‘Do you know why Martin agreed to go along with Poole?’
Trotter looked beatific, as if impending death had bestowed an enviable serenity on him. ‘As I understood it, Poole needed a lamb for sacrificial purposes. And Pasco was just such an animal, poor chap. A squalid little bargain had been struck with the Russians. They had a man Poole wanted out. Pasco was the coin of exchange. Why Martin agreed – well, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at his reasons. He could be mysterious at times.’
Like somebody else I know, Foxworth thought. ‘Do you recall the name of the man Poole wanted out?’
‘Certainly do. Bob Naderson. He’d apparently been arrested by the Soviets during a routine visit to Moscow. I’m not absolutely sure what “routine” means in this context. I remember it was the word they used at the time.’
Foxworth wrote this down in his notebook. ‘Was Naderson released?’
‘Oh, most certainly. He was an important man in the Agency. They couldn’t let him languish inside a Russian jail, could they?’
Foxie asked, ‘Was there any special reason they chose Pasco as the lamb?’
Trotter shook his head. ‘Funny lot, the CIA. Never really understood them. The way they use their own people.’
‘Their own people?’ Foxie asked.
‘You didn’t know Pasco was CIA?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Foxie said.
‘I remember being appalled by the fact that they could rid themselves of their own so callously.’
Foxie closed his notebook. Pasco had been CIA.
‘Any help to you, laddie?’ Trotter asked.
‘I believe so,’ Foxie said.
‘Good. Nice to be on one’s deathbed and still be of some use.’
Foxie couldn’t think of a response to this. A life goes out slowly; an old man lies dying, dying and remembering. He stood up.
‘Off and running,’ Trotter said.
‘You know how it is.’
‘Indeed. Only too well,’ said the old man.
Foxie thanked him and moved toward the door, where he turned to look back. He was affected by a curious trick of the eye for a second: Trotter seemed to float on a cushion of sunlight a few inches above the bed. Foxie raised a hand in a gesture of farewell, and stepped into the corridor where Sally was waiting.
‘Lovely old man,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
She escorted Foxie along the corridor to the front door. ‘He’s such a sweetie to deal with.’
He left the building and walked back to his car. As he drove away, he observed Sally in the doorway waving one hand in a friendly manner and he entertained the notion that he might one day find himself back in this neighbourhood. To dally with Sally.
He travelled by underground back to Piccadilly Circus, then walked to Golden Square. Pagan’s office was empty, as he’d known it would be. On the surface of his desk lay an envelope addressed to Foxworth and marked PERSONAL. Foxie opened it. Inside was a slip of paper on which Pagan had scribbled: Mind the store for me, and if George comes looking, tell him anything you like – I’ve checked into an asylum, I’ve gone on a binge, I’ve been beamed up by an inquisitive UFO for a medical probe. You can reach me at The Madison Hotel, Washington, telephone 202 862 1000. If it’s any consolation, I’m flying coach.
Headstrong Pagan, Foxie thought. Gone. Mind the store for me. He stuffed the paper in his jacket pocket and surveyed the stack of photographs of Carlotta that still lay on Pagan’s desk.
Idly, he sifted through them. She gazed back at him from a number of poses. He saw in each a common element, and it wasn’t danger, it wasn’t menace, it was something else: the bloom of death. It was in her eyes. It was in the set of her mouth. It was a quality that, as soon as he’d pinned it down, slithered evasively away from him, and left him to wonder if he’d imagined it in the first place. He put the pictures back in place and saw that the charred remains of Pasco’s bank-book lay on the edge of Pagan’s desk, and he raised it carefully, smelling the scent of burned paper and remembering the way Pasco had been shot.
I hope you catch her, Frank. Catch her before she catches you.
