by Ian Rankin
Hepton smiled again, but offered no reply. The last thing he needed was a lengthy conversation with a professional traveller. The man seemed to take the hint and moved past him, towards the station shop. Hepton turned his attention back to the telephone. He lifted the receiver, slipped a ten-pence piece into the slot and dialled the number of the base.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak to Nick Christopher if he’s around.’
It took a minute or so, then Nick’s voice came over loud and clear.
‘Nick here.’
‘Nick? It’s Martin.’
‘Hello, Martin. What can I do for you?’
‘I just wanted to check something. You didn’t leave a note at my flat, did you?’
‘A note?’
No, of course he hadn’t. Because he was in Binbrook, not Louth. Because the note had been written by Harry. Which meant she knew Nick Christopher was Hepton’s best friend …
‘Nick,’ Hepton said. ‘There hasn’t been someone there asking questions about me, has there? A woman in her late twenties, short blonde hair, attractive?’
‘No, can’t say there … Hang on, yes, there was somebody here like that. Saw her go into Fagin’s office. Tasty piece.’
That was it then. All she’d had to do was ask Fagin who Hepton’s closest friend on the base was. Then she’d used his name to lure Hepton into the trap. Not the cleverest of traps, but then it had probably been devised in haste, now that she saw him for the threat he really was.
He rang off and found another ten-pence piece, then took from his pocket the card Harry had given him. He had begun to feel a kind of strange elation at having cheated death. In fact, he felt more alive than he had done in months, perhaps even years. He dialled the number, ready to taunt whoever answered, but heard only a continuous whine from the receiver. He tried again, with the same result. Disconnected.
Had they cleared out then? Or changed the number when they had decided Hepton must die? There didn’t seem any other explanation as to why Harry would have given him the card. Unless … He studied it more closely. Thick card, inflexible, covered in a plastic coating. Quite a robust thing, really, given that all it contained was a telephone number, and a discontinued one at that. He asked the attendant if he possessed such a thing as a knife. The man looked dubious, but they went to the shop, where he found a Swiss Army knife. The rep was whistling cheerily, selecting a dozen or so chocolate bars before moving on to the sparse display of music cassettes. Hepton chose the thinnest blade on the knife and began to cut along the edge of the card, the attendant watching, unsure what to expect. The rep came over too, his selections made.
The plastic was tough, but once he was through it, Hepton noticed that the card itself was very thin, more like paper. He began to peel it off, revealing a thin piece of metal studded with solder.
‘What is it?’ asked the rep, intrigued now.
‘It’s a PCB,’ Hepton answered, quite calmly.
‘A what?’ asked the attendant.
‘A printed circuit board. Smallest one I think I’ve seen.’
There could be no doubting that it was a transmitter of sorts. Crude, as something this size needed to be, but probably effective. Hepton smiled, shaking his head. No need to check your car’s wheel arches these days for an unwieldy magnetised box; something the size of a business card would do the job every bit as well.
‘Can I pay for these?’ the rep asked the attendant and, show over, the attendant nodded, taking back his knife and going behind the counter. Hepton stood beside the rep, waiting his turn to pay for petrol.
‘I’d like a receipt too, please,’ the rep said to the attendant as Hepton held the transmitter between forefinger and thumb and gently, surreptitiously, slipped it into the man’s jacket pocket. He held his breath, then stepped away. But the rep hadn’t noticed anything, and with any luck he would continue all the way to Leeds still in blissful ignorance.
‘Have a good trip,’ Hepton called to him as the man went out to his car. Then, having paid for the tankful of petrol, he went out to his own vehicle, started it and headed off in the opposite direction, whistling.
As he drove, he remembered something and reached into his pocket, bringing out the note Harry had left for him, the one that had led him by the nose towards his intended death. He rolled down the window and threw it out. Was there anything else she had given him? No, nothing, not unless she had planted something on him without his knowledge. He would have to check his clothing.
