Devereaux stood still for a moment. He absorbed the name, saw the connection, saw how everything connected in that moment. Reuben did not want the memory program called Skarda; he didn’t give a damn about the Soviet Jews or the Lithuanian network. The important thing was to queer the deal on Skarda in exchange for Star Wars. Let the old priest steal the tape through his agent in Malmö and let the bricks fall down on the congregation. Not on CIA. It was at least two steps removed from Langley, and no one could blame Langley for interfering with American negotiations. So Vaughn Reuben kept shifting blame to R Section for not protecting the conference in the first place and for not getting Michael in the second place. The administration would blame Section, would blame the church, would blame Michael… in fact, would find blame everyplace but at the building in Virginia that housed Central Intelligence.
Devereaux turned from the priest without a word.
“You must not betray Lithuania.”
“I owe nothing to you. Or Lithuania.” And in that moment, he saw Rena in his mind, saw the flawless cold beauty of her perfect face, saw her small act of betrayal against Michael. No one wished Michael dead. Not the cardinal, not the woman he loved. But they had betrayed him to the death dealers.
Devereaux took a step toward the tall doors at the far end of the room.
The doors opened, and two large men stood shoulder to shoulder and stared at the American.
“You must not,” the cardinal said.
Devereaux took out the Beretta and snapped the safety.
“Tomaso. Guglielmo.” The cardinal stood and waved his hand. “Do not put yourselves in the way of harm. He has a gun. It’s not worth a life.”
And Devereaux turned at that, pistol in hand, and stared at the priest.
“Not even Michael’s,” he said.
39
Skarda himself sat at the thin-legged rickety table on the second floor of the house in Copenhagen. It was the same house Henry McGee had been brought to before by the blond girl named Christina.
This time, he was brought by the fat leather spy. The fat leather spy had picked him up as he left the terminal building at Kastrup, and there had been a driver and another man who was strictly for muscle. Henry let himself be muscled. He tried to talk to the fat leather spy, but there was nothing but silence from the other end.
Up the old-fashioned staircase. Grandmother was still downstairs, still carrying her Uzi.
They searched him at the door and took away his pistol and the knife. He went into the room and sat down in a straight chair opposite Skarda. Skarda motioned with his hand, and the fat leather spy closed the door on the two men.
Skarda stared at Henry McGee for a moment, and they both understood the silence, understood there was some finality hidden in this moment.
“The tape recording was retrieved two hours ago,” Skarda said. “We have an assurance from the Americans in London that it will be returned, that no damage has been done. Can I inquire what you were doing the past twenty-four hours?”
“Inquire away. I was in Stockholm, Malmö, trying to go back over the trail.”
“You did not make contact.”
“Happens.”
“We had men in Rome, they contacted Mr. Michael Hampton. But he did not have the tape recording on his person.”
“So he was going to Rome with it,” Henry said. He was staying one step behind because Skarda was one of those arrogant kind of explainers: You asked him what time it was, and he explained how a watch works. Besides, Henry was just now measuring the cell of the room, trying to see where the walls were and how much time he was going to have.
“He was in Rome. He had a confederate, a girl named Marie Dreiser. She is the one who saved him in Berlin. We investigated her thoroughly, and she is in a Roman hospital. It isn’t clear, but she did not have the tape. The Americans recovered the tape — I cannot say how. They have contacted us through the embassy in London. Soon it will be delivered to us.”
“What was on the tape exactly?”
“You have no need to know,” Skarda said.
“No. I suppose not.” He waited.
“You murdered Viktor Rusinov. For what purpose?”
Henry just felt the chill in the walls, felt the words shut like a prison door. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“What is on the tape? Do you have so much curiosity? Then I’ll satisfy it.”
Henry went cold. The door was locked and they were throwing away the key.
Skarda tented his fingertips and smiled. It took him less than a minute to tell him the contents of the tape.
“And so when you get the Americans to start programming Skarda, they’ll screw up their communications system.”
“Is that what you believe?” Skarda said.
“That’s what Skarda was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Something or other to put a virus in American communications with the Europeans?”
“The Americans will examine Skarda as a primitive culture might examine… what should I say? Exactly as the Trojans examined the wooden horse. Carefully. Unbelieving at first. And then accepting it. They will program Skarda in bits, slowly, turning each bit over to see if it fits and is genuine. It will be very genuine, Henry McGee, that is the genius of it. Skarda is exactly what it seems to be.”
“Then I don’t get it. Sounds like a good deal for the Americans.”
“No. You don’t get it.”
“Whatever this Lithuanian thing is, can’t amount to very much,” Henry said.
“But it is important to the CIA. We suspected them immediately. CIA sabotaged the conference in Malmö. CIA stole the tape. CIA set up this courier run to Rome.”
“Why Rome?”
“The Catholic church is the financial mule for the CIA money into Lithuania. They take their… what is the Americanism, the slang word?”
“They take their skim,” Henry McGee said. He was grinning to show how relaxed he was with all this knowledge. He was studying the window right behind Skarda.
“So,” Skarda said. “Why did you kill Viktor Rusinov?”
“Who is he?”
“Are you working for the Americans?”
“He someone the Americans want to kill?”
“You were seen.”
Henry said, “Why set me up? Why put me in charge of hustling after Michael Hampton when it was all just a day late and a dollar short. Hell, you knew he was going to Rome in the first place.”
“We knew.”
“And you had your hitters set in Rome from day one. What was all this garbage about hitters in Brussels, putting them on that girl Rena, setting up in Berlin.”
“Berlin was an honest effort meant to retrieve the tape,” Skarda said. “Our target disappeared, only to resurface in twenty-four hours in East Berlin with a girl. A West German girl with a passport. Marie Dreiser. She was not expected; everything else was expected.”
“Including me fumbling along, chasing after someone I was not going to be allowed to catch.”
“We did not trust you, Henry. Your trail was dirty. We had reports from Washington from the time of your trial, about how you betrayed our secrets to R Section, how you betrayed Skarda, or what you believed Skarda was.”
“Devereaux. R Section. They dirtied the trail. You people should have been smart enough to see that I never betrayed you, and you let me rot in prison.”
“The dirty trail was genuine.”
“Genuine horseshit,” Henry said.
Skarda shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Henry. Whatever you said then or say now. You were seen in Stockholm, and you killed Viktor Rusinov. Believe me, we know this. We had observed Viktor from the first day. He was useful to us. And you will be useful to us as well, when we return you to Moscow and when you explain to us in painful, even excruciating detail, how much you betrayed during your American captivity and how they managed to drag it out of you. It is always useful to examine a traitor, however odious the task, rather as a doctor examines stools.”