Heat

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘That’s a fucking low blow, Foxie,’ Pagan said.

  ‘I’m sorry, I know it is,’ and Foxie lapsed into a regretful silence before he added, ‘I take that back.’

  ‘What did you learn from Trotter?’

  Foxie’s voice brightened. He couldn’t maintain the whining mode for very long because he was not by nature a grudging man. ‘Trotter gave me some interesting stuff. Got a pen?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘First, the agent who approached Burr is somebody called Christopher Poole. Second, the exchange of Pasco was designed to engineer the release of a man called Bob Naderson. I ran a little background on both men. Naderson is currently Deputy Director for Science and Technology. Poole’s a different fish altogether – Executive Director of the CIA, which places him just below the Deputy Director of Intelligence, who in turn is just one tiny rung beneath God himself, the Director.’

  Pagan wrote this down on hotel notepaper. ‘What about Pasco?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, I was saving that. Pasco turns out to have been CIA too.’

  ‘One of their own,’ said Pagan.

  ‘Indeed. One of their very own.’

  ‘A discard,’ Pagan said. He thought of the dead man in the house in Kilburn, the charred passport – the remains of Richard Pasco. ‘He must have known the Agency betrayed him, Foxie. He had years to think about it. One dreary day after another – what else does he do to pass the time except chew on reconstructions of betrayal? And when he’s released, he’s carrying a whole lot of poisonous baggage, and he’s got to dump it somehow.’

  ‘And in the process, alas, he got dumped himself,’ Foxie said.

  Pagan capped the ballpoint pen. ‘You get too close to Carlotta, that’s the risk you run.’

  ‘I assume you’ll remember that, Frank.’

  ‘Count on it.’

  ‘One last thing, Frank. Just keep in touch.’

  Pagan said he would, then put the receiver back in place. He looked at his watch, set it to Washington time, then he went downstairs to a place called The Hideaway Bar and drank three cups of coffee. He was moderately refreshed. How long the condition would last he didn’t know.

  He finished his third cup, looked round, felt the slightly skewed sense of displacement that happens when you’ve transferred yourself through time zones and across an ocean. He examined the names on his slip of paper – Bob Naderson, Christopher Poole. These would be on Carlotta’s list – these and how many others? His thoughts drifted off to Martin Burr and again he wondered about the reasons behind Martin’s decision ten years ago. Had Martin known Pasco was an Agency employee? He tapped his fingers on the surface of the table, feeling the nervy little zing of caffeine in his system.

  ‘Pagan,’ the man said.

  Pagan looked up to see Artie Zuboric standing beside the table. Pagan held out his hand; Zuboric’s grip was slack and moist and quick, barely a contact at all. It had been a long time since Pagan had last seen him – eight years ago, back in the days when together they’d formed a tetchy alliance, Special Branch and the FBI, in pursuit of the Irish assassin known as Jig.

  ‘You’ve put on weight,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Thanks for pointing that out, Pagan. Happens to some of us. You look a little different yourself. More gaunt, maybe. Hollow, kind of.’

  ‘So we’ve both changed,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by superficial things,’ Zuboric said. ‘Some stuff doesn’t change.’

  Zuboric had shaved off the Zapata moustache he’d worn years ago, and the bushy sideburns had been clipped back, but his thick mat of hair was much the same as it had been – crow-black, although Pagan suspected the colour these days came out of a bottle. Zuboric clicked his fingers for the attention of a waiter and asked for a bottle of Bud in a voice as loud as the baggy short-sleeved summery shirt he wore, a linen menagerie of tropical parrots. Zuboric wasn’t big on buttoned-down FBI chic.

  Pagan said, ‘Thanks for meeting me.’

  ‘You think I’d let you wander at will around my turf? I like the notion of having you where I can see you, Pagan. When I heard you were coming, alarms started going off inside my head.’ Zuboric drank his beer straight from the bottle.

  ‘I didn’t come to Washington to look for a nanny, Artie,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Yeah. I know what you’re here for. But she’s on my territory now, and you ought to keep that in mind, Pagan. We got first dibs on her. Plain and simple.’

