by Bill Granger
He turned.
The face of a child, not a man at all but a girl, perhaps a woman, thin and haggard. He began to smile, and then he saw the knife.
“I come to kill you,” she said. “The way you had Michael killed.”
Cardinal Ludovico understood. This was the woman with Michael, the one who had overturned a table in the galleria in Milan. He had not intended to frighten anyone, least of all Michael. He had loved Michael. Didn’t she understand that?
But he said nothing to her.
He waited for her and the knife and his death. He tried to think of God.
And he knelt on the stone floor to receive his death.
The knife glittered in the dim electric light of the hallway between the church walls.
“Why did you kill him? I loved him,” Marie Dreiser said. Her eyes glistened with all the tears she had been saving for this moment. The tears dug little paths on her cheeks.
“I did not kill him.”
“This. You killed him for this.”
She held the tape in her hand.
The cardinal blessed himself. And then he raised his hand and began to bless her. “I forgive you,” he said. “You do not know what you do.”
“Do not forgive me. Forgive yourself forever for this murder on your hands.”
And he looked at the pale, elegant fingers of his hands, and he thought he saw the blood, saw the same thing this girl saw.
She did not move.
Cardinal Ludovico closed his eyes to better feel the blow, to feel the blade sink beneath flesh, between bone and sinew, to find his heart. All his life as a priest he had waited for this moment, for the first of the final four things. To die in this church, after that act of worship, comforted him. He did not intend his death, but it pleased him to die because he had felt so badly about Michael Hampton and felt the guilt of Michael’s death as surely as if he had ordered it.
He opened his eyes, and still she had not moved. She stared at him but could not see him because her eyes were so blinded now by tears.
“I want Michael!” she screamed and threw the knife down on the stones. The knife clattered and skidded across the stones and stopped at the kneeling figure of the cardinal.
Then she threw down the tape.
The cassette clattered loosely on the stones and skidded as well. It was almost within reach of the ancient, bony hands.
“Take it. Michael died to give it to you. He only wanted to give it to you, he didn’t want anything, he wanted to be free of it. He said I could have sanctuary with him, he said I would be free, and I loved him for that, for the kindness he gave me. Take it! You evil man, you utterly evil man. I hope to God, if there is God, that He will come down and smite you and you will roast in hell for eternity for what you did to Michael.”
“I did not kill him. I swear to you, child, I did not kill him and I did not want his death.”
“Go ahead, you’ve got the knife. I don’t care, I won’t kill you, you hideous frog. I hate you. I thought about you, about tearing your eyes out with my hands. I could do that, I could do that. Mein Gott in Himmel!” And she leaped at him and knocked him to the ground.
The cardinal struck his head on the stones.
Her hands were on his throat.
“Sanctuary! You would not give him sanctuary!” she screamed in German, but he did not understand a word. He felt the vise of her small hands choking down life, holding him under. There was blood on his forehead.
Was this from God?
But the blade was beneath his hand.
Was this a sign?
He struck her, and the knife slipped into her back as easily as if she had intended it this way.
The hands slackened.
Her eyes grew wide. Her eyes were large enough to see everything in the world.
“Michael,” she said. Her voice was soft. She saw him rise from the chalk outline on the bridge and smile at her gently. He was the kindness of the world, reaching out his hand to her.
“Michael.” She said it with love and tenderness. “Lamb.”
And her back arched, and then she had to fall—she knew it—and she would have to fall on this man who was lying on the stones beneath her. She would have to strike her head upon the ground, but there was no pain to any of it.
“I did not kill him.”
He said this over the crumpled body of the German girl. “I did not kill him.” He reached down to touch her neck, to feel for any pulse. The knife protruded from her back. And then he saw the cassette. He reached for it first. He held the cassette.
The cassette transformed him back to cardinal from priest. Michael was gone, the moment with the mad girl was gone. He held the tape recording. The secret deal a man had given his life for. To know it was to have the power to use it, and Michael, poor Michael, could not understand the uses of power.
Almost against his will, he was suddenly filled with soft contempt in that moment for his son in the church, Michael Hampton. He had not harmed Michael, did not wish him harm, had said a Mass of the dead for him this morning in the holiest church in Christendom. But Michael did not understand power and was afraid of it, from the moment he had run from the army and then from the CIA. Michael did not want to know, he did not want to hear. What a pity. God gave him his talent, and he did not want to use it. Except for the church. Michael was naïve enough to believe the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith was merely an agency of innocent intelligence, bent to give the pope and the hierarchy the best possible information about the welfare of the church in the various countries of the world.
Poor Michael.
The leonine eyes of the cardinal glittered now.
Pulse fluttered like a dying bird beneath his fingers. She was alive, but what was the point of it? We all end in eternity.
He raised his fingers and blessed her. The Latin ritual for absolution came next: “Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti.…”
What was he absolving her for?
She was a child, and she might have sinned with Michael. Sinned before he was killed on the bridge.
