Never Look Back

by Ridley Pearson

  “Can I think about it?”

  “No.”

  Andy looked up, surprised. Lyell grinned and said, “Sure. I’ll give you a half hour.”

  “Generous. What I wish you would give me is a new assignment.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Oh, you could, all right.”

  “It’s not up to me, you know that. Besides, you haven’t finished that report.”

  “Correction: I’ve finished it four times. This is the fifth draft. The Old Man is stalling or something. Ever since Duncan he’s been like a doting old maid.”

  “And what’s that make you?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No. Please tell me. How am I behaving?”

  “I’ve never lost anyone close to me, Andy. Certainly not a twin brother. I’m not qualified to answer that.”

  “Qualified? You’re a friend. We work together—in a roundabout way. You pay me these little visits every couple of weeks and ask strange questions and misuse your pawns. I’d say you’re qualified.”

  “Straight shot?”

  “Straight shot.”

  “For a while it seemed you might give up. I don’t mean kill yourself, I mean just kind of give up.” He collected his thoughts. “You seem to be over that. But the point is: You work too much. All you do is work on that damn report. You don’t go out, you don’t invite people over—”

  “I want to get the damn thing finished.”

  “And when do you think Stone will call it finished?”

  Light from the fire danced on Lyell’s left cheek. Andy considered the implication. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Just an opinion. You asked.”

  “Another beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Andy ducked through the doorway and into the hall, pushing away his memories of Duncan. Mari was another thing entirely. She had broken his heart and then had run back to Detroit—or so he had heard. Seventeen months ago—but who’s counting? And Andy was still trying to let go.

  Mari Dansforth had sashayed into The Swamp, a hotel bar on the edge of Georgetown that boasted the largest photo of Alan Alda in the world. She was a natural blonde with unnatural eyes. She sat down on a bar stool next to Andy Clayton and asked the bartender hoarsely, “Would you pour me something to remove this obnoxious heat? Forever.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that, ma’am.”

  “Then just help me forget about it, would you? Vodka on the rocks, I think.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder.

  The man was impervious. He mixed the drinks.

  She was looking right at Andy now. His face showed nothing, like a house with no one home.

  “Andy Clayton,” he said, feeling obliged to say something.

  “Mari Dansforth.” The drink was placed in front of her and she drank half of it. “Ohhh, that’s better.”

  “Nice name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How do you spell Mari?”

  “M-a-r-i.” She sipped the vodka. He sat perfectly still. Then she asked, “What do you do, Andy?”

  “I’m an account executive with Tendin Corp.” This was a legitimate company that listed Andy on the payroll. Andy did not work for Tendin. He worked for the Security Intelligence Agency.

  She finished her drink and cued the bartender.

  “You’re very lovely.” The words just fell out of his mouth. He turned red. He never came on like that. He couldn’t believe he had said it.

  “Is that the best you’ve got?” she asked, confusing him by pointing to a gaudy tie he was wearing.

  “I like weird ties.”

  She smiled at him. She was narcotic. “I like weird dresses.” Hers was covered with vivid green-stemmed tulips. Each tulip was a bright primary color. The background was white and it was held onto her by spaghetti straps. She was well-tanned and the dress was tailored for her bust, though when she moved it moved away from her and revealed that she was braless.

  “We used to have a bed of tulips in our backyard. The bumblebees liked them. I used to sit and watch the bumblebees come and go, all day long, their legs yellow from the pollen.” He paused privately, then said, “It’s a nice dress.”

  She rocked the ice in her drink. “We had every damn plant imaginable in our backyard. I suppose there were tulips, but to be honest, I don’t remember. What happened to your backyard?”

  “We sold the house.”

  “The tulips?”

  “Gone, I suppose.” He smiled thinly. “And yours?”

  “Oh, it’s still there, overlooking the Hudson, pretentious and Victorian. Still there for everyone to goggle at. My father likes to show off his money. That’s his problem.” She sipped and didn’t look at him.

  “Oh.”

  She thought of something and said quickly, “I’m not bragging, mind you. I’m on my own. That’s why I’m in Washington. Twenty-five years of that man can drive a person bonkers!” Her smile was pained.

  “It is a nice dress,” he told her again.

  “And I love your tie.” She pulled a soggy napkin toward herself with a long red nail and, with her eyes on the countertop, said, “You’re bored with me already, aren’t you?”

  The comment floored him. He was fascinated, not bored. “No. Not in the least.”

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned my father. Bad habit. Please excuse me. It puts a freeze on a conversation in a second. Tell me about yourself.”

  “No, please. It’s not you. It’s just that I’m very tired. It’s been a long few weeks—these past few. I’ve been traveling overseas and I’m not quite caught up….”

  Andy had recently returned from an assignment. He had nearly caught up to a DS agent, only to lose him again. The agent’s name was Leonid Borikowski.

  For the last few days he’d been drinking a little too much and had been feeling far too low for his own good. So he ordered them both another, to no objection, and led her over to a private table.

  They sat close to each other and that felt about as good as anything ever had.

  “What do you know about failure?” he asked, breaking a long silence.

  She sipped. Hesitantly she said, “I think failure’s healthy.”

