John Downey emerged from the shadows. ‘Fancied some night air, did we? A little stroll in the dark? See the sights?’
Shit. ‘It crossed my mind, John.’
‘Afraid not.’ Downey, who wore a cavernous raincoat, had his hands in his pockets. Pagan didn’t doubt he had a gun stashed away. ‘Strict instructions from Mr Nimmo. You stay where you are. Been a little wayward, haven’t we, Pagan? Been a little stupid.’
‘Depends what you call stupid, John,’ Pagan said. He didn’t have the heart to confront John Downey. He doubted if he had the strength.
Downey shifted his weight, glanced at the girl dismissively. He was a solid man; the sunken cheeks and the vanity of the wax moustache might have misled you into thinking he was a pushover, past his best. But Downey could play rough when he had to; his penchant for adding a sharp physical dimension to interrogations was well known. He stared hard at Pagan; you could see in the look the malignant gleam of old resentments. He would have liked nothing better than to shoot Pagan.
‘One wrong move, Pagan. That’s all I’m waiting for.’
Pagan raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement and acquiescence, knowing that if he was going to get past Downey he was going to have to be quick, because if he missed he wasn’t going to get a second chance. He half-turned away, his arms still raised slightly in front of his body. Now, he thought. It has to be now. He moved the left arm with all the strength he could gather and chopped John Downey in the larynx. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was forceful enough to knock Downey back against the wall. Pagan struck a second time, slamming a fist into the side of Downey’s jaw, hearing a cartilaginous creak as Downey’s head swung back and struck the wall. Pagan kicked him in the stomach and Downey slumped to the ground at an unusual angle, as if the joints that held his skeleton together had been severed. Even then he tried to get up, driven by brute stubbornness, by his hatred of Pagan. Pagan lashed out with the foot again, aiming it directly into the side of Downey’s head, and Downey fell backwards.
Pagan stepped over him, moved away, breathing hard. There was fire under the dressing on his neck, a pulse of flame. He reached for the girl, who had watched the brief flurry of action in a wide-eyed way, and grabbed her arm.
‘Do you have a car?’ he asked.
‘I hired one.’
‘Then let’s get the hell out of here. Fast.’
THIRTY-THREE
VENICE
THE MORNING WEATHER IN VENICE WAS UNEXPECTEDLY SUNNY, ALMOST springlike, if you chose to ignore the fact that the temperature was only four degrees above zero. The rain had gone, the sky was clear. The pastel shades of the city had been refreshed overnight. Shadows formed in the squares. At least for the moment the dead city of winter had passed; hardy tourists hired gondolas, crowds strolled on the Rialto or gathered in the Piazza di San Marco, where they stood around in awe, and when awe subsided they fed the pigeons with breadcrumbs purchased at extortionate prices from vendors.
Barron stepped out on to the balcony of his apartment. Leaning against the handrail, he looked down into the canal below. He wondered where the currents had taken the General’s body. Out to sea, Carlotta had said. Out to sea and long gone. But Barron was beset by the strange notion that the corpse would eventually somehow drift just under his window, that he’d look down and see the General’s sea-bleached face staring up at him. All night long he’d imagined the body rolling with tides, water billowing in the General’s clothing.
He went back indoors. Carlotta was coming down the staircase from the bedroom. She wore a navy-blue business suit, the skirt knee-length, dark shoes brightly polished. She had very little make-up on her face. She’d tinted her hair and now it was black and severely parted.
‘How do I look?’ she asked.
‘Businesslike,’ Barron answered.
‘Perfect.’ She came to the bottom of the staircase. ‘You had a restless night. You didn’t sleep well.’
‘I drifted in and out.’
‘Nervous?’
Nervous didn’t quite describe it, Barron thought. He watched Carlotta cross the floor toward him. It was strange how she adapted the movements of her body to the kinds of clothing she wore. In loose-fitting garments, she seemed angelically at ease, flowing. In tight skirts she walked provocatively, her hips thrust forward at an aggressive angle. In her present attire she appeared to have developed a rapid walk with shorter steps than usual: you almost expected her to advise you on investment matters. Angel, slut, businesswoman, mass murderer: there were no limits to Carlotta, and because there were no limits there was no core of personality, nothing you could ever pin down and say: Here, this is the real Carlotta. This is who she really is.
