Snark

by William L. DeAndrea

“Tell me what?”

  “What I was considering telling you this morning. I want you to understand me. I know it’s dreadfully unprofessional, maybe even dangerous, but that’s what I want.”

  “I can’t promise to understand you,” Bellman said.

  “Just listen,” Felicity said. She didn’t look at him while she talked, just kept her eyes straight ahead, on the road. As if she were in a psychiatrist’s office, or a confessional.

  “The first thing I want you to know,” she said, “is that I’m going to file a report with Mr. Tipton at my earliest opportunity and tell him what you’ve told me today.”

  “Of course,” Bellman said. “I never thought you weren’t professional.”

  She ignored it. “This is my second time round with the Section,” she said. “I was out of it for over a year and a half. Out of the Civil Service altogether.”

  “Voluntarily?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I did the worst thing an agent can do—I loved someone. His name was Derek. He was with the Special Branch. We met during an operation. He was brave and strong and deliciously ugly, and he loved me, too. It was the first thing we’d ever had outside our jobs. I resigned; we got married. Derek was going to leave, too, but he was in the middle of an important investigation. He was going to leave as soon as he was through. It dragged on and on.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen until Derek was safe and dry in a normal job, but I got pregnant, something,” she said, “that will never happen again. The investigation was drawing to a close—”

  “IRA?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something extra in your voice when you talk about them.”

  “Something extra, indeed. One night, he disappeared. Someone had leaked something, and Derek disappeared. Two weeks later, he was found. Dead. Naked. I will not speak of what had been done to him before they killed him. I’ll just tell you that the operation eventually came off without a hitch, proof that whatever they’d done, they hadn’t been able to get him to talk.

  “I went mad when I got the news. They tried to keep me from seeing his body, but I insisted, and I went mad. I also went into labor, and it’s just as well, because I think I might have destroyed the baby if I hadn’t.

  “I never saw the baby—they tell me it was a boy—I didn’t want to. The sight of him would remind me too much of his father. I let him be adopted.

  “I was mad all winter. I wanted to kill. Myself; the people who gave Derek such dangerous assignments; Irishmen at random. I knew I’d never be able to find the specific ones who’d hurt and killed him.

  “I decided at last that the only thing to do was to go back to work for Sir Lewis. If I couldn’t fight them in particular, I’d fight them in general. As I said today, it’s all connected, anyway.

  “It took time, months, but I persuaded Sir Lewis to take me back, and Mr. Tipton gave me this ridiculous name and put me back to work. Every time I frustrate another plan to destroy my country, or at least help; every time I kill a thug or a terrorist, I feel like I’ve done a little something for Derek. And maybe for his son. His greatness is in the gene pool, Jeffrey. I feel good about that.

  “So the work is important to me in a special way. I may still be mad. Do you understand? You may be working with and bedding a madwoman.”

  For the first time, she looked at him. Her eyes were clear and frank and showed no trace of madness.

  “Does that bother you?” she said.

  “No,” Bellman said softly a few seconds later. “I think I can handle it.”

  3

  WITH THE UNIVERSAL INSTINCT of futility that Bellman’s father called the Barn Door Response, the powers that be had doubled the guard (unobtrusively, of course) at Sir Lewis’s home, and made them be extra careful. Even Felicity’s magic little document, the one that had so impressed DI Stingley the night before, wasn’t good enough, and they had to wait while a fresh-faced young man (who was pouring a new driveway with his partners while they kept an eye on the place) went to his truck and radioed London for approval.

  Bellman spent the interval looking at the place. Sir Lewis hadn’t gone in for ostentation. It was a four-room cottage, painted white, gray roof. A couple of rosebushes. The only tip-off to the educated eye that there might be something special about the man who lived here was the slightly over-elaborate TV antenna buckled prosaically to the chimney, a remnant from the days when Sir Lewis had to be kept In Constant Touch.

