Henry McGee Is Not Dead

by Bill Granger

  “This isn’t a dangerous game right now,” Pierce suddenly said to Skeeter. Skeeter was a friend and he had to tell a friend a little more than he would have told anyone else. “Just keep alert and don’t go inside.”

  “Don’t go inside what?”

  “If they split up, just keep your distance from her, whoever she is. If she books a bush plane, just get the number and we can follow it up later, don’t go off chasing her.”

  “Might be a pretty girl,” Skeeter said. “You probably already know if she’s pretty or not.”

  “She’s pretty,” Pierce said. “They want a line on her as fast as they can get it. There’s a red-eye to Seattle at 12:10 A.M. and I want the film on it. They’ll have it by the morning—”

  “What’s the name of this guy?”

  “You don’t want to know that,” Pierce said. They were over the Chugach Mountains and falling down the other side to the lights of Anchorage, laid out on a long, rectangular grid between the Knik and Turnagain arms of Cook Inlet. They approached from the east and the ground came up quickly and it was dark finally, though that peculiar blue and purple darkness the North wears when the long days come.

  Merrill Field, just west of the Northway Mall and Humana Hospital, was laid out in a long L south of the Glenn Highway, which led up to Palmer. The Cessna bumped down with the precision Skeeter used to bring down Phantom jets on heaving aircraft carriers. They had sixty-one minutes and they did not say another word to each other because now it was all operations.

  Denisov spotted Skeeter almost right away and he tightened his grip on Alexa’s left arm as they shuffled with the other passengers through the gate. The exhausting trip was marked on the pale faces of the passengers, on their wrinkled clothes, in their glazed eyes. They formed a weary, straggling line that wound its way to the baggage claims area.

  He slowed her and they fell behind the other travelers moving ahead into the large concourse.

  He saw the second watcher a moment later, coming toward the gate as though looking to meet someone. The second one was better than the first, Denisov thought. He memorized the face: Blond, wide, mustache, blue eyes, even teeth in a wide face.

  He kissed Alexa and she understood. He held her and said: “Go to the Sheraton Hotel by cab and book four rooms if possible and get all the keys and wait in the bar.”

  “Is there such a hotel?”

  “I read this in the magazine in the plane,” he said. “You’ll be followed.”

  He wanted to see which one.

  She broke away from him and went past the Wien Air counter and the first watcher peeled off and began an exaggerated saunter behind her to the front doors, where the taxis waited. It was a large clean airport exactly like every other airport in the northern hemisphere. The second one turned to her as she went to the door, and lit a cigarette with an old-fashioned Zippo lighter.

  He was merely staring at a very pretty woman with long legs encased in tight black trousers. Of course he was.

  Denisov had not seen the camera trick used for years and he wondered that it was still so obvious. What would all the spies do when the world gave up cigarette smoking? How would they be able to take their photographs then?

  Denisov waited for her bag and his at the carrousel. The carrousel began to circle slowly and the bags came pouring down the chute from the luggage cart and the bags went round and round. He picked his two bags and turned and saw the watcher on the other side of the baggage claim area, still smoking his cigarette. What a very dull business it must be, Denisov thought with sympathy for the other man. He had been a watcher as well, and the long, numbing hours were hardly worth it. Like the poor fat man in Santa Barbara who watched him leave the apartment building with Alexa and who followed him all the way down the crowded freeways to LAX. The world was full of dull existences, even the world of intelligence. Nothing ever happened and then it did and it was over in a moment.

  He had to see November in Nome at eleven A.M. in the Polaris Hotel. He wondered who this watcher might be. It was a problem and he had to have an answer right away, even if it was the wrong one. Nome would be too small a place to lose two watchers.

  He realized then he had decided to kill this one.

  The thought came on him so suddenly that it startled him. But it was obvious, wasn’t it?

  This one must be Soviet, he thought. He would kill this one and it would give him a little time to understand November’s game and a little more time to decide on which world he would stay in.

  The other one would wait at the Sheraton Hotel and Alexa would be in the bar. He would call Alexa in a little while and she would merely lose the second watcher, who would then become confused and try to contact the first man and would waste much time doing this. The second one would probably not have to die. He and Alexa would leave tonight for Nome, wherever Nome was and however they could get there.

  He had never been in Anchorage and he wondered how you killed a man in this city. He supposed it was the way you did it in the other cities except there must be different rules.

  The Walther PPK was in the bag he had checked through because the checked bags are never X-rayed or passed through a metal detector. He opened his bag in the back of the cab that picked him up.

  “I would like to go to a place where there is drink and women,” he said very carefully.

  The cabdriver looked at him. “There’s a nice place on Northern Lights Boulevard,” he said. “You know Anchorage?”

  “I have never been here,” Denisov said. “But in every city, there is a place to drink in the company of women.”

