Heat

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘How the devil can I help? I never knew Burr. I never heard of Pasco—’

  ‘Then I should talk to Poole.’

  ‘He’s a hard man to see unless you give him a specific reason,’ said Naderson. ‘But, gosh, I just don’t understand how there can be any useful connection between myself or Chris Poole and the death of Martin Burr.’

  Gosh, Pagan thought. It was a nice old man’s expletive. It resonated with lifelong membership of a white-framed Methodist church in the wheaten heart of Kansas, old geezers whittling sticks on the porches of lonesome houses in the middle of nowhere.

  Pagan said, ‘Carlotta.’

  ‘Carlotta?’ Naderson asked, and frowned.

  ‘She’s the connection.’

  Naderson said, ‘You’re losing me, Frank.’

  ‘She killed Martin Burr. She also killed Pasco. And I want her.’

  ‘The same Carlotta …’

  ‘The same Carlotta in today’s headlines. The very same Carlotta you can catch on your TV round the clock. There’s only one Carlotta, which is something we ought to be thankful for.’

  Naderson seemed slightly flustered by this information. ‘Put this in some perspective for me, Frank. I’m not absolutely sure what I’m hearing right now.’

  ‘I’ll put it bluntly, Bob. She means to kill you.’

  Naderson smiled and shook his head. ‘Kill me? Whatever for? I’ve never had any association with her.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Pagan said. ‘You don’t need to have had any kind of association with Carlotta for her to want to kill you.’

  Naderson plucked at another leaf, rolled it between the palms of his hands. ‘I’m still in the dark, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Let me throw a little light, if I can. Pasco came out of Russia with a major grudge against the Agency. Imagine ten years in the permafrost, ten years of vitamin deficiency and God-awful food, ten years of pure bloody hell. Obviously you’re not quite the full shilling at the end of all these miserable years. Certain things may have been rearranged in your head after all that time. Whatever, Pasco somehow made contact with Carlotta on his release. Carlotta, who’s been known in the past to have devious schemes of her own, enters into a contract with him – I use “contract” loosely, Bob, and not in its legal sense – to settle his grudges for him. These grudges included Martin Burr. They probably also include your good self and Christopher Poole and God knows who else was involved in the wretched betrayal of Pasco. Is that clear enough for you, Bob?’

  Naderson sat back in his chair. He looked like a man perusing a loan application made by a deadbeat. ‘You think I’m in danger. You think she may well come here to my home and …’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s more than a possibility, Bob,’ Pagan said. ‘If not to your home, then somewhere else. Your golf club. Country club. You name it, she may just turn up there. And you won’t know until it’s too damn late.’

  Naderson’s expression changed slightly. He looked a few years older all at once; a muscular collapse had taken place in the jaws and cheeks. ‘I should take steps to protect myself, that’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’m not sure what steps you can take when it comes to Carlotta. She’s like rising damp – you seal her off in one place, she comes out another. You can get yourself some heavies to keep watch over you, but she works on the principle that the more difficult the target, the more of a challenge she finds it. Her life is all challenges and derangements, Bob. She isn’t like anyone you ever met before.’ Pagan observed Naderson and detected in his otherwise mild appearance something of the school sneak caught in an act of blackmail. He wanted to say, There’s always consequences, Bob. For every act we commit, there’s always a reaction. Something has been tracking you for ten years, old fellow. And now you can hear it rustle in the sunlight outside your window.

  Naderson said, ‘The FBI will be taking exhaustive steps to find her …’

  ‘They’re taking steps all right, Bob. And I don’t doubt they’re turning over every stone. But whether they’re turning over the right stones is another matter. She plays with her pursuers. She toys with her assailants. She’s got gifts that very few of us are given in quite the same combination. She has cunning. She has absolutely no sense of remorse. She thinks like a predatory animal. She puts no value on human life. Add to that the fact she’s very bright, she’s a natural mimic, she can conceal herself with all the skill of a praying-mantis on a leaf – you’re talking about a special individual, Bob. And don’t forget: she’s acting alone, she’s a solo performer, which gives her agility and freedom. The FBI, by comparison, is a bloody herd of elephants. She can hear them coming for miles.’

