He pulled it out clumsily and knocked over another bottle. He opened the beer and drank it.
The beer warmed him and he felt like crying. He cried and let the tears fall down on his cheeks and onto his pale, flat belly.
When he was finished, he washed his face in the bathroom again. He smiled to himself. Two teeth were blackened, one was made of stainless steel. Places for three teeth grinned empty in the mirror.
And no one disturbed him.
24
George picked up a cigar and considered it and put it down. After a moment of silence, he picked it up again. It was a Dutch cigar of a make called Panter Mignon and came in a yellow tin package. He lit it at last.
Q sat beside him on the leather chair in the room that was behind the room where Q normally held his audiences. This room was not bare; the walls were covered with rosewood cases filled with books. There were carpets on the floor and two fireplaces tended by young men who were positively vetted every three months. Q was a great believer in positive vetting.
“I like Dutch cigars,” George said at last. His face was in repose. His blue eyes appeared lazy, which was their most dangerous perspective.
“I had to quit,” Q said. “Abnormal heart rhythms.”
“Doctors,” George said. “We’re getting old.”
“I don’t mind that as much as I mind deprivation. Even of such little pleasures. On the other hand, when they come in the night, the heart palpitations frighten me. I realize I don’t want to die.”
“Well, dying is not much concern to me,” George said.
More silence.
The little room contained a striking clock with a German Jauch movement hanging on the far wall. Every hour, Westminster chimes rang and the hour was struck with firm, resounding notes. Every quarter-hour, an incomplete tune was rung. The music of the clock never intruded. The room was completely soundproof and therefore silent save for the striking of the clock and the ticking of the minutes.
“What happened?” Q said quietly.
“I don’t know. Ely found the body in his room. He found identification. That was careless of Sparrow.”
“Yes.”
“Who killed him, I wonder?”
“Ely?”
“Ely didn’t have the guts for it. And he had no reason. Sparrow was a fellow agent. Two dead men on our hands, Q.”
“The minister is wrought up a bit.”
“I daresay he would be.”
“What did you do?”
“I sent Ely to Helsinki. I didn’t want to involve anyone else at this stage. Besides, it may be too late. He wanted to go in any case. To follow the American agent. The girl.”
“Yes. I got his report. She knew quite a bit.”
“Why do you s’pose they’re leading us on like this?”
“The Russians?”
“Americans.”
“Trap.”
“Exactly. But why the squeeze?”
“They want control of Cheltenham. Been hinting at it with the foreign office for more than a year since the scandals. They feel that our security arrangements are less than satisfactory. And now they propose to spring… spring Tomas Crohan. Damn Cheltenham. That was the business with the phony Russians and Wickham. They want to take over, call us incompetent to handle security.”
“The PM would never stand for it.”
“The PM can stand for quite a lot. It’s our necks,” George said.
“And the PM’s neck. The spy scandals haven’t helped.”
More silence. The clock struck the quarter-hour.
“What can Ely do?”
“Extricate us. He was a fixer in the old days.”
“That was before Vienna. He lost his nerve.”
“The Americans were onto Ely from the start. Damned reports that Parker was sending from Dublin station through Cheltenham to us. About his fictitious Russian submarines lurking off the Blasket Islands. Nonsense. And the Americans knew it and fed us.”
“I hate to be played for the fool.”
“What will Ely do?”
“Max.”
“Will he do it?”
“Up to Ely, then.”
“Well, it depends on him, doesn’t it?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Damn it. He was all I could think of. Before I can get another hitter to Helsinki, it will all be over. I think this matter is coming very quickly to the end.”
“I don’t quite see how the Americans arranged to get Crohan away from the Russians.”
“It must have been part of a trade. They brought out that Soviet cipher clerk last year, the one who turned out to be a double. Maybe it was that.”
25
When the plane stopped at the terminal of Vantaa Airport, half the passengers were already out of their seats, pulling down bags from the overhead compartments, stretching their arms through the sleeves of overcoats and furs.
Rita Macklin got up and held her little bag close to her breast. Antonio remained seated next to her, his lazy legs blocking the passage.
“Excuse me,” she said and pushed past him. Her legs rubbed against his legs as she edged into the aisle. She knew the contact was deliberate on his part. He touched her, not gently, on her behind as she moved past. Her face flushed angrily but she said nothing. She had to get away from this man; he was part of the new game she had joined so willingly when Devereaux asked her.
Forty minutes to meeting Devereaux.
Then it would be safe.
Antonio rose behind her and pressed against her in the crowded aisle as the passengers shuffled to the exits slowly. He was smiling and Rita Macklin knew it but she would not turn around, she would not say a word to him.
“Merci, madame,” said the Air France hostess at the exit door. Rita mumbled a merci in return and started quickly down the rampway to the main terminal corridor. She went through the sign marked CUSTOMS and then to PASSPORTS.
Seemingly without effort, Antonio was always visible if she looked for him. He was just a doorway behind. He moved slowly, like a cat stalking in the high grass; his eyes never left her.
She almost ran out of the terminal building into the bitter cold of Helsinki. The wind stung her cheeks red. She shuffled into another line for a taxi and slipped into the rear seat. She locked the door as she entered and again looked around for him; but Antonio could not be seen.
“Stockmann’s department store,” she said quickly.
The dark driver grunted some sort of reply and pulled the meter. The car surged forward across the ice-streaked roadway for the long pull into the center of Helsinki.
Rita breathed deeply, once, twice. She felt afraid as she had felt three years ago, when she had met Devereaux, when her life had been endangered. Did he feel like this all the time? Was this the price she said she was willing to pay?
Who was he?
Why had he known her name?
Why did she feel such menace?
The next thought terrified her and she realized she was sweating and her eyes were wide: Devereaux. Had he set her up?
My God, that’s paranoia, Rita.
The idea would not go away. Devereaux killed; he knew how to kill and he killed as a surgeon slices a tumor; Devereaux had killed a man on the sidewalk in Green Bay when she had been pursued three years before. Even if there was no proof of it, she knew Devereaux had killed the banker in New York after that. She knew it and said nothing and when he had held her, gently, in the retreat in the mountains, she had nearly forgotten what he was.
And then how could you love him if you didn’t trust him?
She closed her eyes. The thought burned her like the impure thoughts that had come to her as a child, each thought carrying the pain of mortal sin and eternal Hell if she were to die; the thoughts tumbled one after the other into her consciousness as a child, each thought more sensual, more depraved than the one before as she struggled between sleep and wakefulness to wash her mind as clean as the nuns said it should be. The thoughts, on spring nights in the old house in Wisconsin, would never leave her and she would finally sink into them, sink into the guilty pleasure of them, let them touch her and caress her, let them open her and fill her. So now this nagging thought about Devereaux, this thought that all was a sham in his world of shadows, that there was no trust, no truth, no moment of decency, no ideals, no right, no wrong. Only survival; only to have existed and to exist tomorrow.