The British Cross

by Bill Granger

  “For all I know now, he set up this business with the Macklin woman.”

  “Do you think so?” Her eyes were sharp and her voice growled. “She did make request for information under the Freedom of Information Act at CIA and they turned her down. Devereaux was already in Helsinki then.”

  Hanley sighed. “Mere paranoia, Mrs. Neumann, I suppose this problem has too many facets to it.”

  “There is a moral point,” she said.

  “Morality? At this late date?”

  “Don’t be indignant, Hanley. We set up Mr. Crohan during the war and essentially condemned him to death. Now he has a chance to come out and we want to kill him again because he is an embarrassment to an organization long since disbanded—the OSS. We want to kill him to save the reputations of a bunch of ghosts. The moral choice seems clear to me.”

  “Mrs. Neumann, we are not speaking of morality or ethics; we are talking of practical things.”

  “Shoes and ships and sealing wax,” she said.

  “This is not a matter of levity. I will have to cover for him, put my neck under the New Man’s ax.”

  “Everyone is expected to make sacrifices,” Mrs. Neumann said.

  Hanley was annoyed by her words and her tone. “I don’t know what I am going to do.”

  “Bullshit,” she said in her hoarse whisper. “You know exactly what you’re going to do and so does November. He’s got you, Hanley, and you just want to talk to me about it, have me talk you into doing what you’re going to have to do anyway.”

  “It is still a trap, a Russian trap.”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “A trap only works when it is unexpected.”

  “I wish this wasn’t happening,” Hanley said, a child caught in a bad dream.

  “You made it happen.”

  He seemed surprised. “Me? But I never wanted to do anything,” Hanley said.

  Mrs. Neumann nodded. “Exactly, Hanley. And you waited too long.”

  28

  MOSCOW

  Stolinaya knocked at the door of the third director of the Committee for External Observation and Resolution and waited for a response. It was usual for visitors to go through the elaborate security gauntlet through the main entrance but Stolinaya—and a few other privileged bureaucrats inside the Committee—could reach the third director through the back door, as it were.

  Stolinaya was director of classification and identification of foreign agents for the Committee. His job was the most creative inside the vast records department because he was the man who decided at last what the enemy was and who he was.

  Or, in the present case, who she was.

  Stolinaya was a tall, thin man with a bristling black mustache and large, luminous eyes. He was a perfect bureaucrat and a perfect Muscovite: The former description suited his careful, cautious way of dealing in an area where too much creativity could pull suspicion upon him; the latter description suited his easy arrogance, a sense that the Soviet peoples were damned lucky to have Muscovites at all, lest they disintegrate as a union.

  There was a muffled response to his knock.

  He opened the door and entered the room. The steam pipes were banging up heat; the single window in the large room rattled with the wind and the rhythm of traffic beyond the window.

  He sat down at the secretary desk next to the large desk assigned to the third director and opened his files without preliminary remarks. It was the weekly updating of the lists of enemies and a formality in a sense because Stolinaya was a trusted man. Still, the third director took some pleasure in altering the status of the unseen people contained on Stolinaya’s list.

  “The first is Abdul Raj-Hassadi of Sudan,” began Stolinaya in a perfect Moscow accent. He continued the description and then precisely explained why the second deputy of the Ministry of Transport in Sudan was now to be considered a paid espionage agent of Colonel Khaddafi of Libya. The third director listened and then nodded and Stolinaya entered the change of order in the files. Thereafter, until another status change, Abdul Raj-Hassadi would be elevated from the rank of “Bureaucrat/Foreign/No Political Status” to the rank of “Bureaucrat/Mole/Intelligence Agent 4th class/Political Status Questioned.” Stolinaya had devised the elaborate coding system of the four hundred thousand names of foreign agents and politicians contained in the vast computer files of the Committee; he was proud of them.

  “Rita Catherine Macklin,” he continued. “Ostensibly an American journalist since 1975. Age thirty. Former employee of the Green Bay, Wisconsin, Press-Gazette, Universal Press Service, Washington, freelance for the Washington Post newspaper. During that period, she served as liaison to R Section, American, in the matter of Leo Tunney, Case File thirty-four dash nine-nine-eight-two dash seventy-nine C.”

  “What was that?” the third director said.

  Stolinaya handed him a précis of the case printed on a single sheet of paper. For a long moment, the third director read silently and then returned the paper to Stolinaya.

  He continued the summary, listing her current employer, and detailing the observation and attempted resolution of her in Helsinki.

  “She is working for the American R Section again?” said the third director.

  “That is obvious beyond all question,” Stolinaya said. “She has access to their secret codes. She telephoned their headquarters from Paris on the instruction of the agent November. She had worked with November three years before. We choose to upgrade her status to ‘Journalist/American/Intelligence Agent in deep cover.’”

  “That seems reasonable.”

  Stolinaya frowned. “There is one other matter here and I wish you would consider it.”

  “Yes?”

  “She and the agent November have been agents provocateurs twice now, and they have exceeded their normal and expected briefs within R Section. In addition, the agent November has been responsible for the unwilling defection of our agent, Tiomkin, three years ago as well as the uncovering of our mole inside R Section. I request that you consider his name for assassination.”

