“Certainly,” George said impatiently.
“Maybe the leak was inside Special Section at Cheltenham.”
“That’s a possibility, too, and that’s why we had to get rid of Bluebird. Blundering fool.”
“I believe his story.”
George looked surprised. “Of course. So do I. But that’s not the point, is it?”
“What is the point?”
“There is an agent now in Dublin called Ely. Q sent him out a week ago. Seems the name Crohan has come up there. And now there is an American agent posing as a journalist snooping about the same thing. Her name is Rita Macklin, and, ostensibly, she’s a reporter for an American magazine. Obviously, she’s with CIA. I can’t tell you everything but I can tell you enough. We want the Crohan matter silenced. Maximum silence.”
Sparrow stared at the older man with his large, round head and blue eyes and darting white eyebrows.
Maximum silence. The ultimate command within Auntie. Maximum silence was more than a license to kill for the sake of a mission; it was an order to utterly destroy, to utterly wrap up in silence an operation launched either from within the Service or from someone without.
“Max the American woman?”
“That’s part of it. That’s just part of it. There are too many problems in this and it worries me. Ely is trying to make a liaison with her, get what she knows. The stationmaster in Dublin tumbled to this Tomas Crohan business about three months ago. Another fool,” George rasped. “He thinks it has to do with some Soviet submarines he’s seen off the western Irish coast.”
“You’re beginning to lose me,” Sparrow said quietly.
George glared at him. “Damn it, I don’t understand half of it myself, but I can tell you that someone, somewhere, is starting to build a neat little frame for us. For Auntie. And this is not the time for it.”
“What does it have to do with Tomas Crohan? Who the devil is he?”
George was silent for a moment. “He was an Irish national the Americans ran in Austria as their agent in 1944 and 1945. Supposedly, he is still alive inside the Soviet Gulag. And now there are these hints that he is coming out.”
“From Dublin?”
“From Helsinki. Three days ago, one of Q’s boys was using the name Sims to probe an American agent there. The American was using the name Dixon, staying at the Presidentti. He was making contact with the Opposition and he sent a hurry-up message through the American station in Stockholm that related to bringing out a man named Tomas Crohan. That was the message that Mowbrey accidentally intercepted at Cheltenham and that the damned fool Wickham told me about on the safe line after Seeker turned him down for information.”
“What does Sims say?”
“Sims does not speak anymore. He was murdered in a sauna three days ago. For some reason, the Finns have decided not to press the investigation. They were onto the American agent but pulled back.”
“That smells, doesn’t it?”
“Stinks like a Liverpool whore, Sparrow. Everything about this stinks of trap, of frame, of setup. But what is the trap? And who is it for? And who is setting it?”
“The American in Helsinki?”
“Very tidy. The Dublin stationmaster has been following this female agent from the States named Macklin. She went into American Express on Grafton Street last week and inquired about trips into Leningrad. From Helsinki, of all places.”
Sparrow made a face. “I don’t like it, George. It gets very curious.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” said George. “Seems pretty blatant, doesn’t it? As though she’s inviting us to follow her along.”
“And what about Ely?”
“He’s a fool, should have been sacked after he cracked up in Vienna two years ago. He had some pull inside Q’s Section, got a file clerk’s job. Q put him on the business to keep him out of the way, to draw flies to the honey as it were. We wanted to know what the American game was and we thought someone like Ely was just the man for the job. No one expected the American agent to be bait as well. Two of them out there, each setting a trap that the other is likely to fall into. It has gotten too convoluted, too involved. Q went to the minister last night; we have authorization for maximum silence. That’s you, Sparrow.”
“Ely?” Sparrow’s voice was soft.
George sighed. “He’s in the way, isn’t he? If you can think of a way to keep him out of it, by all means. But if he becomes part of the accident, then it will have to be.”
Sparrow narrowed his eyes, hooding them like a bird of prey working in a sunlit field. “The American girl?”
“Absolutely.”
“The one in Helsinki?”
“Yes. That should be an easier business in any case. They’ll figure the Russians double-crossed them—”
“I can take them both out in Helsinki. I don’t know about Ely.”
“If Ely doesn’t follow—”
“Can’t you people pull him back?”
“No. He’s part of our bait offering to the Americans.”
“But what is the trap, George?”
“Tomas Crohan.”
“But how can the Americans be using him if he’s bloody prisoner in the Soviet Union?”
“That’s part of their trap,” George said simply.
Sparrow felt disoriented. “But what is he but a bloody Mick and an American agent to boot? Why are we involved?”
For the first time since the interview at Wickham’s country house, George glared again, fixing Sparrow with blue eyes that burned in the dim light of the parking lot at Heathrow. Planes boomed overhead into the dense fog of the night sky.
“That is the last question, Sparrow, the one that I cannot answer,” George said.
“Cannot? Or will not?”
George blinked. “Either reply would be too much of an answer. There’s a plane at five to Dublin, in case you can take care of the matter there. I don’t think the Irish authorities will interfere.”
Sparrow realized the answer in George’s refusal to speak. The answer was “Will not.”
Sparrow felt uncomfortable and did not move for a moment. The car was warm but the wind was rising and it was a cold walk to the terminal from the car. Maximum silence. Well, it didn’t matter about the Americans but he felt a kinship with Ely. Just another poor beggar in the field. Maybe he could shove Ely out of the way before it was too late.
As an act of mercy in the bloody business to come.
14
When the driver made the first wrong turn, Rita Macklin had spoken sharply to him in the voice of a woman who has corrected cab drivers in big cities before. The man with the ginger mustache had merely smiled at her and that had annoyed her all the more. When he made the second wrong turn and actually headed south toward the Ring Road and away from the city center, she spoke again, but with a note of fear in her voice this time.
This time, he produced a small pistol and pointed it at her and then turned it away from her and apologized for it.
“Who are you?”
“You are Rita Macklin, a journalist from the United States.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what you’ve found out from Father Cunningham.”
“But he’s dead—”
“Not silent, however. Otherwise, you would scarcely have spent all this time going through his things. And why do you want to go to Helsinki?”
“Who are you?”
“Well, we can talk about all this in a little bit,” Ely said in a gentle voice tinged with sadness. He wore a driver’s cap.
Rita Macklin reached for the door handle and gave it a pull.
“I’m afraid those won’t work from the inside,” Ely said. “Please sit still. We’re almost there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get information, Miss Macklin.”
“I don’t have any information—”