"Does he know you're over here?"
"He'll probably guess, but I didn't tell him I was going."
"Why not?"
"I'm not sure I trust him any longer."
"Why."
"Personality conflict."
"Well, he can guess all he wants to," Parker said in a low, ominous tone. "By the time I let him in here again, you'll either be dead and buried in the riverbank, or on your way to Washington for some really serious interrogation about your bosses and your network. Your choice."
"Damn it, Parker, I don't have even one boss, much less a network." Suddenly Veil found himself laughing—a high-pitched, tortured, hiccupping sound that would have sounded more like laughter if he weren't dying of thirst and exposure. "You know, man, you're unbelievably dense, and you're really starting to piss me off. Somebody's pulling your pud, and you're determined to kill off the one man who could help you find out who it is."
"Pilgrim's a fool," Parker said, more to himself than to Veil. "He'd give away the whole candy store."
"You're the one with the sucker in the shop, Colonel—not Pilgrim. Think, for chrissake! Did you send that Mamba after me?"
Parker's silence was eloquent.
"Of course not," Veil continued. "Do you know who did?"
Again, Parker's silence was his answer.
"Now we're getting somewhere," Veil said with a sigh, struggling for breath and against the impulse to gag. Each sound he made now translated itself into pain, but he had to keep talking, had to somehow make Parker listen and understand. "I'll bet you don't even know how your man got up on that mountain; I certainly don't, and neither does Pilgrim. But you do know that he went there and that he was after me. Why—if not for the reasons I'm giving you? He was a double agent, sent by his controller to kill me because the controller thought I was after him. Whoever fed you that shit about me being KGB could be the man I'm after."
"It doesn't have to be that way," Parker said tightly.
"What doesn't have to be what way?"
"Your scenario of what happened."
"Fine. Tell me what the Mamba was doing on Pilgrim's mountain. Do you think he got lost during a training exercise and stopped by the pool to ask me directions?"
"He was a double agent, all right, but he was your man."
"My man?" Veil coughed and tasted blood as his lower lip split in two places.
"You were his controller."
"Come on, Parker. Appearances to the contrary, it can't be that easy to seed an agent into your operation here. Once having done so, why should I kill him?"
"That's one of the things you're going to tell me right now, Kendry. And if you don't, you've had your last drop of water in this lifetime."
"You're crazy, Parker. How in hell could I be that joker's controller? I've been living in New York for more than fifteen years."
"Right. The question is what you've been doing in New York."
"I thought you said you'd checked up on me. I'm a painter; I've been painting, stupid."
"What else? What did the Russians have you doing in New York? And why should they assign this Mamba to you?"
Veil choked off a curse and shook his head in frustration. Arguing with Parker was futile, and the fever in his mind and body told him that it was long past time for him to roll out the heavy artillery. "Parker, you fucking idiot, I want you to call a man by the name of Orville Madison. CIA. I don't have the slightest idea where he's posted now, but Langley will have the information. He was my controller. You're DIA, and you should have enough juice to get the Agency to cooperate with you. Madison hates my guts, but I don't think he'll lie to you—assuming he'll talk to you in the first place. Madison will give you the straight story on me, right up to the minute I arrived at the Institute."
"How would he know?"
"Because he's had me flagged from the day I was thrown out of the Army and the CIA. I have no doubt that he's bugged every place I've lived in and knows the birthmarks of every person I've met with since then. Madison can probably tell you what I had for breakfast some Sunday morning ten years ago. He'll tell you I'm not KGB. The same person who sent the Mamba after me is trying to kill me now in a different way, by framing me and getting you to kill me."
"Orville Madison, huh?" For the first time, Parker seemed interested in what Veil had to say.
"If you can't get to Madison right away, try getting in touch with a man by the name of Lester Bean. Bean may be easier to trace, if you go right to your boss in the Pentagon. Bean was a colonel, and my CO in Vietnam."
Veil waited, but there was no immediate response from Parker. "Orville Madison—CIA," Veil repeated. "Lester Bean, at one time an officer in the U.S. Army. Call them, Parker. Learn the truth. And then please bring me some water, because I'm really not feeling too well."
And then Veil passed out.
Chapter 20
______________________________
Veil dreams.
Spring. The Greenwich Village Art Show. Surrounded by his oil paintings, he sits in a tattered canvas folding chair on Christopher Street.
He is terribly thirsty; he is so thirsty that he cannot focus on the potential customers who walk by or occasionally stop to look at his work. Everything seems to be covered with pink gauze, as in fever-vision. He has a pounding headache, and he can think of nothing but water. He is near a number of bars, and he knows where there is a fountain, but he does not bother to rise and go to look for water, for he knows there will be none. Veil knows he is dreaming, and around his dream is a steel cage.
"You're a dead man, Kendry."
Veil squints through the haze at Madison, who is emerging from a taxicab. The CIA controller's shoes are covered with steaming, green jungle mud.
The dream is out of control, Veil thinks, with disparate times, places, people, and things all bleeding into one another. He is dying, and he is both afraid and enraged. He could roll out of the dream, but chooses not to; a waking state will bring him only the worse torment of the cage and the sun.
"Tell Parker the truth, Madison," Veil says to the man at the curb with the rotting jungle mud on his shoes. "Kill me with a bullet, a knife, or a garrote—not a lie."
Footsteps come up behind him, and Parker's voice whispers in his ear. "He can guess all he wants to. By the time I let him in here again, you'll either be dead and buried in the riverbank or—"
Veil wheels, causing the pink fever-haze to swirl around him, but Parker is gone.
"I really wish I could get the two of you together," Veil says, and begins to laugh hysterically.
"He can guess all he wants to," Parker intones from the bottom of a well.
"Madison, don't kill me with a lie!"
"You're a dead man, Kendry. I'm going to shoot your ass on the day you find peace or happiness."
"Orville, old stick!" Veil shouts. "Today isn't that day! I'm really not very happy, so don't let this stupid bastard kill me!"
I'm losing it, Veil thinks as he suddenly finds himself standing in the middle of Christopher Street with cars passing through him. Thirst, exposure, exhaustion and fear are taking their toll, ripping up his mind.
There is no place left to escape to.
"Tell him the truth, Madison. You execute me as you see fit, but please get me out of this cage. I don't want to die like an animal. I don't deserve this."
Raskolnikov, the White Russian art dealer who will become Veil's mentor, rounds a corner. The portly, bearded man carries an ivory-handled cane in one hand and a chocolate icecream cone in the other. His black patent-leather shoes flash in the sunlight; his footsteps explode on the sidewalk like beats of a snare drum.