Sixteen hundred hours plus twenty minutes.
I could be out of town before sundown. Before Scotland Yard.
Somehow I couldn't help feeling I was leaving a part of me behind. A part I was never going to quite get back. A part I didn't want back.
It's always like that with favorite cities when you leave them.
Like saying goodbye to a very special girl.
Maybe, the only girl.
The cab whipped on, the city of London disappearing behind us in the miserable haze of the lightly falling rain.
HOME, JAMES BOND
□ The tape had run down, and the last words of my recorded voice seemed to hang in the highly polished walls and confines of the room. The President of the United States stared at me across the desk. His eyes were sad, but that was nothing compared to the roller-coaster rising and falling in my own chest. It's pretty hard to put the finger on your own Chief, however altruistic and pragmatically necessary his motives might have been. It was a very tough, very crucial moment.
But it couldn't last forever. The silence was screaming.
The President broke it, with one sharp, clear, incisive statement. Somehow, it came as no surprise to me. I'd done a lot more thinking on the plane back to the States. I didn't see how it could be anything other than what I had figured out. No way.
"Yes, Ed. That's it. Just about the whole thing."
"Jesus," I said.
The shining new cassette machine lay mute and silently accusing between us on the most important desk in the country. It held all the menace and explosive reality of a time bomb.
An infernal device.
Like the sort of thing a man named Malvolio Morrow liked to tinker with. It would have been right up his undercover street
"You realize that none of this would have been necessary," I said, "and the whole rodeo would have given me a raincheck if the picture Cursitor snapped of Troy O'Connell had not been missing when Mrs. Cursitor or Cursitor himself turned over his film?"
The President shook his head, his brow wrinkled and unhappy. "There was no reason to suspect anything at the time. Cursitor was successful in London, the double was kidnapped. He simply never linked the O'Connell he knew with anyone in government. Only I had the suspicions and the doubts, you see. And Cursitor wasn't available to me when I was ready to ask any questions."
"When you sent for me, you mean?"
"Yes, Ed. When I sent for you."
I stared at him. It was still a bitter pill to swallow. It wouldn't go down easily at all. It never would.
"I wish to God you had leveled with me, Chief."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"That's not good enough this time. There has to be a better way of doing things. Doing this job. Or else we're all heading for the glue factory. And further down than that."
I didn't take my eyes off his face. I knew he was ashamed somehow, and that he had the power and the authority not to be ashamed for anything he did, and I liked him for that much, at least. It almost made up for everything. Almost but not quite.
"I want to know a few things," I said softly. "If you'll tell them to me now. Above the desk. Without political expediences."
"All right." I imagined he had sighed, but he hadn't. It was only his firm and rugged face appearing a little shopworn and sad. "I owe you that much, I think."
"You do," I said, without rubbing it in. "Who was the boy and the man? I'd like to know."
"Father and son. An actor named Dustin Fairchild and his son Kevin. The people we have in London arranged the details. Fairchild was more than anxious. He was perfect actually. Same age and build as Cursitor and practically the same face. The resemblance is amazing, really. The boy wanted to help out, too. He was too young, actually but—we had to go through with it, you see. The plan was set."
"And the real Cursitor and Bird?"
The President looked me right in the eye, without flinching.
"That I can't tell you. The Operation is only known by three people, outside of this office. I will tell you this much, though: it is the most important operation since I took office. That will have to be enough for you, Ed. I hope it is."
I nodded, still wrapped in the paradox of the situation. There I was, a private citizen, and I knew I had the President on the carpet in some nebulous, incredible way. All because he had not leveled with me, all because he had broken the faith between us just one time too many.
"Troy O'Connell. Have you found out who he is yet?"
The President did sigh that time.
"What I had hoped for by sending you to London, happened. We flushed him out when he committed himself to the action at Heathrow with that hireling, Mr. Badger. I knew then who it had to be because I deliberately let slip, before the suspected person, my plan for you in London. It was—well, you'll only guess, anyway and you're the greatest guesser I ever met—a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It developed that he was on leave when Cursitor took his sea voyage. And Cursitor had never seen him in the White House, because Cursitor had never been here in all the time he worked for us. Strange, isn't it? The man had been planted here ten years ago. Ten years! They work hard at it, don't they? The people who would take over the world——"
"Don't," I said. "Don't say that. Please. I could holler when you say that. Are we any better, really? All this horsing around. And now Fairchild, pere, is half-dead from a beating and Fairchild, fils, is—" I broke off because my voice had risen. I brought it back down and asked in a more reasonable voice. "Does anyone have any idea what happened to that poor kid who tried to make like a big spy?"
The President's face might have been carved out of the same marble and granite that made Mount Rushmore what it is. But he didn't look like any of them.
"We don't know yet. We just don't know. Everything is being done to help. Believe me, Ed—there was no other way—"
"I know," I said, and got to my feet, putting my hat back on. Behind his shoulders, which held the weight of his own world and mine, the sun shone down warmly on the old, familiar D.C. landscape. The buildings, the limitless green lawns, the monuments. Everything looked as great as ever. Only it wasn't. Not for me. I'd had it. The President's eyes opened in surprise. He looked hurt—he really did.
"Ed—you're not——"
"The tape is yours. With my love and compliments. I'm going back home, Chief. I miss Melissa, the office, New York—everything."
"You hate me, Ed. That's it, isn't it? You hate this whole business of politics, cold wars, espionage, and dirty pool that plays with people's lives. Dammit, man, what else is there for us to do? When the enemy won't play any other way?" His voice took off the way mine had.
"I don't know," I said as charitably as I could, the rage dead ashes within me. "I wish I did. All I do know is I have to get back to my own city, now. To put it all together."
The President sat back in his chair, his eyes on my face. His slim, manicured fingers drummed silently on the polished desk top. He shrugged.
"You'll forgive me one day, Ed. I'm sure of it—"
"Don't bank on that, Chief. I'm a hard man to insult but a very easy one to offend." I pulled the brim of the hat down over my eyes.
With that, I turned on my heel and walked from the big room. Without looking back, without sparing him any of the mammoth disappointment and disillusionment I felt. Maybe he was right, maybe I was wrong, but all I knew at that moment was that I wanted to get as far away from him and the dirty business of espionage as I could. As far away as a moon shot.
I think he sensed that, knew it, and threw in the intellectual sponge. Wrapped up his flag and hid it in a drawer of the big desk, where it couldn't be used as a blanket and a cover-up for all the double-dealing in the world. All the treachery in the universe.
I kept on walking out on him.
The President of the United States didn't try to stop me.
Dieu et mon droit.
I had my rights, too.
All of us have, no mat
ter who we are.
Or what we do for a living.
Or what the color of our skin is.
* Assassins Don't Die In Bed, New American Library 1967 ©
London Bloody London Page 13