“Will you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I think from their point of view, without knowing who they are, you will have to be killed before it is all over,” Devereaux said. She shivered. He did not touch her.
“I think that is the way it will have to be played. Something is wrong at both ends, and I cannot understand the British involvement at all.”
“But what is this about?”
“The last thing it’s about is an old man coming out of the Soviet Union. There’s a trap working here but I don’t know against whom and why. I was called home yesterday. I was supposed to go home in the morning. This afternoon, I got my call; I am sure that Crohan is in the city now.”
“Are you supposed to do something?”
“Yes,” Devereaux said. “I should be out in the plaza on the other side of the hotel right now waiting for a signal. To make contact.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. I have to get a message out.”
“Out? Out of where?”
“Helsinki is a sieve for spies,” Devereaux said. “Everything can be tapped, everything can be listened to—”
“Some democracy,” Rita said.
“It’s the only one they can afford sitting next to the Soviet Union,” Devereaux replied. He was surprised by his answer; he thought he had no opinion of the Finns at all.
“Why are you waiting instead of making your contact?”
“Because I think they’ll give me an extra day,” Devereaux said ironically. “I’m sure of it.” He went to the desk and opened up a Finnair timetable. “Are you tired?”
“No.”
“There’s a plane for Paris in two hours. Will you go to Paris, spend the night, send my message, and come back in the morning? I will meet you at Stockmann’s at ten in the morning.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“The taxi driver from the airport will know. Go to the fifth floor where the souvenirs are — knives, furs, cloth. I can meet you there.”
“Is this all necessary?”
“Getting the message out is necessary. Something is wrong, something is wrong with the signals I’ve sent from here and from the station in Stockholm. If the English know about you, I’m pretty sure the Soviets don’t yet. You’ll be safe enough.”
She smiled at him. “You want me to be a spy.”
“I’m afraid there aren’t many choices. Not in this place, not with Crohan. The English think you’re an agent.”
“Disinformation from someone.”
“Yes. But who? And if someone killed the priest deliberately, they did it more for what he knew than for his political beliefs.” Again, Devereaux permitted himself a frosty smile. “You, Rita. You are the target again.”
“But who do I send this to?”
“I will write it down. There’s a number in the States. Call by seven tonight, that’ll be one in the afternoon in Washington. Don’t answer any questions and don’t repeat. Just speak clearly and then hang up and then go and get a good night’s sleep and be back in Helsinki in the morning.”
“Dev,” she began.
He looked at her.
“I never got over you.”
He said nothing.
She touched his hand.
“It was easier for you,” she said.
No, he thought; but any admission would reveal too much of the truth. What could he tell her that would not lacerate her again, that would not tear the bandages from the dry wounds?
She felt intensely ashamed in that moment, in his silence. He should have said something. He should have comforted her. He had let her speak her heart and he had revealed nothing again. She felt like a schoolgirl. She withdrew her hand and looked away to the window. Why did she speak when he could answer her with silence? But that had always been the agreement between them.
He touched her.
She turned back to him.
He touched his lips with the tip of his finger.
She understood.
He folded his arms around her and held her then and she let her weight sink against him and she felt the warmth of his embrace; for a moment, they held each other without movement, without words, without any sounds.
“There is a lot to be afraid of now,” Devereaux said, very close to her, still holding her.
But she only felt his arms around her and buried her face in the shoulder of his jacket. She only held him for a long time.
20
Sparrow sat on the bed in Ely’s hotel room. He had a pistol in his hand. He had been waiting for six hours. In some ways, he hoped Ely would not come; that Ely had left the assignment and the country. He didn’t want to kill Ely.
The woman was already flown, to Helsinki. Rita Macklin. It was as George had guessed. Sparrow would max both the woman and the American agent in Helsinki and that would tidy up the business.
Sparrow had thought about a dozen things during the six hours of silence, of waiting.
He agreed with George that Wickham had gotten off lucky. Wickham would keep his mouth shut as well because he knew what George could do to him if he didn’t.
The only thing that bothered Sparrow was Crohan. What was it all about except a Mick working for the Yanks in the war? Sometimes these people at the top got all excited over nothing, Sparrow knew, and it was always little fellows like Ely who ended up having to pay for it.
He pitied Ely, he really did.
Sparrow was tough, of course, and he could afford pity. He came from Liverpool and his old da had been half Irish. Liverpool was a tough enough town, then and now, though it didn’t have the nigs the way it did now. Sparrow had been a contract employee for the Service for six years before they took him on. Sparrow had been very tough about it: “I got a better offer if you don’t want to take me on the rolls permanent like.”
“A better offer?” It had been some goddamn supercilious little clerk just like Wickham, all nose and looking down at you and soft hands. They were all the same.
“Yeah. From the IRA,” Sparrow had said and that had shaken them and they did one of those conferences they do and they had vetted him back and forth for a month and then they had taken him on. Three years ago, George had come to see his talents. He had come to rely on Sparrow, George had.
Sparrow smiled at that. It was nice to be needed.
He had decided the easiest thing was to wait for Ely in his room. He had not checked out, his bag was still in the wardrobe on the wall away from the single window. Ely lived frugally, Sparrow noted, even on an expense voucher. Maybe he was saving up a little for his old age.
Which would not come in this case, Sparrow thought. At least he didn’t have any orders about Parker, the stationmaster. Parker was out of it, filing his little reports about Russian submarine sightings in the western ocean off Ireland. George said he didn’t really seem to understand what the Crohan business was all about.
Which was no surprise to Sparrow. He didn’t understand it either. He only understood that Ely was going to have to be taken out. A nice clean hit after he got him inside the room.
He heard steps outside the door. He tensed and reached under his jacket for the handle of the Walther.
The door lock tumbled and the handle was turned. The door opened quickly, so quickly that it startled Sparrow, who had expected some caution from Ely.
But it wasn’t Ely at all.
The man in the doorway was dressed in black, his face was dark and recessive, his black eyes glowed hideously. He was bare-headed and his hair was black, pasted by rain against his scalp.
Sparrow noticed one other thing, the last thing he noticed in his life. The man framed in the door, which was banging in that instant against the inner wall, held a very large, black pistol in his hand and he was firing it even as the door struck the wall, even before Sparrow could pull down the Walther out of its holster.