Wait a minute, though … she had given him something else: a ten-pence piece to pay for the call she said she had made yesterday evening. He angled a hand into his trouser pocket and brought out all his loose change, scattering it on the passenger seat. Then he picked out the three ten-pence pieces that lay there and threw them out of the window too. He hoped someone would pick them up. If one of them contained a backup transmitter, Harry might have another long, hard and fruitless journey ahead of her.
Something else was niggling him. Several things really. For one, Fagin had ordered him to talk to Harry, to tell her everything he knew. So was Fagin in on it too? Or was he merely obeying orders? And who the hell was Villiers? What was it Harry had said? Something about ‘my employers, who are, ultimately, your employers’: but who – ultimately – was Hepton’s employer? The Home Secretary? The head of the MoD? Someone in London, he’d bet on that. But it might take a journalist’s nose to discover the final answer. A good journalist. Someone he could trust.
Supposing, that were, Jilly would even want to speak to him again.
15
In fact, the smooth-dressed, smooth-spoken Parfit did not return, and Dreyfuss, who had been keening like a young whelp, grew first agitated and then worried and then frustrated. Parfit had said he was coming back to take him away from Sacramento General, away from the vicious General Esterhazy and the cunning Frank Stewart, away from nurses who weren’t real nurses and drugs that did more than merely put a man to sleep. So where the hell was he? What was he doing?
The evening stretched into night, and the night saw Dreyfuss sleepless, pounding the floor of his room on aching feet. A night-duty nurse looked in on him, but he growled at her and she quickly fled. A male attendant, black, uncertain, asked him if he wanted anything.
‘Nothing,’ he snarled, and paced the cage again.
When breakfast arrived, he found himself waking on top of the bed, still wearing slippers and a dressing gown, his forehead damp with sweat.
‘Hot in here,’ said the nurse, a teenager who certainly looked more like a nurse than Carraway had.
‘Yes, it is,’ Dreyfuss answered, sitting up with his back against the mound of pillows. She placed the tray on a trolley and wheeled the trolley over until it was positioned in front of him.
‘Ham and eggs,’ she said, removing the cover from the plate. Dreyfuss nodded hungrily and started to tuck in. Three or four chews later, he remembered about Parfit, and the hunger left him. He sipped at the coffee, still chewing the food in his mouth, desperate to swallow it but somehow unable to. Eventually he spat it back into his paper serviette.
The nurse returned after twenty minutes and took the tray away. She didn’t say anything about the untouched food.
‘How are we this morning?’ the doctor asked brightly, pushing open the door.
‘We’re fine,’ said Dreyfuss glumly. ‘When can we get up?’
‘I did hear,’ the doctor said mock-conspiratorially, checking Dreyfuss’ pulse at the same time, ‘that we had been getting up. Pacing the floor at all hours of the night.’ He stared at Dreyfuss with soulful eyes. ‘Hmm?’
‘I’d like to leave today.’
‘Fine.’ The doctor had stopped checking the pulse. He now peered into Dreyfuss’ eyes. ‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know; a bit of sightseeing, maybe. Book into a hotel, see a few shows …’
‘In Sacramento?’ The doctor laughed. ‘No, I think you’d be better staying just here,
Major Dreyfuss.’
And that was what he did. Though he willed himself to move, to just open the door, walk down the corridor and leave by the hospital’s front door, he had no idea what he might be stepping out into. A demonstration, perhaps; an angry mob; some lone gunman looking to make the news?
He sat tight, his gut quivering whenever someone walked noisily past the door of his room. But Parfit didn’t come. Someone else came instead.
Frank Stewart.
‘Can I speak to you for a minute?’
‘Can I stop you?’ Dreyfuss’ voice had bite, but he waved for Stewart to sit down. Secretly he was glad of some company.
‘How do you feel?’
How did he feel? He felt strange, staring into Spencer Tracy’s eyes like this.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Stewart continued.
Dreyfuss doubted it. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.
‘You’re thinking that somehow you’re to blame for what happened to Argos. Forget it; you couldn’t have done anything.’
‘I couldn’t?’
‘Well, could you?’
Dreyfuss thought about this. What was Stewart trying to get him to say? ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.
