The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  “You got problems, Vaughn. I helped you in Malmö and I’m trying to help you now, but you’re making your own problems.”

  “I know, Doug. I appreciate it. I really do.”

  They were silent a moment and became enveloped in the noise of the city. Douglas cleared his throat. “Is Michael Hampton… is he going to get to his goal?”

  “There’s every likelihood. In fact, now that Devereaux has decided to backtrack his trail, he’s out of the picture on the Continent. All Hampton has to do is to pull his head out of his ass and fly home.”

  “What happened in Berlin?”

  “KGB. They almost got him. That was too bad. KGB thinks they’re supposed to zap him. On the other hand, why zigzag when it’s, what, two hours by air to Rome?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he’s afraid. I suppose he has a right to be afraid. Poor fellow.”

  “Yes. Poor fellow. But when he makes it, he’ll do all right for himself. And we’ve got the backup insurance in that drunken sot, Evelyn Jaynes.”

  “The inevitable journalist,” Douglas Court agreed. “That was a good touch.”

  “Yes. They’re all good touches. Except that Hanley is dragging both feet, and Devereaux is his old murderous self.”

  “You’ve thought of most things, Vaughn. I can’t believe you haven’t thought of this.”

  “I won’t let the Soviets shove the Skarda computer system down the Firm’s throat,” Vaughn Reuben said in the quietest of voices. “And if we have to take it, I’m going to have a patsy at least set up. R Section. If Devereaux kills Hampton and recovers the tape, we leak it. If Devereaux kills Hampton and doesn’t recover the tape, the KGB and the secretary of state blame R Section. I don’t honestly see how we can lose on this.”

  “Better get back to the Big Fellow.” This is what Douglas Court called the secretary of state. He was the assistant-in-charge to the secretary, and he knew and appreciated the position of the secretary and the position of the Central Intelligence Agency. Douglas Court was an old schemer in Washington, and he thought no death could be sweeter than the way old John Mitchell died, just dropped dead on the sidewalk one day doing the things he liked to do. Or even Adlai Stevenson, just dropped over dead in the prime of political life, not that he ever gave a damn for Adlai Stevenson. Douglas Court intended to go the same way.

  “He’s still putting the heat on Section to get back the tape?” Vaughn said.

  “Yes, he is. He’s got Mrs. Neumann set up for a nervous breakdown.”

  “It couldn’t happen to a nicer old bitch.”

  “You know so many sweet words, Vaughn.”

  “Only one of them matters for now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Devereaux.”

  The two men got up from the bench and started away from each other, each back to his chauffeured car, each back to the endless traffic that was snarled around the White House grounds.

  The two homeless men watched the two government men part.

  “Motherfuckers,” said one of the homeless men to the other.

  “Check the one dude, could hit a dude like that.”

  “The dude what’s limping? I thought about that,” said the first homeless man. “Got himself a real limp. I’m surprised someone don’t knock him upside his head and take off. Just knock the dude down.”

  “Yeah,” said the second homeless man, thinking about it, thinking about the limping man.

  27

  MILAN

  Rain drummed against the roof of the great galleria. They sat at a table and drank cappuccino and watched the gloom and rain rub against the roof and the entrances of the old building. The galleria was a tall, nineteenth-century building lined with shops at two levels. On the ground floor, two broad pedestrian malls intersected at the café where Michael Hampton and Marie Dreiser waited.

  They had been lovers in Paris for a night.

  Michael felt guilt, of course. He had betrayed Rena with this strange, savage woman. Yet, what he felt had changed him. Rena in lovemaking seemed cool and remote; he could feel it even when he did not look at her, even when he smothered his face into her breasts to inhale the scents of her body. Rena was always a little apart from him. Not this girl. She clung to him, forced him deeper into her, urged him with a savagery that thrilled him.

  She had bitten him in lovemaking. When she came, she had cried out. Her cry had been half shout, half sob. The cry was so intense—it radiated from her belly through her lips—that it might have frightened Michael if he was not clinging to her at the moment, if he had not caused this cry of joy and pain.

  “This is some sanctuary,” Marie said suddenly. She shivered in the cold damp that blew through the galleria from the open ends. “Why would this priest help us? For what’s on the tape? I had hopes for you, lamb.”

  But she really wasn’t as angry as her words. She sat across from him, wide-eyed but lacking in innocence from the day she was born. She wanted to provoke him to defense because she still wanted sanctuary. She thought of his arms on her and shivered at the thought, as though no man had ever made her cry like that.

  “I—I was confused because he knew about Rena. It’s logical. He could have known about her. I could have mentioned her, he would have known.… But I was suspicious.”

  “And Rena betrayed you.”

  “She was… she thought she was doing the best thing. She couldn’t understand the importance of what was on the tape.”

  “Michael, I begin to wonder if you’re just crazy or what. Except I know those two men were after you in Berlin and that they shot at you. I know that, lamb, so I know whatever you heard was too much to hear.”

  He was struck by the words. He looked at her, and she took his hand, like a child who clings to an adult. Except who was the adult? He felt reassured by her touch.