  “They’re nice-looking girls,” the cabdriver said, pulling the flag and ending the commercial. The Chevrolet Celebrity galloped up to speed and fled north and east up Spenard Road to Northern Lights Boulevard and then due east across the south side of the city.

  He saw the second cab pull behind him. Would the watcher tell the driver too much or too little? Cabdrivers all were the same; they wished to break the monotony of their lives by pretending to be something else. Policemen or spies or something else.

  “You sound like a Russian,” the cabdriver said. “You fly in from Russia?”

  “I am Polish actually,” Denisov said in his ponderous way. “I am living in Chicago.”

  “Down in Chicago, never been there. You come up on business?”

  It was either professional or amateur nosiness. Perhaps the cabdriver was the third watcher. Denisov thought about this.

  “I am to business. Ball bearings. Not for now, though. A little fun.” His face was sad and his voice was heavy because he thought about killing a man. It was strictly business and there were things you had to do in this trade. “I am here to have fun now. With women.”

  “You in ball bearings, I hope you got the equipment with you. I mean, I hope you brought up samples.” The driver laughed and Denisov smiled in puzzlement. It must have been a joke, he decided.

  “Beautiful women in Alaska and they ain’t shy. I never met a shy woman lasted up here,” the cabdriver said. “Think you’re gonna like Alaska, want to come back up inside even when you’re not here on business. We like people because we ain’t got a lot of them. Hope you have yourself a good time.” He said it in such an open way that Denisov thought he must either be very good or just an amateur after all.

  The Arctic Circle Lounge was set back from the road in a separate low building isolated by a huge parking lot that was not very full. Denisov studied the parking lot. It was dark enough and he noticed that the second cab pulled into a Wendy’s down the street. So the watcher would walk back across the lot.

  Denisov took ten dollars from his wallet and tipped the driver and got a cheery good night as he stepped toward the door. The cab pulled away to the boulevard and turned east, back toward the airport.

  Denisov stepped to the side of the door, into the shadows. There were no windows on this side of the building. It looked as though it had been constructed for long winter nights. It was now
truly dark in the city and a cold wind blew up from the southwest. Denisov opened his bag and took out the pistol and checked the safety and put it in the pocket of his overcoat. He waited without expression in the shadows. He could hear the thumping beat of the music from inside. Perhaps they had a band. A car pulled into the lot, the lights sweeping the semidarkness, and parked. A man and a woman got out, slammed the doors, and the man said something and the woman laughed. She wore white pants and a down jacket and her hair was lovely, Denisov thought. He felt the pistol in his pocket.

  They went into the place and the music was suddenly deafening.

  The door slammed shut.

  He saw the watcher on the sidewalk beyond the parking lot. The watcher was large and looked like a policeman.

  Denisov thought about the problem again. Perhaps there was some other solution. Except everything was a matter of time.

  He could not go back to Moscow, he had known it from the beginning, but he had to find a way to escape from Moscow permanently. He had been betrayed in Section and Moscow had known that Devereaux would call on him. Would Devereaux be part of his betrayal? It was so complex that he could think of nothing else; it was like thinking of God as a child. The thought of God had overwhelmed him for weeks after his busha had told him about the universe and the way God had made everything. He had been seven and had never heard of God before, except when his father had cursed. His busha was very old and had a little mustache and always wore a kerchief on her balding head. The immensity of God gave him nightmares. God pried and poked at every secret in his mind. God knew even at the moment Denisov would know. God knew when Denisov would die. God would give Denisov eternal life, either in heaven or in hell. In hell, he would burn for eternity. God would know, God would judge, God would be in every empty room, God would know and know and know and it was so complex to think about this simple thing that Denisov had cried until the morning came when he found his relief: He could not stop believing in God but he could believe something just as good, something that gave him relief. God knew, but God did not care.

  He must do simple things, step by step.

  The blond man walked into the parking lot, between a row of cars.

  God knows, Denisov thought and fitted his finger around the trigger.

  The blond man was very large in the shoulders and he walked in the way of a policeman, putting down each foot squarely as though walking on ice or staking out a new territory in such a way that it could not be taken back.

  God knows, his busha told him.

  He made his eyes cold. He was not a saint and he had never been one. He had the body of a peasant and a mind that loved the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. He had not wanted to be recognized that morning on a foggy street in Santa Barbara.

  It was not his fault.

  And it was not the fault of the blond watcher either. They did as they had to do because God had known they would do these things from the beginning of time.

  The blond man saw him in the darkness. He was good, he was nearly as good as Denisov. They were six feet apart and Denisov felt the pistol in his pocket.

  “You spotted us,” the blond man said.

  “I’m sorry,” Denisov said, because he was.

  The blond man understood. He did not make a move. He stood in the dim light cast by the changing neon of the Arctic Circle Lounge sign above the building.

  “I can see that now,” the blond man said.

  “You are Soviet,” Denisov said in careful Russian.