  The name of the place was Advance, Tipton had said, because Sir Lewis Alfot would be damned if he ever needed a retreat. A nice little place, Bellman supposed, but hard to guard without disrupting the whole area and blowing the cover to bits. Sir Lewis might step into the back garden to smell the roses, get pulled over the fence, and disappear. That, in fact, was the best theory anybody had so far. The only lead Tipton’s men had on it was the sound truck that had been heard in the neighborhood the day Sir Lewis disappeared. They were trying to follow up. Bellman wished them luck. If Leo Calvin had had anything to do with that truck, anybody who might be either willing or able to tell the authorities anything about it would be long gone from Britain, dead, or both.

  The young man came back from the van, pulled off a tar-smeared glove, shook hands with Bellman and Felicity, unlocked the door, and let them in. It was colder inside than it had been outside, since no sunlight had reached the place in weeks.

  Bellman followed his breath around the room, looking at everything, but nothing in particular.

  “I don’t know what you expect to find,” Felicity said. She had an anorak over the sweater now, and looked like she’d just come in off a ski run. “All the official things and the radio equipment and the like were removed as soon as Sir Lewis went missing.”

  “You’ve met the man.”

  “And?”

  “And I haven’t. This is the next best thing, not that it’s any too great. Still, I want to get some kind of handle on his personality.”

  “Sir Lewis’s personality was too big to be lifted by just one handle, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll do the best we can. This is the trophy room, I take it.”

  Felicity didn’t bother to answer. The walls were lined with plaques, scrolls, certificates, swords, silver and gold cups, and plates and bowls, all engraved with glowing testimonials to the goodness of Sir Lewis Alfot.

  “Well,” Bellman said. “I know something about him already. He was proud but not vain. He kept all this stuff where a visitor could see it, but he didn’t spend much time looking at it himself.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “No furniture. Most men with collections like this make a study out of the room they keep it in, to have an excuse to sit with it for a long time and make sure it’s still there.”

  “You didn’t say ‘elementary,’” Felicity said. “Would you like to see the study next?”

  Bellman told her to lead on. The study was cozy and book-lined. There was a television and a stereo system tucked unobtrusively away. Bellman took a closer look at the shelves. The books were histories and thrillers, indiscriminately mixed among British and foreign authors. The records were resolutely easy listening—probably everything Mantovani ever recorded.

  “The hottest music here is Petula Clark,” Bellman said.

  “He came here to relax,” Felicity said.

  “Okay, no value-judgment implied. I wanted to learn about the man, and I’m making progress.”

  There was one shelf that was practically empty. It was at eye-level for Felicity, who was (Bellman remembered) about the same height as Sir Lewis. The shelf held a silver-framed photograph of a bunch of ragged-looking soldiers, with signatures on the bottom. The faces were haggard, but game, the kind of face seen in every unposed photo taken in Britain from 1939 to 1945.

  Next to it was a silver loving cup about the size of a demitasse. The inscription, which had obviously been hammered in letter by laborious letter, filled up nearly all of the available surface.
It read:

  TO LIEUTENANT LEWIS ALFOT

  IN GRATITUDE

  FROM THE MEN HE LED

  OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH

  FRANCE, 1940

  The other side had “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,” and the designation of the outfit Alfot had taken command of during the flight from France.

  Bellman held it gently, as though afraid he might bend it, read both sides, then placed it back precisely in the circle it had left in the dust.

  Felicity had been reading over his shoulder. “You think this was the one he was proudest of, then.”

  “Unless he was a fanatic for Kipling or Tennyson.” He turned away from the shelf and put his hands in his pockets. “It makes sense. It was the first of his citations, from men he’d been through hell with. I’m sure that made it special.”

  The rest of the cottage showed him nothing you wouldn’t expect to see in the home of any elderly bachelor with money and simple tastes. Bellman took it in, then went back out into the bright, cold sunshine.

