The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  At this McVeigh looked at him, bemused. Three difficult years in the Marine Corps Investigation Branch had given him a kinship with George, but recently he was beginning to wonder. Promotion hadn’t come the way it should, and the drink was playing havoc with his language.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, ‘referee?’

  George eyed him over the rim of his glass. There wasn’t much of his third pint left.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he said. ‘Fight’s off.’

  ‘Off?’

  ‘Yeah, cancelled. Incident room’s closed. Team’s disbanded. Person or persons unknown. You know the way it goes.’

  ‘But you hadn’t even started.’

  ‘Fucking right.’

  ‘So how do they justify that?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  George tipped back the glass, emptying it, eyes looking for the big clock on the wall behind the bar. The glass back on the table, he slumped back in the chair, shoulders hunched, hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat. There was an etiquette in these meetings of theirs, gesture and response, but McVeigh made no attempt to pick up the glass.

  ‘But why?’ he said again. ‘Tell me why.’

  George shrugged. After three pints he got difficult. After four, it would be simple aggression. Once, in the Marines, it had been a laugh. Now, it had ceased to be funny.

  McVeigh put the question a third time. ‘Why?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Or you’ll have theories. Bound to.’

  George shrugged. ‘Suits fucking someone,’ he said. ‘But you tell me who.’

  McVeigh nodded, pondering the proposition. ‘Who’s in charge?’ he said, looking up.

  George burped noisily and named a Detective Chief Superintendent they both knew, Harry Quinton, a slightly older man whose short-cuts were legendary but whose clear-up rate had earned the cautious admiration of the bosses on the eleventh floor. George drank with him sometimes, evenings, and played snooker at a smoky hall in Bethnal Green. Given the circumstances – a shooting in broad daylight, no real investigation – Harry would have had some definite thoughts about it all, and it was inconceivable that George wouldn’t have had to share them.

  McVeigh eyed the empty glass for a moment. It was half-past two. ‘Harry …’ he prompted.

  George looked at him. ‘Gutted,’ he said. ‘Well fucked.’

  ‘But what did he say?’

  There was a long silence. Then McVeigh got up and went to the bar. With the fourth pint he ordered a treble Scotch. George watched him carrying them back. He was forward now in the chair, his voice low, his body bent in towards the table. McVeigh put the drinks down between them. George ignored them. McVeigh took a second or two to place the new tone in his voice. It was anger. ‘What’s the interest?’ he said. ‘Why all this?’

  McVeigh thought briefly of Billy. Explaining all that was complicated, and he wasn’t sure that George would follow. He’d never been good with kids.

  ‘I’ve got a client,’ he said.

  ‘Foreign?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Domestic?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘OK.’

  George glanced round. The pub was beginning to empty. He beckoned McVeigh closer. McVeigh obliged, listening without comment while George told him what he knew. Harry, he said, had somehow pissed off the Israelis. He didn’t know how, and neither did Harry, but the cooperation he’d been getting from Palace Gardens had been withdrawn. The bloke who’d died, Arendt, had evidently been a Mossad man. That was the way the MI5 boys had told it. He’d been Mossad since the mid-eighties, and good at it, a katsa, a Case Officer, one of only a handful world-wide.

  McVeigh, listening, nodded. Mossad was the Israeli Secret Service. They were the best in the business, Israeli’s eyes and ears. Some of the strokes they pulled were beyond belief. No wonder the man had played football with such guile.

  George, glass in his hand, went on. Arendt had been Mossad, and Harry – at the very least – now had a motive. Whoever did it had a thing about Israeli spooks. Which only left about half a million Arab hit-men, every one of them longing for a Mossad notch on the butt of his gun. McVeigh nodded again, remembering Rafael, the Israeli at the Embassy, same theory, same conclusion. He frowned, watching George swallow the last of the Scotch. The beer was still untouched. ‘So where’s the catch?’ he said. ‘If it’s all that simple?’

