Heat

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘He’d been screwing that kid. I mean, it was goddamn obvious. A pervert, Jimmy. A sexual pervert. A child-molester.’

  Mallory put his hand to the place where Donovan had slapped him. He could feel a tingling sensation.

  Donovan said, ‘Think of it as doing society a favour, if that helps.’

  If that helps, Mallory thought. What if I don’t want to do society any favours?

  ‘He was trash,’ Donovan said.

  Mallory nodded. He heard the fan stir air. He thought of the condom in the girl’s hand. She must have been going to dispose of it, he thought. On her way to the bathroom to flush it. Never got there. Never made it.

  ‘An old guy like that. The kid was young enough to be his granddaughter.’

  ‘You didn’t need to,’ Mallory said.

  ‘Didn’t need to what, Jimmy?’

  Mallory glanced back up the stairs at the stained-glass window.

  ‘Do the kid, is that what you mean?’ Donovan asked.

  Mallory didn’t answer. He moved to the foot of the stairs as if he were walking through molasses. He walked out onto the porch and he leaned over the rail and stuck a finger down his throat, but nothing came up. Donovan was standing directly behind him, patting him on the back.

  ‘First time’s tough,’ Donovan said. ‘If Max asks, I’ll tell him you were a trouper, Jimmy.’

  Mallory felt intense pressure inside his ears, a whining. A trouper, sure, you tell him that, Ralph. Dear God, a trouper.

  Donovan had the plastic cylinder in his hand. He said, ‘OK. This is all set and running. We got ten minutes to get back to the car and get the hell out of here, Jimmy. So I suggest we move.’

  Mallory’s eyes ached now. He followed Donovan across the meadow and back to where they’d parked.

  ‘You want me to drive?’ Donovan asked.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Mallory said.

  Donovan shrugged and opened the passenger door. ‘A retired shrink,’ he said. ‘And he’s screwing some young kid. Makes you think.’

  Of what? Mallory wondered. Of dead children? Of blood? He rammed the car into gear with a violent gesture and drove it along the dry rutted dirt road that would take them back to the highway.

  31

  WASHINGTON

  Pagan slept only in a shallow way after his dream, as if his consciousness were resisting the notion of further sleep and the possibility of deeper revelations from the macabre videotape library of the mind. When he woke it was nine a.m. and the images of the dream still lingered in a way he found uncomfortable. He rose, showered, then dressed in blue jeans and a white cotton shirt.

  He had room service deliver coffee and, as he drank it, he looked up the number of the Central Intelligence Agency in the phone book. He pondered the apparent anomaly that not only was the Agency’s number listed in a phone directory, the legend Central Intelligence Agency was also posted on freeway signs as you approached Langley: public access to a place of secrets, he thought. The contradictions at the heart of a society that considered itself open.

  He dialled, asked for Bob Naderson and was put on hold.

  A man came on the line. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I want to talk to Bob Naderson.’

  ‘Mr Naderson isn’t in his office at the moment.’

  ‘When do you expect him?’

  ‘Possibly this afternoon.’

  ‘Are you an associate of his?’

  ‘I’m his assistant,’ the man said.

  ‘I need to contact him urgently,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s personal.’

  ‘May I ask who I’m speaking with?’

  ‘Frank Pagan.’

  There was a pause, a tiny skip of silence. ‘I wish I could be more helpful, Mr Pagan. Can’t you give me some indication of what this urgent matter’s about?’

  Pagan said, ‘No. It’s for Mr Naderson’s personal attention. I can’t go any further than that.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to phone back—’

  ‘Why don’t you give me a number where I can reach him?’

  ‘I can’t do that, Mr Pagan.’

  ‘Because you don’t know where he is? Or because it’s policy?’

  ‘Policy, Mr Pagan.’

  ‘But you could contact him in an emergency if you had to,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Well, I guess so.’

  ‘Fine. Then let me clarify the situation for you. This happens to be an emergency.’

  ‘Mr Pagan, I hope you don’t misunderstand me, but unless I know the nature of the alleged emergency, I can’t possibly interrupt Mr Naderson.’

