“That was before we found out he was Michael Brent. Our Russian defector had an interesting story. It seems we have something on the British as well. We might have crossed Crohan but the British double-crossed everyone when they sent in Brent to kill him. And that’s who you have now, nothing; you have a goddamn English killer.”
“You’re mistaken, Hanley,” Devereaux said then.
“What?”
“We have Tomas Crohan.”
“But that’s a lie,” Hanley said.
“Are you going to prove it isn’t true? Are you going to parade Tartakoff off to a press conference to explain that the man they kept in prison for thirty-eight years was really a British spy sent to kill an American agent behind Nazi lines? What kind of questions do you suppose the Section would get after saying something like that?” Now it was Devereaux’s turn to slash and cut with words like shards of ice. “You have your game and I have mine and if it’s stalemated right now, it isn’t over.”
“Damn you, we work on the same side.”
“Do we?”
“Yes, damn you,” Hanley said fiercely.
But he was met with a voice like an ice field: “When you’re in the middle, all the sides look the same after a while, don’t they?”
34
In Stephen’s Green in the center of the city a tinker woman with a dirty child in her arms stood begging coins from the passersby. Only a few stopped to drop a shilling into her outstretched hand. Her face was dirty and her head was covered with a black and dirty shawl; her eyes were dark and they appeared in pain, but it was a trick of begging and it had been passed on to the tinker woman from her mother before her and her mother before that; she would pass it on to the child she held now in her arms. It was not that the woman was not truly poor; she was and it was a way of life passed on by generations of tinkers and their kin.
Rita Macklin passed her without looking at her and then stopped and turned back and dropped a coin into her hand. The grief on the face of the beggar woman never changed, did not lessen or become greater. Rita Macklin turned away from her and walked back through the park. He was late and she felt afraid and alone.
Her hands were thrust in the pockets of her tan raincoat. It was bitterly cold and damp but the gray skies had not yielded any rain since the night before. She paced down one walk and turned and tried another; Stephen’s Green was not a large square but there were many paths and many trees and perhaps she had missed him.
She could not escape her thoughts and each time she turned one over, it made her feel sick until she felt trapped in this foreign city, in this dirty gray world.
She did not see Devereaux until he was beside her, walking with her suddenly step by step.
She took his arm and buried her face against his chest.
He held her in the middle of Stephen’s Green for a moment and realized she was shaking.
When she pulled away and looked at him, he asked her, “Did everything work?”
“The way you said,” she replied.
“Where is he now?”
“The priests took him in at the rectory. He did everything he was supposed to do. I filed the story this morning. In two days, the world is going to know about Tomas Crohan.”
Devereaux held her arms and did not speak.
“Damn it, Dev. I feel sick all the time. I lied to the ME, I coached the old man in his lie.…”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Devereaux said softly.
“Of course it was. He’s Michael Brent—”
“No. He’s an old man who served thirty-eight years in prison and now he’s free.”
“He’s a killer. He’s a hit man, that’s all he ever was,” Rita Macklin said. “You forget that Tomas Crohan was supposed to murder someone and Michael Brent was supposed to murder someone. It doesn’t matter who the old man was; he’s a killer, just a killer.”
“He’s an old man,” Devereaux said. “He’s just a bit of history that washed up one day. We can forget about him.”
“I can’t,” she said. “And what are we going to do now?” Her green eyes stared mockingly at him. “Got the next chapter figured out yet?”
“I did,” he said and his voice was leaden and dull like the color of the sky.
They stood apart from each other on a quiet path on the green where no one trod.
“What happened?” she asked him.
I wouldn’t kill a man, he thought, but he said nothing for a moment. “I can’t leave the Section yet.”
“Damn you, damn you,” she said.
“I was…” He chose the word. “Forced. To remain a while longer.”
“They can’t force you to do anything. It still is a free country—”
“No. Only a larger prison,” Devereaux said, remembering the old man’s words.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, Rita.”
“You said you loved me—”
“Yes,” he said and he said it so softly it was as though he were affirming a truth too immense to speak of but in whispers.
“Oh, Dev. What are we going to do?”
“You’ll be safe. I had them promise that. Nothing that happened has changed. You can go back to the magazine and—”
“And we can have little rendezvous when you’re back in the country, is that it?” She doubled her fist and her face was flushed: Her small overbite was suddenly prominent.
“No,” he said, again gently.
“No? Then what did you have in mind for me? I mean, you’ve used me to get out of this mess and now it’s kiss-off for little Rita, right? Love ’em and leave ’em. Up to the mountains for a little piece of ass and then send them back home, right?”
“Shut up, Rita,” he said with flat, dull words.
“Goddamn you, Devereaux, I love you and I would do anything for you, I told you — hell, I did it all for you—”
“And I did it for you,” Devereaux said at last.
“What?”
“Stay in the Section. It wasn’t safe any other way—”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I can’t explain it all. There was something I was supposed to do and I couldn’t and the only way I could make sure you would be safe was to remain in the Section—”
“What couldn’t you do for me? What couldn’t you do for me, Dev?”
“Kill a man.”
It was so quiet for a moment in the park that neither could breathe for fear of disturbing the quiet. And then all the color went out of Rita’s face and she was shaking again and she came and held him tightly, wrapping her arms around him, burying her face on his chest. There was nothing more to say and they both knew it and the sadness enveloped them like the silence.
35
What happened next was not expected by anyone involved in the affair, least of all the man called George.
In reality he was Sir Adrian Hugh-Fuller, KCB and KCE, and fourth in line to the barony of Giles.
George had survived, though it had taken some fancy footwork in the past few days; the Americans had botched the matter from the beginning and George had been amused by their clumsiness.
It had begun cleverly. The R Section in America had sent a long coded telegram to Q with a copy to the prime minister. The telegram thanked the British in strong but unofficial terms for their cooperation in the seizure of the KGB officer Tartakoff and regretted in unofficial terms the loss of a British agent named Sims who had been part of Operation Helsinki.
The prime minister expressed her interest in the matter. She was given full background on the operation at a private meeting the following day; the background was given by Q and George personally. The meeting had been delayed because Q had not the faintest idea of what Operation Helsinki was until the Americans gave him background notes on it and again piled on their congratulations for the help provided by Ely, a British agent who had been generously loaned to the American section as a liaison officer.