  “What now?” Felicity wanted to know. “Back to London? I can have our things sent up.”

  “No, back to Brighton.”

  “Your man is long gone from there by now.”

  Bellman shrugged. “This is a small island. When I find out where he is, I can get to him. What I want in Brighton is for you to join me for a seafood dinner.”

  “Am I ever going to understand you?” she said. It was possible that the twist of her lips was a smile.

  “You can try,” Bellman said. He was smiling. “No one ever has yet.”

  4

  LEO CALVIN HAD BEEN involved with pistols, rifles, carbines, bombs. Knives, drugs, poisons, and homicidal maniacs. He had never felt so close to death as he did now.

  Grigori Illyich Bulanin’s handsome face was pinched in a movie-star scowl. It was nonetheless deadly for that. Bulanin wanted explanations, and he wanted them rapidly.

  Leo would provide them. Or he would provide something. He would have to trust to luck that the Russian had no knowledge that would ruin the story Leo had been polishing so carefully on his way back to London.

  Leo was uncomfortable, quite literally not himself. He was in disguise, and he hated it. It had been a matter of pride with him that he had always managed his affairs in such a way that he could flaunt his individuality, his unusual appearance. Now, hiding it, he felt diminished, less able to control people and events at a time when it was essential that he do so.

  But the hair that fell in front of his eyes was a muddy brown instead of the customary platinum. That was the color a whole bottle of Grecian 2000 had made it. It had also made his hair oily, and his scalp seemed to want to crawl away from it.

  The round frames of the eyeglasses he now affected rimmed the world for him—he couldn’t stop seeing them. And he could feel the weight of the false moustache on his lip. It seemed to get in the way when he wanted to speak, muffling his words, hampering his mouth. It was also impossible to forget that the moustache was not the same color as his slicked-down hair. He kept reminding himself that this was the case with many men with natural moustaches, but the fact failed to comfort him.

  Leo was also upset with himself. He had made his plan, and kidnapped an important Englishman to use as a pawn. The pawn had ideas of his own. Margaret was no great loss—her time would have come soon in any case, especially now, with the child she had been foolish enough to allow to be conceived. But he wished he had Sir Lewis back. What capital Leo could have made of him, if only he’d seen the truth. Now, he didn’t dare use it.

  It hadn’t been a mistake, Leo reflected, to agree to meet Bulanin here, in the Tombs. Just a necessity.

  The Tombs was a collection of dank chambers tucked away in the storage space under the South-Bank side of one of the multitudinous bridges across the Thames. Like the London Dungeon not far away, the Tombs was a wax museum for those who found the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s insufficiently horrible. The Tombs boasted loving reproduction of every method of torture ever used in the British Isles, as well as working models of methods of execution, and depictions of famous crimes, certified for accuracy by eminent historians. There was a notice posted at intervals stating that every skeleton and partial skeleton, every mummified hand or head, were Genuine Human Remains, and another notice informing the reader that the building was open every day except Christmas and Good Friday, from 10.00 to 19.00.

  Leo walked with Bulanin down a cobblestone walk in the middle of a reproduction of Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel, breathing an eye-searing concoction that purported to be authentic-formula 1870s smog.

  “It’s good you rang me,” Bulanin said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Everybody has been looking for me,” Leo said.

  “More than you know.” Bulanin coughed. “This is worse than cigarettes. Let’s find a more wholesome area to walk.”

  They turned a corner into a torture dungeon, watching some poor wax bastard being torn apart by red-hot pincers. He looked at the dummy’s face. That was the way they looked, all right. Leo wondered how the artisan had found out.

  “What do you mean, more than I know?”

  “I mean I am not the only member of my organization with access to BBC news. Nor the only one who knows your face.”

  Bulanin paused to let that sink in, a move wasted on Leo, since it had sunk in quite thoroughly already. The police were the least of his worries. As far as that went, he might turn himself in to the next bobby he ran across and let British Justice take its course.