  George looked at him for a moment, on the edge of some private decision. Then he leaned forward again. ‘We had a witness,’ he said. ‘Bloke owns an antique shop. Off Queen’s Gate Gardens. Saw the whole thing. Apparently there was a big argument beforehand. Before the bloke got stiffed.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He couldn’t hear. Not properly. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. The point is the language. The language they were using.’

  ‘What was it?’

  George hesitated again. Then he reached for the beer. ‘Hebrew,’ he said, wiping his lips.

  McVeigh looked at him for a moment, weighing it up. Then he shrugged. ‘So the Arab speaks Hebrew,’ he said. ‘Big deal.’

  ‘This was good Hebrew. The real thing.’

  ‘So?’ McVeigh said again. ‘The Arab speaks good Hebrew. So what?’

  George gazed at him for a long moment, and McVeigh recognized the signs, the impatience, the hands beginning to clench, the fist coming down on the table, the beer dancing in the glass. Instead, though, George leaned forward again, another card to play.

  ‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘Harry gets a phone call. The investigation’s dead in the water. The heat’s off. He’s back to fucking traffic offences. But the phone still rings.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Israeli woman. Arendt’s wife.’

  ‘What’s she want?’

  ‘A meet. She wants to meet Harry. She’s got his name from the Embassy, or the press, or some fucking place, and she wants to buy him dinner. The works. Wheeler’s. Lobster. Champagne. You name it.’

  ‘So what happens?’

  ‘What do you think happens? You know Harry. He loves all that. Loves it. So he goes. Meets the woman. Fills his face. Expects … you know … something to happen … information … a name … a lead … someone to put in the frame …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Fuck all. It’s the woman does all the asking. She spends all night trying to find out how far Harry had got, where he’d been, who he’d talked to, all that. Says she wants revenge.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Harry tells her fuck-all. Gets pissed. Goes home. End of story.’

  George took a long pull at the beer, and McVeigh watched him, trying to picture the scene, thinking about Harry Quinton, the appetite on the man, how greedy he was. ‘Tell me something,’ he said slowly. ‘Did Harry try it on at all?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. Dead loss. Shame, really. Apparently she was something else …’ George grinned for the first time, his mouth slack, his eyes bright. He was obsessed with women and had three failed marriages to prove it.

  ‘So tell me …’ McVeigh said. ‘Tell me what she looked like.’

  ‘The Israeli’s wife? Harry’s little widow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  George grinned again, remembering Harry’s description, reminting the phrases, good as new. ‘She was blonde. Tall. Not fat. Wonderful arse on her. Great face. Great lips, you know, just built for it. Big figure. Really big. Had Harry creaming his knickers … poor bastard …’

  McVeigh looked at him for a while, letting the words sink in. Then he got up and thanked George for his time, and turned on his heel, heading for the door and the street outside, remembering Yakov’s sheaf of photos, his wife, the small, attractive figure. The cap of jet-black hair, the big smile. Cela.

  At the door he hesitated for a moment. Then he was away, out into the street and the bright August sunshi
ne, smiling.

  *

  Telemann arrived at La Guardia late, the Eastern shuttle to New York delayed an hour on the tarmac back in Washington. ‘ATC grid-lock,’ the captain had told the passengers with a resigned apology. ‘Second time this week.’

  At La Guardia, Telemann was met by the guy he’d already conferenced on the secure line. In the flesh, he was quite unlike the impression he’d made on the phone. The voice had been deep, thoughtful, sure of itself, and Telemann had imagined someone older, bulkier, a little slow on his feet maybe, a little overweight. The figure by the baggage carousel was none of those things. He was small, thin, sallow, with a watchful expression and a hint of Latin blood behind the over-trimmed moustache and the soft brown eyes. He looked young, too, no more than thirty-five, a tribute to a man already perched in the upper reaches of the New York Police Department.

  Telemann extended a hand, still not quite sure. ‘Mr Benitez?’ he said.

  The other man smiled. ‘Alfredo,’ he said.

