The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  She did not waver. “I will do anything you want. For as long as you want.”

  “Is that true, Rena? Is it that important?”

  “It is a cause—”

  “Cut the crap, Rena. Your only cause is yourself.”

  “I hate you.”

  “But you gave yourself to Henry McGee to get free. Did you resist long? Did he have to rape you? And you gave yourself to Michael that morning in the Savoy Hotel because it was important that he not go back to pack his own bags, it was important that he get the tape in his bag and not be able to give it back. Did you think of him listening to the tape on the train to Stockholm, listening to it out of boredom? How many times did you have to make love to him to betray him for your cause?”

  She hit him then in the face, and he smiled at her because he had hurt her so much. There. She could feel pain and it pleased him.

  “I loved Michael.”

  “I’m sure you loved him. Right up to the moment he started running to Rome. Maybe he might have made it, and you wouldn’t feel so guilty, and you could thank him with a courtesy fuck.”

  “And you, from the moment you forced your way into my rooms,” she said, “you wanted me. You didn’t give a damn if I loved someone else—you just wanted me. You have no worth, Devereaux, remember that.”

  “I never said I did,” he said. The words were soft and curiously introspective.

  She saw a sense of loss in his eyes and was touched by it because it was exactly her loss.

  “What will you do with the tape?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “The right thing. If I can.”

  “What is the right thing?”

  Devereaux said, “Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, damn the tape and damn me for killing Michael. Damn me for needing you. Will you forgive me?”

  “I have nothing to forgive anyone.” His words were at the edge of the universe, and she understood that.

  And understood why she embraced him then in the mutual suffering of a kindred lost soul. Clung to him but did not expect comfort from the feeling of his body.

  She had known all her life this moment would come, without expecting it. She wanted him to possess her in a way that she had never been possessed before, to fill her while only taking his pleasure.

  Yes, he held her. He wanted the satin of her belly beneath his hand. He felt the silk between her legs then, felt her velvet in the darkness, felt her yielding, felt her draw him into her. He could feel and hear her breath on his neck, against his ear. He could touch and not see her, the fingers of the blind man reading her need for him. She said his name and he said hers. They made love to each other. She was the smell of flowers and the darker smell of loam turned in spring after the rain.

  The two KGB men wore black coats and berets.

  “Do we take them in the hotel or out of the hotel?”

  “Well, we take them and it’s up to us. I’d just as soon wait until they came out, because that way, we got a better exit.”

  “That’s true, but if we take them inside, use the silencers, it might be hours before anyone finds the bodies. And looks for the damned tape.”

  “That’s true,” said the second one. They were standing at the corner of the city hall, watching the entry of the Amigo Hotel. “Well, we ought to make up our minds, because I don’t want to stand around all night in the rain.”

  “Well, I say we take them inside. Like you say, we don’t want to stand around all night in the rain. I hate this fucking rain. Let’s do it now.”

  “He probably is screwing her anyway. That’s a good time. When they get to screwing, nothing else matters.”

  “Remember, this is the guy who took out those two guys in Brussels. Just remember it.”

  “This is Brussels, stupid.”

  “I mean before. Christ, I lose track of the cities. It seems we’ve been on the road for weeks.”

  “It hasn’t been that long, but I know what you mean. You get tired of being on the road. A lot has happened.”

  “I’ll say. Well, here. I put in the special charge. Two good shots and they’ll look like steak hachette.”

  “Oh, don’t get carried away.”

  They went into the quiet lobby. There was a Mexican or Spanish influence to the decor of the hotel, which they thought was very odd. They went to the elevator and rode to the third level.

  They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew everything down to the room number. They had picked up the room number that morning, and they had made a key to fit it. Every little trick in the trade is special and has its own expertise, but they were good at what they did.

  The first one opened the door with the special key. Not a sound. Just like clockwork.

  Into the bedroom.

  They were on the mattress, the covers over them. The hitters pulled out their pistols and fired through the silencers.

  Thump.

  Thump. Thump.

  Thump.

  They walked into the room to find the tape. They pulled back the covers.

  Blood over everything.

  The first one stared.

  “Christ,” he said.

  “Christ,” said the second one.

  “It isn’t him.”

  “It’s some other guy.”

  “It’s two other guys. Two fairies. This one is bald even. What the hell are they doing in this room?”

  “How could we get fucked up like this?”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  To the door, down the corridor, taking the stairs this time. Into the lobby and past the concierge, and they were both running now.

  “What do you want from me?” she said.

  “Describe the limping man to someone in London.”

  “Why? Who is the man in London?”

  “The limping man at the Malmö conference must be working for the CIA. It’s the connection.”

  “What about this other man, Henry McGee?”

