by Bill Granger
“The side that wins.”
“Is there a war?”
“There is always a war in a country like St. Michel. There are guerrillas in the hills because there are always such people. They are led by a man named Manet who is a Communist, I suppose, but it doesn’t really matter. And there is the matter of the Langley Company. They want to know who’s going to win as well.”
“And you’re going to tell them?”
“I will tell them if I have to. I want to be on the winning side. But what if Manet has the winning side? What if neither Langley nor Manet can win? Should I stay on my own side?”
“And you want me to go to St. Michel because no one knows me there.”
“Yes,” said Ready. “I am a little too visible. I need a spy. I need someone I can trust.”
“You can’t trust me,” Devereaux said.
“You’re wrong. You underestimate the situation,” Ready said, smiling at Rita again.
“Who is for Langley there?”
“I don’t know. There is a man there named Harry Francis. He is a comic spy, out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. I can’t believe in him at all, he is so pathetic. Therefore, he might be very dangerous.”
“What was his name in the agency?” Devereaux was called November when he was an active agent. Harry Francis would be called something too, a code name, a clerk-created nickname.
“Hemingway.”
“That’s odd.”
“A joke, I suppose. Harry Francis knew the great man when Harry worked for Langley in Cuba, before the Bay of Pigs. Harry gave Langley some good information but Langley chose to ignore it. Langley cut him loose a few years ago. Harry Francis writes novels. Do you know them? No, I don’t think so. He hasn’t sold a thing for years. He is a pathetic drunk. I don’t trust that at all. I keep thinking that Harry might still be working for Langley.”
“Why?”
“Langley cut Howard Hunt away from the Company three times that I know of. He wrote books, too, little spy novels. Except I know he never left the Company, even when he was supposed to be working for Nixon and his gang.”
“So there’s Manet and there’s Harry Francis.”
“And there are other elements. A good agent can discover them. A good agent with a good cover. And all the while, Rita Macklin will be safe with me in the capital, covering our poor little thirtieth Independence Day celebration for her magazines and newspapers.”
“No. Not her, Ready.”
“Yes. Her.” He looked at her as though she belonged to him. “Her because I told her about her brother, though it was you who asked. Her because I gave you two hundred thousand Swiss francs and it’s for both of you. Her because she led me to you.”
“Damn you,” she said to him but her voice was as dull as night.
“I might kill you instead,” Devereaux said. “There’s the chance that I could do that.”
“It’s a possibility. Except that there are papers filed in a certain place. They are about November and where he lives and what he looks like. They would be useful to Langley. I’m surprised Langley was willing to accept your death. The R Section counts on clumsiness from its competitors.”
Devereaux waited.
“And the wet contract. From KGB. To kill the agent called November. Canceled fourteen months ago because November was dead.”
“If you know all that, you still work for Langley. If you know all that, they know it, too,” Devereaux said. “Then there’s no reason not to kill you.”
“I can think. I don’t need Langley’s computers,” Ready said with annoyance. “It had to be a contract against you. That’s why you ‘died’ in Zurich. Langley was after you in Ireland nine years ago but that’s past. It had to be KGB. Besides, if I worked now for Langley, I wouldn’t need you.”
He decided then. “You can have me. You don’t need her.”
“Your word on it?” said Ready, starting to smile again. “Come on, Devereaux. We’re agents, not boy scouts.”
“Not her,” he said and he realized Ready was backing him into a corner.
“It is all written down, about you, about her, all my guesses and my calculations, most of which turned out to be correct. Langley will get the file if I am killed.”
“And if you aren’t killed?”
“You will get the file.”
“There’s never an end to blackmail.”
“Yes there is. I want one specific job. I want to know what side I am on. Then I never want to see you again, either of you. But first I need to know which side to be on.”
“And who can tell me?”
