The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  And when it was over, when it was finally over, and the storm was still raging, they lay in exhaustion like battle casualties.

  Guilt?

  Yes, it burned her, she was tied to the stake and the flames licked at her. Was it the same for him? But then, innocence was long gone for both of them.

  When it was finally over, she began to tell him things. She began to describe the limping man. She relived the last days of Michael Hampton, and she told him many things.

  33

  ROME

  Marie knew he would not come back.

  She put the tape in her pocket.

  She took his passport and her own passport and put them in her purse.

  He wasn’t coming, back. She didn’t know how she knew this. It was a sullen morning and the rain clouds were gone, but it was not very bright or clear, as though the sky had left traces of tears in its eyes.

  She had waited all night for him. He did not call her. He wasn’t coming back.

  He was dead, she thought.

  She turned the thought over. It was well examined by the time she accepted it.

  She had to kill the priest at least.

  Get a good knife and go to him.

  Maybe he would listen to her confession. She would kneel and bless herself. When he leaned forward, she would put the knife in his eyes. That was for pain. That was to make the blindness real to him.

  And cut off his ears and puncture his ear drums.

  And then, finally, cut out his lying mouth and fill his nose with blood.

  She was grinning like a demon as she rode the elevator down to the lobby. She saw the mutilated priest in her mind, begging silently for mercy with his bloody tongue on the carpet beside him.

  Kill the priest. And then kill the man who had given Michael the tape. And then the agent in Bruges, the gray-haired man.…

  Should she kill Rena Taurus as well?

  Her grin became a frown. This was a puzzle.

  The elevator opened, and the operator slid back the gates. She walked across the dusty, reddish lobby with its overstuffed chairs and little tables. The night clerk was still on duty. The rain was gone, dawn crept across the Forum of Rome.

  First of all, she had to get a knife.

  There must be knives in Rome, she thought.

  She did not know her direction, but she was heading for the Tiber River without any reason or thought. She crossed the bridge, and then she saw the mark on the sidewalk in chalk. The chalk had run a little, but the mark was of a man in death. She knew these things; the pigs used the same method in Berlin.

  A man in death.

  Knelt. Saw the little brown stains that must have been blood.

  Saw marks in the stone. These had been bullets and that was blood.

  The area was sealed by plastic tape looped around temporary barricades. A policeman watched her from the other side of the little monument to sudden death.

  Michael.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  The policeman saw this and was puzzled and came around to her and spoke to her in a language she didn’t understand. When she looked at him, her eyes were glistening again, as they had been for Michael the night before.

  The policeman spoke more loudly this time in Italian.

  She shook her head. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” she said.

  “I do not speak German,” the policeman said in Italian. “Do you speak English?” he continued in English.

  But there was nothing to say to him. He was a pig, and pigs were all the same race of fascists. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her coat and gave him a sullen look. He had seen that look a thousand times.

  He turned away.

  “Ich bin ein Berliner,” she said to herself. And walked away, reluctantly, from the place on the ancient bridge where Michael had been killed.

  34

  STOCKHOLM

  Viktor Rusinov was quite angry with this United States government and the fools who ran the embassy at 101 Strandvägen and with a number of other people who now populated his pantheon of hated objects. The gods in the pantheon had shifted since his days as a Soviet sailor on the freighter ship Leo Tolstoy.

  The anger showed in many ways. He was silent at his meals, and he did not eat his mashed potatoes.

  They rarely talked to him anymore. He asked them over and over when he would be allowed to go to the United States and, in particular, New York City. They smiled at him, muttered vaguely about complications, and each day was like another.

  For example, during the period of his exercises—he wished to keep his body whole and healthy—a marine accompanied him to the yard behind the embassy and watched him as he did sit-ups and push-ups and jogged around the little walkway. He was not a prisoner, of course, and was free to leave the embassy if he wished. But the problem was with the Soviet government.

  The Soviet government alleged he had struck a Soviet merchant marine officer and had severely injured him. It was one thing to defect; it was another thing to hurt someone in the act of defection. This greatly worried everyone, including the fool who was ambassador from the United States.

  Viktor knew that God sent him these troubles because his escape from Soviet life had been too easy. Viktor was certain God would reward his suffering by avenging his enemies, starting with the fool of an ambassador and perhaps extending to the smug young American marine who accompanied him on his exercises.

  And the vodka. When he could get it, it was American vodka, quite watery and without any taste at all, not unlike the exported Soviet vodka. They called that vodka.

  The women were pretty, and many of them were Swedish. He knew Swedish women. They liked to do it almost as much as they liked to breathe. But these were women who must have been told to avoid him. Once, in a corridor in the residence wing of the embassy, he talked to this black-haired Swedish woman who resembled an icon of the Virgin, and she had blushed at his suggestion rendered in passable Swedish and had reported him to the ambassador. So the fool of an ambassador had a talk with him. God, these Americans liked to talk. He had talked to all the intelligence agents, and they had been so kind and persistent and so stupid that he had almost lied to them to make it more interesting.