  ‘I’ve never been petty when it comes to matters of jurisdiction,’ Pagan said. ‘I just want her caught and put away. Here, there, anywhere, it doesn’t matter.’

  Zuboric scratched his hairy arms. ‘Boy. She did a number on your so-called security conference. Jesus Christ. How the hell did you let that happen?’

  ‘I didn’t let it happen, Artie,’ Pagan said. He tried to retain some measure of self-control. An old animosity existed between himself and Zuboric, and it hadn’t mellowed. Zuboric’s nature was gruff at the best of times, but the presence in the United States of an Englishman from Special Branch exacerbated this streak. Besides, he’d never cared for this particular Englishman. Push Artie, and he might let slip a tiny phrase of grudging approval for some of Frank’s past successes, but that was about as far as he would go – and only then under pressure.

  ‘You were in charge, from what I hear. So how did she slip right on past you?’

  ‘Another identity. Different papers.’

  ‘Same old story.’

  ‘Same old story,’ Pagan agreed. He was about to remind Zuboric that the woman had escaped in the first place from the US Federal penitentiary at Danbury, but what was the point of resuscitating ancient history? It could only lead to further hostilities. And he didn’t need a hardening of Zuboric’s attitude.

  Zuboric said, ‘I heard about Martin Burr.’

  Pagan said nothing, merely moved his head in a quiet form of acknowledgement.

  ‘You were there when it happened,’ Zuboric said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you …’

  ‘Couldn’t do anything to stop her? Is that what you were going to ask?’

  ‘Crossed my mind.’

  And it keeps crossing mine, Pagan thought. ‘I didn’t get the chance, Artie.’

  Zuboric scratched his arms again and changed the subject. ‘Fucking mosquito bites,’ he said. ‘I have this allergic reaction to the damn things.’ He took out a cigar and ripped off the cellophane. He struck a match and peered at Pagan through the yellowing flame. ‘So. You’ve come all this way in the hope of catching her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pagan said.

  ‘You expect the Bureau to assist you?’

  ‘I don’t expect anything, Artie.’

  ‘You’re sure she’s in the States?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘How come?’

  Pagan smiled. ‘Sources, Artie.’

  ‘Yeah, we all got sources.’ Zuboric blew smoke in a huge pale cloud then picked a fragment of tobacco from his lip. ‘She’s here, Pagan. She’s come home. You got that right. In fact, she’s already active. You can read this in tomorrow’s papers, so I’m not giving away any trade secrets. She exploded a device in a small town called Capsicum in North Carolina, which blitzed the whole place. Her home town, in fact. Just to round things off real neat and tidy, she shot her parents.’

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’

  ‘Let me put it this way, Pagan. We’re not altogether overloaded with alternative candidates. Who the hell else would do something like that? We’re talking your basic one-street town, population next to nothing. And her parents – well, that’s the frosting on the cake. That’s like leaving your fingerprints behind.’ Zuboric slugged his beer. ‘You seem underwhelmed.’

  Pagan asked, ‘Why would she go to the trouble of killing her parents and blowing up her birthplace?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be the big expert on Carlotta’s head,’ Zuboric said. ‘You figure it out.’
/>   Pagan was puzzled. He thought he’d grasped her agenda, the focus of her business in America, but this new information threw him. Either she’d widened the range of her targets, or Capsicum was somehow connected to the Agency or to Pasco; maybe it was something else, something simple by Carlotta’s own corkscrewing standards – she’d decided to attend to a personal matter, in her own lethal fashion, because she happened to be in the general vicinity.

  ‘Is there anything special about Capsicum?’ he asked.

  ‘Special? It was just another half-dead community in the middle of nowhere. We got a million of them. What could be special about it? It didn’t have any local industry. It’s po-boy country, Pagan, bone-dry and rotting away from the inside. It’s the kinda place where pulses quicken when people see a car with out-of-state plates. Maybe she just had this insane grudge against the whole place, including her parents. I read her case-file, and the way it looks she didn’t have a whole lotta love for Mom and Dad anyway. Seems she harbours some real deep resentment about the fact they kept sending her away – boarding-schools, a clinic. So she shoots them, then zaps Capsicum out of existence to the tune of about seventy fatalities and serious injuries. You got a problem with that notion?’