  “And the woman?”

  “No, not yet. Her effectiveness seems tied to her operation with him. She is a propagandist at worst; a nuisance.”

  “But an assassination invites retaliation in kind,” the third director said with a frown.

  “Two years ago, he retired from the R Section and then rejoined the service. We do not quite understand all the matters but perhaps he will detach himself from the Section again. And its protection.”

  The third director sighed. He took the paper proffered and placed it face down on his neat, empty desk top. He sighed again. “These matters must be decided at the highest level,” he began.

  “I understand, Comrade Director.”

  “For the moment, though, this November is still under the protection of the Service?”

  “Yes, Comrade Director.”

  “Then let us tread carefully,” the third director said. “Let us wait and decide if it is worth the retaliation to us to eliminate him.”

  29

  HELSINKI

  George had met Ely at the airport in London and given him a final verbal instruction. Ely was frightened of the order.

  “I’m certain she’s merely a journalist,” Ely said.

  “Are you really?” George had smiled in his superior way. “My dear Ely, we have made other determinations. She is fouling up our operation, things going on you know nothing about.”

  “Than why not use someone who understands the reason to max the woman?” Ely said at last.

  “Ely, you are existing on sufferance inside Auntie. I hope you understand that plainly. This is not a matter of discussion.”

  “She’s a civilian, George. She told us everything.”

  “She set up Sparrow in your bedroom, your bloody girlfriend did. You saw him there, Ely, with the top of his head blown off. Who do you suppose arranged that?”

  Of course he had to max her. There was never a choice in these matters, not after you r
eceived the L Order in your career at Auntie, permitting you to kill in situations other than self-defense. He had killed before, justly or not; he was convinced that killing Rita Macklin was not just. But then, Ely had no choice.

  He touched the small Beretta automatic in the pocket of his coat. His hands were cold, the pistol was cold. He had felt depressed on the flight from London to Helsinki, thinking of the woman, thinking of what had happened in Vienna two years before. He had lost his nerve once; this was a second chance and there would not be a third.

  He tried to hate Rita Macklin for killing Sparrow but realized he had no feelings of hate or disgust or righteousness. Everything in him was empty.

  He rode the silent elevator to the sixth floor. She was registered in a room on the sixth floor of the Presidentti Hotel. He walked down the silent corridor and placed his fingers around the grip of the pistol in his pocket.

  George was right, of course; the service could not permit the murder of Sparrow to be unanswered. Yet was she the one who had set up Sparrow? Was she a spy? George was right again. Everything indicated it.

  Ely had worn a light coat and it was too cold. His face was blotchy red with the cold. His pale blue eyes were tired. His ginger mustache was not fierce anymore; the ends drooped around his thin mouth. He felt so terribly tired, even sick of the game.

  But it was the only game he played.

  He flicked off the safety of the automatic and knocked at her door.

  Quickly.

  He pulled the pistol from his pocket.

  The corridor was empty and light.

  Maybe she had fled, he thought suddenly. Maybe there was nothing he could do.

  The chain rattled on the other side of the door. The handle turned.

  He brought the pistol up to the level of his chest.

  Quickly. Without pain for her; with only a lingering horror in the aftermath for him.

  Rita Macklin opened the door wide. Her face was drawn, pale. She stared at him and the pistol with green, fearful eyes. She trembled.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Macklin,” he said with politeness that struck him as terribly absurd. He wanted to speak again but she shrank back from him into the narrow hall of the room. He held his pistol in front of him and saw that it trembled.

  “My God,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated inanely. “I am so sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry yet.” The harsh, surging voice came from the side of the hall. He was abreast of the bathroom door and yet Ely could not turn to face the voice because the barrel of a large gun was stuck in his ear. The cold of the metal shocked him.

  Without a command, he lowered the pistol even as Rita took another stumbling step back into the room.

  “Him,” she said with a shaking voice. “The British agent.”

  “Close the door,” Devereaux said. Rita edged around them and pushed the door shut and locked it.

  “Why did you come here?” Devereaux said.

  “I had to see—”

  “No more lies,” Devereaux said. “Speak the truth.”

  “Really. I cannot say anything.”

  “I’ll blow your head off.”

  “That’s melodramatic—”

  “Merely true.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Ely said sadly, still staring ahead of him, unable to turn toward Devereaux. “It was the method you used in Dublin with Sparrow. You and Miss Macklin. George was right.”

  “Who is Sparrow?”

  “Come now. He’s the one you killed in Dublin. In my room.”

  “So you came to kill Rita.”

  Ely felt very tired. It was over at least. He was calm. They would kill him in a moment, without words or regret. It was better to die than to have to kill again; better to end this sordid life at the hands of another than to stumble on through with it.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I came to kill her. She had killed one of our agents. We can’t permit that.”

  Ely closed his eyes and waited for death.

  But the pistol muzzle was pulled away from his ear. He opened his eyes and blinked. He turned his head and saw the winter-hard face of the man with gray eyes in the doorway of the bathroom.