  “I am being pressed,” Bulanin continued ominously, “for results.”

  “There’s a lot at stake here,” Leo said.

  “I know what is at stake. My career. My life. I must have delivery of the goods you promised.”

  “You will, but you have to accept that it can’t be done just like that.”

  “It could have been done just like that weeks ago. Instead, you had some private project in mind, using the one thing that could save your life as bait. I was foolish to let you.”

  “This can make it better.”

  “What can make it better? Your being a fugitive? American agents making threats—” A group of noisy, shouting schoolboys came by, testing macho by ditching class to look at the gruesome reproductions. Bulanin waited for them to go by, then said in a lower voice, “Making threats in my own building. Oblivious to surveillance. Accompanied by an Englishwoman we know to be a spy. Unheard of behavior for the CIA.”

  “He isn’t CIA.”

  “No? What, then?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not the original Bellman. He’s not the one you had your friends get in touch with for me.”

  “I didn’t think so. Who is he?”

  “When I knew him before, his name was Driscoll. He claimed to be working for the Defense Department, but that wasn’t true either.”

  “I ask you again—who does he work for?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but he’s something new. Follows no rules. Takes incredible risks.”

  Bulanin grinned. Leo didn’t join him. It wasn’t appropriate, and he still wasn’t sure of his moustache.

  “He works like us, then,” Bulanin said. “You and I.”

  “Exactly. That’s why—”

  “I am done taking risks in this instance. There is a death order on you which I have ignored. I have even helped you. Because you promised me the old man. I must deliver the old man, or I will deliver you.”

  Leo acted more concerned than he felt. If Bulanin had been absolutely determined to pull the plug on their little joint venture, he wouldn’t be here breathing smog and talking. He would have set up the meet, and had it kept by a couple of trained Bulgarians. And Leo would have been delivered, with Bulanin getting credit for a job well done.

  But Leo had a hunch that Alfot meant even more to the Russians than Bulanin was letting on. His KGB friend wasn’t going to give up while there was sti
ll the slightest chance that Leo might succeed. Leo noted with an almost academic interest that he could now feel fairly confident he would continue living for the time being. That had been in some doubt.

  “I don’t think you’re going to touch me,” Leo said. “You’re too smart.”

  “It isn’t my wisdom that keeps you alive,” Bulanin said. “It’s my ambition. My instinct for survival is stronger than either, and that wants you dead. I suggest you use this last opportunity to persuade me otherwise.”

  “Leaving aside the old man,” Leo began, “I have something your people have wanted for years, and you know it—a way into Alfot’s section.”

  “Revealed to you, no doubt by the old man himself, under drugs or torture. His security checks are too good for you to have learned any other way.”

  Leo let him think so. It was vital that Bulanin never know Leo no longer had Sir Lewis in custody.

  “Test me if you want,” Leo said. “Give me two days to find out who the woman is.”

  “I don’t care who she is.”

  “Never mind, then, it’s beside my point.”

  “Yes. Your point. Get to it, please, I have work to do.”

  “The point is Bellman. He’s behind all this. He’s framed me in this murder business—”

  “What do you mean, he framed you?”

  “I mean he killed the woman I’d been hiding out with, using the technique of this Sussex Cyclops maniac in order to get the British police after me.”

  “That is extreme for an American,” Bulanin said.

  “I told you that.” Leo watched the Russian carefully. This was the lie that had to go across. He watched as Bulanin ran the story over in his mind, waited for him to speak.

  “If he knew where the woman was, and knew you’d been with her, he did not need to get the British after you. He could have gone to your flat, killed the woman, and disposed of you when you returned home.” For the first time in many minutes, Bulanin turned to look Leo in the eye. “I would have expected a more skillful lie.”

  “He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to turn me. He wants publicity. He wants to make a mess. It’s a good thing I had the old man in a safe place.” Vital Lie Number 2.