The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  “And they won’t tell you.”

  “No. State is very close on this.”

  “What is it we want?”

  “The tape. Before it falls into the hands of two Middle Eastern news agencies which are not Israeli.”

  “And the third?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Who was the third agency Michael Hampton was accredited with?”

  “The Congregation for the Protection of the Faith,” Hanley said.

  Devereaux stared at him.

  “The eyes and ears of the pope. The semiofficial, totally secret, and utterly deniable Vatican agency in charge of what the more mundane world calls counterintelligence. The Vatican’s intelligence agency.”

  Devereaux shook his head. “This is absurd. I’ll take a nap, and you can wake me up later and share the joke.”

  “Michael Hampton is a free-lance translator and part-time ‘journalist’ for relatively unsavory organizations, including the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith. I trust my Methodist upbringing has not led me to a perverse form of anti-Catholicism, but we have dealt with the good people of the Congregation before. When Cardinal Ludovico dies, they will have to screw him into the ground.”

  “Who financed his trip to Malmö?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Is anyone trying to find out?”

  “The assumption is that it came from the Middle East agencies. Perhaps not.”

  Devereaux shook his head again. “You take too much on faith, Hanley. Why are we working with KGB to track down Michael? Why believe there even is a missing tape? Why aren’t you on the loop?” The loop was the current bureaucratic slang for the small number of people who would be permitted to sign off on any particular secret project or read a secret document.

  Hanley made a sound and his head resumed an upright position. The tent folded. He stared across at Devereaux. “Is this an exercise? I don’t know. CIA is digging our grave again, whispering in State’s ear about our security incompetence. The conference in Malmö was Section’s game. Maybe this is all a phony war, and we are chasing the red flag of the other side. But I don’t think so.” He stopped, wanting to say something more profound, could not find words.

  Devereaux did not speak.

  Gloom settled on their shoulders. “Security becomes a monster when it’s left untended,” Hanley said. “The matter of Henry McGee, the escape from prison in Chicago… You see, I can’t believe in too many coincidences. First the tape is reported missing. Then we find the wide and open trail of Henry McGee. Which leads him here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He landed in Copenhagen forty-eight hours ago. Exactly forty-five minutes by hovercraft from Malmö, Sweden. Isn’t that a jolly coincidence?”

  Devereaux stirred. Henry McGee always interested him.

  Hanley continued, “He was lost in the U.S. for thirty-six hours, and then we found his trail again, going out of New York with an English passport. We kept just far enough back to watch him. He entered Copenhagen, Denmark, a day ago using a phony American passport under the name of Henry Miller. Occupation: writer.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Devereaux sighed. It was as though he suddenly collapsed. “Did he use the Honest Broker in Frankfurt?”

  “Yes. That’s one of the ways we followed him.” There were a dozen men in the world like the Honest Broker in Frankfurt. If you had the money, they could arrange “matters.” They were go-betweens uniting arms dealers and revolutionaries, traitors on the run and the passports they needed to keep running. They were men like Felix Krueger in Zurich and the Honest Broker, men trusted by every side in the way every side trusts the American dollar or a bar of gold in a Liechtenstein bank. Hanley went on: “Three sets of ID. The point is, why Copenhagen?”

  “It’s a good place to make Soviet contact. The Soviet embassy is Spy Central there.”

  “Copenhagen is just west of Malmö, Sweden.” There. He did not believe in coincidence. “Henry McGee’s name surfaces on a code sheet. A sheet delivered to us by a Russian sailor who defects in Stockholm more than four weeks ago. The name McGee is linked to something called Skarda. Now McGee escapes our prisons and is next seen in Europe in a city thirty-one klicks west of Malmö. Where a tape recording of a secret conference has disappeared. These things don’t just happen this way.”

  “Is there a connection between Skarda and this conference? Maybe with this tape?”

  Hanley shrugged.