“I don’t know. But ‘Hemingway’ has a notebook and I want it. I know it exists but I don’t know how to get it. I tortured him once before but he’s tough. I don’t think I would get it before I killed him. He drinks too much. If he were in good shape, I could probably torture him until he couldn’t stand the pain. But I can’t take the chance.”
“What’s in the notebook?”
“Secrets, I think. I don’t know. I’ve heard about Hemingway’s notebook for years.”
“What can one old man know?”
“What did the old priest know in Florida that was worth it to you six years ago?”
Ready stared suddenly at Rita and she trembled because he looked insane.
“What would you do with the secrets?” Devereaux said. His voice was without inflection and was very gentle.
Colonel Ready stared at Rita Macklin before he spoke. He felt her hatred shine like warmth on his face. He felt a stirring between his legs. She would not break her stare in return.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ready said to Devereaux. “You’ll do the job for me to get me on the right side. Everyone talks about Harry’s notebook. Even Harry. Except he keeps calling himself Hemingway. I think Harry is a little crazy, which you might expect after all those years in the trade. The notebook might be nothing more substantial than the Holy Grail but that doesn’t stop everyone from looking for it. The notebook is power because knowledge is power.”
“If Harry is on the island, you have all his knowledge now,” Devereaux said.
“Harry is an old man and he drinks too much. He can’t take too much hurt. If I torture him again he might die out of stubbornness and then he’d be worthless, wouldn’t he? I have Harry and no notebook and that’s a bad deal and it doesn’t mean very much. But if I have a notebook, then I really don’t need Harry anymore.”
“And you can use it,” Devereaux said. “How will you use it?”
“That’s my business,” Ready said. “You don’t need to know that.”
“I won’t do it,” Devereaux said.
Ready looked at him. “Yes. For your own sake. You like to be free of the trade, don’t you? I know you, Devereaux. You slipped the traces and slipped both sides and your file is closed. But if it gets opened again with the kind of information I could plant at Langley, the Big Red Machine would have to acknowledge they had made a mistake about you, that you weren’t really dead. November is dead and it doesn’t matter who November is. The name is used once and never again. You’re November dead and I can make November alive and you know I can. So you’ll work for me, just a little job. I’ve tried my best with Harry, but I have a country to run.” He smiled. “I can’t spend all my time trying to find something that might not even exist.”
“And if it doesn’t exist?”
“Then you’ll have to prove that to me. The burden is on you. It isn’t fair, I know that, but it’s the way I have to operate.”
“Just me.”
“No. I want leverage. You could be dangerous in the old days, Devereaux. You’re slower now but so am I. And I’ll keep Rita near me just in case you want to change the rules of the game in the middle. I won’t harm her. In a little while, this will all be over for both of you.”
“No,” he said.
“What do you say, Rita?” Colonel Ready touched her hand and it was cold. “For his sake. For your sake.” He looked a
t Devereaux. “You put this scam together and you have to see it through. You kill me now and you will be hunted again, believe me.”
“What do you want me to do?” Devereaux said and Rita stared at him and did not believe his words.
“I am watched going in and coming out. I’ll leave at noon. The next direct flight connects through Paris and Guadeloupe to St. Michel at noon each day. I will be on the plane Wednesday. Miss Macklin will follow on Thursday. And you will follow on Friday.”
“No,” Devereaux said. “I don’t know St. Michel, but there are too many coincidental passages to your… island… from the same European port. She can follow in two days but not from Paris.”
“There’s a roundabout flight using Frankfurt to Miami—”
“Yes. And in four days, I’ll leave from London.”
Ready smiled. “You see, you always remember how to cover your trail. Instinct.”
“I don’t want to leave footprints,” Devereaux said in the same soft and uninflected voice.
And Rita had stared at Devereaux as he made the plan with Colonel Ready and her face grew very pale and when she spoke at last, her voice sounded detached: “Kill him, Dev. Just kill him now.”
