by Garbo Norman
THE SPY
When you’ve worked for the biggest, deadliest intelligence organisation in the west, they don’t ever let you go - even when you no longer officially exist. Ex-spy, ex-assassin Richard Burke has a new life and a new face but now the Service want him properly dead. They can only find him if they get to the four patients who had plastic surgery at the same time - an actress with silicon treatment, a neurotic writer, an ageing female executive, and an ex-boxer down on his luck. They are four innocents in the ruthless world of espionage, each with their own personal motivations for changing their appearance - and each with the ability to smash Richard’s new life into little pieces…
The Spy.
Norman Garbo.
Prologue
I
About ten miles east of Beirut, Richard Burke sat near the edge of a forest, his back against a tall cedar, and waited for the daylight that was still an hour away. A rifle lay across his lap, and he fingered its stock, trigger guard, and barrel in ritual order. His rosary, he thought. Except that he had no prayers to recite, only the vague wish that what he had to do would be done quickly and without accident or surprise. He lifted his hands, stared at them in the grey dark and found some comfort in the fact that they were steady.
He was near the crest of a hill that rose steeply above a group of houses a short distance below. Closer to where he sat, another house stood apart from the rest. There were lights in several rooms, but they had been on all night and did not mean anything. Burke could see clearly through the lighted windows with his field glasses, and from time to time had watched the guards talking and moving about. There were four of them and they tended to huddle together for company instead of holding to their posts in and around the house. Arabs, thought Burke. Whatever their merits, disciplined soldiering would never be counted among them. Had they kept the area properly secured, he could never have moved in this close. As it was, he would have a clear shot, from good cover, at an effective range.
Burke watched the sky slowly lighten. He loved this time just before the rising of the sun, with shadows fading to the soft greys of Whistler. All the world seemed to remember Whistler for was that portrait of his mother, but it was his misty watercolors of London that were the best. You just had to look at them to breathe the Thames. Burke was not an especially jealous man, but he had envied Whistler those paintings. There was such purity of purpose there, so clear a knowledge of what was right. He had wondered if the artist had ever been uncertain of anything.
He was growing stiff and shifted to a prone position, careful to keep the rifle muzzle off the ground. The few trees below were clear now. He could see a table and chairs on the second-floor veranda of the solitary house. The veranda was open to the sky, and in the distance behind it the more modern part of Beirut’s skyline rose beside ancient minarets. Farther north, the first of the early morning flights took off from the city’s international airport and Burke watched the plane’s lights until they disappeared. If all went well, he would be up there himself in a few hours. And if it didn’t go well? Then he might be delayed. Like forever.
He glanced at his watch, thinking he would rather be just about anyplace but where he was. There was nothing about this assignment that he liked… not the killing, not the idea of having to waste a man he knew and respected, and certainly not the fact that he didn’t understand anything about it. Up to the time Kreuger had called him to Washington and given him his orders, he had thought Abu Hamaid was high on the State Department’s preferred list in the Middle East, a moderate Arab leader with the proper political leanings toward the United States and a genuine interest in a just peace for the area. He had been wrong … though not, of course, for the first time. During his more than twenty years with the Service, there had been so many changes in political alignments, so much switching about of friends into enemies and enemies into friends, that it was impossible to know who was on whose side on any given day without a program printed no earlier than that morning.
Ah, I’m getting too old for this, he thought. What I should do is get out of this whole crazy business and go off somewhere and paint. He smiled faintly at this, at what had become a rather wistful dream … also, a futile one. One rarely retired from his line of work. It was not a question of loyalty, patriotism, or devotion to duty. It was just that after a certain number of years, you had done too much and knew too much for them to let you go.
His clothes were wet from the dew and he shivered with the morning chill. A bird called from a nearby branch and Burke glanced up at it. The bird had yellow wings and an excited tail that flipped up and down. They looked at each other and Burke wished he could hold the bird and feel the softness of its feathers. He wished he could hold anything that was alive and warm and breathing. You felt alone at many times, he thought, but doing this was the worst of all for feeling alone. Even afterwards, there was no one you could share it with, no one who could understand. When he was still married, he had once tried to tell his wife. They had been much in love and there were moments between them when anything seemed possible. They could almost feel each other’s blood, and what one sensed and knew, the other knew also. At one such point he said, “How much do you love me?”
“As much as it’s possible,”
“No matter what?”
“You should know that by now.”
“Yes, but sometimes there are things I have to do. They don’t always make me feel very lovable.”
“If you do them,” she said with the certainty of the young, the foolish, or the very much in love, “then it can’t be too wrong.”
“Some may think it is.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes. But even then, I believe it has to be done.”
“Then it’s all right,” she said, granting him final absolution.
Which was all very lovely and sufficed for his particular needs at that time, but had not held up too well over the long haul. Not for either of them. Besides, he had not been really sharing, only hinting.
The bird flew away and Burke looked down through the cedars again to the house with the open veranda. For a while, he just lay quietly as the sky lightened further and the day came, a shining October morning without clouds and the colors running to soft pinks and purples. To distract himself and help pass the time, he imagined how he would paint it. One had to be careful about the softness because that was the thing in this, not so much the color, but the mood, which was of an absolute serenity.