  “The train for Rome leaves in thirty minutes. I have to take the chance. The cardinal… well, I’ve worked for him in the past—”

  “And what does this cardinal do that has to do with what you heard on this precious tape?”

  “The congregation… you might say it’s the intelligence apparatus of the Vatican, of the Holy See.”

  She gave a short, Berliner laugh.

  He smiled at her.

  “I’m sorry, lamb. The thought of religion having any intelligence struck me. So they are spies in cassocks? Cassock and dagger?” She made the last joke in English, and he smiled again. There was a comforting quality to Marie that was larger than her tawny eyes, larger than her slight frame. Was she the real sanctuary that he had never found?

  Suddenly, there were two of them, burly and swarthy, wearing long dark overcoats that glistened with raindrops. They wore black hats and they sat down at the table.

  “You weren’t at the train station,” the first one said to Michael. The second one kept his eyes on the girl.

  Michael started and then seemed to slump.

  “It’s over,” he said.

  “Yes,” said the first one in accented English. He looked at his companion, and they seemed to nod to each other.

  The table must have weighed eighty pounds. It was made of iron and had a small amount of marble at the base. They never took the tables inside at night, only threaded a chain and padlock through the legs. It was impossible to believe this thin, little girl with the orphan’s face and those large, appealing eyes and those dainty little hands—

  The table overturned against the two in overcoats, and she was up, kicking the second one square in the face. There was the sound of teeth cracking. She reached out and grabbed Michael’s hand, and they were running away, down the marble corridor of the galleria through the side entrance that led to the square in front of the Duomo cathedral. There were steps behind them, but they didn’t look back.

  The rain swept the square.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Michael shouted above the rain.

  “I don’t know a damned thing!” she replied, her voice raised in triumph
.

  Michael saw her face and she was smiling. She was happy to be running in a strange city, running in the rain across an unknown square, chased by unknown men who meant them harm. My God, she was happy!

  They rounded a corner and saw a carful of police.

  Marie slowed to a walk and entwined her arm in Michael’s.

  “Lovers in the rain,” he said. His heart was in his mouth.

  “Of course. That’s what we are in fact.”

  Michael looked behind him but did not see the men. “Maybe I’m getting better at running,” he said.

  She stopped in a doorway and drew him in. She kissed him. Her lips were wet and hungry.

  He kissed her and held her frail form against him.

  “You are getting better, Michael,” she said. “If we have to run and run and keep running, then we can do it.”

  “Cardinal Ludovico,” he said.

  “Why don’t you think the priest sent those men—”

  “That’s absurd. He couldn’t have.”

  “Everything is possible. The priests always say that. Maybe it turns out it’s true.”

  She was grinning again in the darkness of the doorway.

  “I have to get to Rome, Marie. But maybe it’s better if you waited. You could get a room here—”

  Her grip was suddenly fierce. Her face was close. “No. I won’t let you go, not for a moment, not to go across the street. You are my lamb, my life. I won’t let you be harmed.”

  He looked at her. There was such passion that he felt melted by her. He kissed her again.

  “We will go to Rome,” she said. “Together. Now.”

  “But how? They’re at the train station—”

  “Michael. How would they know you were at the train station?”

  It occurred to him right away. His face twisted. “Damn. Damn him.”

  “Did you tell the priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was foolish.”

  “Damn him. I trusted him.”

  He saw the light dying in her eyes at that moment. She was self-sufficient, but she had yearned so for what he promised to give her. To be safe and not to be running. A moment before, he had seen her joy of combat running across the unknown square; now he saw this childlike disappointment.

  “So now we just keep running,” she said. She clung to him but without passion. In the darkened doorway, they were lovers who had stepped out of the warm Italian rain to kiss and taste the raindrops on each other’s flesh.

  “No,” he said.

  She looked up at him.

  “The cardinal will hear my confession,” Michael said. “Let him bear the same burden if that’s what he wants. But he has to do it with me there. I’m going to give him the tape whether or not he wants it. Let them go after the cardinal and the church, not me.”

  Again, the tight grip against him, her body pressed to him.

  “We go,” she said. “I know a way.…”

  28

  LONDON

  The first call came at 0713 hours, which meant it was 0113 hours in Washington.

  Mrs. Neumann’s voice was raspy.

  Hanley pressed the receiver tight to his ear. London was still dark beyond his window. The predawn stillness added to his sense of being utterly alone in a hostile world that would eventually find him and kill him. This was absurd, of course. No one would kill him. He was the control, the man who placed pins on the flat map of the world. He was cocooned behind paper and jargon. But where was he now? He wondered if there was a pin of him on some map in Washington: this is Hanley; this is control; this is the paper shuffler become agent in the field.

  “The National Security Council has decided to pull us off the chase,” she began.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “The secretary of state convinced the president that Section is purposely botching the case. He thinks we botched security from the beginning of the Malmö conference. They’re talking about sabotage and they want an investigation. They… say… we haven’t cooperated with our Russian friends in hunting Michael Hampton.”

  Hanley closed his eyes.

  “He wants his own people to go after this Michael Hampton person,” Mrs. Neumann added.

  “State?”