Devereaux looked at her. His eyes were flat, without emotion. Ready looked at him and saw what the look in his eyes meant and felt contempt for Devereaux. He got up from the table and dropped a fat envelope of documents. “Visas,” said Colonel Ready. “Press credentials. I expect you in two days, Miss Macklin. I know I won’t be disappointed. Will I?”
“No,” said Devereaux.
“There will be a reception in the palace. You can meet the president of St. Michel. His name is Claude-Eduard. And his charming sister. Keep away from the president, Rita, especially in dark rooms—he’s reputed to have a three-foot cock.”
Rita said, “Kill him now.” Her voice was dead. “It doesn’t matter. We can get away. We did it before. We can get away from him. If you won’t kill him, give me the gun, I’ll kill him. I know you brought a gun. I’ll kill him and I’ll run and it’ll give you time.”
But Devereaux only stared at the redheaded man and felt the impotence of the pistol in his belt.
“Damn you,” Rita said. She was crying. “Kill him now.”
4
KILLERS
Flaubert’s chicken waited at the door of the café for a long moment and then minced inside. With each step, the hen stopped and seemed to stare at Harry Francis.
It was hot and bright. Humidity lingered on the walls of this café on the main road four miles south of the capital of St. Michel. It was the middle of the afternoon and nothing was moving on the road and Flaubert had gone back into his living quarters at the rear of the café.
Harry Francis had warned Flaubert many times about letting the chicken roam into the dining room. He had told Flaubert that it wasn’t sanitary, that the chickens left droppings that carried disease. Flaubert always listened politely to Monsieur Harry during these lectures and then shrugged at the end of them. But this time, Flaubert was in the back and Harry Francis was drunk enough to do what he had always threatened to do.
The hen was scrawny and unevenly covered with worn red and white feathers. She was probably very old. Flaubert had no system in raising chickens, just as he had no discipline in keeping them out of the café. He killed the hens when he was hungry or when he served chicken to the customers. But a lucky fowl could live to an old age if Flaubert did not notice, because he always killed the chicken nearest at hand.
Harry Francis was drunk because he had been drinking with Cohn for two days in the café. Harry had known from the beginning who Cohn was and where he came from and why he had been sent to St. Michel.
The café was across the road from the long sand beach which stretched from the edge of St. Michel all the way south down the quarter moon of the island to Madeleine, at the southern end.
The sun was setting very quickly. The Caribbean was blue close to the land and farther away, in the Gulf Stream, it was green. Harry Francis yawned. His eyes were red from too much vodka and too little sleep. The hen was backlit by the dying sun in the open doorway.
Harry Francis decided.
He bumped the legs of the chair across the floor and stood up. He pulled out an ivory-handled knife from the worn leather sheath on the wide black garrison belt that was hidden partially beneath the blouse of his bush shirt. The shirt opened across an expanse of leathery skin that was cracked and burned and weathered by a life in the sun.
The hen paused, took a step, paused, and cocked its head to focus one unblinking eye on Harry Francis.
“She’s inside, Cohn. You’d have to say she’s inside,” Harry Francis said in a rough, gravelly voice.
“Yes, Harry,” Cohn agreed. His voice had grown rough along with Harry’s from the days and night of vodka and rum. He saw the knife in Harry’s hand and he didn’t care. He was so tired.
“I told you I told Flaubert I’m not going to live like a goddamn nigger with chickens walking and crapping where I eat, didn’t I tell him that?”
“Yes, Harry.”
“So he leaves the door open anyway and he goes in the back because he knows a goddamn chicken is going to walk in finally. He does it to aggravate me. I know these people, I know people like Flaubert. I’ve lived in the islands thirty years. But you know that, don’t you, Cohn.”
“If you say so.”
“And what does it say in my files?”
“I don’t know, Harry.”
“Martinique to Cuba, Windward and Leeward, Bahamas and Jamaica and St. Maarten, I’ve been on them all, worked on them all, I know them and all their fucking little secrets. I know you’d like to know everything I know. Everything I wrote down in the book. You’d like to know about the book.”