‘Well, Barron,’ she said. She tapped a cigarette on the surface of a silver cigarette case. ‘This is the day. And the sun is shining. How appropriate.’ She looked from the window, lit her cigarette. She stuck the case back inside the small bag she carried, which matched her suit. She turned, faced him, smiled. There wasn’t a trace of uneasiness about her. She was calm, deliberate. This is Carlotta in her element, he thought. This is how she comes to life – by being somebody else, in this case a Russian security operative named Alyssia Baranova.
She stepped towards him, put her arms round his shoulders, blew smoke directly past his face. Every gesture, every move – total confidence.
‘Well? Nothing to say?’ she asked.
‘You know what you have to do,’ he answered. ‘There’s nothing you’ve forgotten?’
‘We’ve gone over everything.’ She laid the palm of a hand tenderly against the side of his face. ‘It’s going to be very simple, Barron. There’s nothing in the world to worry about. Anyhow, frowning ages you. And you don’t want to look your age, do you?’
He smelled scent on her fingertips.
‘Think of it as just another day,’ she said. She pinched his cheek lightly between thumb and forefinger. The gesture, seemingly so innocuous, made him feel like a patronized child. His relationship with this woman had more complex passageways than an anthill. You went one way, found yourself in a chamber you’d never seen before. You went another, came to a dead end, backtracked, passed through rooms only vaguely familiar to you, and yet all the while you could detect the spoor of the woman, the scent that compelled you to keep searching for her. But you never found her because she wasn’t there.
‘Just another day,’ he said.
‘Exactly.’ She moved away from him. Looked at her watch. Took from her bag a compact, flipped it open, regarded her face a moment in the mirror. Suddenly stern, eyebrows drawn together, she surveyed Barron over the rim of the mirror. ‘Alyssia Baranova. I was probably raised in Smolensk. My father was, let’s say, an engineer. A Stalinist. Definitely a Stalinist. Loyal Party member who couldn’t stomach the new regime. My mother taught in a nursery school. She was more liberal than my father. When I was ten, she sent me to ballet classes, but I didn’t have the talent for that. What then? Well, I went to university, studied languages, became fluent in French and German. And then I was recruited by Intelligence. The bare bones of a life.’
She smiled, seemingly pleased with her invented history. She might never have been Carlotta. She put the compact back inside the bag, then she removed a small black cylindrical object. Barron remembered the cheerfully innocuous paper in which the General had wrapped the thing. But he didn’t want to think about the General now.
‘Simple little device,’ she said. ‘Amazing. So much destruction from such a tiny source.’ She replaced the object, closed the bag. ‘And when I’m no longer Alyssia Baranova? What happens next?’
‘We go away on an extended vacation. Tonight.’
‘We leave all this,’ and she gestured round the room.
‘For a time,’ Barron replied.
‘And then. Do we live happily ever after, Barron?’
‘We try.’
Barron watched her go toward the door. He had an urge to detain her, to keep her from going out of the apartment, as
if some part of him, a relic of conscience, wanted to bring everything to a dead stop. But he didn’t speak. It was too late to change anything now. He’d played his part. He had nothing more to do with events.
‘Later,’ she said. And she went out, leaving her casual word of departure hanging in the air. Later. He walked up and down the room, stopped at the mantelpiece, remembered all the photographs he’d broken. Earlier, he’d watched Schialli silently sweep away shattered glass, and he’d felt nothing, no regret, no touch of sadness. He had a sense of having outlived the usefulness of his souvenirs.
He went back on the balcony, back out into the sun whose cold harshness burned upon the decaying buildings of the city. He felt a peculiar menace in the brightness.
He looked at his watch. He thought of the girl calling from Lyon to say that the business with Pagan was finished with, and he wondered why she wanted to see him. She was always a delight, of course, she always had been – and he permitted himself a moment of nostalgia, remembering her father Harry Cairney, the business he and the old man had done together, Harry raising money for his beloved Ireland, Barron supplying weapons. Life had seemed altogether simpler in those days. And then he thought of the son, Patrick, but that memory was thin.