  The eyes of the other man narrowed. “ULU,” he said. “You’re the link, aren’t you? To ULU?”

  The shot caught him high in the chest and smashed his breastbone and drove stakes of bone into his heart. He fell back hard and cracked his skull on the asphalt of the parking lot. Denisov dropped the pistol into his pocket and pulled the body to the shadows. He opened the pockets of the dead man.

  He found the gray card without any numbers on it that looked exactly like an unstamped credit card.

  “Damn,” he said in English.

  He did not understand: This one was from Section and now a way was closed to him that had not been closed a moment before. He had made the wrong choice. He had shut off a way of escape and he could not wish the blond man back to life. “Damn,” he said again in English. He opened all the pockets and found the usual things and the laser printer depiction of him. He took the lighter out of another pocket and removed the tiny disc of film. At least they still would not know about Alexa.

  He had killed the wrong man.

  And he wondered, as a child might, if God had always known this. Or if God cared.

  23

  FLIGHT AND CAPTURE

  Kools said, “Why do they need to know how we do it?”

  Noah said, “It doesn’t matter. I made out the report.”

  Kools had a gym bag packed with an extra pair of jeans, underwear, and socks. He had the ticket for Seattle via Anchorage. He had everything he needed. “I don’t understand what happened.”

  “They found the suitcase.”

  “How the fuck they gonna find a suitcase on the line? They looking for a suitcase? Somebody drop their suitcase halfway to Barrow? Come on, Noah.”

  Sure, Noah was worried, too. He looked it. He had intense eyes and he liked to stare you down with his superiority. But it was getting to him.

  “The only three people knew about that suitcase was you and me and the old man,” Kools said again. He had said this off and on for two hours. They had been waiting in the apartment in Fairbanks. The saloons were all open and night was just settling in for a brief nap before the sun would rise on Thursday at 2:10 A.M.

  “I told you you were crazy with that kind of talk,” Noah said. He stared at Kools and fondled his light beard in imitation of some professor or another. Kools knew he was doing his you’re-only-a-dumb-fucking-Eskimo look. It usually didn’t bother him any more than it bothered him when Noah poked his sister. But he wasn’t getting away with it now because Noah was scared, too, and the fright showed in his eyes, even when he was being superior.

  Kools was supposed to be halfway to Seattle but he had stuck around, he wanted to see it blow. He had never seen an atomic bomb go off before. They were in Fairbanks and the bomb was supposed to go off one hundred fifty miles to the north and they both figured they would see the blast from Fairbanks.

  Except there hadn’t been any bomb. Not a word on radio or television.

  Their apartment building was a three-story wood-frame on the south side of the street. There was the smell of a storm in the air and the clouds had gathered all evening to make it possible. They could hear the other apartments through the thin walls. They heard toilets flush and televisions blare and the sound of a child demanding its rights.

  “We got to get out of here,” Kools said. He had said that before as well. He had no great affection for Noah, but there was something going on and he did not want to run away to Seattle alone.

  “If nothing happened, why do we have to run away?” Noah asked. “We make out a report the way we always do and we wait for contact. The old man said he would contact us on Friday.”

  “The old man said that when we thought we were putting a bomb on the pipeline. The old man said a lot of things.”

  Noah bit his lip. He felt the way Kools talked. He couldn’t figure out what was going on, except it was wrong. It had never been like this before. Every previous bombing had gone off like clockwork. The training in Siberia, all of it had been directed to this moment. And now what?

  Below them, a woman’s voice told the whining child to shut up. The child continued to whine. The woman repeated it. Someone turned on a radio and there was the thumping sound of heavy guitars coming through the walls from someone’s stereo.

  Kools wore his light jacket, jeans, black sweatshirt. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. He was ready to go, he had been ready to go. He looked down at Noah sitting on the one straight chair by the table off the kitchen. Noah wasn’t going—fu
ck Noah, let him hold the bag. Yet Kools did not make a move. He really wanted to see it the way Noah saw it, see it cool.

  “The old man wouldn’t screw us, there was something wrong with the device,” Noah finally said. It was the first time he had tried out this thought. Kools turned it over in his mind. It had a shape to it at least.

  “You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to arm the thing,” Kools said.

  “We didn’t screw up. That isn’t what I said. I said there has to be something wrong with it. Like you said, they didn’t find the suitcase, they had to know what to look for to find it and that would’ve meant the old man or someone crossed us. So if it wasn’t that, then there has to be something wrong with the device.”

  “Or maybe the clock stopped,” Kools said. He meant it as a joke.

  “Or maybe the clock stopped,” Noah said with approval. “Lots of things. It was under freezing out there, maybe something happened to the clock or something.”

  “It was a quartz clock, it had one of those batteries,” Kools said. Noah was such a cheerful Charlie, he thought. Noah tried to see the bright side of things.

  “Something happened to the device itself,” Noah said. He was convincing himself.