Cardinal Ludovico led him through the intricacies of it.
The journalist took Pitman notes, and his hand danced across the pages of his notebook. Usually, his hands would be shaking by now, but there was the reserve strength in him that all the old pro newspapermen share, to get on with the story with the reckless abandon of football linemen.
On and on, unfolding the intimate agreement between the Americans and the Soviets, presenting the unique moral dilemma — he loved it! — of trading the future of a lot of Soviet Jews for the future of the whole liberal movement in Lithuania. And some other stuff about a computer defense system. It was tedious, and he wrote it down as well, but it was clear to him that was not at the heart of the deal. The deal was to sell out Lithuania for a cheap political triumph by the corrupt American administration. That’s the way Evelyn Jaynes saw it, strictly another cynical American maneuver.… And what sort of debate would this story inspire? Ah, Evelyn Jaynes, journalist of the year, perhaps now it was time to seek regular employment. But why think small? Britain was a little country, and there was America just over there and the great British press lords who were now recolonizing the land with their splashy newspapers and magazines and publishing empires.… Of course there would be a place for Evelyn Jaynes in such a world. He cut too great a figure to stay on the provincial stage. Evelyn saw the headlines, saw the bylines, saw the photographs of famous people called upon to decorate his revelations.
He licked his lips as he wrote, and felt the dryness of his tongue. Perhaps just a celebratory glass or two after he left the dear old Cardinal of the Secrets?
“You understand, my son, the implications of all that I have told you?”
“I understand perfectly, Eminence. You should have told me at the beginning, perhaps it would have—”
“I knew nothing at the beginning.” He held up his hands. “My dear Michael Hampton was our agent of intelligence to see if the church would be harmed by whatever agreement came from the Malmö conference—”
“Then you suspected the conference was about other things.”
“We had our suspicions.” He put on the guise of wisdom. He nodded his head. “The church has eyes and ears in many places. Alas, it is the price we must pay for our survival.”
“I understand perfectly, Eminence.” Evelyn Jaynes had taken the first flight from London after receiving the astonishing phone call from Cardinal Ludovico. The previous story — the story about the pope reaching out to the Anglican communion — had gone over well, and they joshed him in the Pig and Whistle about turning religious in his declining years. But what the hell, it was a good enough story to earn a Sunday banner.
“You must keep this matter in secret until you are safely back in London.”
“I’ll go to the airport directly.”
“This is very, very grave material, Mr. Jaynes. I shall not rest easy until the truth is published. For a long time, we have observed the American operations in Lithuania. It is a disgrace that the Lithuanian movement would be traded in such a callous way.” He said this to see how the Englishman would take it, to see if the Englishman would put the correct spin on it. But it was going over very well, the cardinal saw.
“I will—”
“Do not seek out the Americans, they will deny everything. I stand behind you—”
“Eminence, I am humbly grateful for all you have done for me.” It was true. Evelyn was grateful in that moment, so grateful for this second chance at a new career that he might have kissed the cardinal’s ring or done whatever bit of papishness the old man would have demanded. But the old man, the dear old man, demanded nothing but the truth, and Evelyn Jaynes would let the truth make him free.
The gratitude poured out of him as he shook the hand of the cardinal at the portico of the great house on Borgo Santo Spirito. The gratitude continued as he waved down a taxi to take him to the airport. But it was the time of day when taxis were occupied and the whole world needed to go to Michelangelo Airport, and there was nothing to do about it. He stood on the avenue with the best of intentions for ten minutes, but every bloody dago in Rome was queuing for cabs at this time of day — not queuing, mind you, but bloody running into the street and flinging down old ladies to get a cab — and what the hell was he doing but standing here like a bloody fool? There was nothing to be done.…
Except have a drink.
He popped into the bar near the bridge and had a whiskey down before the bottle was put away. He had another with a glass of Peroni beer. Better, much better.
Evening. Lights along the Tiber.
Not far from the place of Michael Hampton’s murder, Evelyn Jaynes walked out into the night air to find a taxi. The lights along the river were festive, because the time of Christmas was coming. The wind was cold but not demanding, and Evelyn felt very warm with a belly full of whiskey. He was sated with the story, puffed up with an expansiveness he had not felt for some time.
Across the river, in a little black Fiat, two men sat. The third man came down the embankment and got into the car.
“Well, there’s some kind of a mess in Copenhagen,” said the first man. “Skarda has been replaced as number one on this. They said to go ahead and make sure we clean the body in case he has the tape or notes. They said to wait on the old priest — that would have to be cleared. Probably back to Moscow.”
“What about the American agent?”
“They said he went back to Brussels. They said they’d watch him in Brussels to see if he jumps one way or the other. Someone’s got to have the goddamn tape.”
“Yes,” said the driver. “That girl — she just disappeared. You notice that? Both of the women disappeared. The girl disappeared in Rome. The gray man — he iced our men in Brussels. He killed Mikhail. I knew Mikhail, we were in Kabul together.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true. Mikhail was all right. He would have liked to get that girl in Brussels. You should have seen him.”
“Well, all the girls are disappeared.”
“Well, you know how it is.” And the third man related a bawdy story that was very popular in Moscow those days. The other two men had heard it before, but they laughed in any case. It eased the tension of their job.
“He’s on the street, looking for a cab.” The laughter of a moment before was gone. They were all steel again, flat and dulled by use, waiting on the time of the dead.
“Yes,” said the driver. “Well, we might as well do it here instead of at the airport.”
They thought about that.
“Yes. We might as well,” said the third man. And the car began across the bridge.
41
“Who is it?”
“Me.”
She opened the door on the chain. She saw him and closed the door and reopened it. They stood apart for a moment. It was done, she thought, whatever it was. She saw the coldness, saw it in eyes and the pale color of his face, saw it in the slump of his shoulders. What would warm him?
She embraced him. Was there anything else she could do? There was no power in her to resist him, not for a moment, not from the moment he had come to her rooms in the rue du Lavois, when he opened her case, not from the moment he had ordered her to embrace him in the courtyard at the moment of dawn. I love you. But did she love him, or was it that he was only life? She could not obliterate dead Michael from her mind. Not Michael. She had betrayed Michael from the beginning; she had helped kill him as surely as if she had been the one shooting at him on the bridge in Rome.… All for a cause.
She stood apart from him when his arms no longer pressed against her back and when she felt the coldness of him.