  “And…?”

  “We learn from our failures, don’t we?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Yes, well… I think that’s true. Make enough of them and eventually you make less of them. Pretend they aren’t there and you’ll never stop making them.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. Why? What do you think?”

  “I’m not real fond of failure. And to tell you the truth, I’m not in a very good mood. I’m afraid you’ve caught me on an off night.”

  “Bad moods don’t scare me away… Andy,” she said, grabbing for the name. “We’re in a bar aren’t we? Bars are full of bad moods. Cheap psychiatrist—that’s what a good drink is. Did you ever look at it that way?”

  “Let’s get out of here. I’m driving.”

  “Agreed.”

  Even by dash lights her eyes showed up like road signs. Some brown flakes had been mixed in with the green of her right eye, as if placed there to grab your attention. The MG’s top was down and the wind felt good to both of them. She was not worried about her hair and he liked that.

  Despite her full figure, she was not a centerfold type. Her jaw was drawn and narrow, chin pointed; her oddly shaped ears were carefully hidden beneath the blond curls. Her clothes flattered her.

  They walked a path along the Potomac. She talked some more about her father’s money and their problems. Her father had wanted a boy. Or so Mari thought. She wrapped an arm around Andy. They sat on a bench. Cars passed on the other side of the river. Tires whined. Music from somewhere far off.

  Mari lay her head on Andy’s lap and he stroked her hair. He had never felt this close to anyone so quickly. It was strang
ely wonderful. But he did not trust his feelings. He never trusted his gut feelings, and yet, they were never wrong. Why then? He was about to ask Mari when he noticed that she had fallen asleep.

  Later, when a breeze picked up and finally cooled him off, he drove her home. To his surprise, she invited him in. But he declined, and in doing so, embarrassed her. She became crisp. He did not feel up to explaining.

  They kissed before he left—just once—and it felt very private, almost as if they were lovers.

  And not long after that, they were.

  Now, standing in his kitchen with two cold Buds in hand, Andy tried not to think about Mari. He’d done too much of that recently. He closed the refrigerator door and ducked back into the hallway.

  As he entered the living room, Lyell announced, “I have examined the board and I’m not ready to concede. Is that permitted?”

  “Discretion is the better part… and all that. But no, I don’t mind. I’m only two pieces ahead. Let’s keep going.”

  “Good.” Lyell moved his queen.

  “What can you tell me? What’s news?”

  “Is that why you asked me over here tonight, to pump me?”

  “I’ll let you answer that yourself.”

  “The big news is that two Bulgarian Aeroflot workers who have been linked to Rome and the attempted assassination of the Pope last year, are now evidently in Canada… Montreal, I think. Of course the big fear is that they may attempt it again, and this time on either Canadian or American soil. Everyone is up in arms about it, which of course makes my job hell.”

  “Who’s on it?”

  “Mat Minor and John Thompson I think. That’s the rumor.”

  “Good men.”

  “Yes. What’s been making our job tough is this Karen Kwang, with Cable Watch.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s a dig-it-up-and-smell-it type. Very popular right now, and it was she who turned up the Bulgarians, much to our embarrassment. The Old Man asked for me to have a ‘chat’ with her. I’m supposed to soften her approach. Right. Quite frankly, I wish someone else had the assignment. Somebody in Public Relations or something. I’m afraid of her kind. She’ll just use our talk as a springboard for another angle on the story…. I’ll be showing her how close to the truth she is. That’s very risky.”

  “Do you have a choice?”

  “No. I’m on orders.”

  “I wish I’d get some different orders. Writing a six-hundred-page report on Soviet Middle East Intelligence operations is not my idea of work, at all… it’s more like prison.”

  “You know what they say, Andy. If things aren’t going right, then chances are you don’t want them to be right.”

  After a long silence Andy said, “Who the hell is ‘they’ anyway?” He moved a bishop. “Check.”

  Lyell shrugged.

  8:00 P.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  A small pink light atop the intercom on Terrance Stone’s desk flashed intermittently. Working late, Stone, his secretary, Janie Luzo, and a handful of others were still in the offices of the SIA, busily trying to keep up with work that knew no hours.

  Thirty-four years ago, Terrance Barnum Stone had been the president of a small New England college. But at the age of forty-seven he had been recruited by a close friend into the ranks of Military Intelligence as an advisor, and seven months thereafter, had announced his resignation from academic life.

  As an advisor, he had theorized several ways to penetrate a network of agencies that the Pentagon, among others, had considered impenetrable. These same theories, when passed on to the State Department, had led to the discovery and expulsion of several diplomatic “aides” in various embassies around Washington.

  Lacking a formal title, Stone had consulted for the Pentagon for three years, before, at the age of fifty, he had accepted a diplomatic appointment to the American Embassy in East Berlin, posing as a deputy ambassador. There, in the early years of the Cold War, Stone administered a small group of private citizens who helped collect reams of sensitive intelligence data. Most of the information concerned the movement of suspected foreign agents, two of whom were eventually caught in the act of espionage, compromised—doubled—and released to spy on their own agencies. These two men had supplied U.S. Military Intelligence—G-3—with the inner workings of the East German and, in some instances, Soviet intelligence communities for nearly ten years.