He painted a great picture in his mind. But how well could he do on canvas? Given the chance, probably not badly. At least’ that was how he felt for now. At other times, when his work kept him from picking up a brush for weeks or even months at a stretch, he was much less certain of his talents and wondered whether he even had any at all.
He looked at his watch again. Within a half hour, Hamaid, a man of unswervingly regular habits, would be out on the veranda having his usual breakfast of croissants and coffee. Burke had known the Colonel for many years, long before his present rise to prominence, which was one of the reasons Tony Kreuger had thrown him into this job. That, and because Kreuger and he were close enough for trust and honesty in a line of work where both these commodities were in short supply. “I don’t like having to stick you with this one,” Kreuger had told him, “but there’s nobody else I’d want to share it with.”
That was all Kreuger had said on the subject, but his face had offered a lot more. He had a wonderful face, with deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and the look of a born conspirator. If a movie producer were looking for someone to play a high-level intelligence agent, Burke was sure Tony Kreuger’s face would get him the part On that day in Washington, his face had been especially conspiratorial, hiding its nest of secrets behind that great, tough-looking facade,
yet showing enough doubt and concern to let Burke know there were forces at work that he did not like and over which he had no control.
But like it or not, Kreuger had put him here and this was what he had to deal with. He knew that thinking was just about the worst thing he could do at a time like this, yet he was oddly-unable to control it. Abu Hamaid was awake by now and Burke wondered what he was thinking, what plans he had made that would never be carried out, what love he had saved that would never be spent. Too bad. He was one of the good ones, one of the few who weren’t foolish, angry, or corrupt. Which was probably why they had to get rid of him. Only it wasn’t they who were getting rid of him. He was doing it. Oh, stop bitching, he told himself. And stop thinking so much too, or you’ll really blow it and that won’t help anyone.
The sun came up and shone on the house Burke was watching. A cool breeze sighed through the trees and drops of moisture fell. It “was almost time and Burke started to get ready. He moved a small rock into position for support, rested the rifle barrel on it and squinted through the telescopic sights. The chair in which Hamaid would soon be sitting showed sharply behind the cross hairs. Burke inserted the clip of special explosive rounds into the magazine, worked one into the firing chamber, released the safety, and waited.
One of the guards came out first, stretched, scratched himself and leaned lazily against a wall of the veranda. A heavy-set woman brought out a well-laden tray and prepared the table with a single place setting, a pot of coffee, a basket of croissants, and a folded newspaper. Then she went back inside. Moments later, Abu Hamaid appeared. He spoke briefly to the guard, who threw back his head and laughed, then went inside also. Hamaid sat alone at the table with the sun shining on him. He poured himself a cup of coffee and looked up at the wooded slope where Burke was lying. Burke saw his face clearly through the telescopic sights. Hamaid seemed to be looking directly at him, his expression thoughtful as he squinted against the sun. Burke dug his elbows into the damp earth, steadying himself, feeling the rifle stock smooth against his cheek, letting the cross hairs drop down from the Colonel’s face until they centered on his chest. Then he moved the cross hairs fractionally to the right, took his finger off the trigger guard, touched the trigger and thought, sorry, old friend.
It was the absolutely wrong thought for that specific moment. That is, wrong for dispassionate and efficient killing. Because along with the thought came a minute trembling in the fingers that made it impossible for Burke to keep his sights on target. He breathed deeply and tried again, but the trembling only grew worse and he finally closed his eyes and just lay there.
Easy, he thought. He was making too much of this. Abu Hamaid wasn’t really an old friend. They had simply known one another for a long time and spent some nights talking and some days playing tennis and neither of them owed the other a thing. As a matter of fact, the man had just about the silliest serve he had ever seen.
He had to stop being such an ass, Burke told himself. He knew better. Under the right circumstances he knew he could kill anyone. Yes, but he was not convinced these were the right circumstances, and he did not think Kreuger was convinced either. That was the whole problem right there. Never mind the goddamned dialectics, he thought. He had been told to kill Hamaid, not to set Service policy or make fancy judgements. All he had to do was follow orders. The rest was neither his responsibility nor his concern.
Yes? Then where was he when the Nuremburg trials hit the fan?
He was well disciplined and had a long history of performance and control and obedience to orders behind him. So he tried again, and this time the trembling had indeed stopped and the cross-hairs found their target and remained there. But he did not squeeze the trigger. Some kind of psychic bombardment in defense of Hamaid’s right to live had begun in his brain. It was suddenly a strange and lonely landscape he saw over the blued steel of his rifle barrel There was no exhilaration in it, only the.
knowledge that once this particular place was reached, there was no turning back. It was the most frightening of discoveries. And the worst of it was its finality.
He still lay behind the tree, still held his rifle in firing position as if awaiting a miraculous change, an eleventh hour reprieve that would somehow allow him to carry out his orders and fulfill his mission under totally different circumstances. But there was neither change nor reprieve. Abu Hamaid finished his breakfast and read his morning paper without knowing how close he had come to enjoying neither ever again.
