Time to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  She said, ‘Let’s make it more than a pleasure to do business with you.’

  ‘Let’s,’ said Mason, following her into the bedroom. It was dominated by the bed, a mirror inset in its canopy.

  ‘You want to undress me? Or watch?’

  ‘Watch.’

  She was good, very good. Not trying to make it a gyrating striptease but neither shedding her dress, pants and bra like a discarded skin. It was the first live naked female body he had seen since he couldn’t remember when and he thought she was magnificent, no sag or lines to her breasts or stomach.

  ‘And you?’

  He wasn’t feeling anything: no excitement at all! ‘You help.’

  The girl did that well, too, stripping him with her hands on the inside, not the outside, of his clothes, so that every movement was an erotic caress. Mason still stayed flaccid, even when she knelt before him to slide off the final piece.

  She nuzzled his groin, pushing him back upon the bed, and said, ‘You got a favourite? Something you really like that makes it extra good? Anything at all?’

  An essential for Mason’s predatory sexual need had always been cunnilingus but he’d only ever practised it with trusted mistresses, not with one night stands and never with hookers and he didn’t want to risk it now, desperate though he was to be aroused. ‘Blow me.’

  The girl had difficulty fitting the condom, so flaccid was he. She licked and sucked and he stared up into the mirror at her perfect body as she tried. He remained limp.

  ‘Relax. Don’t tense,’ she murmured

  Nothing.

  ‘You want to feel? Touch me? I want you to touch me.’

  Mason touched her, going into her and she splayed and said, ‘Look. Really look.’

  But nothing happened and finally he said, ‘It’s no good.’

  ‘It will be good. It happens like this sometimes but it will be good, next time. You want my number, for next time?’

  He took her card, promising to call, but didn’t shower, anxious to get away. He got a cab at once and asked for La Guardia airport, eager to get back to Washington. It wasn’t his fault, he told himself. Too early, after such an abstinence. Shouldn’t have tried it with a hooker, either. Needed someone he could trust: whom he knew would be clean. Not his fault at all. She was right. It would be good the next time, like it always had been. But not with her. He crumpled her card into a ball and dropped it on the cab floor, wishing the frustrated anger would go away.

  Ten

  It was time.

  Not immediately, not today. Today began the actuality after all the deadly – literally – fantasy. There were computer snares to be put in place from what he’d discovered when he’d got back from New York the previous night and worked out now, lying there in the dawn half light. Tomorrow. He’d set everything up for tomorrow, have a car ready in the basement car park to avoid any delay. Maybe he shouldn’t have waited as long as this, maybe … Mason brought the reflection up short, refusing it. Not refusing. Rejecting, annoyed the doubt had ever come to mind, been allowed to enter his mind. He hadn’t unnecessarily held back from embarking upon the retribution, as if he had second thoughts: doubtful, frightened second thoughts. As if, even, at the final moment of decision that he didn’t want to go through with it. To do it. That he was frightened, didn’t trust himself to do it. Didn’t believe that he could do it. The doubt, the unthinkable, unacceptable doubt that he was incapable of untraceably killing those he was going to kill burned through Mason – scourged through him – and he physically reared up from his bed, the fury vibrating from him and through him, as it had when he wrapped his arms around himself, astonished by whatever had caused that reaction then and what was arising within him now. Why should he – how could he! – have any doubt about what he was going to do! Had to do. At how he had to inflict all the hurt and punishment upon those who had inflicted as much hurt and punishment upon him. OK, so Peter Chambers didn’t come within that justification. But what the hell did that matter? The only thing that mattered was the hidden three million dollars that was going to ensure the very full and very satisfying future life of Adam Peterson. Forcefully, as if there were people, witnesses, to impress or convince, Mason cast aside what little remained of the bed covering and just as determinedly, anxiously, began his restricted exercises, his mind closed off against any thought other than the preparations he had to make for what inevitably was to follow, as inexorably as the night was being succeeded by day through the drawn-back drapes. With that full day before him Mason didn’t cut back on the morning’s run, totally encircling the Constitution Gardens and was still back at Guest Quarters before Washington DC and its commuters were properly awake and moving.