  Naderson tipped back his head and looked up at the hanging plants, fuzzy green suspensions in sunlight. He asked, ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Suggest? I can’t suggest anything,’ Pagan said. ‘You work for the Agency, they’ve got security experts, they can advise you. Ask them.’

  Naderson stood up. A bone creaked in his leg. ‘A question occurs to me,’ he said, frowning. ‘How did Pasco discover … how did he find out the names of the people involved in what you call his “wretched betrayal”? How did he know that?’

  ‘Good question,’ Pagan said. ‘I don’t have an answer for it. Maybe he just worked it out for himself. Maybe he spent years creating a list of candidates. By a process of elimination, he came up with certain names. Here’s another possibility. Maybe somebody gave him the names. Somebody with an interest in Pasco’s grudge. Somebody who knew where to dig up the bones.’

  Somebody, Pagan thought: who was this enigmatic somebody who might have given the names to Pasco? It was an angle Pagan had never explored before, for the simple reason that he’d been focused, as usual, on only one individual, and she had a way of eclipsing broader considerations, she had a knack of seriously limiting his horizons.

  Naderson looked perplexed. ‘It would have to be a person inside the Agency. A person with access to certain material inside the Executive Director’s personal files.’

  Pagan shrugged. ‘I don’t know how your labyrinth works, Bob. That’s something for you to find out.’

  ‘I don’t see what anyone would stand to gain by releasing that kind of material,’ Naderson said, and sounded all at once like a fussy old man upset by his own advancing years and their toll on his body.

  ‘What do people normally stand to gain from giving away secrets? Money. Power. Erasing an old resentment. Take your pick, Bob. Motive is a bottomless pit.’

  Naderson withdrew into himself; his face was blank for a moment, his eyes focused elsewhere. ‘I have to speak with Christopher Poole.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind speaking to Poole myself,’ Pagan remarked.

  ‘That’s up to him, of course. I’ll call him. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, thanks for the warning.’

  ‘You keep a gun,’ Pagan said.

  ‘A few.’

  ‘You know how to use them?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  Pagan walked to the door. He thought: You’d never get a chance to use them, Bob. Not if Carlotta comes your way. You’re too easy for her. Too soft.

  He went outside and Naderson drifted after him into the distracting heat. The sky was vast and cloudless. Pagan wondered about the woman and where in this huge continent she might be. He had a sense of an inevitable collision, her comet impacting with his, a crash of fates. Bonded.

  Naderson said, ‘Thanks again.’

  Pagan climbed inside his car. Thanks for what? he wondered. For bringing you news that somebody is stalking you with lethal intent? That your own devious history has just exploded in your face?

  He drove back to the city, back to his hotel.

  Inside his room he sat on the edge of the bed and opened the little logbook Zuboric had given him and he thought for a moment before he inscribed the words: Watched TV, read the newspaper. Then he shut the book.

  A slight sound made him raise his face in the dire
ction of the bathroom door. Instantly alert, he stretched his hand toward the bedside table, thinking of the drawer in which he’d placed his gun, but before he could reach it the bathroom door opened and he saw her standing there, dark and lustrous, in half-shadow.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said.

  32

  LONDON

  Robbie Foxworth had a way with bank managers. It had to do with the authority inherent in his upper-class accent. At times his pronunciation and cadences of speech rang a residual little bell of class inferiority in certain people, and they were reminded of their own less elevated backgrounds. John Black, the manager of Barclays Bank on the Strand, was one such person.

  He could tell Foxworth was very well-bred, his origins had been privileged, and that even if he were only some kind of policeman, just the same he came from old moneyed stock. Black imagined him to be the eccentric offspring of landed gentry, and that his affiliation with Special Branch was simply a kind of hobby, something his blue-blooded family had grudgingly accepted without true enthusiasm. He caught the whiff of hunting and fishing and country estates about Foxworth – a world of hunt balls and aristocratic shenanigans, a place of wealth and mystery beyond the reach of a bank manager with a degree in Business Studies from the University of Leeds.