When Hamaid left the veranda and went into the house, Burke also left. He buried his rifle deep in the forest, drove to the Beirut airport in a rented car and boarded the noon flight to Rome that would eventually land him in Washington. There he would face Tony Kreuger and work out whatever terms he could for himself.
II
It was a strange New Year’s Eve celebration. Counting himself, there were just the five of them in Pamela’s corner room, all patients in the small private New York hospital that was devoted exclusively to the practice of plastic and reconstructive surgery. They drank champagne, sang “Auld Lang Syne,” danced the New Year in with Guy Lombardo and wore the silly party hats … all in weird contrast to the assortment of bandages, swellings, discolorations, and stitches they wore on their faces. What we must look like, decided Burke, is a coven of witches celebrating the devil’s own birthday. Still, considering why they were there, the celebration had a sort of splendor.
Shortly after midnight, Lilly was well enough into it to take off her blouse and show them her new breasts. No one was shocked or even surprised. At that moment it seemed natural and right, an easy, warm sharing among friends. They had going for them by then a rare sense of communion that Burke had seen happen before, but only at moments of extreme stress or physical danger. This was different. And it was especially different for a New Year’s Eve, his least favorite of nights. The forced gaiety, the conscious loss of another year, the memory of people and things long gone, invariably combined to depress hell out of him and push him to seek escape alone somewhere at the bottom of a bottle. This New Year’s Eve he was neither alone nor terribly drunk, and this was the first of forty-three such nights that he was observing not as Richard Burke, Nor was he observing it from behind Richard Burke’s face.
Had he been asked exactly whose face he was wearing tonight, he was not sure how he would have answered. He supposed that his new face belonged to his new identity — a man called Eric Cole. It had been created for that purpose, yet he, as Eric Cole, had had nothing to do with its creation. This was the work of Dr. Obidiah Stern, a major plastic surgeon with the given name of a minor Biblical prophet. And since the flesh, bone, and cartilege still belonged to Richard Burke, their original and longtime owner, the question of true possession was not a simple one. To be absolutely accurate, he thought, he would have to describe the face he had on tonight as a permanent mask, sculpted by Obidiah Stern, out of materials supplied by Richard Burke, and finally accepted, paid for, and worn by Eric Cole.
He had found the concept intriguing and baffling during the weeks since the operation. Day by day he had watched the results emerge from a cocoon of bandages and stitches. Had his parents been alive, he was sure even they would not have been able to recognize him. When he looked into a mirror, a stranger stared back. The only recognizable sign of Richard Burke was the pale, cornflower blue of his eyes… nothing more. And even they could be taken care of by colored contact lenses. Gone, the network of tiny squint lines. Gone, the heroic scimitar of a nose that had once earned him the nickname of Beaky. Gone, too, the incipient sagging of neck, chin, and jaw, the scar of an old knife wound, the bags he had acquired over uncounted nights, some pleasurable and some not so pleasurable. The new, synthetic Eric Cole looked at least ten years younger and immeasurably better than Richard Burke had looked when he checked into the hospital.
Burke accepted this as a minor fringe benefit. The sole purpose of the surgery had been to give him a new face to go with his new identity. For the p
resent, he cared to think no further.
Celebrating the New Year with Stern’s other patients, Burke appeared to be just another accident victim with a surgically reconstructed face … the same as David, the youngest of the group. Except that David’s auto accident had been real, which made the results of his reconstructive surgery much less positive than Burke’s. Apparently there was just so much that could be done with lacerated flesh. Still, it was a face. And, as Obidiah Stem himself had described it to his young patient, a reasonably serviceable one. It was an understandable enough attitude for the surgeon to take. He was a professional who dealt with such things on a proper professional level But it was David’s face to live with, not Stern’s, and during their weeks together in the hospital, Burke had glimpsed the doubts and fears that lay behind it.
Yet the kid certainly did cover it well, Burke thought now, sipping champagne from a paper cup and watching him gyrate with Lilly in the frenetic, rock, mating ritual that currently passed for dancing. Lilly had put her blouse back on, but had carefully left the two top buttons undone. She had too much of the natural exhibitionist in her to hide the breasts that Stern had made significantly larger. The surgeon had also made her nose significantly smaller, but there she still wore surgical tape.
Pamela and Hank were dancing too, although more sedately than the younger couple. Hank was big, even for a heavyweight, and starting to thicken across the middle, but he moved with the fluid grace of an athlete. Burke remembered seeing him fight. It had been about ten years ago, when he was just starting to come up and he’d had style and a good, solid toughness that could take a lot of punishment. But he had lacked the big punch and never quite made it all the way. Catching Burke’s eye, he grinned over Pamela’s shoulder. One of the prophet Obidiah’s miracles, thought Burke. Fourteen years of ring damage erased in four hours on the operating table.
When the music slowed to what Burke considered a more reasonable beat, he cut in on the ex-fighter. He had once enjoyed dancing, but had not done much since Angela had left him. And that had been about five years ago. My God, he thought, five years! You slid out of one life into another and then out of that one too, and never even stopped to look back. Then one day you woke up, took a deep breath, and wondered where it all went.