He looked down into the waters of the canal and pondered Rhodes and Kinsella in their hotel suites, anxiously awaiting news of Helix.
THIRTY-FOUR
MARSEILLE
PAGAN SAW NO FUTURE IN GOING TO LYON AIRPORT – WHICH WAS THE first place he’d be apprehended as soon as the dead woman was discovered or Downey had recovered awareness. For much the same reason he decided against Geneva Airport as a destination; it was close enough to be placed quickly under surveillance. So he told the girl to drive to Marseille, two hundred and fifty kilometres away.
To forestall the possibility of conversation that would have been either stilted or recriminatory, he turned on the radio and for a few minutes there was jazz, before the station drifted and an Italian baritone voice fused uncomfortably with Dizzy Gillespie. Now and then he looked out of the window, fighting sleep; he avoided the girl’s face. The tension inside the vehicle was like a third passenger, somebody having a quiet nervous breakdown in the back seat.
The girl turned off the radio. Pagan had the feeling she was about to speak, and wished she wouldn’t. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say; it had gone beyond that. Silences were preferable. He looked at the reddish glow of the dials, then peered at the highway, here and there seeing farmhouses, the outlines of barren trees, small cafés. A chill dawn sun hung in the sky.
Despite his better judgement, he found himself wondering about the girl’s reports to Barron, the phone calls. How much had she revealed anyhow? How had she phrased her reports? I’ve got him exactly where I want him, Tobias. I really think he’s falling in love with me. He tells me practically everything about his work. These were depressing considerations. He couldn’t dwell on betrayal; it was like sucking on an orange spiked with arsenic. The trouble was how the taste kept coming back at you.
Barron, he thought. And his anger rose up again, sickening him. Barron, do-gooder, benefactor of the meek, the underprivileged, the starving. And what else besides? Connected to Carlotta, and presumably to the bomb, and so to The Undertakers: hence to William J. Caan. The sharp cogs, the teeth of a very complicated machine. And all the while Barron sprayed garlands of goodwill around the wretched planet, he opened clinics, schools, bestowed his blessings on the needy. It was terrific cover.
The girl glanced at him. ‘I want you to know how I got involved with Barron.’
Pagan said nothing. He made an indifferent gesture with his hands. He didn’t care.
She didn’t speak again for a few miles and then it was as if she were addressing herself. ‘It seems sometimes that I’ve known him for ever. He used to come regularly to our house in upstate New York. He’d lock himself away with my father for hours. I was just a kid, what did I know? Two grown-ups discussing business, that’s all. When business was over he was … playful, I guess is the word. He liked games. Croquet. Checkers. He taught me chess moves. Whenever he came to visit, he brought presents.’
‘Good old Uncle Tobias,’ said Pagan wearily.
Undeterred by his tone, the girl continued. ‘I went away to boarding-school for a while. During summer vacations, I’d go visit him in Coral Gables. He always had time for me. He’d drive me round in this big convertible he had. Take me to restaurants. I was maybe thirteen, fourteen, and he treated me like an adult. He was never anything but kind to me …’
Pagan didn’t want to hear any more recollections of Uncle Tobias. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘I’m happy for you. I’m delighted you’ve got all these lovely memories to sift. Long sunshine days in Florida. Teaching you chess. Open-air restaurants. Very nice.’
She glanced at him and he looked away. He said, ‘And the sweet little girl grows up to be a potential killer. Uncle Tobias was a terrific influence. A real role model.’
‘I made my own decisions, Pagan. He didn’t force me into anything.’
‘He approached you with a proposition. Get me the dirt on Pagan and don’t worry if you have to sleep with him to do so – it’s all part of the ongoing struggle for justice. He pimped for you and you cruised along with it. Then there’s another proposition. Something new. Something different. Katherine, my dear, I’m afraid you’re going to have to kill Pagan. You don’t mind, do you, Katherine? Or did he call you Kate?’
‘I’m trying to explain,’ she said.
