by R.J. Ellory
Aside from Catherine as my controller, I had a section director. His name was Lewis Cotten. Mid-thirties, family for two or three generations out of OSS, the birth of the CIA, and knew more about the history of the thing than anyone else I’d met.
‘Bill Casey is planning to roll back the communist empire singlehandedly, ’ he said, and gave a coarse laugh. ‘You know he was OSS, right? And chairman of the SEC? Guy’s a hard-headed ball-breaking son-of-a-bitch. My father used to play golf with him. Said he’d never met anyone so single-minded in his life.’
Lewis Cotten and I founded an awkward relationship. He knew why I was there. I was the proverbial blunt instrument. I later learned that Cotten was no stranger to this element of the game. Though he would supervise and direct the killing of Nicaragua’s foreign minister, Miguel d’Escoto in 1983, and then in 1984 the assassination of the nine commandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate, Lewis Cotten had been involved directly in attempts, successful and unsuccessful, on the lives of the chief of Panama Intelligence, General Manuel Noriega; Mobutu Sese Seko, the President of Zaire; Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica; Gaddafi, Khomeini, and the Moroccan Armed Forces commander, General Ahmed Dlimi. In 1985, after I had left Nicaragua for the last time, he was involved in the deaths of a further eighty people when an attempt was made on the life of the Lebanese Shi’ite leader, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
Cotten seemed to live solely to see others die. It was his purpose, his motivation, and sometimes when we met for another assignment he would grip my shoulder, grin broadly, and say ‘So you wanna know which unsuspecting asshole is going to the gallows today then?’ That was his expression - go to the gallows - and though we never hung anyone, though the means of despatch was invariably close-range sidearm or long-range rifle shots, the expression never changed. Between September 1981 and December 1984 - those three years when Catherine Sheridan and I lived out of each other’s pockets; three years when we walked from one day to the next and never really knew if we had just survived or just begun the last of them, three years when we drank and smoked and fucked like it was our last chance for anything - during those three years we were responsible for the deaths of ninety-three people. Lewis Cotten got the order, Catherine organized the diary, I attended the meetings. It was a good arrangement. I was shot once. Caught it in the thigh. They had surgeons and doctors on hand. I was out of service for no more than three weeks.
After my leg healed I went back to work. ‘Jesus,’ Cotten said, when I walked back into the hotel room where he’d set up his office, a hotel on the edge of the Residencial Linda Vista district north of the Laguna de Asososca. ‘How fucking long does it take to get over a fucking superficial gunshot wound? You have any idea the kind of shit I’ve had to manage while you’ve been resting your weary little self for the past three fucking weeks? Christ almighty, anyone’d think this was the fucking army. Take a little R ’n’ R why don’t you? Dammit Robey, you need to get your act together. Get that girlfriend of yours down here and let’s talk about what the fuck has been going on while you’ve been on vacation.’
But that conversation took place in the middle of 1983, and I have overlooked the first one. A killing that should have been meaningful, should have been life-changing. But it was not. At least not for me. It was only afterwards, late that night, as I sat in the window of a hotel room on Avenida 28a on the east side of Barrio el Cortijo, the Farmhouse, that I realized the significance of what had happened. The important thing was not that I had killed someone. The important thing was that I had killed someone and I had felt a great deal of nothing.
Back at Langley during those weeks of training, we had talked endlessly about the mental and emotional effects, the psychological impact that killing could have on someone. It was all talk. We spent our lives talking it seemed. We were told that some people, despite the training and the mind-modification procedures, despite our certainty that we were doing the right thing . . . well, some people would not be able to go through with it. And then there were some who would go through with it, who would actually line up the sight and look down the barrel and pull the trigger and watch a small red knot bloom in someone’s forehead, and associate cause with effect, and understand that they themselves had done this thing - terminated a human existence. Only later would they collide with the sledgehammer of reality, and they would puke, maybe get drunk, maybe sit and sob about what their mother would have thought if she had known what they had done.