  Stone was next assigned to prepare, for the Secretary of Defense, a comprehensive study of Army and Navy crypto-codes and their vulnerability to outside penetration. His study had led to the inception of the National Security Agency, and Stone’s appointment as the Director of the Security Intelligence Agency. His agency was to oversee security activities at the NSA, and to advise on ways to prevent penetration into intelligence agencies. Following the Vietnam War, he was given a small group of former Army Intelligence officers, all in their middle thirties, to “actively recruit the assistance of foreign agents… and to activate an internal network of intelligence gathering in the agencies or administrations of any ‘hostile factions’,” a term whose definition had varied according to who held the Oval Office.

  Stone pushed the button on the intercom. The light stopped blinking. Janie’s voice was thinned by the small speaker. “Sir, you have a scrambled call from Solicitor General Gustav Molière, RCMP, Montreal… line one.”

  “Concerning?”

  “I wasn’t told.”

  “I see… Would you please give me his ABDOS on the screen, read rate thirty.”

  “Thirty,” she said, confirming the speed at which the computer would scroll each page of Molière’s ABridged DOSsier on Stone’s video monitor.

  Stone, who had just now been preparing to head home after another long day, sighed and waited until the first page appeared on the screen, which happened very quickly. He scanned the information, refreshing himself with Molière’s condensed history: Solicitor General Gustav Molière, seventy years of age, had been educated at Cambridge, England. He had served on loan from the Canadians with British Intelligence in both World Wars, spending part of World War II in France coordinating resistance offensives. Military service included Asia, Australia, and New Zealand with promotions that read like a list of a ladder-climber’s best; and now he sat on top. Just like Terry Stone.

  The Old Man pushed the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end, thick with a French accent, resonated with authority. “General Gustav Molière, Canadian Privy Council.”

  “Yes, General Molière. How can I help you?”

  Hundreds of miles to the north, Gustav Molière looked down at the first page of a file marked Terrance Barnum Stone: U.S. Intelligence—Non-active. He knew of Stone, even recalled having been introduced to him a few times; but this call amounted to their first official intercourse.

  “If you please, I am sending you a copy of a videotape by special courier, recorded in Montreal’s Dorval airport less than two hours ago. One of our rovers—a woman—was apparently executed. Her assailant was approximately one hundred and seventy-seven centimeters tall, weight between seventy-five and eighty kilos, short blond hair, skin disorder or birthmark on the left of his neck.

  “Presently, our agents are working on an identity. I was hoping that perhaps your people could also look over the tapes.”

  Terry Stone had immediately assumed the phone call would concern the two Bulgarians and the papal visit. He reoriented himself. “With pleasure. Yes, certainly. My condolences. I know how difficult it is to lose an agent,” he said truthfully.

  “Yes, merci.”

  “Might I inquire as to the method of execution?”

  “A needle. A hatpin perhaps. It entered behind the lobe of her right ear… killing her instantly.”

  “Your thoughts?”

  “An operative… This was my guess, yes. Certainly none of the terrorist organizations we have been plagued with. Too subtle for them. I am certain it was an agent. This I cann
ot explain, but I think you are able to see when you view the tape. It was very cold-blooded, non? Very… professional. The murder went unnoticed, I am sorry to say—except, of course, by the cameras. His acting… he was very convincing. Very… professional.”

  “And the follow-up?”

  “We are circulating the best photograph we could pull from the video. Taxis, buses, rentals. We will find him, but I would like to know who it is we are after. It is more difficult to hunt the nameless, non?”

  “I agree completely. How may I reach you?”

  Molière left Stone several numbers. They briefly discussed the two Bulgarians. Thompson and Minor were being cooperative with the Canadians. Fine.

  Molière emphasized no hour was too late for Stone to call.

  The tape was due to arrive in Washington shortly.

  8:00 P.M.

  Montreal, Canada

  From the back seat of a musty cab, Leonid Borikowski succumbed to the visual splendor of Montreal. From the airport freeway, the sparkling lights of the city were spread before him, crawling up the sides of Mount Royal in the background, reflected in the broad St. Lawrence River in the foreground. A picturesque mix of historic Old Montreal along the waterfront, and the spectacular, soaring buildings of the new metropolis behind.

  The young driver offered no conversation during the ride, uncomfortable with Borikowski’s ugliness. The agent felt this and relished it, the quintessential actor savoring every morsel of deception. He rode in silence, awaiting his destination: a hotel he had named but had no intention of using.

  Assuming hidden cameras had recorded the murder at Dorval, he expected cab drivers to be questioned. A remembered face to a fictitious destination would only help hide the trail and buy him precious time.

  The cab jerked to a stop, throwing Borikowski forward. Marble steps and a brass banister fronted an ornate hotel entrance. A fat doorman with a bright red nose came to inquire and assist. Behind him, etched onto a brass plaque, were the words Hotel St. Jacques. Borikowski passed a generous fare to the driver and climbed out. As the cab pulled away he looked up and complained, “This is the wrong hotel!”

  The doorman shook his head. “I will call you a cab, m’sieu!”