  Officialdom, Pagan thought. Worse than that: CIA officialdom. The hooded voices, the masks, cloaks and bloody daggers. These guys were caught in a time warp. He felt a serious darkening of his mood. ‘Let me have your name,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can tell Bob Naderson when I see him – and I will see him sooner or later, have no doubts on that score – what an obstructive little bastard he has for an assistant.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re approaching this too constructively, Mr Pagan—’

  ‘Put your ear close to the phone and listen carefully. I’ll say this once. Either you tell me where I can contact him or I go direct to Christopher Poole.’ A rabbit from the old hat, the bluff disguised as a threat. Pagan put a hard spin in his voice. If he resented anything, it was trumped-up assistants who tried to give you the no-go treatment, men and women whose desk drawers contained all the rubber-stamps of authority and yet had no genuine authority themselves. Nickel-and-dimers, the parasitic goblins of bureaucracy.

  ‘Christopher Poole?’

  ‘You heard me. I talk to Chris Poole.’

  ‘Mr Pagan—’

  ‘I didn’t mention I’m from Special Branch, did I?’ Pagan asked, wondering what substance that might add to his general approach: very little, he suspected. ‘I’ve come from London specifically to talk to Bob Naderson and I don’t have time to fuck around. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Look, I sympathize—’

  ‘I don’t want sympathy,’ Pagan said. ‘Let me see if I can phrase this in such a way you can get your head around it. It’s an emergency, and your Mr Naderson’s life may depend on me.’

  There was a prolonged silence. Pagan wondered if he’d made any advance, even a tiny one.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I can do, Mr Pagan. I can contact Mr Naderson and tell him you want to talk to him. If he’s agreeable, he’ll call you back himself.’

  ‘That’s the best you can do?’

  ‘That’s the best. Give me your phone number.’

  Pagan read the number to him, then said, ‘If I don’t hear from him within the next ten minutes, I’ll call you back. And if you refuse to take my call, I go direct to Chris Poole. Is that position plain enough for you?’

  ‘Plain as the nose on my face,’ the man said.

  ‘What is your name anyway?’

  ‘Quinn,’ the man said. ‘Larry Quinn.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’ Pagan hung up.

  The conversation had irritated him more than he needed. He wandered the room, stood by the window and tapped his fingertips against the pane, then – remembering his conversation with Zuboric about Carlotta from the previous evening – he turned on the TV, punched the remote until he had a twenty-four-hour news channel. A keen-eyed woman with perfect hair was standing in front of a weather-map of the United States. Sunshine everywhere. Drought in the Southwest, the Midwest, water rationing in many of the other states. A storm front was forming in the Atlantic, but its movements were unpredictable. We may be in for some rain, folks. That’s going to be welcome news for most of us. Especially our farmers. Why were these TV meteorologists always so cheerful? They could announce approaching tornadoes as if they were impending marriages.

  He sat down with the telephone in his lap and watched the picture change. He found himself looking at a smoulderi
ng group of houses and stores, fire-trucks, ambulances. A TV reporter, a black man in an open-necked shirt, was getting quite worked up about the destruction. Pagan leaned closer to the TV.

  ‘Official sources are saying nothing about the possibility of a connection between the destruction here in Capsicum and the terrorist known as Carlotta. On the other hand, there appears to be a general consensus of opinion among the people of this small rural community that nobody else could have been responsible for this attack. I’m talking to Eugene Boyd, whose son Dick, who ran the gas-station, was a victim of the blast.’

  A red-eyed man appeared in front of the camera. Pagan didn’t like the crass manner in which the media intruded on the grief of people, and he liked even less the concomitant notion that stricken people were somehow expected these days to go on TV and bare all their emotions. Private feelings became public spectacles. The vampire that lurked in everybody had to be satisfied.

  ‘Course it was her, had to be her,’ Eugene Boyd was saying, and drew the back of his hand across his face. ‘Nobody else gonna come to a quiet place like this and do this … atrocity. Don’t know why they don’t just come right out and say it.’

  The TV reporter asked, ‘You knew the family?’

  ‘I knew the mother and father, yeah.’

  ‘What impressions did you have of them?’