  As a consequence of the bank manager’s sense of social inadequacy, the charred bank-book Foxworth had placed on his desk was no mere object of curiosity, but a document demanding his immediate attention.

  Foxworth said, ‘Clearly, I’m in no position to divulge how I came into possession of the thing. You understand that.’

  The bank manager nodded. ‘The delicacy of an investigation, Mr Foxworth?’

  ‘As you say,’ remarked Foxie, who was dressed this morning in a sharp three-piece pinstripe suit from his Jermyn Street tailor.

  ‘I understand,’ said the bank manager. ‘Perhaps if you’ll explain the nature of your needs …’

  ‘One, who opened the account. Two, how much was deposited. Three, have there been withdrawals.’ Foxie thought the bank manager was really a wonderful specimen of a groveller. It was a strange thing about the English, the way they were often cowed by authoritative accents.

  ‘The account number is barely legible, Mr Foxworth.’

  ‘Yes, but not the account holder’s name.’

  ‘Pasco. Richard Pasco.’ The bank manager prodded the burned document with the tip of a fountain-pen. ‘Strictly the bank is under no obligation to provide information without appropriate supporting documents – warrants and such.’

  ‘Quite,’ Foxworth remarked. ‘But I think we have a gentleman’s agreement, yes?’

  Black nodded. ‘Of course, of course.’ He was a dapper little man whose small snout of a nose had recently been exposed to sunlight, and the skin peeled. He peered in a sniffy manner at the wreck of the bank-book. ‘I remember this particular transaction.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the person who opened the account?’

  ‘An American gentleman who was acting on behalf of a company called Mongoose Enterprises.’

  ‘Mongoose Enterprises?’

  ‘Yes. He provided me with a specimen of Richard Pasco’s signature and Pasco’s passport, as well as a cheque drawn on a bank in Zurich for half a million American dollars.’

  ‘A considerable sum,’ said Foxie.

  ‘Considerable,’ Black said.

  ‘The man gave you his name, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll have to check on it to refresh my memory. If you’ll excuse me …’

  The bank manager left the office. Alone, Foxie looked through the window. Below, traffic passed along the Strand in bright morning sunlight. He was feeling reasonably self-assured this morning. For one thing, Nimmo had not appeared demanding an explanation of Pagan’s absence, which meant he hadn’t yet learned of Frank’s departure – although sooner or later it was inevitable. For another, he felt an unexpected liberty with Pagan gone, and he was exercising it profitably, using his own initiative, answering only to himself. Pagan, he felt, had dismissed the bank-book all too quickly, failing to see that it might open rooms of useful information. But that was Frank for you yet again, that was a flaw in the man – scurrying to the heart of the action without taking into account the rich seams that might be quarried around the peripheries. Scurrying, almost breathless, in an unseemly way, toward Carlotta.

  Foxworth hummed the tune of a popular song that had lodged in his head. Five minutes elapsed. He watched buses and taxi-cabs plough through smoky sunlight in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

  The door opened and the bank manager stepped back inside the office, bearing a document. He sat down behind his desk. ‘The account was opened on 15 August this year by a man named Jason Mannering. A withdrawal of five thousand pounds was made by the account-holder, Richard Pasco, on 2 September at a branch in Oxford Street.’

  ‘And that was the only withdrawal?’

  The bank manager said it was.

  ‘Tell me about this Mannering,’ Foxie said.

  ‘Quiet, mid-forties, well-groomed. He provided me with identification of his own, a prerequisite in any banking transaction. We have to be careful, naturally, all the more so when large sums of money are involved. He showed me his passport, which was American. He was, as I recall, an executive director of Mongoose Enterprises.’

  ‘Is there an address for this company?’

  Black studied the sheet. ‘Mongoose Enterprises has an office in Richmond, Virginia. But its head office is in Zurich.’

  ‘Can I have a copy of that sheet?’

  ‘I don’t see any problem with that, Mr Foxworth.’

  ‘Isn’t it unusual for somebody to open a bank account on someone else’s behalf?’

  ‘Nothing is unusual in my business,’ said Black.