  The two men shook hands, then walked quickly through the crowded concourse and out on to the pick-up area. At the kerbside was an unmarked Chevvy with a dent in the rear wing. Behind the wheel sat another man, black. Like Benitez, he wasn’t wearing uniform.

  They drove into Manhattan across the Triborough Bridge, then headed downtown on the East River Memorial Drive. At First and 30th, they pulled left into the Bellevue Hospital. They took the elevator to the basement and walked along the corridor to the morgue.

  By now, Telemann had confirmed the worst of it. The incident at the Manhattan Plaza had been investigated by a small core-team of four. By the time the bodies had arrived at Bellevue and the autopsy procedures had been completed, the clinical trial had gone cold. The investigating pathologist could find nothing helpful in the way of residues or specific organ damage. The couple in the hotel bathroom had evidently died of respiratory failure, but no obvious causal mechanism had shown up.

  So far so good, but there were two other pieces of evidence. One of them was the maid from Housekeeping who’d first discovered the bodies. She’d collapsed outside the bathroom, but survived. As best she could, she’d described her symptoms, and these had gone into the file. The other piece of evidence was an aerosol recovered from the bathroom floor. According to the label, it contained shaving-foam. It had been sealed inside a polythene bag and hand-carried to the NYPD forensic laboratories. Already suspicious, the investigating technicians had put on full protective clothing, including face-masks, before analysing the contents. The analysis had occupied four difficult hours, but by the end of the afternoon there was absolutely no doubt about their conclusions. The liquid inside the aerosol was dimethylaminoeth-oxy-cyanophosphinne oxide. The stuff was virtually colourless, with a faintly fruity smell. The standard military abbreviation was Tabun GA. Most people called it nerve gas.

  Telemann followed Benitez into the morgue. Forty-five minutes in the car from La Guardia had already given him a respect for the man. He was quiet, thoughtful, undramatic. Days back, after the aerosol analysis, he’d already understood the need for discretion, for secrecy, for ring-fencing the investigation, keeping it away from the media, from the politicians, even from his own colleagues. Mercifully, the NYPD had never had to deal with nerve gas before. Nor, for that matter, had there ever been much call for measures against anthrax or hand-portable nuclear bombs. But these weapons existed, and the threat was therefore credible, and now that one version of the nightmare had come to pass, he’d known at once that the secret must – at all costs – be kept safe. In all, eleven people knew enough to make them a risk. Each one he’d seen personally, spent time with them, explained the public order consequences of loose tongues and wild rumours. The investigation, naturally, was proceeding. But the cause of death was still, in official terms, unknown.

  The two men walked into an ante-room of the big six-slab autopsy theatre. The room was tiled entirely in white. The light was harsh from the overhead neon strips, and there was a strong smell of bleach. One of the walls was occupied by a bank of tall refrigerators. Benitez nodded a greeting to an attendant, murmuring a name, and waited while the man opened one of the fridge doors. Inside, racked on metal trays, were half a dozen bodies. The attendant pulled out a tray near the bottom. Inside the clear polythene bag was a man in his early forties. His head lay to one side, mouth slightly open, and except for the long autopsy incision his body was unmarked. He looked fit, well made, in good shape, though the tan on his chest and his legs was beginning to fade.

  Telemann looked at him for several moments before turning away. Ten years in the CIA had taken him to places like these all over the world – the same smell, the same low background whirr from the big white fridges – yet he’d never quite got used to the sight of a corpse. Badly damaged, by a bomb or a beating or a cleverly worked traffic accident, and it was sometimes easier to cope with. But like this, a man asleep in a plastic bag, it was hard, and gazing down he knew yet again that it was true what they said. Look a dead man in the face and you see your own funeral, your own end.