27
WASHINGTON
Max Skidelsky always used the same high-priced call-girl agency when he wanted sex without commitment. The girls were invariably tall and fair-haired, because that was the way he liked them. Generally, they were hard-up students working their way on their backs through expensive colleges. They used names that were patently not their own – they called themselves Ophelia, or Candice, or Leticia, which was a step up from the more vulgar noms d’amour such as Brandy, Cinnamon or Honeydrop. Skidelsky expected a certain level of conversational skill as well as sexual, because he considered communication an important aspect of foreplay.
The girl who presently lay on the sofa in his Washington apartment called herself Amaryllis, one of his regular visitors. She was a third-year history student at Penn State, a fact Skidelsky had managed to coax out of her during their last encounter. Her real name was Mary Margaret Kennedy, which she didn’t think sufficiently exotic for business purposes. It wasn’t exactly a come-on to have a name like a Mother Superior.
Skidelsky poured two glasses of white wine and sat alongside the naked girl. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
She stretched out one arm to take the glass from him. ‘Cheers.’
Skidelsky sipped his wine. He surveyed the lines of her body, impressed by the perfection of the nipples, the light hair that grew under her navel and darkened as it spread down her flat belly. She had light green eyes and a good jaw and a wide mouth. Max Skidelsky enjoyed the geography of women, the way they were sculpted. He sometimes thought of them in terms of terrain, contoured maps.
‘You were a little … quick tonight,’ she said.
‘Is that a criticism?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. You just seemed very tense. Anxious. Are you anxious, Max?’
He smiled. ‘Not especially.’
She changed her position, sat upright, drew her long legs under herself. ‘Every time I come here I think the same thing – why does a guy that looks like you want to pay for sex? You must have women throwing themselves at you. Maybe you just like the idea of paying for it. Some guys do. They find it a turn-on.’
Skidelsky said, ‘I don’t respect women who throw themselves.’
‘But you respect a woman who charges money?’ she asked.
‘It’s open, it’s honest, it’s a straight transaction without complications. I like some things in life to be simple.’
‘I can see that,’ she said, and looked round his apartment – which was spacious but seriously under-furnished, no more than a sofa and two chairs, a TV and a coffee-table. No prints hung on the walls. ‘This is all a bit monastic, Max.’
‘Why encumber yourself with stuff you don’t need?’
‘Why indeed.’ She peered at him over her glass. ‘You’re a mystery, Max.’
‘Me? A mystery? I’m an open book,’ he replied.
‘If you’re an open book, I’m a virgin cheer-leader.’
‘Why do you find me mysterious?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know anything about you, what you do, where you work, what you think about stuff—’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Stuff stuff. You know, politics, current issues, books, movies.’ She gave a languid little shrug. ‘I mean, you give the impression of this highly focused kind of guy, except I don’t know what you’re focused on. Does that make sense?’
Skidelsky held her hand. He inclined his head and brushed his lips across her knuckles. Then he raised his face to her. ‘I don’t read books except histories, I don’t have time for movies—’
‘OK. That leaves politics.’
‘All politicians are scum. Without exception. They couldn’t run a dog-pound, never mind a nation.’
‘A serious charge,’ she said, wide-eyed.
‘You wanted to know. What else was on your agenda? Current aff
airs? I can cover that in a sentence or two. The country is bent out of shape. People can’t even walk their own neighbourhoods at night. They’re terrified about taking their kids to the local friendly fast-food joint just in case some disaffected psycho decides to let off a few rounds of ammunition, and they don’t feel secure going to work in their high-rise hives because they don’t know if they’re terrorist-proof. Americans look ahead and the crystal ball’s gone cloudy and we’re scared because we don’t know what’s coming next. The comfort of prediction is gone. The eiderdown of assurance and self-confidence is moth-eaten, sweetheart. We used to be able to project, and what we saw on the horizon was always rosy and nice. But now we’re well on the way to becoming a Third World country. There are areas in some of our cities as bad as anything you’d see in Manila or Rio.’
‘You see a cure for all this?’ she asked.
‘A quick solution, no.’
‘So we sit round and drink and maybe try to fuck our way out of all this gloom?’