  Devereaux started to speak but said nothing. He stood up and went to the window. Fleet Street held no answers. He did not see the illusion of Rena Taurus. Or Rita Macklin. Ghosts had fled his thoughts, and his tiredness was nothing more now than an irritation with his body. He saw Michael Hampton and a cassette tape and Henry McGee and whatever Skarda was.

  “So what’s the key?” Devereaux said.

  Hanley stared at the slate-gray wall opposite him. There was a calendar on the wall put up in 1979. It was turned to August.

  “Rena. If Michael eludes the KGB, the key is Rena. We don’t know where Michael is—”

  “I was assigned to Rena Taurus,” Devereaux said.

  “Yes. And they were assigned to Michael Hampton. Do you suppose that was coincidence as well?”

  “I don’t know what to suppose.”

  “I don’t trust the bastards,” Hanley said.

  The unusual epithet—Hanley never swore—made Devereaux smile. He turned from the window and felt much better.

  “Which ones?” Devereaux said. “Who put the clamp on our need to know?”

  “It came from the highest levels.”

  “The president.”

  “The president wants something and it is apparently involved with whatever secret agenda was agreed upon at Malmö. We shall know at the pleasure of the president. In the meantime, Section is in deep doo-doo. Is that clear enough?”

  “No. Not yet. What about the two Middle East news agencies? Where are they?”

  “Tripoli. Our friend the colonel. The other is in Riyadh. Our friend the king. Michael Hampton is quite the Arabic scholar. Why would they send him to Malmö for a tedious conference on the right of American ships to intimidate the Lithuanian coastline?”

  “You asked me that before,” Devereaux said.

  “In time we discover all the secrets,” Hanley said.

  Devereaux said, “I’m going to lie down now.”

  “You have to get back to Rena today—”

  “The banks are closed on Sunday. If she has to get money for Michael, she’ll have to wait until morning. The point is, anyone sharing this tap?”

  Hanley said, “My orders are to cooperate fully with the security forces of the Soviet Union in recovering what is, essentially, Soviet property.”

  Devereaux stared down at him.

  Hanley opened his hands to see if they were empty. “The answer is no. They have their games and we have ours.” He looked at Devereaux’s haggard face and tried a small, tight smile.

  10

  BERLIN

  The Air France jet from Hamburg had only been aloft thirty-five minutes when it began its steep dive through East German airspace for the tiny dot that was Tegel Airport, the link between West Berlin and the West.

  Michael Hampton felt the plane strain downward through the surging nighttime clouds, and he closed his eyes. He hated landings; he was still as terrified as he had been on his first flight twenty years ago. He had flown hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, but the landings always induced this suffocating panic.

  He thought of God. He thought of Rena. He thought of the moment of impact when the billions of molecules that made plane and passengers and crew and baggage exploded into eternity.

  The jet bumped down, and the plane raced across the smooth tarmac to the terminal building. This is Sunday night, this must be Berlin. He opened his eyes and smiled. It wasn’t really funny, any of it, but the strain of running w
as beginning to make many things seem funny to him.

  He took the small bag from under his tourist-class seat and joined the crowd now in the aisles, waiting to get out. He wore a plain blue parka—he had bought it in Göteborg at a ship’s chandlers—and a dark sweater. The bag had underwear and socks and a bottle of aspirin and a cassette.

  He pushed toward the jetway and then into the customs area.

  There were six policemen and two policewomen in the wide entry between the baggage claim room and the rest of the terminal. They were large and German, with flat foreheads and marble blue eyes. They were body searching the departing passengers in little curtained cubicles set up as part of the exit way.

  Michael felt a wave of panic. What could he do, run back to the plane? He gripped the handle of the little bag tighter.

  He had his own passport and his own identification, and they were looking for him here, in Berlin. It was—

  “Bitte, Herr… Hampton.” The policeman read the passport for a moment, stared at the picture, stared at Michael Hampton. He held the passport open with his thumb. The cold eyes of the big German policeman stared right through Michael. The policeman looked like a statue or a recruiting poster. “Are you here for business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure.”