  Pagan shook his head. ‘No, not really.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced. You know something I don’t know, Pagan?’

  ‘Nothing, Artie.’

  ‘Don’t hold out on me.’

  ‘Would I do that?’

  Zuboric puffed furiously a few times on his cigar and then crushed it. ‘Yeah. I believe you would, because you always were a secretive sonofabitch.’

  ‘Me? Secretive?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Pagan. You know something, you show me your cards.’

  Pagan showed Zuboric his empty palms. ‘See. Nothing hidden. Nothing up my sleeve.’

  ‘It ain’t your hands I’m interested in. It’s what’s inside your head, Pagan. For instance, what’s your next move? What’s your strategy? What fragments are you trying to glue together?’

  Fragments, Pagan thought. Fragments of self, perhaps, but that wasn’t an answer he could offer Zuboric. Artie Zuboric wasn’t the kind of man comfortable with riddles and paradoxes. I’m hunting the woman, and she’s hunting me. Why would she go to Capsicum and set off an explosive device and kill her parents? Why that wayward activity, that murderous side-trip? To conceal her real purpose? To confuse? But why do something that was certain to create huge publicity and bring her name back into the public eye and activate the Bureau? OK, so she liked headlines, she liked spotlights and all the attention of her notoriety, and maybe she just wanted America to know she’d finally come home … Pagan’s thoughts fizzled out once again in the maze of trying to understand the woman. He felt a little slippage, a dull reverberation of fatigue. The caffeine was dying in his system.

  Zuboric said, ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘I don’t have a strategy, Artie.’

  ‘You come all this way on something as vague as what you refer to as “sources”?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Zuboric shook his head. ‘That’s your story.’

  Pagan said, ‘That’s my story.’

  ‘Here’s the Bureau’s official position on you, Pagan. You don’t interfere with our investigation at any level. You stumble across any information relevant to our inquiries, it comes to me immediately. You get lucky and find out where the woman is, you don’t go in solo for the kill, you pick up the nearest phone and you contact me. The Bureau takes the view that you’re a tourist who just happens to be a cop. You’re way out of your jurisdiction, and you don’t have the privileges of an accredited law-enforcement officer.’

  ‘The spirit of co-operation,’ Pagan said. ‘I like it, Artie.’ You give me nothing, Zuboric, and you get nothing in return, he thought.

  Zuboric stood up. ‘I don’t give a shit what you like, Pagan. I’m telling you the way things are from the Bureau’s point of view.’

  ‘You want my gun? My badge?’

  Zuboric said, ‘You get to keep those.’

  ‘An act of kindness.’

  Zuboric said, ‘Call it charity, Pagan. Because that’s what you are. A charity case.’ He took something out of the back pocket of his pants and tossed it down on the table. It was a small diary.

  ‘What’s this?’ Pagan asked.

  ‘What’s it look like to you?’ Zuboric tried an English accent, which he didn’t do with any conviction. ‘It’s a gift from the Bureau, old boy. It’s all you’re going to get in the way of handouts.’

  ‘Is this an early Christmas present? Or am I expected to keep a bloody log?’ Pagan asked.

  ‘Religiously. Who you phone. Where you go. Who you see.’

  Pagan said, ‘This is embarrassing, Artie.’

  ‘Aintit just,’ Zuboric said and smiled. ‘Every now and again I’ll check in on you, and I’ll ask to see the log, and it better be accurate. And remember what I said. We’ll be keeping an eye on you. You just won’t know when. Ciao.’

  ‘Big Brother,’ Pagan remarked, but Zuboric had already wandered away from the table and didn’t hear the comment.

  Pagan fingered the pages of the diary. Zuboric wanted him to keep a record of his activity: the Bureau wanted him to feel like somebody on probation. He supposed he ought to be grateful they hadn’t attached an electronic beeper to his ankle. OK, he’d keep a log, but he’d do it his own way.

  He went back upstairs to his room. He checked the telephone directory for the names of Naderson and Poole, and found neither. He wasn’t surprised. Both men were unlisted, which meant that if he wanted to talk to either of them he’d have to contact them through Langley. Naderson, he assumed, would be more accessible than Poole, because he didn’t have Poole’s status. First thing in the morning, he’d contact Naderson and try to arrange an appointment.