  “Yes.”

  The silence ran across the ether, touched the satellite, fell back to earth, waited on its human masters.

  State. The Department of State had its own intelligence apparatus, of course. There were so many intelligence agencies operating in the country that it was sometimes difficult to remember all their nomenclatures. But State did not have operations as far as anyone knew. State was not prepared to take part in aggressive pursuits. As far as anyone knew. It was much more logical, if R Section were to be replaced at this late date, to put the Central Intelligence Agency on the matter.

  Hanley knew all this, and so did the head of R Section, Mrs. Lydia Neumann.

  They were silent because it seemed so incredible.

  “This smells,” Hanley said.

  “A week-old fish,” she agreed.

  “This makes everything look so much different,” Hanley said.

  “The other oddity is Langley,” Mrs. Neumann said. “They threw in their cards early. They don’t want to protest this. This whole thing is absurd—and from Langley’s point of view, as much an insult to them as it is to us.”

  “And they didn’t protest.”

  “Vaughn Reuben. Your good friend.”

  “My good friend,” Hanley said.

  “He sat there with that little hateful look on his face. He just sat there, and when the secretary was done, he didn’t say a word.”

  “So Langley is silent. This gets more curious.”

  “Langley has been very active the last few days in putting the bad-mouth on us,” Mrs. Neumann rasped. “Why suddenly give up when the secretary decides on an asinine course like putting State Department intelligence on the trail of Michael Hampton?”

  Hanley had been thinking about it. “Because they know State will fail.”

  Mrs. Neumann did not speak.

  “They know State will fail to retrieve the tape. That Michael Hampton is not running aimlessly but has a specific goal and it is not the Soviet Union. He knows where he wants to go. Langley—they know too much, don’t they, Mrs. Neumann?”

  But she said nothing.

  The second call came at 1112 hours London time. The phone rang a long time in the shabby, nearly empty rooms that comprised the “safe house” for R Section on Fleet Street.

  Hanley stepped from the bathroom, zipping his trousers on the way. “Yes.”

  Devereaux began a fill. The fill started from the moment of Rolf’s confession. He said that Rolf was on his way to the safe rooms on Fleet Street and that he would probably need some medical attention. He then spoke of Michael Hampton’s principal employer at the conference in Malmö.

  Hanley repeated the name: “Alberto Cardinal Ludovico. That old schemer. What on earth is the connection with the Malmö conference on naval shipping?”

  “There was a secret agenda,” Devereaux said. “And it must be recorded on that tape. That’s why the Soviets want it back and why the secretary of state wants it back. Glasnost has finally happened, and everyone is working on the same side.”

  “Sarcasm,” Hanley said.

  Silence. Hanley blew his nose, crumpled the tissue, and threw it into a basket full of dozens of crumpled tissues.

  “Who is the limping man? The man who gave Rolf the money to pack the tape into Michael Hampton’s luggage?”

  “Who indeed?” Devereaux said.

  “We’ll run it through the 201 computer, but there are probably dozens of limping men on file.”

  “Probably. Try to narrow it down to someone who might have been in Sweden last week.”

  “American or Soviet?”

  “Or Armenian for all I care. But the logic says he has to be an American.”

  And then Hanley told him about th
e telephone call from Mrs. Neumann. He did not have Devereaux’s memory for exact things. He did not have the precise words, but he knew the order of thought. He conveyed this and waited.

  Devereaux was silent for so long that Hanley thought the connection had been broken.

  “I think I begin to understand,” Devereaux said.

  “Enlighten me,” Hanley said.

  “You don’t want to know. In fact, we’ve never spoken.”

  “You have to check in sometime—”

  “And sometimes I’m too busy—”

  “Don’t cross any trails with Langley. Or, now, with State. We don’t want to make waves, just uphold the Section.”

  “Sometimes you can’t do both.”

  Hanley suddenly wondered what the weather was. It was a concrete question in mind, not ephemeral like this conversation with Devereaux. His nose was red; the food was atrocious, even to someone whose lunchtime habit had always been a cheeseburger with raw onion, and a single martini, straight up. He wondered what the weather was and then thought of Devereaux’s remark: “Sometimes you can’t do both.”

  Hanley spoke: “What are you going to do?”

  “Go to Rome, obviously. Cardinal Ludovico, however crazy it sounds, has to be in this thing. Or Michael Hampton is trying to put him in this thing. The congregation must have financed Michael’s trip to Malmö. Or Michael learned something of great interest to the congregation. Ships in the Baltic? Who is the stationmaster in Rome?”

  “Mr. Dobetti,” Hanley said in clearspeak, not using the code name of the Italian agent. “Number 7, Via Icilio on the Monte Aventino.”

  “Alert him.”

  “All right. What do I tell him?”

  “Why would the Vatican be interested in a naval conference on security in the Baltic?”

  “Because there was something else on the agenda,” Hanley said.

  “That seems perfectly clear. But what involves the Vatican? Or is a connection to the Vatican?”

  Hanley waited.

  Devereaux said: “I spoke to Henry McGee. In Malmö. This morning.”

  Hanley felt curious. “You did?”