  ‘Sounds a lot like mine,’ Foxie remarked.

  ‘I imagine so.’ The bank manager smiled with Masonic secrecy. ‘I’ll have a copy of this made for you, Mr Foxworth. Come this way.’

  Foxie followed the bank manager into an adjacent office where a pretty young woman sat behind a typewriter. She had short dark hair and a luminescent complexion and eyes the colour of unsweetened chocolate.

  ‘Sheila,’ said the bank manager. ‘Run off a copy of this for me, please.’

  Sheila rose and said, ‘Of course,’ and smiled in a sweet way at Foxworth whose first thought was to transfer his bank account and his trust fund to this particular branch at the earliest opportunity.

  33

  WASHINGTON

  In a downtown fast-food restaurant that smelled of deep-fried putrescence, Max Skidelsky fidgeted with a waxen cup that contained the dregs of a Diet Dr Pepper. The clientele of the place was mainly young and pimpled, an assortment of adolescent geeks from an electronics college located nearby. Skidelsky drained his drink. He was anxious to be out of here and on his way.

  He watched Larry Quinn pick french-fries out of a cardboard carton and said, ‘Let’s assess the situation, Larry, before I die of grease inhalation. Pagan meets with Naderson.’

  ‘Right,’ said Quinn. ‘Then Naderson comes into the office an hour ago in a state of some agitation.’

  ‘And confers with Poole.’

  ‘Right. Then Naderson asks me to find him some specialized home help. People who know their way around a gun. A couple of live-ins.’

  Skidelsky rattled ice-cubes. ‘Because he’s scared shitless of the woman.’

  ‘Shitless, right.’

  ‘Did you find him help?’

  ‘I pulled a couple of names out of the graveyard files. Old freelancers. These guys couldn’t hit a barn door point-blank. They’ve been in the graveyard files so long they’re practically embalmed by this time.’

  ‘Fine.’ Skidelsky’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses. He took off the glasses and wiped the lenses with a special anti-static cloth. ‘Let me tell you what Poole is up to. He wants a complete record of all activity relating to his per
sonal files during the past twelve months. Who had access. Who looked at what. Who signed the register. The whole thing. All because Pagan came to Naderson with questions concerning our friend Richard Pasco. So you got two old guys desperately trying to find out who leaked the names to Pasco. Two old guys with troubled consciences.’

  ‘Is this a problem?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘How do you define problem?’ Skidelsky stared at a chinless girl munching into a half-pound cheeseburger that oozed mayo. ‘You don’t imagine I left my fingerprints on the files when I ransacked them, do you? You don’t imagine I made an entry in the god-damn log after I’d copied the information, do you?’

  ‘Who else has access to Poole’s personal files?’

  ‘Apart from Poole and myself, Poole’s personal secretary, Wanda. And Poole’s assistant personal secretary, Gilda. Wanda and Gilda – it sounds like some kind of shabby high-wire act in a poky one-ring circus.’

  Quinn smiled, chewed on a fry.

  Skidelsky continued. ‘The thing is, Poole thinks the sun rises and sets on my halo. I’m like the kid he never had. A little unruly at times, maybe, sometimes a bit on the rebellious side, and just maybe I need a dressing-down once in a while to remind me to cool the jets of my youthful eagerness – but untrustworthy? Moi? Not in a thousand fucking years, Larry. That would never cross Poole’s mind. So Gilda and Wanda are the ones walking the tightrope, so to speak. They’re the potential leaks. They’ll be questioned until they’ve got steam coming out their ears.’

  ‘So you’re out of the frame,’ Quinn said.

  ‘The frame doesn’t even exist when it comes to me.’

  Quinn wiped his greasy salty fingers on a napkin. ‘What about this Pagan?’ he said.

  ‘Ah, well, Pagan. I’m not sure. Persistent bastard. I figured he’d come after the woman, so it’s no surprise he’s here. What I didn’t take into my calculations was that he’d get to Naderson—’

  ‘I could hardly stall him,’ Quinn said. ‘He said he’d go to Poole if I didn’t help.’