by Bill Granger
Devereaux waited. Henry wanted to talk now.
Henry smiled. “Got your attention with that, didn’t I?” He swept his hand to indicate the blood-splattered floor and wall. “Thing about women is they really can work themselves into thinking they’re the only one. If you got a million dollars, you got any piece of ass that ever walked on the earth, male or female. That’s the truth of things. Walk up to a virgin and give her money enough and she’ll end up on her back, begging for it.”
“Everyone isn’t for sale.”
“I hope you are.”
“If you know about me, you know better.”
“Everyone has a price.”
“What’s mine?”
“Girl named Rita Macklin.”
Devereaux waited.
“Lives on Rhode Island Avenue Northwest in Washington. Journalist. This is a straight hit, nothing kinky about it. In fact, the hitter doesn’t even know who his employer is.”
“Who is it?”
“Employment officer is me and the setup was made three weeks ago in Seattle. Just before you came out to chat with Captain Holmes.”
“Don’t give me that booga-booga.”
Henry smiled. “All right. Try another one. Old lady in Chicago named Melvina is your great aunt and she saved your life when you were a street kid growing up.”
“She’s old. People die when they get old.”
“Narvak there didn’t get old. All right, maybe you are hard enough. Maybe I’m even bluffing but at least I took the time to do my homework on you. But there has to be some price because everyone has got a price.”
“This isn’t real estate. Everything is not for sale.”
“Got two prize crooks for you for starters. One is a sitting senator, one is an ex-senator. The sitting senator is a prize pain in the ass in the making on the Senate Select Oversight Committee on Terrorism and Intelligence. Going to make Frank Church look like a Langley cheerleader. Ask Hanley what he might think about nailing those two.”
“On what?”
“Terrorism for starters. Terror for profit.”
“What do you want in return?”
“Little peace and quiet to work out spending my money. And your share is a mil, give or take.”
“You guess wrong.”
“All right. You get the two crooked politicians, no great loss there, and you get the go-between who is selling out Silicon Valley to the people in Moscow Center.”
Devereaux still heard the scatter-gun shot in his head. He felt the same cold ball in his belly. He listened to Henry and tried not to follow the dancing words, but Henry was filling him in the same quiet, quick, insistent voice.
“Who is it?”
Henry smiled. “It’s less important who it is than how he does it, right? And what he does. And how many more there are just like him.”
“You say less with more words,” Devereaux said.
“Ivan Ilyich Denisov. You remember him? The retired millionaire in Santa Barbara?”
“Show me.”
It was very good, very complete. There was the transfer of funds to the account in Zurich, which would turn out to be Denisov’s account. There was a bill of lading on a gross of Beluga caviar sent to the wrong address on purpose from a gentleman in Santa Barbara. There were six black-and-white photographs where the grain was very bad but the light was good. It was Denisov all right, at the Hauptbahnhoff in Zurich, and the man next to him was handing him a package and it would probably turn out to be this or that Soviet courier operating in the neutral country. The package of photographs and copies of transcriptions and various money transfers was in a brown manila envelope and Henry waited while Devereaux went through it all.
“Denisov is one man. There are several others, kept at great government expense in your Witness Protection Program.”
Devereaux stared at Henry McGee without speaking.
“The point is that I bullshit a lot and drink too much and tell a lot of stories. But the other point is that at the bottom of everything, I tell the truth. I defected one way once and defected another way back. But now I just want to get out of it all and I don’t want anybody coming after me when it’s ended.”
“What about the Soviets?”
“I’m on a very clever mission now, that’s why I took the risk to come over. The submarine picks me up in exactly one week. I can tell you the place. In fact, I will tell you the place when the time comes because I would like the navy—I’m talking the U.S. Navy this time—to be there to meet it.”
“And they’ll figure we have you.”
“And I’ll be very long gone. You’ll have Denisov and a few others like him and I’ll have—”
“Where’s all the money coming from, Henry, that you’re going to retire with?”
“Couple of places. This is a rich country, you lose sight of that when you don’t see big cities and a lot of people. Everyone in the lower forty-eight equates rich with cities because that’s where they see people living rich. I can tell you about a miner down in Nome didn’t bathe all winter and had a beard halfway down his chest. Smelled just like a caribou. He wore caribou hide, he ate the meat, for all I know he fucked caribou when he wasn’t fucking half the girls in the Board of Trade saloon. See, he had money. Gold. Still mining gold and still finding it like acres of clams. You look at him and you want to put him on welfare but he didn’t need it, though he’d take it. Must have been worth three, four hundred thousand. He lived in New York City, he’d drive a Mercedes instead of that old GMC pickup he had, and he’d live in a high-rise instead of a shack near the Teller Road. I guess I’m saying there’s money here, Devereaux, but half the people are too blind to see it. Always has been for sharp-eyed creatures.”
“We’re going down to Nome, Henry.”
The babble of words was stopped up just like that. Devereaux held the gun very still, his hand propped on the table. His eyes never left Henry’s face.