  He undressed and lay face-down across the bed. He was asleep within a matter of minutes. He dreamed.

  He dreamed the woman came to him. She stood at the foot of the bed. She removed her clothes and tossed them aside. As they fell they seemed to hang, with the contrary gravity of dreams, in the air; clouds of silk, transparencies of lace. She climbed onto the bed and slid toward him. She drew the bed sheets aside. She caressed him with a tenderness he hadn’t expected. This is what you want, she said. This is what you really want. Her voice was a whisper. I excite you, Frank. Admit it. I excite you. He kissed her, touched her breasts, felt her hip against his, the delightful stretches of her thighs against his skin. Admit it. You’re burning. You can’t hold back. Come inside me. Fuck me.

  Yes, he said.

  He was lost in her, a ferocious entanglement. He disintegrated. His heart was dynamited.

  He tried to speak, couldn’t.

  I control you, Frank, and you like it, you love it—

  —he sat upright, sweating, the dream fresh and stunning in his head, so realistic, so convincing, so solid, he was astonished to find himself alone in the room. He pushed the sheets aside. His face and hands were damp. He might have been stricken by a fever.

  The rich language of dreams. The secret voices. The seductions. All the static that lay just under the surface of consciousness refined itself in images of startling clarity.

  Dreams. They weren’t supposd to be interpreted literally. They were symbols, graphic puns, the mind at play. So why did he still feel the woman’s touch?

  His mouth was sleep-dry. He walked to the window and tugged the cord that opened the curtains. Dawn was lightening the sky across the city; he could sense the heat of the day begin to gather in the crevices of shadows where sun barely penetrated.

  29

  WASHINGTON

  At six a.m. she was sitting inside a rented Honda Civic in the parking-lot of a truckstop when she saw him. He still had a small billygoat beard and wore a maroon beret and a long lightweight coat to his sneakers. His angular face had the texture of creased leather. He entered the restaurant.

&nb
sp; She waited, watched, wondered if he had backup in the vicinity, if he had thought to bring along with him any of his friends. No: he wouldn’t take the chance of trying to deceive her. She knew too much about him. For all he knew, she might have records stashed away, revelatory documents to be opened in the event of her death.

  She waited a few minutes then stepped out of the car. She made her way between parked trucks and entered the restaurant, scanned the room, saw him at a booth in the back. She moved toward him, conscious of the weary faces of truckers turning to assess her.

  They looked at Carly Phoenix and they were instantly revitalized. She made things happen for them. She stirred them. The long monotonous white lines of the highways were burned out of their memories. They liked the look of her, the provocative glossy mouth, the eyes hidden by shades, the tight blue jeans and the black leather jacket, the boots, the whole style. They wanted her to fuck them. They wanted her to dominate and humiliate them. She was made out of dark dreams and longings.

  She thought Carly Phoenix a stripper’s working name, one you might see on a sleazy marquee; or a porn queen, somebody who bared everything in a hardcore fast-fuck film. Carly Phoenix would glisten on a stage under lights, she’d savour the feel of her own perspiration, she’d look out across the rows of darkness and enjoy the shadows of men who watched her with palpable desire. A pelvic shimmy, a breast teasingly revealed, a hard spangled nipple, a nice tight ass turned to the audience. She’d think of erections, men sitting in the dark and growing stiff, perhaps surreptitiously fingering themselves or going to the john to jerk off.

  One of the truckers looked up from his breakfast and said, ‘Hey, sweetie, need a ride?’

  She smiled. Her lips were like glass recently drizzled by rain. ‘I already got wheels,’ she said. She smiled and it dazzled him.

  ‘Not like the wheels I got, honey. I can go any way you like. North, south. Up, down, sideways. Round the world. You only gotta name it.’

  ‘Some other time,’ she said.

  ‘Zat a promise?’ The guy was drooling yolk down his chin.

  She kept moving to the booth at the back of the room. She slid into the seat facing the man with the maroon beret. She laid her purse on the table.