  The clipped German accent made the English words fall like hanging bodies. “Are you here long?”

  “Two days.”

  The policeman looked at the bag. He put the bag on the table and opened it. He searched the bag with careful fingers and went through everything. He fanned the pages of a paperback thriller in the bag. He opened the plastic bottle of Bayer aspirin.

  “Aspirin,” said the policeman.

  “Aspirin.”

  Michael started to make a joke about drugs and paused. It was exactly what you never did. Especially in an airport. Especially to a policeman.

  “And a tape cassette?”

  The policeman held up the cassette and looked at it and then at Michael. Very cold eyes now, very curious and cold eyes. “You have a cassette?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where is the player?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your cassette player?”

  Jesus Christ, Michael thought. What a stupid thing to do, carry a tape without a player. “I broke it. In Hamburg. I came in from Hamburg.”

  “What is on this tape, then?”

  “Songs. I tape songs I like from the radio—” He felt miserable, he thought his voice was pathetic.

  “So,” said the German policeman.

  He stepped forward into a booth where he would be searched. The policeman had barely glanced at his passport. What the hell were they looking for? He felt the metal detector as it glided over his clothes. He took change out of his pocket and held out his wrist so that the technician could see his Seiko watch was the cause of the detector’s alarm.

  And then he was free, on the other side of the barrier. He felt lightheaded suddenly because he had been running for more than twenty-four hours and he wanted to sleep. They had let him go, they weren’t looking for him. He crossed to the entrance way and found the taxi ranks.

  Berlin seemed sinister as the Mercedes pulled away from the glitter of the airport and plunged onto the autobahn. The wide parks were dark; the silence of the immense woods reached to the edges of lighted roads. Why Berlin? But it was the next plane out. Hopscotch. Göteborg. Then Kastrup. Then Hamburg. Now Berlin. He’d wanted to go direct to Brussels, but the flight had been canceled and he had this… feeling. They must be right behind him; they would sweep down on him a moment before he stepped on the plane.… Berlin was easy to get away from. He had to sleep and to kill time until he could meet Rena. Money, time, had to get the tape south. He thought again about the plan he had in his mind, and he thought it was good. It was going to be all right if it all worked out.

  Down into the glitz of the Kurfürstendammstrasse, the Ku’damm Sunday night, and the crowds surged beneath the glittering rows of electric signs promising food and drink and dancing and love and all the goods of the world. The taxi slowed, the driver humming a song to himself. The girls wore bright raincoats and showed their legs as they strolled on the broad sidewalks. Punks with bizarre haircuts and haunted eyes darted in and out of the lines of slow-moving traffic. Everyone on the Ku’damm was on parade, everything was made up and a trick. Girls watched for boys and boys watched for boys and middle-aged men strolled with the young. Michael watched the homeless and supperless line up at the charity soup truck near the Kaiser Wilhelm Chapel ruins, and he realized he hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger was greater than tiredness—he would have to eat.

  The little hotel on the side street had no dining room, and they would not accept the American Express card. He paid out in deutsche marks and looked at what he had left. He asked directions for a place where he could get a wurst and a beer, and his German was good enough to please the woman behind the front desk. She relented her Teutonic armed stance and gave him a very good corner room and told him about Otto’s bierkneipe up the street. It was a good enough place, and they still served food, even on Sunday night.

  He thanked her absently, and she took a good look at him at the door of his room, looked at him and at the bed in the good corner room. She said her name was Ernestine. She had a wide, generous mouth, and he realized what it was Ernestine was really saying, and he almost started laughing again.

  “There were policemen at the airport…” he said.

  “It’s on the radio. Terrorist sweep.” She shrugged. “It is supposed to be over tonight. They found arms and explosives yesterday on an Air France flight.”

  So.

  All routine, nothing to worry about, piece of cake.

