League of Terror

by Bill Granger

  39

  Henry McGee found Matthew O’Day at the bar in the little pub down the street from Paddington Station. It was just two in the afternoon and there had been so many things to do since meeting Trevor for lunch. He had left his salad but finished his whiskey. And left the bill for Trevor to pay.

  “About time,” Matthew said.

  “You didn’t enjoy the booze while you were waiting?”

  The two men moved down the public room bar to the saloon side and entered. The saloon was carpeted while the public room was not. They ordered whiskeys and took them to a booth where the lights were dim.

  “Well, then, what’s it to be?” Matthew O’Day said. “And where the hell is Maureen?”

  “Maureen is deader than Kelsey’s nuts,” Henry said.

  Matthew froze. His hand covered the whiskey glass but it was absolutely paralyzed. He stared at Henry and waited for another sound but none came for a long time.

  “You killed her?”

  “She was gonna kill you and I needed you a lot more than I needed her,” Henry said. “She blamed you for the raid on the farm and for bombing the public house in the south and even for killin’ little Brian Parnell. A murderous bitch, she had to be killed or she would have ruined everything. She was gonna off you tonight.”

  “I don’t believe a fookin’ word comin’ out of your mouth,” Matthew said.

  “Listen to her yourself.”

  He had a microcassette Sony in his hand. He pushed the button. There was Maureen’s voice, clear at times and cloudy at other times. “I’ll kill Matthew for what he’s done to us. Poor Brian. He killed Brian as sure as if he was standing in that urinal with him.”

  “I never killed Brian Parnell,” Matthew said.

  Henry chuckled and turned off the tape. “I know that and you know that but you couldn’t convince her of it.”

  “She coulda killed me lots of times the last few days. Why tonight?”

  “Because we’re gonna make a move in three days and time was finally rannin’ out,” Henry said.

  “Where is she?”

  “Someplace safe. Nobody’ll find her for days. Until she stinks too much and someone smells her rotting body.”

  “Jesus Christ, man. Ain’t you got no nature to you? How’d you kill her?”

  “The same way I killed the people in Mayfair. Nerve gas. Very humane. Attacks the central nervous system and you kind of do a fit. That’s what I’ve been told. Sort of like epilepsy. A grand mal seizure. In any case, she’s dead.”

  “And the girl, the girl you sent to meet me in Dublin at the Horseshoe Bar—”

  “My little Marie.” Softly. “She’s gone back to Berlin. She wants me to join her but she’s got family there. Got a mother there, I understand; never met her.” Henry grinned.

  “What the hell is going on, man? Do you take me for a fool?”

  “One hundred thousand pounds. British pounds. Trading at one point sixty-one in dollars. A nice bit of change. You did good on the first mission, now you’ll finish it off and be on your way. I’ve booked you on a flight to Chicago at two P.M. Friday from Heathrow.”

  “Why the hell would I want to go to fookin’ Chicago?”

  “To get out of here for a while, Matthew, and cool down. And to finish the thing off for me. Mr. Armstrong needs further convincing and so I’m gonna offer it to him. I’ve got an address for you in Chicago and another parcel to deliver when you get there. But this time, it really is a bomb, not a book.”

  “What the hell is it that I want to do in Chicago?”

  “I want you to blow up the ticket office of EAA. All you got to do is make another Federal Express delivery and walk away. And I know you’re gonna do it, Matthew, because you wouldn’t fail me now.”

  “Why not do it yourself?”

  “Because when the bomb goes off over there, I’m gonna be standing right next to Mr. Trevor Armstrong with a fucking metaphor pointed at his head and I’m gonna tell him that next time, EAA will have another plane fall out of the sky. An airline gets a bad reputation after a while. A long time ago, there was one of those once-in-a-million things where Air France had two crashes in one day. Well, they were devastated, especially when some television comedian started calling them ‘Air Chance’ and they had some rough years there. EAA had bad luck with terrorists once; they can have bad luck come in bunches if I can’t shake the money tree.”

  “So I’ll be in Chicago and you’re thousands of miles away and I trust you to take care of me, is that it? You must think I was born the day before yesterday. Do you take me for a fool?”

  “No, sir, Matthew, I surely don’t. I take you for an honest man.” Henry paused, chuckled. “I’ll give you a suitcase at Heathrow on Friday noon. You’ll open it in the privacy of a stall in the men’s room and you’ll see it contains exactly what I said it would contain. Some shirts and shoes and junk like that. And seventy-five thousand pounds sterling Bank of England in God We Trust. Now you’ll put the money in your pockets and you’ll march over to the ticket counter and check your bag through and go into the lounge and wait to board. First class. And when you reach Chicago, get a hotel room, rest up—don’t want you to suffer jet lag—and the next day, pick up a package at a certain address and take it to another address. You think you can follow that?”

  “All right, what if I take the money and run? Did you think of that?”