  “Henry McGee may deal, he may not deal, I can’t depend on him. Henry puts out a convincing case that he’s being set up. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the secrets on the tape. This all seems trivial, but perhaps that’s all it is. Trivial. A lot of stuff gets set in motion for trivial reasons. I don’t understand politics, but I understand there could be some political advantage to having the Russians free a lot of people. Advantages. Little edges in the game. That’s all it is maybe.”

  “And you will let Lithuania die.”

  She was naked against him, lying in bed, speaking in whispers. Their sheets lay tangled around their bodies.

  “It isn’t a matter of that. I have to return the tape to my masters, and they determine the political morality.”

  “Are you so unable to have a conviction?”

  He looked at her. She was beautiful, she made love with power and passion, she filled him and drove away apparitions. She wanted to have him possess her; even now while they spoke, their bodies were poised.

  “The spies don’t set policy,” Devereaux said.

  “Is Lithuania such a little thing?”

  He did not speak to her.

  For a long time they lay against each other and searched through all the words in their memories to find the words that would make it clear to them. What were they supposed to think?

  “I am not a member of the movement. I was asked this through my father,” she said. “My father is not a member of the movement. But it is no small thing, to be from a homeland that you cannot be part of again, that does not even exist in the eyes of the world. Russia. It is a terrible thing to be in the embrace of a bear, to feel its paws on you all the time, to feel its teeth marking your flesh.”

  “Come here,” he said.

  She put her hand on his sex and felt it and said, “I want only that. The other thing—those are words and we will not understand each other, not ever. You make me act like a spy, change hotel rooms, want me to make a call to that man in L
ondon.… I am not a spy, I am a woman only. I know languages as easily as I know that I want you, I have always wanted you, I have waited for you to come and possess me all my life. Do you understand me?”

  He didn’t, but he was beyond caring.

  42

  LONDON

  There were the sounds of bagpipes, beautiful and clear in the still November air. The sun stood straight up in the sky and flooded the ancient city with unexpected light. Every brick and stone was polished by the sun. The day was as fresh as a child beginning his life.

  Devereaux stood among the tourists, not looking for anyone, not expecting anything until the moment he saw Henry McGee. Henry grinned at him.

  Henry followed him into the park, and they found a bench and sat on it. The day was cold enough to make their words form puffs of breath.

  “I need a deal.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “I need money.”

  “Everyone needs money. It’s the one thing capitalists and communists agree on.”

  “I saw Viktor Rusinov. I iced him, but I got it on tape. It was a setup, like you thought. I got the same from the radio man on the Leo Tolstoy. On tape. The only thing I ain’t got on tape is the main thing. What this whole thing was really about—even I didn’t know.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Devereaux stared at him. “You’re a congenital liar, Henry. Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “I thought about that all the way here. Then it seems obvious to me. I iced Skarda. They’re all going to come after me like a wolf pack. That won’t be a setup. They want to ice me, and that ought to prove myself to you. Except if I wait until then without taking precautions, I get iced and you stand there at the grave and say, ‘Well, I shoulda listened to ol’ Henry this time, because this time he was goin’ to tell the truth.’ That doesn’t do either of us any good.”

  Devereaux thought about it. Hanley had already learned of Skarda’s death in Copenhagen. The shit was hitting the fan.

  “All right. What would be worth it to me?” Devereaux said.

  “Skarda is a software program designed to prevent viral attacks on computer systems. Years ahead of what the Americans have. Except it is also a viral attack by its very nature, and when your people program it, it is going to direct a missile, a fucking missile, to land in the middle of Quebec City. Kill SDI. This is going to fuck up the American military program for months, for years—I can see that. But it will never trace back to Skarda. Skarda will just be there, in place, working fine, and it will never trace back to the Russians. The Russians want their glasnost and friendship and all that, and they want it bad enough to use Skarda to get it. The man is dead but not the program.”

  “When is this going to happen?”

  “December twentieth. A missile-launching test in Utah.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I gave you the day and time and target. What else do you want?”

  “The only thing that makes it sound genuine is that you didn’t produce a tape of it.”

  “It is genuine.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I got maybe ten thousand left after all my expenses. I got to have some money to run on.”

  “You’re a convicted felon. You escaped from prison. You should turn yourself in.”

  Henry grinned. “I used to think about killing you. Inside. Cutting your nuts off or something. I see why you had to get me, but I didn’t see why you had to dirty my trail so that they believed it, believed I betrayed them.”

  “Just a personal touch, Henry. I don’t like you.”

  “I also don’t like you,” Henry agreed. He slipped his hand out of his pocket just enough to show Devereaux the grip of the revolver.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I coulda come to shoot you, but I need money.”

  “How much money do you need?”

  “Twenty-five thousand.”

  “Ten thousand,” Devereaux said.

  “Jesus. You’re talking the bottom of the basement.”

  “Government austerity,” Devereaux said.

  “I really hate you, you know that. I could just kill you now and walk away. I don’t owe you anything.”