Skidelsky set his wineglass aside. He’d reached his alcohol limit for the day. ‘Maybe that’s the best response,’ he said, and smiled at her, and drew her face toward his. The kiss was all electricity, charges rushing through his head and body. He placed his hands on her breasts. There was a sudden renewed intensity about him, which the girl felt, a force almost frightening. She reached for him, held him in the palm of her hand, felt the tension in him as if it were hot iron. She rolled a condom over him, parted her legs. As he entered her he knew it was going to be quick again, because his blood was racing. His orgasm was like a flower violently opening. He laid his face against her shoulder and his body shook.
She was silent for a while, then she said, ‘You know what you really need, Max?’
‘Tell me.’
‘A massage.’
‘A massage?’
‘Seriously. Lie face down on the floor.’
The telephone was ringing. Max reached out to pick it up.
Larry Quinn said, ‘Eddie Binns is dead. They found him in his house in Baltimore. There’s going to be a scandalous fall-out in academic circles.’
‘Scandalous how?’
‘He was hanging from a rope in his bedroom. He was dressed in what you might call revealing underwear of the female variety. There were also magazines of an explicit homosexual nature. The cops think he was trying to achieve one of those mind-blowing mid-flight orgasms, and it went wrong because the chair fell over and he choked on the god-damn rope.’
‘Inventive,’ Skidelsky said.
‘Yeah. Somebody less refined could just have gone in with a gun. You have to give her points for creativity, Max.’
‘I don’t think her creativity was ever in doubt, Larry. Her stability, sure. But never her inventiveness.’
Larry Quinn laughed. ‘Turn on your TV in a few minutes, Max. CNN channel. I understand there’s something coming on that might interest you.’
Skidelsky hung up. He looked at the girl. She was studiously staring at a copy of a newspaper she’d found because she didn’t want him to think there was even the smallest possibility she was an eavesdropper. He was a good customer, and usually a surprisingly pleasant lay, and gentle to her – and in her line of work discretion was paramount. Max was the first client she’d ever really grown to like. He had a boyish quality that appealed to her, and sometimes she experienced little protective urges toward him. A maternal thing, she supposed. He looked at times so god-damn young.
He turned on the TV and lay on the floor.
She climbed on his back. ‘That’s the idea,’ she said. ‘Watch a little TV while I work those tensed muscles of yours. Just relax. Breathe deep and easy.’
He gazed at the CNN logo and thought about Eddie Binns hanging from the end of a rope, dressed in frilly panties. She knows her stuff, he thought. The woman knows her stuff all right. An announcer appeared on the screen, a black guy in an open-necked shirt. Directly behind him a row of buildings smouldered; fire-trucks could be seen, cop cars, ambulances. The girl ploughed her fingers into Max’s shoulder muscles while he listened to what the black guy was saying in his breathless heart-of-the-action manner.
‘Terrorism came to this small sleepy North Carolina community today. The town of Capsicum, population two hundred and sixty, has almost totally been destroyed. You can see the devastation,’ and he made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘Federal agents are busy at the scene … and I’m reliably informed by sources at the heart of the investigation an explosive device placed in the vicinity of a local gas-station was the cause of this mayhem. It’s going to take experts days to put the pieces of this tragic jigsaw puzzle together, but the question on everybody’s lips is Why? Why Capsicum, of all places?’
Max Skidelsky watched as the black guy was joined in front of the camera by a chubby man in a sheriff’s uniform.
‘This is County Sheriff Jay Blades.’
The county sheriff, unaccustomed to TV appearances, nodded in an embarrassed way. His eyes were rimmed with smoke stains.
‘Sheriff Blades, are there any theories why this happened?’
Blades said, ‘Right at this moment, Dave, we don’t have a whole lot to go on. We’re looking at several angles.’
‘You want to expand on that a little for us?’ Dave asked, poking his microphone forward. He was obviously a graduate of the Persistent School of TV Journalism.
‘Nope, because right now the investigation’s at a delicate stage, and I don’t want to play guessing-games.’