  “Did you think of who I am, Matthew? Did you think I could have started half the republic of Eire after your ass? Did you think I couldn’t terrorize even the professionals? I’m the top of the league of terror, Matthew; I thought you’d realize that now. I’m the worst man in the world and if I didn’t hear a bomb go off in Chicago, I’d just have to go after you. I learned to skin hides in Alaska years ago. I’m an Alaska man, did you know that? Can you imagine what it’s gonna feel like when I find you and start peeling your skin off? Can you even imagine the pain of it? And when you pass out from the pain, I’ll just wait till you come to again and we’ll start again.”

  The important thing was to make Matthew believe every word. Henry delivered the words very low and slowly and without any threat, just recitation of dull facts of life.

  He saw that Matthew believed.

  “Then I’m through with you. Once it’s done?”

  “Once it’s done,” Henry said. “I got tickets here. Another airline, not EAA. We don’t want them spooked or looking for you. Another airline and you’ll travel first class. You’ll like it fine. Seven, eight hours and you get a good night’s rest and then a simple delivery of a package. It’s easy work, Matthew.”

  “Yes,” Matthew said, seeing it from Henry’s point of view.

  And then he saw Maureen in his mind’s eye lying dead somewhere, rotting.

  He wiped his lips. He stared at the murderous man. “You take a share of pleasure in killin’, I can see that.”

  “Good,” Henry McGee said. “If you can see that, then you’ll do the right thing for sure.”

  40

  Dwyer drove Trevor Armstrong home. Jameson and Dennison were back at Oxford Circus not because Trevor needed them to work late but because he needed to be alone with Dwyer. Dwyer was his man, especially in this.

  Night smothered London and the sky was orange with the reflected lights from the city. The River Thames was black but, here and there, sprinkled with gems of light from the buildings along the Embankment. The new buildings beyond Tower Bridge loomed up hideously in the night sky. The modern architecture did not even try to blend into the graceful Georgian landscape that had preserved an idea of the city for two centuries. Trevor stared out the side window and began to speak in a clear, distant voice to Dwyer, as though Dwyer might be a disembodied spirit sent to converse with a disembodied Trevor.

  “Where did he go?”

  “To a public house in Paddington. I waited for him and even went into the public bar to spot who he was meeting. Looked like an Irish fellow, you know how they look. Wore a tweed coa
t and I caught the accent when he went to the bar for a whiskey. He drank Paddy.”

  “I know who it must be,” Trevor said.

  “Then he gave me the slip. Not that I think he spotted me but I think he was just doing something out of habit. The man I was following went back to the washrooms and never came out. After a while, the Irishman went back to his hotel. It’s one of the little hotels down the street from Paddington Station.”

  “I want to get away from the police on Friday. I have to meet this same man at Heathrow. We’ll be making an exchange.”

  “This isn’t about Allison. Or the kid.”

  “No. This is about our survival, Dwyer.”

  The little man thought about it. The car swept along and everything about the night was crowded. London had a sense of cars, lorries, buses, and streets filled with people. It was a rare, warm November night and there was a gay spirit to the city that infected every stone and street.

  “Dennison and Jameson aren’t in on it.”

  “You and me, Dwyer.”

  “Like from the beginning, boss.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what’s it about?”

  “I’ve been blackmailed.”

  Dwyer said nothing for a long time. Then: “I figured that.”

  “When did you figure it?”

  “When I saw that book that was in the mail on the sideboard. It was the movie that was showing on One forty-seven when it went down. And when the cops came, you had thrown the envelope in the toilet and flushed it and the book was on the shelf in the library. I just figured two and two.”

  “And you were smart enough to say nothing.”

  “That’s right, boss.”

  “All right. A man wants me to give him a lot of money to leave EAA alone. I don’t know if he had anything to do with the first bombing. But he certainly killed my household. I’m… in a bind, a financial bind. I owe a lot of money for a lot of stock purchases I’ve made. I can’t afford to see EAA go through… any period of doubt. In six months, Dwyer, we’ll be out of London and out of the airline business. And we’ll be very, very rich.”

  “You’ll be rich.”

  “I told you to buy EAA at forty-four.”

  “I put everything in it.”

  “Believe me, before this is over, it’ll be bid at a hundred.”

  “I believe you, boss,” Dwyer said.

  “What I have to do is, I have to give him the money. On Friday. At Heathrow. A lot of money in a suitcase.”

  “All right,” Dwyer said.

  “Then I want you to get the money back for me,” Trevor said. He did not look at the other man. “Do you think you can do that?”

  “I can do that,” Dwyer said.

  “I mean, you can’t terrorize him or threaten him or anything. That isn’t what I mean,” Trevor said.

  “Don’t worry, boss. I know just what you mean.”

  Trevor sighed. For the first time that day, for the first time since it began, he felt at ease. Dwyer was loyal. Dwyer knew exactly what he meant for him to do.

  41

  Hanley told Mrs. Neumann about it. When he was finished, she did not say anything for a long time. She went to the window in the corner office on the sixth floor of the Department of Agriculture Building where R Section was quartered, and looked down on Fourteenth Street all the way to the bridge. Night was coming to the capital. She had been chief of R Section for four years and they had taken a toll on her. The concerns of the world of intelligence had rounded her shoulders a little, and her eyes, while as sharp as ever, were etched with lines that had not been there before. Even her beloved husband, Leo, had noticed all the changes in her and accepted them with sadness.