  On this afternoon, after a night of violent storms with thunder and lightning dancing above the sacred spires of the Gamla Stan, Viktor Rusinov took his stroll along the waterfront. The great night of storms had inspired him to prayers, and he had earnestly suggested that God, in His wisdom, burn down the American embassy. But morning had come and the embassy stood, and Viktor, though disappointed, accepted God’s judgment as a sign that Viktor’s time of suffering must continue a while longer.

  He had a particular route which took him along the waterfront Strandvägen to the Djurgards Bridge, which led to the island called Djurgarden. On this pleasant island in the Stockholm harbor was the battered remains of the Wasa, a Swedish ship that had unceremoniously sunk on launching three centuries earlier. For some reason, the Swedes had raised the ship from the harbor floor and housed it in a museum, where it was kept constantly wet so that the planks would not crack and wither. The ship had rolled over and sunk because it was top-heavy, and this was hardly a tribute to Swedish engineering. It amused Viktor Rusinov to go through the museum and to look at the hulk of the ship and study all the ancient naval artifacts recovered with the ship. He was in touch with those sailors who had drowned because of the stupidity of the people who had designed and launched the Wasa. Wasn’t life endlessly repeating itself? Wasn’t stupidity always the ruler of humankind?

  The day was clear after the rain. The cold sun was bright. People walked about in heavy clothes, their breath preceding them in puffs. Men in fur hats with briefcases and girls in bright parkas and jeans. God, he would love to have a woman right now.

  He walked down the Djurgardsvägen, past the Nordic Museum (which did not interest him at all), to Alkarret. The Wasa Museum was just ahead.

  He did not recognize the man who stopped
him.

  The man stopped him with a hand on the shoulder. He glared at the man. Viktor Rusinov was a big man, and he had big sailor’s hands.

  The man spoke Russian to him: “Do you speak English?”

  Viktor nodded. His English had been pretty damned good to start with, and now with the endless days in the embassy, it had gotten better. What was it to this guy anyway? The big sailor’s hands were bunched in his jacket in fists.

  “Then that makes it easier for me,” the man said. He had small, mean eyes and dark hair and dark skin. He was a lot smaller than Viktor. Viktor thought he could take him easily.

  “I want to know how you got that message and how you got my name on it,” said the stranger.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Henry McGee hit him so hard and so fast that Viktor was on the frozen earth, staring up at the cold bright sun and the bright, mean eyes at the same time. He didn’t even hurt. He had no idea why he was on his back on the ground, but he figured that this man had something to do with it. There wasn’t anger on the other’s face, just a sort of lopsided smile.

  “What did you do?”

  “Hit you, Viktor. Which is what I am going to keep doing until you tell me the things I want to know. This ain’t the embassy, Viktor, and I’m no Boy Scout from Central Intelligence.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The man whose name was on that message you took off the ship. The thing is, how did you get it and who did you get it from?”

  “I told them I stole it from the radio room.”

  “Damn, Viktor.” And the little man kicked him so hard in the belly that Viktor retched his American breakfast of Wheaties, fried eggs in margarine, and link sausage.

  When he was done with that, Viktor scrambled away to regain his footing.

  They were in a park with bare trees and browned grass. The ground was frozen and crispy to the touch. Viktor got to his feet and swung and missed. No one was around, and that began to bother Viktor. In case anything serious developed.

  The little man stepped inside and dropped him with another sledgehammer, this one to the chest. Viktor thought his heart stopped. He shuddered at the blow and fell again to one knee. This time the little man followed up and kicked him hard, again in the chest, again to stop his heart.

  Viktor turned blue and coughed and coughed. When he was done with that, he thought about dying.

  “You wanna tell me now or you wanna dance again?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Who you got that piece of paper from and how you got it.”

  “I told them over and over. I stole it from the radio room.”

  “If that’s all you really got to tell me, you’re gonna be dead.”

  Viktor saw it was true. Not only had the man brought him to the point of death, but now the man had a pistol. The mean eyes were glowing as if the pistol and the thought of what it could do gave him pleasure.

  There was no one else in the world. In the summer, the park is full of children. This was in the middle of the week, in the throes of November, after a night of rain and thunder. The ground had refrozen at morning, sealing the earth from the cold, moaning wind across Stockholm’s harbors.

  Viktor was cold and alone in the world. He said a name. “Arkady Yazimoff.”

  “That a brand of vodka or someone’s name?”

  “The radio officer on the Leo Tolstoy. He sold me the message for money. I had money. I had a lot of it.”

  “Is that right?”

  “If I tell them, they will suspicious the letter.”

  “Get suspicious of.”

  “Yes. That. I cannot say this. I do not want to go back to Soviet Union.”

  “I appreciate that sentiment, Viktor, I really do.”

  “Can I get up?”

  “Not at the moment. Tell me about the message, Viktor.”

  “What can I say? I do not know this message. It is code.”

  “Tell me about Arkady. You and him shipmates and buddies?”