  “Go into the bedroom,” Devereaux said. “And sit down. I want to talk to you now, Ely. About Sparrow. And George.”

  They spoke a long time and the three of them in the small bedroom sat still as they talked and listened. After an hour, Devereaux went to the telephone and made a local call.

  Ely sat fascinated as Devereaux spoke first with the operator and then with a second person in stilted Swedish. Devereaux was one of those persons who never forgot a language and acquired basic languages easily; he had been in Sweden nearly fifteen years before, out of Vietnam, on a matter involving a traitor who had taken refuge there. Devereaux spoke nine languages and dialects with more or less fluency—his best was French, acquired in Vietnam, and Vietnamese patois. In his long winter of isolation in Helsinki, Devereaux had learned that nearly all Finns could speak Swedish, though some reluctantly.

  When the call was finished, he turned back to Rita and Ely.

  “The old man is here.” It was the last secret revealed among the three of them; they were spies stripped of secrets now because their own survivals required an alliance.

  “You saw him,” Rita said.

  “Yes. As long as I have Tartakoff on hold, there probably won’t be a problem. I think they wanted the old man out in any case.” He wrote something down on a sheet of paper. “This is where they put the old man.” He gave it to Rita.

  She stared at the paper and then at Devereaux. She did not speak but her eyes held the question.

  “Ely and I will have to wait here now.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” she said.

  “Get out of Helsinki now. Quickly. Don’t use the airport. It’s become a shuttle for spies in the past few days. The Finlandia sails tonight at six for Stockholm. You and the old man will be on board. He’s an American now; here’s his passport. Get on board and stay away from the public rooms until the ship sails.”

  “Are you going to meet us?”

  He smiled at her. “I suppose so. If everything works.”

  “Why do you have to stay?”

  “Tartakoff is in my room at the moment. That’s part of the deal. I’m the messenger boy and I take him out when everything is set with the old man. Our British friend here has complicated the matter somewhat but I can use him now.”

  Ely said nothing.

  “And if it doesn’t work out?”

  “Oh, you of little faith,” Devereaux said, and he was smiling. Rita glared at him but the mocking smile played lightly on his thin lips and doused her anger in a moment.

  “Will he come with me?”

  “If not, hit him.”

  “Dev.”

  “Rita, he’s a prisoner, a lifer.” His words turned easily into rougher usage. “If you said squat to him, he’d ask you how many times. He has nowhere to go unless he is told to go somewhere. Get him now while I occupy Tartakoff. Before other matters interrupt us.”

  “What about him?” she said.

  “Tartakoff? He’ll be taken care of.”

  Ely suddenly exploded: “Why are you saying these things in front of me?”

  “Because the only way you are going to survive is to do what I tell you,” Devereaux said. “You have to understand the game and the trap. When you get to Stockholm—” He turned to Rita. “Here is a name and address. Use it the second day, if I don’t arrive. It’s a safe house.”

  “She is a spy,” Ely said.

  “No, Ely. You were wrong and George was wrong.” He turned to look at Rita sitting on the edge of the bed. “She was caught in the trap.” He spoke softly as though he did not see her in that moment. “Like you, Ely. Nothing was as it seemed.” He glanced up. “Get going.”

  “I don’t understand why you have to stay if I have the old man,” she said.

  “To close the back
door,” Devereaux said. “I have to wash the dishes and lock the place. The hall was only rented for the night.”

  Nine minutes later, Ely and Devereaux entered Devereaux’s room on the fourth floor. Ely had the sense of a drama rushing to a conclusion; it was the last act.

  Devereaux felt only a sense of release. The room had been his tomb for a long, dead winter and now it was opened.

  Ely had been relieved of his Beretta; trust did not extend to weapons between them.

  Tartakoff was at the window staring into the cavity of the construction pit across the street where Natali’s naked, frozen body had been found. He turned as they entered. His eyes widened angrily when he saw Ely in front of Devereaux.

  And then he saw the pistol in Devereaux’s hand.

  He started to make a move and then stopped.

  “What do you mean by this, Messenger?”

  “Sit down, Tartakoff. There. Take that chair.”

  “It is after five. The ship leaves for Stockholm in—”

  “Sit down.”

  Devereaux took a step past Ely. He stood in front of Tartakoff and saw the flicker of a movement of Tartakoff’s hand. Without seeming effort, Devereaux slapped the Russian across the cheek with the pistol barrel. The blow cut a line of blood across his face. The Russian took a step back and Devereaux pushed him into the chair. The muzzle of the pistol was pressed against his cheek.

  Devereaux reached down into the Russian’s coat pocket and pulled out a large automatic weapon which was a sort of pistol modified from a Uzi submachine gun.

  “Rather large to get through Customs,” Devereaux said. “How did you manage it?” He smiled and pulled out the banana clip and threw both pieces on the floor. “Sit there, Ely.”

  “We are going to miss the boat,” Tartakoff said, his voice rising.

  “Exactly,” Devereaux said.

  “Messenger, you have no authority.”