  Telemann shook his head and glanced up at Benitez. Most of the details he already knew. Lennox C. Gold. Forty-one years old. An avionics consultant from San Antonio Heights, California, a hands-on-engineer who’d smelled the big money and left the development laboratories in the San Bernadino Valley with a headful of knowledge and a firm bead on the upmarket end of the American dream. Much of his experimental work had been for Department of Defense programmes, some of them sensitive, and his commercial activities had twice rung bells with the security agencies. He’d been duly investigated and placed under surveillance, but on both occasions nothing much had turned up. The guy was greedy, and ambitious, and worked like a demon, but on all three counts that simply made him a good American. Telemann looked down at him again, wondering. ‘The name …’ he mused. ‘… Gold.’

  Benitez glanced up. He’d been reading another autopsy report, something unrelated.

  Telemann nodded at the body between them. ‘Jewish?’

  Benitez frowned. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Should that matter?’

  ‘Maybe. You’ve seen the security reports. He’s certainly been talking to the Israelis, but so he should. They’re good customers.’

  Telemann nodded. Lennox Gold had secured contracts with two separate divisions of the Israeli Aircraft Industry. His speciality was Electronic Counter-Measures, ECM, the shell of hi-tech electronic emissions that cocooned the latest generation of fighter planes from the attentions of enemy missiles. In today’s dog-fights, no pilot could survive without them. R & D-wise, the US still led the field, and Gold had the inside track. To the Israelis, always looking for the edge, his knowledge would have been invaluable.

  Benitez looked thoughtful. He was still gazing at the body in the bag. ‘You’re looking for a motive?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You think he got too close to the Israelis?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Close enough for someone to want to kill him?’

  Telemann shrugged but said nothing. No one from New York knew anything about the message from Amman. That, for the time being, was the tightest Federal secret of all. He nodded at the fridge. ‘What about the girl?’

  The attendant glanced at Benitez and slid out another tray, immediately above Gold’s. The body in the bag was smaller, whiter. She had curly brown hair, shoulder-length, and a little of her lipstick had survived the attentions of the pathologist. She had a good figure, long legs, and her knees were slightly bent, drawn up towards her belly, a pose that lent her a strange innocence. The stitching on the long autopsy incision from her throat to her belly was as neat as Telemann had ever seen. Normally, no one put much effort into it. An autopsy, after all, wasn’t something you ever survived. But the work on this girl was different. Someone must have seen what Telemann had seen. Someone must have cared.

  Benitez was picking his teeth. ‘Elaine Fallaci,’ he said, ‘Italian hooker.
Successful. Freelanced for an agency on the Lower East Side. They work the diplomatic crowd a lot. That’s serious money.’

  ‘She live in town?’

  ‘Sure. Small apartment. East 74th. Overlooks the Park …’ He smiled. ‘That’s how good she must have been.’

  Telemann nodded, his eyes still on the girl. Something about her reminded him of his own wife, a decade and a half back, that summer they first met at the University of San Diego. He’d always regarded their life together as one of God’s bigger miracles, infinitely delicate, infinitely precious. The fact that this girl was dead disturbed him more than it should. Mortality, he thought again. Hers. Mine. Laura’s.

  He glanced up at Benitez. ‘You say he’d met her before?’

  ‘A lot.’

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Double figures.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The agency.’

  ‘They keep records?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They give them to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They want to stay in business.’ Benitez smiled a thin smile. ‘And the girls aren’t keen on dying.’

  Telemann nodded, accepting the point. ‘You talked to the girls?’ He nodded at the tray. ‘They tell you anything?’

  ‘Not much. It’s quite common to keep a handful of steadies. Better the devil you know …’ Benitez trailed off, still looking at the dead girl. Then he shrugged and glanced up at Telemann again. ‘He was a businessman. Flew in regularly. Met people around town. Serious guy. Hard worker. Very straight up. Nothing kinky. Nothing violent. Treated her nice. Strictly cash. Two hundred bucks an hour. No hassling for deals …’ He paused again. ‘Shame about the aerosol.’

  They exchanged glances and stepped back from the bodies, and Telemann heard the rumble from the rollers and the soft clunk of the door as they turned away and the attendant tidied up. Back outside the morgue, sitting in the car, Telemann wound down the window. The driver had disappeared inside the hospital in search of a Coke machine. For late evening, it was still very hot.