  “Not buddies, like you say.”

  “Come on. Did he cop your joint for you? Or you for him?”

  “What?”

  Henry said it in Russian.

  Viktor looked tough for a man lying on the ground. “I do not do this, this fairy-boy thing you say. I am man. I fuck girls all the time and fuck them good.”

  “Good for you, Viktor.”

  “I talk to Arkady to buy this.”

  “How did this come up? I mean, you were at the same dance together and you dropped a hint you wanted to buy a message?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did it come up?”

  “I do not understand.”

  Henry spoke in Russian. It wasn’t perfect Russian and the accent was strange, coming by way of Siberia, but it was good enough to puzzle Viktor for a moment. He had forgotten that. He had thought so long about getting off the Leo Tolstoy and defecting to America that he had forgotten the origins of the thought.

  “I do not remember.”

  Henry McGee kicked him in the groin. The act was so quick and natural that Viktor did not react until a moment after the white pain hit his brain and the yawning sickness in his belly told him it was time to vomit again. He did, this time on himself. He couldn’t help it, he really couldn’t.

  “My God, never do that to a man.”

  “I’m not even sure of that—you might be a pussy sailor. Tell me about you and Arkady Yazimoff.”

  “I try to remember.… Arkady is drunk. I make the vodka, good strong vodka, not this weak American vodka. Arkady is drunk and we are aboard. It is when we are in harbor at Göteborg.… I remember that Arkady is drunk in the radio room, and the ship is almost deserted, only a few of us left because it is the day of the Revolution and the sailors are in Göteborg to march in the parade.… I can’t remember, but Arkady says to me that if someone could steal some traffic sheets, some second sheets where the traffic is written down—he means the radio traffic—that someone would have a good passport to the West because the West is always about stealing secrets. Yes. Arkady is drunk and he tells me this. All the political officers on the ship are making me nervous just then, always watching me.”

  Henry McGee stared at him.

  “Yes,” Viktor says, his face as pale as snow. “It is this that he says, to bring a secret message.”

  “And you told no one this thing.”

  “If I tell them that I pay Arkady Yazimoff for papers, they suspicious the papers and they suspicious me.”

  “They surely would suspicious you, Viktor, they surely would. So you kept your big dumb mouth shut.”

  “I only tell you. Now.”

  “Now I want you to tell me all this again, just go over it nice and slow and talk into the tape recorder.”

  “Will you use this against me?”

  “Hell, no, Viktor. We can get along now that you’re telling me things I want to know.”

  So Viktor did it again, for the tape recorder. When it was finished, Henry put the tape into the pocket of his jacket. He stared at Viktor. “Everybody’s got a secret, you know that, Viktor. Ain’t one creature alive in the world ain’t leading a secret life. If we get enough tape recorders going, we’d find out everybody is a liar.”

  “I do not understand you,” Viktor said.

  “And that creates a problem, too.”

  “Why?”

  Viktor stared at him hard to understand what it was this man was thinking.

  “Why, Viktor. I’m sort of caught in the middle of things. I don’t mind telling you, because it puzzles me. I might just want to go back to Mother Russia, and I might just want not to do that if the Big Mother is setting me up, which I think she is. So, either way, I got what I came for, and that means it’s too bad about you, Viktor.”

  Henry shot him then in the head at very close range. The first bullet shattered his left eye, and the second bullet shattered his skull. Viktor Rusinov stretched out on the frozen earth
, arms thrown out in a quiet plea. The pistol cracks reverberated above the frozen earth, but Henry McGee was already walking away.

  35

  ROME

  Alberto Cardinal Ludovico stood before the side altar and finished the words of the Mass. He spoke Latin because it was the tongue of the church and because it was now permitted again and because it most moved his heart. His heart had been lost with the death of Michael.

  “Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, donna eis requiem.”

  Again and again, striking his heart with his hand. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world…

  But what sins could be forgiven?

  Michael Hampton was dead, shot to death on a Tiber bridge at midnight, all because of Cardinal Ludovico.

  His hands trembled as he picked up the wafer.

  The immensity of St. Peter’s Cathedral was all around him, the immensity of the statuary and the high altar by Bellini and the immensity of pillars reaching hundreds of feet to support the dome of the roof. On the prow of St. Peter’s stood the stone Christ and the stone Apostles, and they gazed with somber eyes across the piazza and its columns, where Cardinal Ludovico had waited for Michael Hampton beneath the storm.

  Ite, missa est.

  But there were only three standing at this side altar, early tourists or worshipers who wished to hear the Latin words again. Go, the Mass is ended. Ite, missa est.

  Only two left.

  Cardinal Ludovico bowed to the altar and genuflected before the sanctuary on arthritic knees.

  He started for a side door.

  The pilgrim waited.

  He opened the door that led to the changing rooms where he would shed the chasuble and alb of worship for the ruby gown of office.

  He turned into the corridor and the pilgrim was behind him.

  “Cardinal Ludovico.”