“I don’t think so, no—”
And the telephone rang. The rings were short and sharp. Kulak picked up the receiver.
He listened for a long moment and his eyes narrowed and the veins in his neck began to bulge.
“Yes,” he said in Finnish. “Yes.” And then he spoke a string of words so quickly that Devereaux could not follow them. And then he slammed down the receiver.
Kulak stared at him again. And spoke: “This is only a game, isn’t it, Mr. Devereaux.”
“What do you mean?”
“No.” Kulak rose. He took Devereaux’s pistol out of his pocket and placed it on the desk. He seemed suddenly weary, suddenly sad. “A young women is killed in the most vicious way. Cut open. And a man named Sims is cut the same way. Murder, Mr. Devereaux. Real deaths. Do you know that those two people were alive and now they are dead. They walked, they breathed, they talked, they laughed…” He paused and stared at Devereaux. “And you sit there and you know about death, don’t you? I have seen your eyes. You have killed people, Mr. Devereaux, I can smell death all around you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. I can do nothing. You know that. You know that I must obey my orders.”
For the first time, Devereaux was startled. He had expected everything but this. “What do you mean?”
“When I am told to leave someone alone, I obey. I am a policeman and I have a good job and I do the best that I can. And sometimes, someone will tell me: Do nothing. And so I will obey.”
“I don’t understand this.”
“No, Mr. Devereaux. Neither do I.” Kulak walked to the door and opened it and turned back to Devereaux who sat perfectly still at the window weeping with streaks of snow. “But you, Mr. Devereaux, you are playing a game and I tell you that I am not.”
“But who told you?”
“It doesn’t matter. It is not for me to tell you.”
13
Wickham had wandered into the house three hours before like a wounded animal. Except he had no wounds that were visible.
He had been gone nine days. Maggie had met him at the door of the estate house. She was a small woman, chiseled like a marble statue, with sharp ears and sharp eyes that reminded Wickham of a fox. She was quite beautiful in a small and distant way. The first thing he had asked her was where Rogers was.
Maggie had been too shocked to answer. Wickham smelled like a beast and his eyes looked hunted; he had lost weight in nine days and his cheeks were hollow. His hair, normally so neat that one never gave it a thought, was wild and shaggy and he had a thin coating of beard on his face.
“Rogers is gone,” Maggie had managed to say as Wickham staggered into the two-story entry hall. She shrank from him as though he were a stranger.
“Of course he’s gone, he’d have to be gone.”
“I dismissed him,” she said.
“You what?”
“The police. Your disappearance. I thought it was terrible, I couldn’t stand to see—”
Wickham laughed and went into the drawing room and found the brandy on the cart and poured it into a glass. He took a strong drink.
Outside, sleet came down in driving sheets. It coated the brick walls of the estate house like silver leeches.
He seemed mad to her.
“Where have you been?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how long I’ve been gone—”
“Nine days.”
“My God,” he said to himself and poured another glass of Hennessy and drank it too quickly. Color returned to his frozen face. His clothes were sopping wet; they dripped onto the yellow Oriental carpet in the drawing room.
“Get out of those clothes, get into something warm—”
“Yes. I must call George—”
“George? Do we know a George?”
“Maggie, for God’s sake, get out of here a moment and let me call—”
She had retreated facing him, had nearly stumbled at the door, and closed it. He made a telephone call but she could hear very little. Then he opened the door to the drawing room and began to tear at his clothing. “Warm,” he mumbled. “Bath. Clean clothing. For George…”
Three hours later, a black Rover prowled up the gravel drive from the road to the front door of the Georgian estate house and two men climbed out of the rear seat. A third man stayed inside the car, behind the driver’s wheel; he kept the motor rumbling for warmth but doused the headlamps.
Some normalcy had returned to the house. Wickham had bathed and changed and shaved. Maggie had prepared him eggs because it was the cook’s night out.
The eggs had nourished him at least and another large brandy had made him feel not so cold. Victor had released him from his car two miles from the house. It had been a cold, wet two-mile walk down a narrow road bereft of traffic.
In the tub, Wickham had considered every option and decided he would tell George the truth this time, no matter the consequences.
He even had the photographs in his pocket. He had not shown them to Maggie.
George and the second man waited for him in the library, which was across the entry hall from the drawing room. The room was filled with books on shelves that reached to the ceiling. The rug was a deep-red Oriental pattern that was cousin to the yellow rug in the drawing room. There were the requisite leather side chairs, armchairs, and leather-topped desk in burnished rosewood. The fireplace was lit and crackling and throwing out small patches of color into the dark, warm room.
Wickham came into the room and smiled wanly but no smile greeted him in return. He started to speak and thought better of it. He closed the door.
“Will you have a drink?” he began.
George stared at him. He was not tall but he had large shoulders and a large head with large blue eyes and white eyebrows that curled fiercely above his eyes. His eyes seemed to glare into the soul of Wickham standing before him like a truant schoolboy caught at last. George had his hands behind his back, revealing a large belly and a bright red wool waistcoat.
“What happened to you, Bluebird?”
“I was kidnapped, of course.”
“You were?”
“Of course,” Wickham began. “I didn’t even know how long I was held, the place had no windows—”
“And they returned you to your home and hearth?”
“Yes.”
“Ransom?”
“No.”
“Why do it?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Why kidnap you, Bluebird?”
“Political.”
“Ah.”
The second man who had come with George came around the desk to stand by the fire. He, too, held his hands behind him as though warming them at the fire. He, too, held Wickham with glaring eyes. He was taller than the man called George and he had a harder face. He was clean-shaven, his eyes were soft brown, his hair was cut unfashionably close to his head. He did not speak but the movement to the fire had interrupted the dialogue between George and Bluebird for a moment.
“Can I get you a drink?” Wickham asked a second time.
“Certainly. Scotch’ll do.”
“With ice?”
“No.”
“And you?” Wickham said turning to the other man.
He merely shook his head.
Wickham realized his hands were shaking when he poured the drinks, a brandy for himself and Scotch for George.
When he turned back to the room from the brandy cart, George was seated on the edge of his desk. He handed George the glass and turned again to find a chair.
“Sit down, Bluebird,” George said, as though he were the master of the house.
Wickham sat.
He stared at both men and then sipped the brandy.
“Now why don’t you begin at the beginning?” George said. And slowly, reluctantly, Wickham began to tell them the truth, from the moment Mowbrey came into his office nine days before with a signal intercepted from the American station at Stockholm.