  His previous night’s computer discovery from his Trojan Horse bug within her website was that Glynis Needham had finally made contact with her parole officer counterpart in California. The colleague was another woman, Beverley Littlejohn, and from the tone of Glynis’s email the two knew each other. It was still, though, a straightforward professional exchange. His scanned photograph and a précis of his trial and imprisonment record was an attachment to the email itself. In it Glynis Needham alerted the other woman to Mason’s intended, as yet unspecified, arrival on a possible resettlement visit to California. Mason smiled at Glynis’s description of him as a contrite and obviously rehabilitation-seeking offender, the judgement qualified by the recounting of the Frank Howitt episode. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the prison officer was guilty of gross professional – even criminal – misconduct which was going to be severely punished by an internal enquiry. She was trying to dissuade Mason from pursuing compensation litigation. Such litigation, upon the evidence already assembled for the internal tribunal, would most probably be successful. She and the prison authorities feared the resulting publicity and virtual retrial of Mason’s case would make impossible any chance of Mason’s unrecognized re-entry into a community, quite apart from the damage it would cause to the prison service. Glynis urged the other woman to initiate a discussion and add her dissuasion to his continuing with the threatened action. Mason smiled again at the personal conclusion that Glynis Needham liked him – ’which is rare for me, as you can guess’ – and wanted him to have the best possible chance to be re-absorbed, unknown, into a city or town and any re-employment he might choose. From that concluding remark Mason guessed that Beverley Littlejohn was probably gay, too, but after what had happened, or failed to happen, in New York thoughts of sex, either sex, any sex, weren’t high on his agenda.

  What was of primary importance was that the electronic exchange between Washington DC and California had given him Beverley Littlejohn’s all-essential email address, into which had to be implanted a ‘ghost server’, a quantum leap improvement upon a Trojan Horse, for what he had to achieve. The Trojan Horses Mason had installed in the websites of White Deer Penitentiary, Glynis Needham and Patrick Bell gave him the undetected facility to roam – and utilize – whatever and wherever he chose within their respective sites. The effect of installing separate and unsuspected ghost servers between the two parole officers, activated by obvious but exclusive trigger words of ‘mason’ or ‘white deer’, was to suspend between them an electronic seine net in which any exchange from Washington or California would be enmeshed and stopped, without Glynis Needham or Beverley Littlejohn knowing it. And allowing him, still without either person being aware, to adjust, rewrite or respond in what would appear to both to be expected acknowledgements but with what he wanted to convey, not what they had written, one to the other.

  The time difference between the east and west coasts of America, which had not been part of Mason’s evasion plan, worked in his favour. From his Trojan Horse within the DC parole system Mason knew that Beverley Littlejohn had not replied to Glynis’s initial message and he had his ghost server filter in place by the time she did, just after 2 p.m. East Coast time. It was a simple acknowledgement of Glynis Needham’s advisory message, accompanied by assurances to do w
hatever she could to help Mason’s resettlement and employment, the expectation of encountering a real life spy for the first time (‘I think he looks closest to Sean Connery’s James Bond from the photographs’) and interspersed with a lot of how-are-you-I’m-fine-it-would-be-great-to-meet-up-sometime sentiments. Mason passed it on without any alteration. Once he’d read it he didn’t do anything to alter Glynis Needham’s return promise to alert the other woman to his California arrival details either.

  It was late afternoon Washington time before Mason was satisfied that he had his other intercepting ghost servers satisfactorily in place, tempering the satisfaction with the reminder that there was no way he could insure against any of them switching from email to telephone contact.