  He closed the door on Ernestine and went into the room and put his bag on the bed. He took off his clothes and went into the bathroom and tried the old-fashioned shower in the claw-footed tub. Water under pressure wailed up through the pipes, and it was hot and soothing. God, it felt good on him, massaging him. His skin tingled and he closed his eyes and held his head up to the water pouring down.

  Ten o’clock. The withered autumn linden trees were stark against the glowing sky. The clouds reflected all the thousands of lights on the Ku’damm and the streets that led to it.

  Michael hunched his shoulders against the damp and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the parka. He was bareheaded. He had thought about nothing but the secret of the tape since that moment in the compartment on the Stockholm train. Why had the accident happened to him? Some stupid clerical mistake, probably by that fool, Gustafson, and it was coming down to finding a way to survive. Not that anything had happened yet. Maybe he was just paranoid, thinking he had been followed on the subway in Stockholm. No. He had seen the man twice, he was sure of it. They were following him.

  The little tavern was warmly lit, and they did have wursts served on paper plates with bits of mustard and a hard roll. He sat at the table and gratefully ate the small repast and listened to the roil of voices around him. He held the hard roll in his left hand and the wurst in his right and dipped at the mustard in the approved German way. The action of eating, filling his body, slaking his thirst with beer settled him. He fell almost into a trance, thinking randomly of things beyond this room.

  In such moments—it could happen anywhere—he would suddenly see the link between himself and the little boy he had been who had grown up in Cody, Wyoming, a thousand miles from anywhere.

  The reverie happened now, precisely as it had happened a hundred times before. The same reverie presented in his mind in the same way, the collection of his past laid out as orderly as pages in a scrapbook. He turned the pages while he ate and drank.

  He had not been a good student in the cheerful, go-along sense of the word. Not a good student, but he had this astounding facility for language. It was so easy that he could not comprehend how others could not fall into the habit of working and even thinking in other tongues, so easy that he was declar
ed a prodigy. His brother, Will…

  Michael closed his eyes tight. No matter where he was, the time of day or night, the presence of friends or strangers, when he thought of Will he first had to cry. It only lasted a moment, this first painful memory of Will, but then it was all right. He opened his eyes and they were wet, but he was not going to cry now. It was part of the reverie; it came at precisely the same time each time he remembered.

  Will was big and easygoing and handsome. Will wanted to be a cowboy and nothing more. Will rode well but Michael never did. Will was two classes ahead in school and protected Michael when his peculiarities came to the attention of bullies or teachers. Will was his big brother, and he’d do anything for Will. Except he couldn’t stop Will from hurting himself. Will signed up for a three-year hitch in the last part of the war. Will loved country and flag and being a cowboy and being a soldier.

  “Will,” Michael said aloud. He toasted his brother with the beer.

  He put the stein down and stared at it and saw Will. Will in the army. Will home on leave, showing his uniform to the girls. Michael said nothing to Will, whom he loved, but he wasn’t going to join any goddamn army.

  Army. The stupidity of it. One of the last to be drafted, Michael had tried to volunteer for a National Guard company, and he thought it had been fixed, the deal was set.…

  Army Intelligence. Oxymoron. Top-secret clearance. He didn’t want to know any secrets. Then Captain Guthrie had let Sergeant Peterson explain it to him: “You don’t want intelligence duties and we don’t want reluctant troopers, so we come to an impasse. But right now you got a big brother sitting over there in Da Nang who gets to fly in helicopters to these here fire zones and gets to shoot gooks. ’Course, it’s only fair they get to shoot back, and he’s got another nine months out there, and there is every chance that some dirty little fucker in black pajamas might just get lucky and nick a big fella like your bro’. Am I going too fast for you, Mike? Intelligence has got its clout and little privileges, and it just might be that your bro’ could actually be assigned to heavy duty in Bangkok, which is called Bangkok because that’s all cocks do there all day long, bang bang bang. You like my joke? So if you want to think about your bro’ slogging his sorry ass through the jungle of Nam or getting laid on a nightly basis in the rottenest lovely city in this whole world, you think on it, because that’s what your intelligence is for.”