The sheriff was drifting away from the camera. The reporter, Dave, caught hold of the lawman’s sleeve and said, ‘One last question, Sheriff. There’s a rumour that Capsicum was the birthplace of the notorious terrorist known to the world as Carlotta—’
‘I don’t discuss rumours,’ said Blades, and moved away. ‘I got work to do.’
Dave turned back to the camera and looked grim. ‘We’ll have updates throughout the night. This is Dave Witherspoon, Capsicum, North Carolina.’
Max punched the off button on the remote. He felt the girl’s fingertips work into his flesh in deep, satisfying strokes. So, the Carlotta angle was being played down – clearly an FBI decision. The Feds didn’t want the great US public to think the woman was back in business in America. They liked to create an illusion of calm. Carlotta? No, she’s got nothing to do with this. She’s out of the country. There’s no way she could come back here and try this kind of thing. Life goes on.
‘That’s pretty scary,’ the girl said. ‘A quiet town like that … and you were just talking about terrorism.’
‘The world is full of coincidences,’ Max Skidelsky said.
28
WASHINGTON
Pagan felt the gears in his brain slip. The five-hour flight from London, most of which he’d managed to sleep through, had dehydrated him, and now the fluorescent enormity of Washington International Airport dazzled and diminished him. Because he carried a firearm, he was whisked off to a small interview room where he was asked by an Immigration official to show his Special Branch ID and complete certain forms. Name. Occupation. Affiliation. Purpose of visit. Make and number of gun. Passport number. A pen was stuck into his hand. The world was being asphyxiated by red tape. He scribbled quickly, handed the forms back to the official who studied them.
‘You’re a tad vague when it comes to purpose,’ the man said eventually.
‘You know how it is,’ Pagan remarked. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be specific in this game.’
The official examined Pagan’s official ID, holding it under a desk-lamp as if he suspected that direct light might reveal some flaw in the laminated card. ‘I guess it’s all in order. Just don’t forget you’re legally obligated to advise the local police department of your presence here. That’s the rule.’
‘I’ll do it at once.’ Pagan took back his card, picked up his bag, a leather valise he’d packed hurriedly in London, and moved toward the door. He crossed the massive terminal, following signs and ar
rows that indicated the location of car-rental companies. He hired a two-door Ford compact, basic wheels. He filled in more forms – Land of the Free, provided you signed in triplicate – took the keys from the clerk and when he stepped from the air-conditioned building the night heat smacked him with the concentrated ferocity of a karate blow. He felt himself buckle as he went in search of the car-hire lot.
He drove into the city, checked into The Madison Hotel on 15th Street Northwest. He made inquiries at the desk about the woman, using only her most recent alias of Kristen Hawkins. He talked to the assistant manager who, anxious to help a law officer, allowed him to look through records of guests in the last day or so – but there were none who might have been Carlotta. I’m here because she wants me to be here, he thought. Because she knows where to find me. Because she needs control. His room was small but, in the language of hoteliers, ‘elegantly-appointed’. He showered, changed clothes, called Foxworth’s number in London. He found Foxie in a sullen frame of mind.
‘Nice one, Frank. You waited until my back was turned and you sneaked off, leaving me with the cheerless prospect of explaining your disappearance to Nimmo.’
‘Has he asked yet?’
‘No, but he will. He’s bound to. Christ, Frank. The least you could have done was to discuss this overseas jaunt with me—’
‘You’re whining,’ Pagan said.
‘If I’m whining it’s because I feel bloody excluded. I’d like to believe, after all this time, that I’ve earned your confidence.’
Pagan said, ‘I need you to be there, Foxie. In Golden Square.’
‘For what? To make excuses on your behalf?’
Pagan sat on the edge of the bed. He wondered briefly about the nature of long-term working relationships, whether they transmuted into a kind of asexual marriage over the years. What Foxie sounded like was a wounded spouse.
‘You just jump on a bloody plane, Frank. Have you got a plan of action worked out? Or are you following some kind of musk, like a dog in heat?’
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