  ‘Impressions?’ Eugene Boyd asked. ‘They kept pretty much to themselves. Private folks. They didn’t take part in this community.’

  ‘Did you ever meet the daughter?’

  ‘I see her once or twice when she was a kid, that’s all.’

  The reporter wanted more. ‘You ever talk to her?’

  Boyd said, ‘Once maybe twice. It was a while ago.’

  ‘But you didn’t really know her?’

  Boyd shook his head, raised a hand to cover his face, and Pagan thought: Nobody really knows her. He sympathized with the unfortunate Eugene Boyd, who’d drifted away from the camera just as the reporter’s image abruptly disappeared and the location changed to that of the studio where a blow-dried, pancake-faced anchorman sat behind a desk. ‘Sorry to break in on you, Dave, but news is just coming in from Caroline County, Virginia, where the home of the well-known psychiatrist Patrick Lannigan has been the subject of a vicious fire-bomb assault early this morning … Dr Lannigan is thought to have been inside the house at the time. Firemen at the scene say they’ve recovered two bodies, but identification is going to take some time. Patrick Lannigan is well known for his bestselling book on the psychology of terrorism and his most famous case study was that of Carlotta in her teenage years, so there may well be some connection with events in Capsicum and the apparent slaying of Dr Lannigan, although this remains speculation for the moment—’

  Dave’s face reappeared. ‘It’s all speculation at the moment, Don.’

  Lannigan, Pagan thought. One of Carlotta’s past analysts. What the fuck was she doing? Erasing everything connected to her past? Destroying everybody and everything that had anything to do with her history? For what reason? Yes, Dave, it’s all speculation; you’re dead right about that. It’s all sheer speculation.

  His phone rang and he picked up the receiver at once. The voice on the other end of the line said, ‘Bob Naderson here. I understand you want to see me, Mr Pagan.’

  Pagan followed the directions he’d been given by Naderson. He drove with his air-conditioning unit on maximum as he headed west out of the city. He checked his rear-view mirror regularly, but he saw no consistency in the vehicles immediately behind him, no one car dogging him with persistence: Zuboric or his hounds could be back in traffic somewhere, of course, but Pagan had no way of knowing because traffic was dense, slow-moving; pollution created a haze around the sun. His thoughts drifted to Capsicum, North Carolina, and then to the news flash concerning Dr Lannigan. Carlotta, he thought. What exactly are you doing?

  He drove on Highway 66 beyond Arlington and Fairfax. Naderson had instructed him to head for Manassas Park and beyond that to look for a sign directing him to a place called Maryville. He found the sign, turned off the main highway, drove for several miles until he reached Maryville, an uninteresting place, the bones of an old community around the central spine of which had been constructed a series of big redbrick houses in post-Colonial style, each occupying a two-acre site. There was the quiet hum of wealth here, tucked behind redbrick walls and wrought-iron gates and dense trees.

  Pagan found Mulberry, and looked for number 324. He uttered his name into an intercom located on the wall and the gates swung open to admit him. A paved driveway led to the house. He parked his car and got out. A man was standing in the open doorway of the house.

  ‘You gave Larry Quinn a hard time, I hear,’ the man said, and smiled. ‘You have some ID, Mr Pagan?’

  Pagan handed his ID to the man, who studied it a moment before returning it. ‘We called London, of course. We had you authenticated.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Pagan said.

  ‘Your name’s not exactly unknown to us, of course.’ The man held out his hand to be shaken. ‘Bob Naderson. Come inside. It’s damnably hot out here.’

  Pagan followed Naderson inside the house and was led to a room that was a kind of atrium stuffed with fresh herbs in a multitude of ceramic pots. Under a large skylight plants lavishly perfumed the air. Thyme, basil, rosemary, mint; the place smelled like an overwhelming pot-pourri. Naderson suggested he sit in one of the two dark green cane chairs that were camouflaged by plants. Pagan did so.

  Naderson, crossing his legs, sat facing him. He had candid brown eyes and an earnest look. His bearing suggested that of a retired banker, a kindly man whose business life has been characterized by discretion and old-fashioned honesty. Clandestine wasn’t an attribute that would come immediately to the casual observer’s mind.