Stewart seemed pleased with this reply and drew his chair closer to the bed.
‘I know there’s something wrong,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘I know there’s something cooking.’
‘Are you CIA or NSA?’
Stewart seemed surprised by the question. ‘I’m State Department,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Dreyfuss said, sounding as unconvinced as he felt.
‘Okay, okay. I’m on secondment to the NSA.’
Dreyfuss nodded. ‘And what,’ he said, ‘makes you so sure something’s “cooking”, as you put it?’
‘Just a feeling. When you reach my age, you get a nose for these sorts of things.’
Now if that wasn’t a line from a Spencer Tracy film, what was? ‘What sorts of things?’ Dreyfuss asked, enjoying throwing Stewart’s statements back at him as questions. This way, he gave himself a little room for manoeuvre.
Stewart’s voice grew quieter yet. ‘When General Esterhazy was in Europe, another of our staff generals, William Colt, very high up at the Pentagon, sent him a message. It said, and I quote, “Sorry you couldn’t make it to the burial.” That message was sent at almost exactly the time your shuttle was crashing.’
The burial! Hes Adams’ face swam into view amidst the smoke and sparks and heat.
Stewart could see his words having an effect. ‘What is it?’ he hissed. ‘That means something to you, doesn’t it? Has it jogged your memory, Major? Not that I believe for one moment that you really have got partial amnesia. I’ve got to hand it to you, though. You’ve got the doctors fooled.’
‘Nurse Carraway wasn’t a real nurse.’
Stewart nodded. ‘So I understand. Ben Esterhazy had her planted here. I didn’t know anything about it.’ His voice fell again. ‘It’s him you’ve got to be careful of, not me.’ Dreyfuss stared at him stonily. Stewart shrugged his shoulders. Then he changed tack. ‘I hear tell,’ he said, ‘that when you landed, the ground crew had to prise Major Adams’ fingers from off your throat. Adams was one of Esterhazy’s men too. He was his golden boy at one time, but then he screwed up on a mission. Got himself compromised. Then suddenly he ends up on Argos. That made me a little curious. What was going on up there?’
Dreyfuss was thinking. Yes, it was true: Esterhazy and Adams had the same words at their disposal – “coffin’s got to be buried”; “sorry you couldn’t make it to the burial” – and it meant something to both of them, something worth dying for, worth killing for. He had to tell someone. His brain was feverish. He felt he would burst if he didn’t speak. Where was Parfit? Parfit should be here, not this American secret serviceman. The confessor was wrong, but still the need to confess was strong. Too strong.
He cleared his throat as a prelude. ‘We were up there to launch a communications satellite,’ he said. ‘That’s what I thought. But it was like some joke was being played on me, like I wasn’t being let in on something. They were grinning … I think the rest of the crew knew. Hes Adams definitely knew what was going on. We launched the satellite okay. Then I saw some figures on the screen, co-ordinates I thought at the time. And a series of numbers. There was one sequence that kept repeating itself. I tried to memorise it, but it was way too long. I remember how it started, though: Ze/446. I wondered about that, but nobody seemed too bothered. Then I asked Hes – Major Adams – about it, and he laughed.’ Stewart’s face was so intent at this point that Dreyfuss felt nothing would tear the older man’s eyes off him. ‘I knew then that something was wrong. And I felt that I wasn’t intended to get off the shuttle alive, because I’d been stupid enough to tell what I’d seen to the one man aboard who knew what it all meant. Then later,’ he continued, swallowing, ‘when we were dying and everything went haywire, Adams started choking me. He was mad, screaming at me, “Coffin’s got to be buried!”’
Stewart looked startled at this, then sat back in his chair, as though he were thinking hard. He folded his arms and seemed to require no more from Dreyfuss for the moment. Dreyfuss was thinking too, thinking how hungry he suddenly felt.
‘Now hold on,’ Stewart said at last. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight …’
‘Got what straight, Mr Stewart?’ asked Parfit, stepping into the room.
