lights came up, distorted by the patches of wet and dry glass.
“You’re the government,” Rita said. “I don’t understand this. Why are they after you? Why aren’t you working with them?”
“Perhaps I am.”
“Then why did you hit that man?”
“Because, Rita, it’s gone awry this time, all of it.”
“I don’t understand you—”
“What was in the journal?” Devereaux said.
“Fuck you.”
“Yes, Rita. That was well enough when it was still a game. Now the game is over; it’s time to quit.”
“You bastard. I don’t trust you.”
“The choices are limited; in fact, they don’t exist anymore. You trust me and I trust you, that’s the way it has to be now.” His voice was hard. “They’re sealing off the state above Milwaukee and they know there’s just a limited number of ways out of this area. You couldn’t have gone to ground in Chicago or Cleveland, could you? You had to pick a dead end.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Rita said with something like a defensive tone in her voice. “I couldn’t go back to Washington, I didn’t have an outlet there. I didn’t trust Kaiser anymore.”
As soon as she said the words, they tore at her. She thought of Kaiser and felt afraid. She hugged the bag to her chest.
“Tell me again. I still don’t believe it. Why did Kaiser… kill himself? What was all this about his son?”
Devereaux kept his eyes on the road, his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. He did not speak at first but then his voice was calm. “He had a son who worked for InterComBank in New York. He has a wife and two daughters. He had a lot going for him but he wanted a little more. So he became a thief. When the bank discovered the embezzlements, they decided not to prosecute. Not at first. They decided to use the matter to blackmail Kaiser. Nothing spectacular, but when you’re running a big multinational corporation, every little bit helps. They only used Kaiser twice. Nothing important. The first time was when he suppressed a report from one of his steady stringers in Asia. That was four months ago. The stringer had an accurate little report about Soviet advisers going into Vietnamese-held Cambodia. Nothing earthshaking but apparently it was important to the bank. The stringer’s name, by the way, was Dang Lau Ky. He was a missionary’s son who worked out of Bangkok. He had good sources.”
“I know who you mean. He did work for us, I used to edit his copy. He was terrible at English. He also did work for one of the networks.”
“Yes. Dang Lau Ky.” The voice was hard again. “He was killed, you know. Three months ago, right after he sent that report to Kaiser. The one that Kaiser suppressed. Maybe it wasn’t enough for Kaiser to keep the report buried; maybe they had to make certain that his stringer didn’t tell any more stories. Or maybe there was no connection between the two events.”
“Who would have done something like that to Kaiser?”
“Not a monster. It was strictly business. The chairman of the bank is Henry L. Fraser, you must have heard of him. Friend of the wealthy but with a social conscience. He organized the big relief drive last year for the Cambodian refugees and the Vietnamese boat people. He’s a big man with a big heart.” Each word was flat, without inflection, but in sum all the words were laced with bitterness. “He has friends in high places, Henry L. Fraser. He went to college with the man who is National Security Adviser. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“Oh, Kaiser,” she said suddenly, letting grief leap out of her. “Kaiser.” She began to cry and then stopped abruptly. She pushed the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Kaiser,” she said, her voice turning dull. “I didn’t trust him. I thought he had betrayed me.”
Devereaux said, “He did betray you. Everyone is guilty in the end; we all betray each other. Sometimes, we don’t live to regret the betrayals.”
“You betrayed me,” she said. “I told you things… my secrets. And you were… one of them.”
“You’re getting too old to see the world in such black-and-white terms, Rita.” His voice was now gentle and distant.
“Henry Fraser.”
Devereaux did not speak.
Rita said, “Henry Fraser. He was behind all this. He killed Kaiser as much as anyone. And all those deaths in Florida. How can a man live with that kind of conscience?”
“Men do it all the time.”
“But he killed those men,” she said.
He realized she would not understand; he kept his eyes on the road unwinding in front of them.
“And you saved me.”
“You’re not home free yet.”
“But you helped me get out—”
“They were going to kill you, Rita.”
“You could have just taken the journal.”
Yes, he thought.
It was perfectly true and they both considered it in silence. At an unmarked intersection Devereaux turned to the left, off the main highway, and headed east. This road was not as good. The car bucked and lurched over the potholes. Snow pelted the windshield in a temperamental burst of fury.
Over a rise and then, below, they saw a string of lights at the edge of the great frigid body of Lake Michigan.
“What’s in the journal?”
“What you wanted to know,” she said dully, the fight gone from her. She realized that she would have been killed had he not been there; he had betrayed her, but he had saved her life.
“Yes. That was the only thing that worried me,” he said.
“What?”