  By chance it was the same reservation clerk as before at the Hertz office just off M Street, which spared him the delaying discussion of renting in cash rather than credit card. Prompted, though, by her recognition when the essential priority was always for him to remain unrecognized, Mason told her he’d probably return the car – another Yaris – to the airport facility, as he’d done earlier, reminding himself as he did so to list from the telephone book back at Guest Quarters all the Hertz outlets in the city, as well as those of Avis and Budget. It was impossible to calculate how long he’d need to complete his necessary total surveillance of Daniel and Ann Slater, 2832 Hill Avenue SE and whatever else emerged from it. But if he were to remain invisible it was essential he never drove more than once around Frederick in the same car model, make or colour. It was the most basic rule of undetected observation always to avoid identifiable vehicles, doubly, even trebly, important when the target was another equally highly qualified intelligence officer. Mason hesitated at the reflection, wondering if it had been a precaution practised by the CIA after Slater had exposed him. Hardly necessary, he reminded himself. They’d had all the proof they’d needed of his spying, without having to gain more with prolonged stake-outs. He would, of course, have spotted it if it had been imposed, maybe even had a chance to run.

  There was no possibility of his oversleeping the next morning, but Mason decided against going out for dinner that night. He limited himself to two highballs while copying out the addresses of car rental companies, watched the early evening news, and grilled some of the steak he’d bought from the basement supermarket at the Watergate, not bothering with any wine. He didn’t watch television afterwards but sat, thinking about what was going to begin the following day.

  It was very definitely time.

  Mason was on the road by 5.30 a.m., surprised at the volume of traffic already on the roads. It got even heavier on the Beltway, the impression heightened by the constant stream of vehicles passing him contentedly enclosed in the slow lane. Even driving unhurriedly Mason reached the outskirts of Frederick just after seven, stopping at the first McDonald’s for coffee and a blueberry muffin. He considered, but quickly abandoned, the idea of asking directions to Hill Avenue. As he was approaching Frederick from the west it was unlikely any of the staff would know an address on the other side of the town and he’d attract attention if the question was passed around among them in their effort to help.

  He was waiting at the door when the tourist office opened, and to fulfil his role as a vacationing visitor Mason collected some unwanted sightseeing brochures and guides as well as the town map, choosing a Main Street cafe for more coffee and its central location to orientate himself. He located Hill Avenue SE on the map and memorized a route he didn’t expect to take longer than ten minutes to complete. It was very much small-town USA. There were neat buildings and stores and a rounded civic centre with its inevitable, high-poled flag set amidst methodically arranged flower beds – tulips and polyanthus and daffodils and a lot more he couldn’t name, all regimented by their colours – and pattern-sculpted grass. Mason was discomfited – unsettled – by it. It was close to being too small-town, a place where almost everyone knew – at least by sight – everyone else: a place in which a loitering stranger would be obvious. Noticed. Objectively, from another viewpoint, Mason conceded it to be right – the obvious protection – for someone with a new name, a new everything including a new wife, in which to hide himself. Prepare himself for the Russian retribution that would be inevitable, expected, if the KGB or its successor chose to hunt him down. Would Slater or Sobell have expected that? Feared that? Of course he would have done. Retribution was always exacted upon defectors by Russian intelligence, if the traitor could be found.

  What about him? Would Sobell – or Slater as he had become – fear retribution from him? Unlikely, Mason decided; unlikely to the point of years ago having become dismissible. Deciding when – how – Slater and Ann were going to learn he was out for revenge was going to be one of the most difficult things. Mason wanted them to know, to be terrified for as long as possible, to suffer horribly, realizing they were trapped and that there was nothing they could do to prevent his revenge. But if he mistimed it by as much as a second they’d run, seek protection from the CIA or whoever it was who were now responsible for maintaining their security. Couldn’t have that; risk that. If he lost them this time he wouldn’t get another chance. If he got the timing wrong he could even be rearrested. Returned to the piss-stinking, ass-fucking nether world of a prison. Could never do that. Would rather kill himself than go back to that. Would kill himself. Not hesitate for a moment. Wouldn’t happen, though. Couldn’t happen. He had them at his mercy. Except there wouldn’t be any mercy. Any escape. They wouldn’t know it was him, not until it was too late, when they couldn’t do anything about it. That’s when he’d string it out, let them know it was him. Keep them prisoners maybe, to gloat over their helplessness. Ensure they couldn’t escape, though. Break their legs, so they couldn’t run. Their arms, as well, so they couldn’t fight back, couldn’t do anything.