Stewart looked embarrassed, but recovered quickly. ‘Just asking the major here some questions about the flight.’
Parfit looked towards Dreyfuss. ‘And does the major want to be questioned?’ he asked.
‘The major wants to be told he can get out of here,’ Dreyfuss said, remembering now that he was angry with Parfit, who had left him here for so long.
Parfit made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘Your carriage awaits,’ he said.
Stewart was rising to his feet. ‘Wait a minute. Major Dreyfuss can’t just walk out of here. He’s under medical care.’
‘Nonsense,’ Parfit replied. He went back to the doorway, leaned out into the corridor and picked up a large paper carrier bag. ‘I hope these fit,’ he said, bringing the bag to the bed.
Dreyfuss was already on his feet. He opened the bag and brought out trousers, underwear, a cotton shirt, socks and a pair of canvas shoes.
Stewart watched him dress, but his words when he spoke were directed at Parfit.
‘You know this is crazy, don’t you? Esterhazy will blow all his fuses when he finds out.’ But he sounded as though this was not a wholly unpleasant thought.
‘I’m hoping he does just that,’ Parfit returned.
Dreyfuss knew there was some undercurrent to this exchange, something they were managing to say to one another without his understanding. He slipped on the shoes. The clothes were a near-perfect fit.
‘Ready?’ said Parfit.
‘Ready,’ answered Dreyfuss.
‘I’m glad we managed to have some time together, Major,’ Stewart was saying. Dreyfuss smiled but did not reply. Parfit had already turned in the doorway, and held the door open as Dreyfuss took his first steps out of the room, into the bright, disinfected corridor.
Parfit kept a couple of steps ahead of him as they walked. Dreyfuss felt elated at first, light-headed, but then started sweating. He had paced his room, but that had called for little real exertion. Now, after sixty or so strides, his hair was prickling and his back began to feel damp. The corridor was quiet: no staff, and all the doors except his own looked to be locked tight. They came to a set of swing doors and opened them. Now they were in a larger, noisier, busier corridor, one of the hospital’s main arteries. Dreyfuss looked back at the doors they had just come through and saw that a large NO ADMITTANCE sign and a radiation symbol warned the unwary against entering his own silent corridor.
He had been expecting to see an armed guard at least. What had been stopping journalists from trying to visit him? Not just that si
gn, surely. Then he noticed an orderly sitting on a chair by the door, pretending to be on his break and browsing through a newspaper. His eyes were toughened glass as they fixed on Dreyfuss and Parfit, and Dreyfuss knew he was a guard of some kind, but an unobtrusive one.
‘Does he know who we are?’ he said to Parfit as they walked on.
Parfit glanced back towards the orderly. ‘Well, he knows who I am. I’ve had to get past him to see you, yesterday and today. But he’s here to stop people getting in, not coming out.’
‘What took you so long to come back?’
But Parfit was flurrying on again, and it took all of Dreyfuss’ energy and concentration to keep up with his pace. The question lapsed.
‘How much did you tell Stewart?’ Parfit asked.
‘Quite a bit.’
‘Mmm. That’s all right then.’
‘What do you mean?’ But Parfit wasn’t about to answer this question either.
Everybody was too busy being sick or being a comforter of the sick to pay them much attention, but at the main door, Dreyfuss hesitated. Something would happen. They’d be stopped. He’d be dragged back to his room and questioned again. They wouldn’t get away with it. As Parfit approached the glass doors, they opened on a motorised hush, and then both men were outside.
Outside, it was warm, but with a strong breeze. And there was cloud cover. A storm was coming. Dreyfuss began to shiver as the sweat on his body cooled. A large sedan pulled up to the kerb, and Parfit opened the back door, ushering him inside. The driver was a thickset man with the face of a well-used hammer. He stared at Dreyfuss in the rear-view mirror. Parfit closed the door after him and they drove off.
‘This is Ronald,’ Parfit said to Dreyfuss.
Ronald nodded, unsmiling, then concentrated on his driving.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Dreyfuss.
‘Washington. There’s a private jet waiting for us at the airport.’