  Pagan said, ‘Nice room.’ He surveyed it quickly, noticing on a small circular wicker table a number of old silver-framed photographs. Family groups taken thirty or forty years ago. He thought he could pick out Bob Naderson in a couple of them, young and fair-haired and athletic, a fine honest smile. There was one picture in which a man who was apparently Bob in his forties was depicted alongside a young woman; the shot had been taken on the steps of a gazebo in bright sunlight. Bob and the girl were smiling, arms around each other’s waists. A fiancée? a friend? Pagan looked at the young woman’s face; something about it troubled him, although he couldn’t say what.

  ‘Organic herbs,’ said Naderson, gesturing round the place. ‘Out back, free-range eggs. A sizeable vegetable patch. Sweet corn. Runner beans. No great crop this year, of course … I’m very careful what I put in my body. I sometimes think half the trouble with the world is nutritional. Too many chemicals and pesticides, small wonder the race is in a state of such decline … So. Special Branch indeed. What is this emergency that has you jumping across the ocean and terrifying young Larry Quinn?’

  Pagan sat back in his chair and contemplated the older man. Naderson’s manner was disarmingly gentle.

  ‘It’s an old matter,’ he said finally.

  ‘Ah. My past has come back to haunt me,’ Naderson said, and smiled as if at some private joke.

  ‘A man called Martin Burr was murdered in London a few days ago.’

  ‘Burr,’ Naderson said, and looked like someone skirting the edges of a faint memory. ‘I think I read something about that in the newspapers here.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  Naderson shook his head in a puzzled way. ‘No. Why would you think that?’

  Pagan paused a second before he said, ‘Because he was instrumental in helping Christopher Poole get you out of Russia.’

  Naderson frowned, reaching for a plant and stiffly grasping a leaf between thumb and index finger and raising it to his nostrils. ‘Mind if I call you Frank?’

  ‘Feel free.’ Pagan glanced again at the photograph of Naderson and the girl. Whatever had troubled him about it a moment ago seemed to have dissolved. His eye shifted
to the telephone that sat amidst the photographs. He read Naderson’s number on the dial and made the effort of committing it to memory.

  Naderson said, ‘Russia. Now that was a bad business all round, Frank. Tell you the truth, I never understood the mechanics of my release. Certain arrangements were made, but I was never privy to them. God knows, I was glad to get out. I was there for six weeks. Constant interrogations. It was downright unpleasant. But nobody ever told me how my release was worked.’

  Six weeks in exchange for Pasco’s ten years. It wasn’t much of a trade, if you’d been Pasco. Pagan leaned forward in his chair. ‘You were traded for somebody by the name of Richard Pasco. Does that ring a bell?’

  ‘Pasco? No.’

  ‘Pasco, it seems, was a fall guy. An innocent. He did ten years in highly unpleasant circumstances so that you could be returned to the fold. And you’ve never heard of him?’

  ‘Never,’ Naderson said. ‘You say he did ten years despite the fact he was innocent?’

  ‘Right. Burr came to an arrangement with Poole.’ He studied Naderson’s face a moment. What he was looking for was some kind of tic, a flicker, an ocular shading – any little sign that Naderson was lying when he said he’d never heard of Pasco. But Naderson emitted only a certain blandness. Pagan wasn’t inclined to buy his way into this impression; maybe Naderson was just a bloody good liar. If he and Poole had worked together for years, if he’d been a spook important enough for Poole to engineer his release, then he’d surely know about the arrangement carved out with Martin Burr, and the betrayal of Pasco. Naderson would have asked questions about the way the exchange had worked, and Poole must have answered at least some of them. If they were old comrades in the cloak and dagger trade, they were certain to have shared all kinds of confidences.

  Naderson said, ‘What I don’t see is where you’re going, Frank. What are you after? You told young Quinn you had an emergency on your hands – so what has that got to do with my time in Russia and this Richard Pasco?’

  ‘A couple of things. I want the person who murdered Burr. And I want to know why Burr went along with Poole’s scheme in the first place.’