One guy shot some asshole in the head, shot him right through the eye, and then he looked down at the body, understood the implications and ramifications of what he had done, turned the gun around, and blew the back of his own head off.
Me, I didn’t get so emotional and melodramatic.
I sat in a corridor outside an office. I waited patiently until the small man in a beige suit came down the corridor, and as he passed me I stood up, aimed a handgun at his head, and shot him through the temple. The other side of his face exploded and hit the opposite wall. The color and the suddenness surprised me. I don’t know what I’d expected. I stood there for some seconds, looked down at the man on the floor. I could see the dark stains beneath the armpits of his suit. The gun I’d used had been silenced so no-one came running to see what had happened. My pulse was regular, my heart rate had not risen, and I recalled Lewis Cotten’s expression as he’d handed me a monochrome photograph of the man and said, ‘He’s in the way of the Alliance. That’s all I’ve been told, that’s all I can tell you, and that’s all we need to know - except that your girlfriend knows where he’s gonna be tomorrow so you have to be there to shoot him in the fucking head, okay?’ Cotten smiled, and then uttered the words he would say before every job. The smile, the wink, the knowing glance, and then, ‘Oh, and one more thing, Robey’ . . . He’d pause for a heartbeat - great timing, naturally comedic - ‘Don’t fuck it up, eh?’
So I stood there for a minute or two, a dead man on the floor at my feet, much of the contents of his head on the wall facing me, and wondered if this was now my life, if this is what I would do, the thing I would be remembered for. Hello, my name is John Robey. What do I do? Oh, nothing much . . . you know, kill people for the government, that kind of thing.
And we were so sure we were right. Me and Catherine. Living like we didn’t even exist, flitting from one hotel room to the next, to an abandoned apartment on the north side of Reparto Los Arcos, a semi-derelict adobe villa in Barrio Dinamarca. Eating in restaurants, watching the people come and go - Company people - knowing who was who and who was not by the way they dressed, the words they used, the old-timers and veterans, the greenhorns and cannon fodder.
‘Out of the landing craft, across the beaches and into the gunfire,’ Cotten would say, and then he would grin his foolish grin, and I would wonder and marvel at the madness of the world, and then look at the pictures of who was next.
Took me a year to figure out what was happening out there. Took me a year to get a grasp of what La Allianza was all about, and by that time I began to understand that Nicaragua was not about communism at all. Nicaragua was about something else entirely. By the time we understood what it meant it was too late to go home. We had become what Lawrence Matthews, Don Carvalho and Dennis Powers had wanted us to be right from the very start. As Matthews used to be so fond of saying, we were the sacred monster. Catherine was the thinker, I was the blunt instrument. Perhaps the bluntest instrument they ever had. But there was an edge. I realized that after a while. And it seemed that everything I did, every assignment I undertook, sharpened that edge. Just as they’d never really concerned themselves with who I might have been before I belonged to them, so they never questioned who I had become.
It was with the death of a lawyer, a man named Francisco Sotelo in the fall of 1984, that the seams started to come apart. Prophetic it might have been - the things he told me, the things I understood to be the truth, the nature of his personal circumstances - but it didn’t stop me killing him. Then,
later that night, and the many nights to come, only then beginning to understand the true significance of what we’d done, I spoke to Catherine of what might happen and we realized how perfectly we had been deceived.
It was at that point that it became personal, and where previously I might have been able to leave the dead where they’d fallen, after that night they followed me home.
TWENTY-SEVEN
News came like a bullet. The sound of the phone woke Miller abruptly. Slurred when he said his own name, and then he heard Roth’s voice, and Roth said something that he didn’t understand. Miller - still fully dressed - sat up, took a deep breath, tried to focus on something on the other side of the room.
‘What?’ Miller asked. ‘What did you say?’
‘Got an ID,’ Roth said. ‘A very certain, very real ID. Someone has given our boy a name.’
‘You what?’