  Devereaux waited.

  “Fifteen,” Henry said.

  “And both tapes,” Devereaux said.

  43

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The problem at first was with the tape recording itself. R Section managed to override the no-copy signals imbedded in the tape, but it took nearly thirty-six hours of work and the Soviets were howling for the tape. When the tape was finally copied, the original was turned over to the Soviet Union.

  Within three days, the first part of Skarda was transmitted to the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Also, the president of the Soviet Union, in a stunning gesture of goodwill, announced that the first of thousands of Soviet Jews who had applied for permission to leave the Soviet Union would be allowed to do so and that the number of departures would reach ninety thousand by the end of the following year. The Soviet Union said it had made this decision after intensive negotiations with the United States as part of the Malmö meeting of the superpowers.

  The newspapers were filled with stories of the emigration of Soviet Jewry. The refugees were being processed through in Vienna as well as in Stockholm. Everyone had praise for the negotiating skills of the U.S. administration and, particularly, the secretary of state.

  The president announced a new Soviet-American summit would be held in New Jersey in early spring.

  The world reveled in the spirit of the Christmas season, in the apparent friendship of the two great powers, in the good feeling it felt toward the Soviet Union for living up to the spirit of reason and glasnost.

  Among the 90,000 exit visas would be 1,298 visas for members of the Committee for State Security, the KGB.

  Douglas Court sat dining alone in the great restaurant in the Willard Hotel. He ate with delicate enjoyment of the small portions of very rich food. He ate in the European manner, fork in one hand and knife in the other, because he had spent so many years abroad.

  He was only slightly annoyed when the two men came up to him and stood before his table. He looked up at them. One he had never seen before, the other was only vaguely familiar. He hated to remember a face, but he tried. Who were they?

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, that’s him, all right.”

  Douglas Court remembered the face then. He even connected it with a name. Rolf Gustafson. He remembered the name and face and time and place, and he understood then that the second man, the one with gray eyes, would not be a friend.

  “We have a car outside waiting for you,” the second man said.

  Douglas Court, with the good manners born of a lifetime of civility, dabbed at his lips with his napkin and put it down. He saw the way it was.

  “Which agency?” is all he said.

  “R Section.”

  “Yes. It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

  In the second week, a GS14 in Computer Analysis in R Section showed, through charts, how Skarda was designed to work. Everyone agreed it was very clever, including Mrs. Neumann, who understood computers, and Hanley, who was completely baffled by the demonstration but did not acknowledge it. The only way they had discovered the secret of Skarda was that they knew what they were looking for; otherwise, the computer program would have passed any minute inspection.

  On the same day, a secret grand jury in Washington, D.C., filed a true bill naming Vaughn Arthur Reuben on fourteen counts of conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States by misdirecting CIA personnel in Europe and conspiring to steal a government tape recording. The true bill was signed into an indictment at one forty-five P.M., and two hours later, when officers arrived at Reuben’s house, off DuPont Circle, they were not especially surprised to find him dead, a large pistol in his right hand and a large hole in his fore
head. There was a note, a long one of explanation and regret, and it was turned over to the U.S. marshal’s office, which, in turn, sent it to the CIA. It was destroyed at Langley, after a suitable number of conferences.

  On December 20, during a routine field exercise in Utah, a Strategic Defensive Initiative test missile veered suddenly off course. All this was monitored at Moscow Center communications. The missile appeared to cross the border into Canada before it was destroyed. No one was injured in the incident, and the administration denied that any such test had occurred or that a missile had been destroyed. The consensus in Moscow Center was that Plan Skarda—to send a U.S. missile off course and into a Canadian city—had not worked, despite all of the late Skarda’s brilliant posturing. Gorki of the Committee for External Observation and Resolution concluded that Skarda had oversold his masters inside KGB on his software expertise and suggested that, in the future, KGB stick to more fundamental methods of infiltration and sabotage.

  In the funding of covert counterintelligence activity, it is not uncommon to bury authorizations inside more routine budget allocations.

  This is done less to fool the intelligence enemy, who might stumble upon such material, than to obfuscate facts in the face of scrutiny by Congress and the more professional interest of the General Accounting Office.

  Thus it was noted that $200 million in funds to the CIA that were used for “research and liaison with religious bodies in foreign countries” were stripped from its budget. The CIA so informed Cardinal Ludovico within two weeks.

  The following day, an agent from R Section called at the house on the Borgo Santo Spirito and explained the new facts of life to the cardinal. He reluctantly agreed, and the secret lists of Lithuanian networks was turned over to Section, which had, surprisingly, come up with a $200 million surplus in its fiscal budget to enable it “to expand crop reporting techniques to Scandinavia and nearby regions.”

  Thus Devereaux had convinced Hanley, who had convinced Mrs. Neumann and the power structure of the American intelligence community, to “do the right thing.”

  44