  ‘You want a refill?’

  Mason physically, obviously, jumped at the presence beside him of the waitress, a young, blonde, milk-fed kid most likely working her way through college. ‘I was thinking. Miles away. You startled me.’

  ‘You all right?’ She appeared genuinely concerned.

  ‘Sure. Just thinking of things, like I said. A refill would be good.’

  ‘Looking at the history?’ She smiled, nodding down at the brochures on the table beside him. ‘Gettysburg’s worth visiting. It’s quite close.’

  ‘I might well do that.’ Mason smiled back. What the fuck was he doing? He’d attracted attention to himself, losing control – forgetting where he was – and jerking up like a frightened cat at not being aware she was beside him. She’d remember it, make a story of it to other kids that night. Mason was hot with embarrassed fury, hoping he wasn’t too obviously red faced.

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Absolutely fine.’ He had to get out, to minimize it so there was as little as possible for her to remember; certainly not enough from which to describe and identify him.

  ‘You staying locally?’ the girl persisted.

  Fuck off, go bother someone else with your coffee refills! ‘Don’t plan to. Just passing through and thought I’d take a look-see.’

  There’s some hotels, a couple of motels, if you change your mind.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Enjoy,’ she said, finally moving on.

  Mason forced himself to remain at the table, hunched over the unread tourist guides to obscure his face as much as possible, knowing she’d be curious if he left the coffee he’d accepted. He gestured for his check the moment he’d finished and carefully counted out a fifteen percent tip, neither too little nor too much to give her something else to remember him by.

  ‘Maybe see you again if you decide to stay?’ She smiled, as he rose to leave.

  ‘Maybe,’ Mason said. He didn’t pause directly outside the cafe, striding away to get out of sight and hopefully out of her mind. Wrong to overestimate the incident, he tried to reassure himself. From strictly professional standards – the standards he had
to maintain at all times and never for a moment forget – it shouldn’t have happened. But it had only been a friendly kid trying to do her job, nothing more. If it had a relevance it was as a warning against his hanging around too long in one place or getting lost in reverie again.

  Out of sight of the cafe Mason curbed the impulse to continue hurrying, although he didn’t linger, either. When he got into the Yaris he realized, angry again, that he’d forgotten the route to Hill Avenue and needed to consult the map again.

  Like Frederick itself, the location of the house was bad for Mason’s purpose but well chosen for Slater’s. It was a two storey, white painted clapboard, with an attached, single-storey garage at the end of a wide drive, now empty. At that time of the morning so was the avenue itself, stretching totally straight for at least five hundred yards – maybe more – on either side of number 2832, with no intervening cross section or street offering the slightest safe place for surveillance. Slater’s house stood alone on its two or three acre plot, as did every house in the street deserted even of animals. Some of the properties, although not Slater’s, had trees or expansive shrubs in their gardens and there were some trees at the road edge, too. There were no dropped leaves around any of them. There were a few lawn sprinklers operating, but Mason couldn’t detect a single abandoned child’s bicycle, buggy or toy. Every front lawn was manicured and sharply shovel-edged. As he got closer to Slater’s house Mason isolated the CCTV mountings and the separate lenses at the porch and the garage entrance he guessed to be for visitor-identifying TV cameras. Mason’s spirits – and his expectation – lifted at the sight of the basketball hoop on the side of the garage. So they had a kid, maybe more than one. Certainly a boy, because he didn’t think girls played basketball. If the boy or boys played basketball they were of school age. He could hurt Slater and Ann far more than he’d first hoped, because he’d always planned that if there were kids they’d be the first to go. He didn’t have to turn his head as he passed the house to count the three separate front door locks, one big enough to be a deadlock, guessing there’d be additional inner chains or maybe even bars.