‘What is it?’ asked the rep, intrigued now.
‘It’s a PCB,’ Hepton answered, quite calmly.
‘A what?’ asked the attendant.
‘A printed circuit board. Smallest one I think I’ve seen.’
There could be no doubting that it was a transmitter of sorts. Crude, as something this size needed to be, but probably effective. Hepton smiled, shaking his head. No need to check your car’s wheel arches these days for an unwieldy magnetised box; something the size of a business card would do the job every bit as well.
‘Can I pay for these?’ the rep asked the attendant and, show over, the attendant nodded, taking back his knife and going behind the counter. Hepton stood beside the rep, waiting his turn to pay for petrol.
‘I’d like a receipt too, please,’ the rep said to the attendant as Hepton held the transmitter between forefinger and thumb and gently, surreptitiously, slipped it into the man’s jacket pocket. He held his breath, then stepped away. But the rep hadn’t noticed anything, and with any luck he would continue all the way to Leeds still in blissful ignorance.
‘Have a good trip,’ Hepton called to him as the man went out to his car. Then, having paid for the tankful of petrol, he went out to his own vehicle, started it and headed off in the opposite direction, whistling.
As he drove, he remembered something and reached into his pocket, bringing out the note Harry had left for him, the one that had led him by the nose towards his intended death. He rolled down the window and threw it out. Was there anything else she had given him? No, nothing, not unless she had planted something on him without his knowledge. He would have to check his clothing.
Wait a minute, though... she had given him something else: a ten-pence piece to pay for the call she said she had made yesterday evening. He angled a hand into his trouser pocket and brought out all his loose change, scattering it on the passenger seat. Then he picked out the three ten-pence pieces that lay there and threw them out of the window too. He hoped someone would pick them up. If one of them contained a backup transmitter, Harry might have another long, hard and fruitless journey ahead of her.
Something else was niggling him. Several things really. For one, Fagin had ordered him to talk to Harry, to tell her everything he knew. So was Fagin in on it too? Or was he merely obeying orders? And who the hell was Villiers? What was it Harry had said? Something about ‘my employers, who are, ultimately, your employers’: but who — ultimately — was Hepton’s employer? The Home Secretary? The head of the MoD? Someone in London, he’d bet on that. But it might take a journalist’s nose to discover the final answer. A good journalist. Someone he could trust.
Supposing, that were, Jilly would even want to speak to him again.
15
In fact, the smooth-dressed, smooth-spoken Parfit did not return, and Dreyfuss, who had been keening like a young whelp, grew first agitated and then worried and then frustrated. Parfit had said he was coming back to take him away from Sacramento General, away from the vicious General Esterhazy and the cunning Frank Stewart, away from nurses who weren’t real nurses and drugs that did more than merely put a man to sleep. So where the hell was he? What was he doing?
The evening stretched into night, and the night saw Dreyfuss sleepless, pounding the floor of his room on aching feet. A night-duty nurse looked in on him, but he growled at her and she quickly fled. A male attendant, black, uncertain, asked him if he wanted anything.
‘Nothing,’ he snarled, and paced the cage again.
When breakfast arrived, he found himself waking on top of the bed, still wearing slippers and a dressing gown, his forehead damp with sweat.
‘Hot in here,’ said the nurse, a teenager who certainly looked more like a nurse than Carraway had.
‘Yes, it is,’ Dreyfuss answered, sitting up with his back against the mound of pillows. She placed the tray on a trolley and wheeled the trolley over until it was positioned in front of him.
‘Ham and eggs,’ she said, removing the cover from the plate. Dreyfuss nodded hungrily and started to tuck in. Three or four chews later, he remembered about Parfit, and the hunger left him. He sipped at the coffee, still chewing the food in his mouth, desperate to swallow it but somehow unable to. Eventually he spat it back into his paper serviette.
The nurse returned after twenty minutes and took the tray away. She didn’t say anything about the untouched food.
‘How are we this morning?’ the doctor asked brightly, pushing open the door.
‘We’re fine,’ said Dreyfuss glumly. ‘When can we get up?’
‘I did hear,’ the doctor said mock-conspiratorially, checking Dreyfuss’ pulse at the same time, ‘that we had been getting up. Pacing the floor at all hours of the night.’ He stared at Dreyfuss with soulful eyes. ‘Hmm?’
‘I’d like to leave today.’
‘Fine.’ The doctor had stopped checking the pulse. He now peered into Dreyfuss’ eyes. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know; a bit of sightseeing, maybe. Book into a hotel, see a few shows...’
‘In Sacramento?’ The doctor laughed. ‘No, I think you’d be better staying just here, Major Dreyfuss.’
And that was what he did. Though he willed himself to move, to just open the door, walk down the corridor and leave by the hospital’s front door, he had no idea what he might be stepping out into. A demonstration, perhaps; an angry mob; some lone gunman looking to make the news?
He sat tight, his gut quivering whenever someone walked noisily past the door of his room. But Parfit didn’t come. Someone else came instead.
Frank Stewart.
‘Can I speak to you for a minute?’
‘Can I stop you?’ Dreyfuss’ voice had bite, but he waved for Stewart to sit down. Secretly he was glad of some company.
‘How do you feel?’
How did he feel? He felt strange, staring into Spencer Tracy’s eyes like this.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Stewart continued.
Dreyfuss doubted it. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.
‘You’re thinking that somehow you’re to blame for what happened to Argos. Forget it; you couldn’t have done anything.’
‘I couldn’t?’
‘Well, could you?’
Dreyfuss thought about this. What was Stewart trying to get him to say? ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.
Stewart seemed pleased with this reply and drew his chair closer to the bed.
‘I know there’s something wrong,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘I know there’s something cooking.’
‘Are you CIA or NSA?’
Stewart seemed surprised by the question. ‘I’m State Department,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Dreyfuss said, sounding as unconvinced as he felt.
‘Okay, okay. I’m on secondment to the NSA.’
Dreyfuss nodded. ‘And what,’ he said, ‘makes you so sure something’s “cooking”, as you put it?’
‘Just a feeling. When you reach my age, you get a nose for these sorts of things.’
Now if that wasn’t a line from a Spencer Tracy film, what was? ‘What sorts of things?’ Dreyfuss asked, enjoying throwing Stewart’s statements back at him as questions. This way, he gave himself a little room for manoeuvre.
Stewart’s voice grew quieter yet. ‘When General Esterhazy was in Europe, another of our staff generals, William Colt, very high up at the Pentagon, sent him a message. It said, and I quote, “Sorry you couldn’t make it to the burial.” That message was sent at almost exactly the time your shuttle was crashing.’