“Jesus Christ, Harry.”
“The trouble with these people is they never talk to you directly unless they want to say please or thank you but they don’t mean it. I know what they really think—they have ways of letting you know what they really think. Flaubert wants to piss me off, Cohn, that’s why he leaves the door open. Well, it’s time to piss Monsieur Flaubert off.”
Cohn said nothing.
“We’re going to have chicken for dinner.” Harry Francis crossed the floor. He held the knife in his left hand like a fighter. At the last minute, he rushed for the chicken but it fluttered with a squawk out of his grasp. Harry cursed.
Harry lunged again, moving more quickly than his big-bellied bulk might have indicated. The chicken squawked and flapped onto the tabletop. Its claws slipped on the dirty Formica and in that moment, Harry lunged again and reached under it and grabbed one yellow leg. The chicken made another sound and then was silent, waiting for death upside down, its wings spread. The weight of its feathered wings was too great to move.
“Not in here,” said Cohn, feeling sick. His face was pale. “That’s as bad as the other thing.”
Flaubert opened the curtain that covered the doorway to the back of the café. He was a small, thin black man and his skin seemed oily in the heat. His black eyes glittered red at the edges of the whites. He wiped his hands on a soiled white dish towel.
“What it is, my friend?” he began in a singsong French that was part island patois.
“A fucking chicken. In here. I told you.”
“I forgot. It was so hot in here.”
“I know you forgot.”
“You’re going to kill it, Monsieur Harry?”
“Yes.”
Flaubert shrugged and turned his back.
Harry Francis slit the head from the body with one stroke of his ivory-handled knife. It was so sudden there was no drama to it. The head fell to the floor with scarcely a sound. Blood spurted from the severed neck artery onto the floor. When the bleeding slowed, Harry Francis dumped the carcass on the floor.
A final burst of the creature’s nervous system sent the headless body scurrying in a sudden dance across the floorboards.
Cohn
felt frightened then; it was not pleasant to see a dead thing still moving as though it were alive.
And then it was over and the carcass collapsed and there was blood all over the floor of the Café de la Paix.
“Flaubert, get your chicken,” Harry Francis shouted. His face was red and his eyes were shining. He wiped the bloody knife on his shorts and tucked the blade in its sheath.
Flaubert turned again, came to the carcass, and picked it up. He picked up the head as well and threw it out the window. “Philippe!” he called sharply and the boy with almond skin and light blue eyes came to the door from the beach. He stared at the bloody floor.
“Monsieur Harry has killed a chicken. Get the mop and wash the floor.”
“Why did you kill the chicken, monsieur?”
Flaubert said, “Because he’s drunk, mon petit.”
“Because your father is an unsanitary slob,” Harry said and grinned and Philippe’s face lit into a smile.
“Why did you do that?” Cohn said when Flaubert went into the back room. The child mopped the floor.
They spoke only English to each other. “I’m not subtle, Cohn. If I meant to give you a message, I would have just as soon stuck you myself.”
“What message?”
“Cut the crap. You’ve been on St. Michel two weeks but you only found me two days ago. There are fifty thousand poor souls on this poor little island and only five thousand whites and we all live around the capital, so what was so fucking hard to find me?”
“Maybe I wasn’t looking for you.”
“Maybe. There are other games on this island besides me, I know that. But I know everyone is interested in my notebook.”
“What about your notebook?”
“What about it, Cohn?” Harry grinned. “What about it is that I know things. Lots of things. Cheers, Cohn, up your ass.” He took the expensive bottle of Smirnoff from the table and drank from the neck and wiped his mouth when he was finished. They had run out of ice long before. The clear liquid burned on the back of his tongue and the edge of his thought.
“I don’t care particularly what you know,” Cohn said.
The laugh filled the room. “Why don’t you come out like a man and ask me what you want to ask me and stop this screwing around?”