‘We’re trying to get some details right now,’ Roth said. ‘Metz called me. I’m at the precinct. Lassiter’s on his way. Get over here for God’s sake.’
‘Time is it?’
‘Quarter after eight.’
‘On the way,’ Miller said, and before the last word had left his lips the line had disconnected. He tried to get up. Blood rushed to his head. He took a few deep breaths, felt light-headed, tried to get up again and spent a few moments steadying himself before he moved. Felt like a hangover. Maybe not. So long since he’d had a hangover he couldn’t recall how one felt. Felt like he did at his mom’s funeral. Everything vague, everything unreal, everything shifting awkwardly across his line of vision. Grabbed hold of the edge of the table as he crossed the room towards the bathroom. Sluiced cold water onto his face, used the john. Washed his hands, flattened down his hair, took his jacket from the back of the chair by the front door, and hurried down the stairs into the diner. Told Harriet he was sorry, he had to go, no choice, important things . . .
She scowled, she frowned. She said nothing and waved him away.
Miller searched every pocket for his car keys, had to go back inside to get them. Pulled out of the front drive and aimed for the Second, stop-lights green all the way. Like he was meant to get there fast. Like someone was on his side for once.
He reached the Second at eight forty-eight p.m. Asked the desk sergeant if Lassiter had shown, relieved to hear he hadn’t. Took the stairs at a run, found Roth, Metz, Riehl and Feshbach in the office.
‘Coffee shop,’ Metz said. ‘Corner of L Street and Massachusetts. One of the patrol guys went in, gets talking to the girl behind the counter. He shows her the picture. She says she knows the guy. Says he comes in regular. Two, three times a week. Sometimes just orders coffee to go, other times he stays and has a sandwich. Usually lunchtime, sometimes early, like he’s en route to work. Wasn’t clear on his name. No surname at all, but says he was named John. She was very certain about that . . .’
‘And very certain about how he looked,’ Roth added. He looked agitated, got up from where he’d been sitting at the desk. ‘She was certain that this was our guy, Robert. Looked at all the pictures. Said his hair was longer in the back, grey at the sides, sort of swept back. Said his eyes were unmistakable. She was absolutely sure—’
‘So we have some people over at this coffee shop?’ Miller asked.
‘Two unmarked cars,’ Metz said. ‘One out front, one at the back. We have the place covered.’
Miller walked to the window and stood there for a moment, hands on his hips. ‘Which picture did this waitress say was most like him?’ he asked Roth.
‘Fourth in the sequence. Full head of hair, clean-shaven, you know the one?’
‘Sure,’ Miller said. He faced the window.
‘Robert?’
Miller looked back at Roth. His heart was racing. Excited, frightened in a way, like it could be everything, it could be nothing. Nothing else came close to this.
‘What is it?’ Roth asked.
‘I want to go over there,’ Miller said. ‘I want to go see this waitress.’
Streets were as good as empty. Straight run from New York and Fifth past Carnegie Library and up Massachusetts to L Street. Roth drove. Miller glanced back toward the library and remembered the missing hours from Catherine Sheridan’s final day. Still hard to believe that only four days had passed. Wondered what had happened to Chloe Joyce. Nine-year-old kid with nothing left from very little at all. Child Services would have her. She’d be some place with other kids whose lives had car-crashed . . .
‘It’s over there,’ Roth said, interrupting Miller’s thoughts.
Bright neon window sign - Lavazza. Warm yellow lights within made the place seem welcoming, friendly. The name over the awning read Donovan’s.
‘Which is the unmarked?’ Miller asked.
‘Other side of the street . . . see the sports goods store?’
Miller saw the sedan parked a little ways beyond it.
‘I’m going inside,’ Miller said. ‘Get a cup of coffee, speak to the waitress.’
The diner was as warm inside as it had appeared from the street. A knot of regulars at the far end of the counter-bar. Four guys, all of them in their late fifties or early sixties. They did not look up as Miller and Roth came through the door, but when Miller took a seat and asked for coffee, when the waitress came over with the jug - smiled at them each in turn, asked if they wanted anything to eat - one of the old guys nodded at Miller and said, ‘You guys after the same thing as the others, right?’