Henry said, “You don’t get it. I’m giving you what Section wants. Plugging your own leaks. You said yourself you came to close the file on me, just go through the paces and tell yourself you did all you could.”
“So we’re going to Nome, right to the airport, get a special plane to Anchorage if we have to.”
“I told you the way it was: I plan on the details.”
“I have the gun.”
“Dead or alive, Devereaux?” Henry had tilted his head and was smiling.
Devereaux had considered it in the moments while Henry was talking. “Dead or alive, Henry.”
“You wouldn’t bluff me?”
Devereaux said nothing.
“No. I guess I take you seriously. It’s a lot of money. Not to mention the bomb. Did I tell you about that? About the atomic device as they call it? Sitting out there on the Alaska oil pipeline even while we’re talking. I’m full of surprises, ain’t I? It’s the way you hold your audience. I didn’t tell you that part because you never let me tell you where the money was coming from.”
“Come on, Henry. You can tell your stories in Anchorage when we get there.” Devereaux got up and the eye of the muzzle on the automatic stared at Henry’s chest.
“You think I’m bluffing, too? About an atomic device? That’s what you call a thing in a suitcase, right? Instead of sitting on a missile?”
“Maybe I don’t give a shit,” Devereaux said. He smiled because the annoyance showed in Henry’s eyes. And something else.
Something else.
He saw Henry’s eyes shift and he turned.
Devereaux turned too slowly.
Narvak brought the ax handle down hard on his right shoulder and the numbness reached up to his brain and down to his paralyzed gun hand. He stared at the ghost of Narvak covered with ghastly red blood that had burst from the wound in her chest. Narvak brought the ax handle down a second time and there was no pain, only a slight sense of falling away like an autumn maple leaf. Her eyes were bright in that almond face streaked with blood.
&nbs
p; 19
DESPERATE HOURS
WILLIAM SCHWENCK. APT. 402. 534 FIGUEROA. SANTA BARBARA, CA.
MESSAGE: NOME. POLARIS HOTEL. 1100 HOURS THURSDAY.
SIGNED: ARMISTICE DAY.
It was Wednesday morning. The babysitter from the protection program had disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared.
Karen O’Hare. She had been replaced very suddenly by a large whiskey-faced man who had shown him identification and had begun a long, disheartening interview. He had assured Denisov that no one could have penetrated the program to identify him. The man—his name was Wagner—assured Denisov that the program had never been penetrated in its history, unless the witness under protection bragged about the fact or otherwise betrayed himself. Denisov listened to Wagner the way he had once listened to the bureaucrats—the apparatchiks—inside the committee. They spoke of life in the field as if they had experienced it themselves. They spoke of agents, moles, doubles, and triples as though these men and women were nothing more than moves on a chessboard. They knew so much that they were functionally ignorant of reality. Their reality was in plans, quotas, tables of organization. If Denisov did such and such, such and such would result. But it rained that day in Berlin and the agent stayed home; but the plans were lost when the bus crashed on the autobahn; but, but, but. The explanations were left to the agents. Wagner was like this, Denisov thought. Wagner could never help him because Wagner would never believe Denisov. And what would happen when they killed Alexa and blamed it on Denisov? Would Wagner testify for him? Would Wagner say it was possible for the program to be breached?
Denisov stared at the Mailgram again. It had been sent from Alaska, there was no doubt of that, and mailed from Los Angeles.
Denisov sat at the kitchen table with his fingers framing the Mailgram message. “Armistice Day” was one of their jokes, a way of identifying themselves to each other. He was William Schwenck, the first two names of Gilbert; Devereaux was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—the time when World War I ended and was thereafter commemorated for nearly fifty years as Armistice Day. He was the eleventh man because he was the eleventh month—November.
Who would know the code but November?
Denisov was in shirtsleeves. He wore dark blue suspenders in the current fashion and dark trousers. The climate of California had changed in three days. The morning fog seemed sinister to him and the photograph of Alexa feigning death haunted the mists. He no longer walked by the sea. He spent long coffee mornings waiting for the message from November, the message assured by Karpov.
What must he do with the summons?
They wanted November in Moscow and they wanted Denisov to return home. Was it possible to give them November without returning home? Was it enough?
Denisov had called his broker on Tuesday morning and carefully liquidated every stock. The money would be transferred to the bank in Zurich in five working days. There was quite a lot of money.
He thought he could live on it if he had to disappear.
He could disappear to Switzerland, where he knew a man named Krueger who knew how to make disappearances permanent. Exactly what the Americans had assured him seven years ago.
He had called Alexa twice and there had been no answer, only the stupid recording device telling him to leave his name and telephone number. He had thought about it: “Hello, this is Ivan Ilyich Denisov, your murderer and your former lover. Do you wish to call me in Santa Barbara or Moscow? Unfortunately, I do not know where I will be staying in Moscow.”
He got up and carried the blue and white Mailgram to the kitchen sink. He took a book of matches from the counter and lit the end of the piece of paper. The paper flared into flames and he held the edge, letting the flames curl the pages into blackness. He dropped the black ball into the sink and flushed the bits of paper down the drain. He looked at the coffeepot and thought about making more. He felt sour and fretful.