  “Devereaux was the last man to send after him,” she said at last. “He was discharged from hospital a week ago. He’s a sick man.”

  “There’s no time. If we can’t get Henry back, he’ll fall into the wrong hands.”

  “We’ve had our hands on him before.” She turned from the window to look at him. “Miss Macklin will do all the things she threatened.”

  Hanley said, “Yes.”

  “You haven’t really told me everything.”

  “I’ve told you everything.”

  “But not the part where Devereaux is going to kill Henry McGee.” Her voice was gruff as always, a smoker’s voice from one who had never smoked. “He’s going to kill Henry, isn’t he?”

  “We do not sanction people.”

  “I know. I know your games, Hanley.”

  “I did not authorize any sanction.”

  “This is a wet contract and you’ve put him up to it because he wants to do it. He said he had been hit by Henry and we didn’t believe him at first. And now we’re afraid he was right and he gets our authority to… do what? Make an arrest? Call the British in, let them arrest him and turn him over to us.”

  “No,” Hanley said. “It can’t be handled that way.”

  “It’s the right way to do this,” she said.

  “Mrs. Neumann, it is not the right way but I give you your choices. I will resign immediately from Operations. If your character cannot see the right thing to do, even if it’s the wrong thing in some ways, then I won’t be a part of the destruction of Section. I was here from the beginning. Henry knows too much now, about the deal in Europe last year in the case of that translator. We let Henry go a second time and we hoped the Russians would finish him off for us. You know that and you knew it then. But the Russians have other fish to fry for the time being and they won’t do our wet work for us and we’re stuck with the fact of Henry McGee. Yes, I think Devereaux will kill him and that will end the matter for us. Except for the complication now of Miss Macklin. In the event he does not kill Henry. What do we do about Miss Macklin?”

  “She’s an American citizen.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s not much we can do. She’s a journalist.”

  “We can do an S job,” Hanley said. He was very calm. They had never spoken of such things to each other.

  “That would only be partly effective.”

  “Slander, Mrs. Neumann. It doesn’t kill anyone. We’ll put the FBI on her and follow her publicly and let it leak that she is a spy and has always been a spy and that she sold secrets to the Russians at the embassy in Mexico. She was there in March and she did go to the embassy. We even have a photograph of her entering the embassy from our permanent watcher. She went to the embassy for an interview but that’s neither here nor there. We can follow her. We can investigate her. And we can ruin her. It’s been done before.”

  “The hounds of hell. Follow her and slander her and let the slander build its own case against her.”

  “Yes. We can limit damage if we have to.”

  Mrs. Neumann put her thumb and index finger over the bridge of her nose and covered her eyes while she squinted. She might have been in pain. Hanley understood the pain.

  “If we have to, S,” Mrs. Neumann said. “We can also support Devereaux, can’t we?”

  “No. Whatever is happening is happening now and it is very close to being over and I don’t know how we can send in support at this late date. I have an open line to London Station but he hasn’t made contact. You know how he works in black. He’s not going to make contact because he doesn’t want to involve anyone else. I don’t even know exactly where Devereaux is at this moment—”

  “Hanley. This was the wrong thing.”

  Hanley nodded. “But it was necessary because this was the time for wrong things.”

  42

  Trevor Armstrong stood before the fireplace and stoked the oaks that Dwyer had ignited. It was a damned nuisance not to have staff at the moment. Dwyer had to be general factotum.

  A glass of whiskey rested on a marble coaster on the sideboard. He went to it, picked it up, and tasted the Laphroaig.

  Dwyer had disappeared up the stairs for his bedroom at the back of the house where he had his telly and VCR and his own stock of whiskey. S
ometimes he had a girl there but only on nights when the staff and the boss were gone.

  “Please don’t make a sound, Mr. Armstrong,” Devereaux said.

  He stepped into the room from the entry hall. He held a pistol in his right hand. The pistol and all the other things he needed had been waiting for him at the Hilton Hotel when he arrived. They were packaged by the safe house in Fleet Street and included the standard pharmacopoeia as well as items of trickery like lighters filled with gas. And a pistol, a standard 9-millimeter Beretta.

  “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

  “You brought me in. I was in the trunk. Or boot. You and your friend drove into the garage and past the police guards.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sit down.”

  Trevor thought to make reply for a moment and then thought better of it. He chose the leather wing chair closest to the fire. He sat down and waited, his hands joined in a casual gesture, his head tilted toward the man with the gun.

  The gunman sat on the hearth bricks, his back to the crackling flames. He stared at Trevor’s face for a moment, studying it. Then he reached in his inside jacket pocket and removed a photograph. He handed the picture to Trevor.

  Trevor studied the front view and profile of Henry McGee. The picture was the last taken of him, three years earlier, when he had been arrested for espionage.

  Trevor held the photograph for the proper length of time and then handed it back to the man with the gun.

  Devereaux said, “I know you’ve seen him.”

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

  “I want to know what he wants from you.”

  “I’ve never seen that man before.”

  Devereaux studied the lie. He was certain it was a lie and he wondered why. People lie out of terror sometimes, but terror replaces terror and he was the man with the gun at the moment. That should have been enough.