‘And I’m wondering why you feel this burning need. I don’t give a shit—’
‘I don’t believe what you said about Barron, Pagan. That’s why. What you tell me doesn’t square with what I know about him.’
‘You’re trying to defend a man who orders you to shoot me? You’re trying to tell me he’s basically good, is that it? Sorry if I’m not buying, love.’
There was anger in the girl’s voice. ‘Look. He was kind to me, goddamit. After my father died … shit, I couldn’t begin to tell you. You wouldn’t listen anyway.’
‘You’ve got that right,’ he said.
She tightened her hands on the wheel, accelerated, overtook a convoy of cumbersome trucks in a reckless way. Then she braked slightly as if her anger had dissipated. ‘Your perspective is just so goddam narrow, Pagan. You’ve been chasing terrorists for so long it’s warped your judgement. You see things that aren’t there. You impute motives to people who don’t deserve to be maligned. This Carlotta, this bomb on the Underground, you’ve got that all wrong when you blame Barron. OK, he wanted you out of the way, but he’d have a sound reason, because he wouldn’t order death unless it was necessary, and even then he’d be unhappy about it, it would make him miserable—’
‘Mr Conscience,’ Pagan remarked. ‘Even as he tells you to off me, he’s wringing his hands and blowing his nose into a hanky and his eyes are watering.’
‘You’re a shit,’ she said.
‘When it comes to people like you and Barron, I’m more than a shit. I’m a monster.’
‘You could never understand the part he played in my life.’ The girl stared at him a second before returning her eyes to the road. ‘I was fifteen when I understood that Barron was helping the Cause. I knew about my father’s involvement before that – how could I not have known? It was all around me. You were right about that much at least. When he died, I went to live in Barron’s house in Florida for a time. When I was seventeen, and pretty damn bitter about the way both my father and brother had been killed, Barron asked me to run an errand for him. A simple thing, really. I was to deliver an envelope from Belfast to New York. I jumped at the chance. I didn’t know what it contained, I didn’t care. I assumed it was money, a cheque maybe, I don’t know. All I knew was I was making a contribution … And it excited me, Pagan. I was doing something real.’
Pagan said, ‘And one simple errand leads to another. Then another. By which time you’re ready for your fir
st big assignment – namely, Frank Pagan.’
She nodded her head. ‘I was happy to be asked. Do you understand that? It meant I’d grown up, I was to be trusted, Barron needed me for something important. I knew your name, of course. I knew about you and Patrick. I wanted the job, Pagan. And when it came down to killing you, I wanted that as well.’
Pagan stretched his legs, felt his neck throb, tried to adjust his position in such a way that the friction of collar against burn would be alleviated. He stared from the window, seeing apartment buildings and an industrial estate. Somewhere a bonfire was burning and ragged red cinders rose into the sky. Beyond, over the Golfe du Lion, the sun was cloudy, a forlorn old biddy of the sky.
‘Now you’re trying to convince me Barron’s a liar,’ she said. ‘And I’m not ready to accept that. Not on your word alone, Pagan. No way. What are you running on anyway except some wild stories, some flight of goddam fancy?’
Pagan glanced at her profile and felt a slight sadness. She was lost to him – or at least his ideal of her was lost. An evaporation had taken place, a vanishing. But it was unproductive to think about that; the road led nowhere. She came into your life, she went out of it again, and amen. Sadness was irrelevant. He had to put himself in a place beyond feeling. Cold storage.
At Marseille Airport, she parked the car. Pagan stuck her gun with the silencer in the glove compartment. They went inside the terminal building, walked to the Air France desk. When he stated his destination the putty-faced woman behind the console looked at him in a surprised way. ‘I’m afraid there’s no direct connection, sir,’ she said. ‘You need to go through Rome.’
‘What about another airline then? What about Alitalia?’ he asked.
The woman patiently punched her keyboard. ‘Alitalia has no direct flight either. You would have to fly through Milan on that airline. Sorry.’
Sorry. Pagan realized he’d fallen into a trap of assumptions. He’d come to Marseille because he’d assumed, wrongly, that a direct flight to Venice would be instantly available, he’d buy a ticket, flash a passport – presto, a window seat, coffee, a quick flight.
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