The knock at the door surprised him.
The building was equipped with an outside locked door, which generally ensured that every visitor would ring the bell in the vestibule and be identified over the intercom. It was not a totally secure building—there had been a burglary in another apartment during the winter—but it was not usual to have someone knock at the door.
Denisov took the Walther PPK out of his right front pocket and snapped the safety off.
“Who is?” he said.
The day was all fog and drizzle beyond the front room windows. The day pressed against the windows, seeking to invade the colors of the rooms illuminated at midday by lamps.
“I,” came the voice and he knew it. It was the last voice he had expected.
He opened the door quickly and stood aside, the pistol aimed at Alexa’s chest.
Her hair was wet and her dark eyes glittered in the darkness of midday. She wore very dark, very tight slacks and boots and she might have been a romanticized Cossack princess in a child’s book.
She stepped onto the carpet of the little hall and raindrops fell on the rug. The raindrops glistened on her black boots.
Denisov did not move for a moment and then he prodded her belly with the pistol.
She turned around and put her hands on the wall and opened her legs. Denisov reached down her legs and felt along the boots and up beneath her leather jacket to the silk coolness of her blouse. He took her purse and dumped it on the kitchen table. There was a long knife in an ivory case and he slipped it into his pocket.
“All right,” he said.
She turned and went to the table and began to scoop up the contents into her purse.
“I have loved that knife, it was from my brother,” she said to him, her eyes on the table.
“Touching,” Denisov said. His voice was flat and he had not put the pistol away. He sat down across from her at the table. He pointed the pistol at the Mr. Coffee maker and the pot. “There is enough for one cup.”
“I do not drink caffeine,” she said.
“You are too California now,” he said in English.
She switched to Russian. “I was kidnapped six days ago for what purpose I do not know. But it involved you. I thought to kill you.”
“It involved me against my wishes.”
“Is this true?”
“Alexa Natasha, the program is broken. A man who is called Karpov came to me three days ago and he showed me pictures of you. I thought you were dead. The pictures are a demonstration for me. They want me to return.”
“To return.” She said the words like a person on drugs. Her eyes did not leave his face. She was very beautiful and the eyes were part of it, but they were also the cool, frightening part of her presence.
The rain drummed at the windows of the small warm apartment. The damp was seeping into the room despite the lamps and the gentle thump of the baseboard heater.
“The program is broken. They identify me, they identify you. There is only the possibility to understand how much they know and to plan an escape.”
“Nureyev returned to Moscow last year to dance,” she said.
Denisov’s saintly eyes opened wide with contempt. “I am not a ballet dancer, Alexa, and neither are you. Will you work for them again? Will you stay in California and sleep with your movie people and act the spy?” The Moscow accent was strong with sarcasm; it was the way Muscovites showed contempt for others, to play out words like a scenario that always ended absurdly for the other person.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Alexa Natasha, they said you betrayed me.”
“They said you betrayed me.”
“I did not,” Denisov said.
“I did not,” Alexa said.
“Can we believe each other?”
“No,” she said. “There is no trust.”
“Do you want to escape?”
“I thought I was free,” she said. “I thought the other life was a dream and this was real. It is not real, is it?”
“Did they speak of anyone else?
”
“No.”
“What about our conductor?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Him. They did not speak of him.” She meant the man called November.
“What will you do?”
“I do not have any money that Roger has not given me.”
“You cannot stay here.”
“They wanted to change my face. I could not bear it.”
“It doesn’t matter, Alexa Natasha. If they penetrated the program, they would have penetrated your disguise. But I have a problem. You see, I do not necessarily believe anything we have experienced.”
She said nothing.
“You think it is Moscow and I am made to think it is Moscow. The absurdity of it convinces us. The Americans keep us. They keep me for six years. They give me California. The conductor said to me once, ‘Is it such a bad prison?’ No, it is not so bad. We have had dealings, the conductor and I, over the years that you know nothing about. That no one knows about. Or so I assumed. Perhaps it was ordered, perhaps it was testing of me to see what I would do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I killed people, my dear little one,” Denisov said. He did not say it with disgust. “It is not in the rules and he uses me to step outside the rules. We both understand, my jailer and I, that there are no rules. The rules are the things that are made up to justify everything that has been done.”
“What do you want me to understand?”
He stared at her for a very long moment, as though deciding about her. He had seen her naked, made love to her with Russian urgency and selfishness. Later, in the same bed, in the same room, as they both lay naked, she had shown him the other ways to make love which were patient and which made a virtue of hesitation. What could she not understand?
“The Americans have this program and it is to their advantage. Just as we have taken care of our own agents. Philby lived well in Moscow, far better than many high bureaucrats, and what was he but our British double agent? We make a public point to show that we take care of our own, that there is always a home in Moscow for the good soldier of Mother Russia, no matter what war he fights in or what nationality he is. The Americans have their useful icons as well, Alexa Natasha. They live in fine houses in eastern universities and they preach from time to time as the American government desires them to.”