Her face paled. “I will go to him, perhaps he is not dead, I can resuscitate.”
“No. It’s not that. He was killed. Murdered. No, sit down.”
“But I must go to him.”
“You must not. Did anyone else come into the sauna this afternoon besides me?”
“No. Except Mr. Sims.”
“Yes. That’s who’s dead. Anyone else?”
“No. I was in the laundry room for a while.”
“It’s all right,” he said. Again, the flat cold words carried an edge of gentleness to them. She was not involved in this, he thought. He would not involve her to get out of it.
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“My duty is to go back.”
“No. Don’t do that. You’re pregnant; think about that. Just call the police.”
“I will—” She reached for the phone but Devereaux put his hand over it. He needed time but he did not want to leave the woman alone in case she did investigate and saw the body.
“We’ll go upstairs. I want you to call from the lobby. We can lock the door on the way up, can’t we?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone down here.”
She followed him reluctantly up the stairs and they locked the door at the lobby level. “Use the phone at the front desk.”
“Where are you going, Mr. Dixon?”
“I don’t feel well. I have to go to my room for a moment. I’ll be down.”
He left her as she was crossing the lobby. Just a little time, time to call, time to explain to the front desk what happened, time to summon the police, time to unlock the door and go back to the basement sauna. Just a few minutes of extra time, but enough to go to Room 612.
Devereaux pushed open the door. There was a small piece of Scotch tape at the bottom of the door which broke as he pushed it open. A simple device to see if your room had been disturbed.
The radio was on, playing American rock songs.
Devereaux looked around the room. The window drapes were open on the frozen building site across the street that was Devereaux’s own view of Helsinki and where it was said the body of a dead woman had been found two nights before.
Devereaux opened the clothes bureau. There was a leather bag on the top shelf. Devereaux opened the bag and felt along the seam inside the bag until he came to what he wanted. He opened the seam with his finger and pulled out the wafer-thin wallet. Inside were Bank of England notes in large denominations totaling two thousand pounds. He put the notes in his pocket. He opened the wallet. A face was on a card.
Anthony Sims. Trade representative. British-Suomi Exports Ltd.
He put the card in his pocket.
Another card was below the first. It was shaped like a credit card but it lacked printing or raised numbers. The card was gray. Devereaux knew what it was used for. When it was slipped into a machine like a transfer punch, the card came to life and put a message on a screen. The message was the identity of the British Intelligence agent.
Auntie. An agent from British Intelligence had tried to make contact with him. Why? Why had he been killed less than twenty-four hours later? And why would suspicion fall on Devereaux?
And silence. Why was there no response from Hanley? A defector named Tartakoff wanted to bring out a man who was supposed to be dead named Tomas Crohan. And now the British were probing the matter as well.
Devereaux suddenly felt intensely foolish, as though he had become so careless that he had allowed the numbing routine of the past weeks of inaction to make him an easy setup for a trap. He had been intended to find the body and he had been so careless that he had been followed. Not only by Sims but by the man who had killed Sims.
Why didn’t Tartakoff make contact? Why didn’t Hanley answer?
Devereaux turned and left the room quietly. He walked along the deserted corridor to the soft-drink machine in the middle of the hall. He fished out the two identification cards he had taken from the body as well as the wallet full of British pounds. He put the cards in the wallet and then tipped back the edge of the heavy soda machine and slipped the wallet beneath it. He took the stairs next to the ice machine to the fifth floor and his own room. Down another empty corridor. The hotel was always silent, always seemed empty, even though it was usually full of business travelers. The silences were intentionaclass="underline" The hotel was built with heavy simplicity, heavy walls and doors and thick-paned windows.
He turned the key in the lock of his own door and opened it.
There was someone in the room.
For two weeks, he had not even carried his pistol with him. The routine had numbed him as surely as the weather.
The room was dark but there was someone in the faint shadows cast by the perpetual light on the clock at the bedside.
Would it be a knife?
He felt awkward in that moment, painted in outline against the lights of the corridor. He saw in his mind’s eye the disemboweled body of Sims in the sauna.
“Mr. Dixon?”
“Who are you?”
“Or should I call you Mr. Devereaux?”
“Who are you?”
“I will turn on the lights.”
Devereaux said nothing. The lights went on. Devereaux blinked. In front of him was a short man with a bull’s neck and thick fingers extending from a thick palm. He wore a dark coat that might have been blue. His face was flat and his eyes were small like unburned coals.
He held a pistol in his hand. It was a Walther PPK automatic and he held it at the level of Devereaux’s belly.
“What is your real name then? Dixon? Or Devereaux?”
“Who are you?”
“You have to tell me eventually, you know. That’s the rules of the game.” His English was not without accent but it had an ironic note to it that implied a deep understanding of the language.
Devereaux waited.
“My name is Kulak,” the thick man said. “I am the police, Mr. Dixon or Mr. Devereaux. Do you see?”
And slowly, without a word, Devereaux came across the room until he stood near the other man. They stared at each other but the policeman named Kulak did not lower the barrel of the deadly black pistol held loosely in his massive hand.
9
Wickham awoke, felt the beard on his face as though feeling the fur of an unexpected animal. How long had it been? But there was no time in this place. There were no windows, no passage of day to night, no passage of weeks. He slept, he awoke, he slept in no order at all. He felt his life ebbing away from him in his sleeps. He was dying because he slept; and so he struggled to stay awake but the utter boredom drove him to sleep again as a refuge. Perhaps that would be death, he thought suddenly; a sleep accepted at the end and even yearned for.
The single door in the windowless, shallow room opened and Wickham turned but he could not rise because he was handcuffed by one wrist to the edge of the steel cot.
The man was Victor. He knew their names. They never actually told him names but he had to give them names so that he could distinguish between them. Victor was the harsh one. Victor had beaten him the first night. Yes. It had been night, it was dark, Rogers stopped the automobile, Rogers got out.…
“Wickham. Get up and come over to the table.”
Victor uncuffed his wrist. He felt the blood tingle back into the hand. He went to the table and sat down. He was naked except for the undershorts he had been permitted to keep but not to change.
He looked at Victor but did not speak.
Victor put the photographs in his briefcase on the table. He stared at Wickham. Wickham looked at the photographs.
Vile things.
In the first, Wickham was in a lavatory stall. He was performing fellatio on a young man. The identity of the young man could not be seen but it was clearly a lavatory and the young man was seated on a toilet. The picture was not clear but Wickham could make out the figures well enough.