Miller smiled. It was the second time in days that someone had identified him as a policeman.
‘We should wear signs,’ Miller said. ‘It’s that obvious, right?’
‘Way you people act you might as well wear the uniform and be done with it,’ the old guy said. He laughed; the others laughed with him.
The waitress - button badge said Audrey - poured them coffee. She set the jug back on the hotplate and returned to where they sat at the counter. She was in her early forties Miller guessed. She looked tired, but undefeated. Perhaps she owned the place. Perhaps there was something more here than just a badly-paid job.
‘Take no notice,’ she said. ‘These old guys are down here ’cause their wives can’t stand to have ’em in the house any more.’
‘Guys like these I can handle,’ Miller said. He looked down the bar once more; the old guys were back talking amongst themselves. ‘So you’re Audrey.’
‘I have it on my badge here case I forget.’
‘I’m Detective Miller . . . Robert Miller.’
‘You’re not a Bob are you?’
‘No. Why? You have a thing for names?’
‘People,’ Audrey said. ‘Have a thing for people, but it’s amazing how much someone’s name can influence who they are. Like your guy for example. No way his name is John.’
Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
Audrey shrugged. ‘Isn’t difficult. John’s the name he gives, but John isn’t the name he was given.’
‘You know this for sure?’
‘No, not for sure, but you get a sense about some people. John is a regular guy’s name. Hardworking kind of guy, you know the type. This character here? The one that other detective showed me pictures of?’ Audrey shook her head thoughtfully. ‘He’s not a regular person . . . may look like one to most folks, but I tell you he’s seen and done some things, if you know what I mean.’
Roth leaned forward. ‘You telling us you can sense this about him?’
Audrey laughed suddenly, abruptly. Her face creased like a paper bag. The lines around her eyes, the yellowing smoker’s teeth, the way her lashes were clumped in little groups of three and four with mascara - these things showed her age. ‘Like I’m psychic? Shit no.’ She glanced at the group of men at the end of the bar. ‘Jesus, you’ll have these old bastards burning me for a witch. No, I don’t sense anything. I just look, and I see what I see. I’ve been here more than fifteen years.’ She tilted her gaze out toward the front of the diner. ‘Donovan. Tha
t was my husband. Died thirteen years ago and left this behind for me to take care of. I see people come in and out of here in numbers I can’t even add up. Get used to talking to people, you know?’ She glanced at Miller. ‘You’re a cop. Cops do the same thing. They talk to people, they look, they listen, they see what they see and they figure out everything they don’t. People aren’t so hard to read.’
Miller knew what she was talking about.
‘So all I’m saying is that you get a feeling for people. You get to know which ones want company. Doesn’t matter who it is, they just roll right on in here and open up their wounds for the world. And then there’s the others. Spend several hours with a jackhammer and you don’t get more than a dozen words. John? He says what he thinks you’d expect him to say, that’s all. I mean hell, I could have read him all wrong, but I don’t think so. To me he looks like a man with a burden. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘And there’s no question at all that the man you’re thinking of is the same man as the one in the pictures you were shown?’
‘That was a gallery of whatever,’ Audrey said. ‘That was one picture with a whole bunch of different hairstyles and whatever. I saw one, and it was very close to how he looks now. That’s what he looks like. He’s the kind of guy who looks like a million other guys. Then he speaks to you, you look right at him, and you don’t mistake him for someone else.’
‘Did he scare you?’ Miller asked.
‘Scare me? Hell no. Takes an awful lot more than a customer to scare me.’
Miller smiled with her as she started laughing once more.
‘He just comes on in here, orders coffee to go, very rarely he might order a sandwich, even sit at the counter and spend a few minutes reading the newspaper and making small talk, and then he ups and goes on his way.’
‘Which way does he go?’ Roth asked.