Did he believe in such things after thirty years of deception and treachery in the name of the protection of the church?
Yes, he must believe.
He pulled out the knife and raised it above the child as he had done a moment before, raising his hand in blessing and absolution.
Forgive me.
The side door opened and threw bright light into the narrow hall. He looked up at the tall man. Did he know his eyes glittered in that moment or that the tall man saw every intention in his eyes?
“Will you murder again?” the tall man said.
“I did not…”
But he looked at the knife, and it accused him. He saw now there was blood on his hand, not the imagined blood of Michael that the girl saw, but the real blood, this of the girl he had not intended to hurt.
“Put the knife down,” said the tall man, and Cardinal Ludovico thought he must obey.
The knife clattered on the stones again.
“Get away from her.”
He staggered to his feet on creaky legs. He felt age and weight and the weariness of many burdens. He held the tape in his hand.
“How many would have to die for the tape before it’s been paid for?” the tall man said.
“Who are you?”
“The man who wants the tape.”
And the side door closed, and they were alone in the semidarkness of this hall between the walls of the church, standing over the prone, bleeding body, staring at each other and considering the worth of lives.
36
HELSINKI
A scum of ice floated on the blue, still waters in Helsinki harbor. The Leo Tolstoy groaned at the ropes that restrained her, rubbed against the dock, struggled to be free in the waves at sea. She was here too long, and she felt it in her hull, in the quiet of her engines, in the agony of her empty gangways. The ship yearned for all the ports of the world, and this could be s
een in the undulation of steel and wire pulling at the immense ropes that held her.
Arkady Yazimoff dozed at the radio table. There were no messages; there had been no traffic for hours. He was the prime radio officer and had to take his turns, but he had really wanted to spend this afternoon getting drunk in Helsinki.
He had missed Viktor Rusinov’s vodka. That was the only thing everyone agreed on: Viktor was a pain in the ass—and good riddance to rubbish when he had slipped over the side that day in Stockholm—but he knew how to brew the very best homemade stuff. God, it could put you out.
Arkady wanted to be put out. Oblivion was almost complete pleasure to him. He liked to drink, liked the raw taste on his tongue and throat, but most of all he liked the dreaminess that came just before oblivion. In those moments—it might be minutes, it might be hours—a warmth like sex overcame him and caressed him.
“Officer Yazimoff.”
He started in his chair, turned to the open hatch. A civilian in raincoat and hat.
He thought of KGB immediately and snapped to as much attention as you can manage in a chair.
The hatch closed.
“I am Garishenko, KGB.”
“Yes, Comrade.”
“Comrade. Be at ease, please.”
“Yes, Comrade.” Yazimoff strained for a little more attention. He thought his shirt buttons would pop or his neck would explode from the pressure.
“Comrade, this is in regard to the matter of Viktor Rusinov.” The KGB man sat down in the second chair of the cabin. He did not remove his hat.
“Yes, Comrade.”
“I have reviewed the whole matter, and I want to go over it again with you, at least your part of it, so that I can understand perfectly.”
“I don’t understand, Comrade Garishenko.”
The freighter was so silent. There were only groans, sounds of metal against sea, sounds of ropes squealing and the hull scraping like a lover against the wharf. Not a sound in the world because every sound was familiar and was in their souls already.
“Tell me how you approached Viktor Rusinov.”
“This is all in the report—”
“Tell me again.”
The voice chilled him. The voice was of the state and the cells of Lubyanka and the cold depth of Siberia or the bauxite mines deep in Kurdistan. Yazimoff had heard all the stories, because sailors get around and sailors live on their stories.
“As I was instructed, I became an associate of Comrade Rusinov. I was told to tell him certain things, that certain messages could be carried away if he wanted to defect to the Americans, and that the messages would give him a gift to give them that would ensure his acceptance into their confidence.”
“As who instructed?”
“But surely, you know that.”
“I want to know it as you know it.”
“Well, I know, but I don’t understand—”
“Who gave you this instruction?”
“One of yours. His name is Skarda, that is the name he has given me.”
“Of course,” Henry McGee said in Russian with a Siberian accent.
Yazimoff looked at him. He had a dark complexion—he might be an oriental Russian in part. It was hard to tell anymore. The damned foreigners were everywhere; they had jobs in Moscow and ate their filthy Eastern food with their fingers, like peasants. His eyes were black and small and mean. Mean. The mean look put fear into Yazimoff more than anything else.
“When Viktor decided to defect, he paid me, and I gave him the arranged message. The message is in my mind.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, Comrade: ‘Skarda. The time of Henry McGee is not past. Eagle will be penetrated. The operation… ’ ”
“That was the whole message?”
“Well, it was a broken message. It was intended that way, as though he had stolen one of the pads.”
“I see,” said the agent.
Yazimoff tried a smile. “But you know all this. Does my memory recollect with your report?”
“In every way,” said Henry McGee.
37
LONDON
The reports came in all morning. Every listener and watcher and chaser made his or her report. They came in cipher or by digital code or by sound blip, with the message squeezed into a fraction of a second of radio transmission and then “ironed out” later in the receiver to its normal length. The reports were noted on flimsy paper and put on Vaughn Reuben’s desk. He looked at every report before he consigned it to the paper shredder at the side of his desk.
Vaughn Reuben was back in London, in the corner office of the subdirector of the CIA station at the United States embassy on Grosvenor Square. The fog was gone, and the sun was crackling bright above city and river. The streets looked fresh with new people on them and newly painted cars and buses. As usual, every inch of road was taken and no one was going anywhere very quickly. London was full, but it had been full for years, and the British philosophy was that to build more roads would only encourage more traffic.
Reuben picked up a sheaf of flimsies, weighed them, put them down. He looked at his visitor and said, “You don’t listen to your marching orders so good.”
Hanley said, “This doesn’t concern you.”
“By God it does. It does if the director says it does. You’re not running with some goddamn renegade agency that can set policy and do as it damned well pleases. You got an order, didn’t you?”
“Internal affairs of Section are not the business of anyone in Central Intelligence.”
“You pompous asshole, what do you think this is about?”
“I came here out of courtesy.”
“You came here because Mrs. Neumann ordered your ass to liaise with me, so you better start doing some liaising.” Vaughn Reuben was just letting the words steamroller out of his mouth. “Goddamn agent Devereaux—Don’t protest to me about your fucking security. I know goddamn well who you got running right now. Goddamn agent Devereaux shot and killed Michael Hampton at midnight. In Rome. Your Rome station was involved as well. You were supposed to pull Devereaux off of this, and you didn’t do it. You think we don’t have a station chief in Rome? You think we’re the three blind mice?”
“Hum me some of it,” Hanley said.
“I really don’t like you, Hanley,” Vaughn Reuben said.
“Really?”
“I am going to tell you once. Get your goddamn man on the first plane back to London, and then we’ll talk to him about things like murdering people in foreign lands. And I want that tape delivered personally to me, you got that?”
“I thought this was a matter for State. For State Department’s intelligence,” Hanley said. “I don’t understand this intense interest by Langley in matters that don’t concern Langley. Why don’t you start by explaining that to me?”
“Hanley.” Vaughn Reuben was definitely doing his John Houseman imitation. “None of this would have happened if Devereaux hadn’t been on the loose, and that’s your responsibility. Two dead Soviet agents in Brussels, and he kidnaps this… this Rena Taurus, and no one knows where she is, and there’s a report he was supposed to ice Michael in Bruges but he let him go—”
“So now you are convinced he killed him in Rome. That doesn’t make sense, Vaughn.”
“Hanley, where is the tape?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Devereaux?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made contact.”
“Hanley, are you fucking with me?”
“Yes,” Hanley said. Very cold, very distant. Vaughn Reuben was sweating it. He really wanted that tape. But why? Why did any of this involve CIA?
And why had Devereaux suddenly made contact with Henry McGee? What did any of this mean except danger to Section?
Section was getting all the heat in the world because it had not called off one of its agents and because the orders for Section seemed to be coming from a dozen sources and a dozen points of view.
To hell with i
t, Hanley thought at last.
He stood up and buttoned his coat and pulled a wool scarf around his neck. He had a cap, too, with a little brim, all made of wool. British November weather had made him a believer in wool products.
Vaughn Reuben gaped at him for a moment. “Where are you going, Hanley?”
Hanley blinked. To hell with it. “Out.”
“What are you going to do about this?”
“Nothing,” Hanley said.
38
ROME
The surgeon was gifted. His fingers were strong and sure. The surgeon was young, and his scowl of concentration was enhanced by the darkness of his beard. He moved very quickly because the life of the girl on the naked operating table demanded it.
The problem was in the bleeding.
The single knife thrust had cut through muscle and intestines and touched the liver, and there was great damage. The girl had strength—they could see her strength on the heart monitor, on the screens that showed her blood pressure—but she was weakened by the loss both of blood and of that other, unmeasurable thing that doctors sometimes called the will to live. A curious lack of it in one so young.
All of the skill of this peasant child who had gone to university and medical school through the gift of his intellect was now bent to the task of healing this bleeding body. The girl’s face was soft and waxy, as though composed for death. She lay naked on her stomach and was draped with sheets, and only the wound of her back—enlarged by surgical incisions—was exposed. The operating room, like the hospital, was old and high ceilinged and not the most efficient place of its kind. But there was a spirit within the heart of the surgeon and in the attending nurses and nuns that could not be replicated or purchased. Others had seen it in these grim dungeons called hospitals in Italy, which seemed constructed as monuments to mortality; this human spirit was still alive amidst the ruins, and it would not accept mere death. It did not matter, none of it, except that this child should not die.
When it was over, the surgeon walked from the room with a drained look in his eyes. His thin body drooped as he walked down the lime green corridor to the room where they waited.