The Man Who Heard Too Much

by Bill Granger

  “Why—?”

  Her voice was loud. She saw he held his finger to his lips.

  The whisper was harsh. “Why do I believe you? You break into my rooms twice! You’re here like a thief now. Worse. I don’t believe a word you say!”

  “Where is the canal where you meet Michael?” Devereaux’s voice was gentle. “Where is the old hotel?”

  She said nothing. She felt a strange, warm sense of embarrassment, the kind she had not experienced since she was a little girl. A child has no privacy, no rights—a creature of mistakes and reprimands, encaged in a world of rules she does not understand. How many times had she been wrong and the same creeping flush of embarrassment overcome her, starting at her cheeks and burning down her body until she wanted to hide?

  “I’m not going to harm Michael. I told you that.”

  Devereaux stared at her. They both became accustomed to the darkness. They were shadows now, but recognizable shadows. His voice was flat, he was not pleading his sincerity. “There is grave danger.”

  Grave danger. In all her languages, the words that most conveyed a sense of casual terror were the warnings the French posted on electrical junction boxes: Danger de mort. A simple warning rendered with a shrug of Gallic shoulders. Danger de mort.

  “I believe you?”

  “You have no choice. I know you’re going to meet him; they know. If they mean to follow you, they’ll follow you. You don’t have the skill to elude them. And if they’re bringing another team, then it’s more than to recover the tape.”

  “Michael said—”

  “Michael said he couldn’t give them his memory. He listened to the tape. It’s original sin,” Devereaux said.

  Danger de mort. A standard warning; ignore it at your peril, but don’t say we didn’t post a notice. People die in stupid ways—lighting a gas stove, touching a wire, leaning out the train window to be decapitated by the express train running in the opposite direction.…

  Very soft, very full of pity. He was so close to her that the room was filled with the smell of him, his voice was a thick whisper, and yet she could see him as he had been on the airplane, staring at her, the hard eyes growing soft the more he stared at her.

  She thought the thing that was too terrible. “They will kill him.”

  “Yes.” No pity now; no absolution. A simple explanation and warning.

  “And why must I trust you?”

  “Because I won’t kill him.”

  “And I believe you?” Again, the question was only half asked.

  For a moment, he sat in the darkness and did not speak. She felt his weight at the edge of the soft mattress. Her body fell toward him, and she was next to him, not by choice but by his weight at the edge of the bed. Close to him, feeling his hesitation at the words he wanted to speak. The blind experience through smell, sound, touch; only those who can see blind themselves to the other senses. She sensed his hesitation, though she could not see through the darkness. She felt the struggle in the silence.

  Devereaux had awakened in the safe rooms in London. Hanley sat in a straight chair and watched him as he sat up and yawned and looked at his watch. He had slept long enough to feel the hangover of the pills. He yawned again, and his mouth was a dry hole of foul smells.

  “Michael Hampton was given a dishonorable discharge from the army. He had a top-secret clearance. He ran with a radical-left crowd in New York. He worked for the United Nations.” Hanley had gone on in the same dull monotone. “He has associates in too many places where we have too few friends. He has been approached to enter into service, but he refuses. He lives in Stockholm and has friends in the down-with-America community. This comes from CompAn, and I knew these things this morning, but it didn’t matter then.”

  “It matters now.”

  “Erase him.”

  “Get a hitter.”

  “Erase him. They want to erase the girl as well.”

  “I won’t be a hitter.”

  “The word comes from State. Cooperate with KGB. We’ve done it before.”

  “Fuck you, Hanley.”

  “Erase them and recover the tape.”

  “Fuck you, Hanley.”

  Hanley said: “We do not kill. We erase. We suspend a case. We deal in wet objects. We will not compromise ourselves or our principles.”

  “Fuck you, Hanley.”

  “The Soviets want bodies.”

  “How about their heads in brown boxes? How about their tongues?”

  “We can erase them humanely. It will be different if the other side gets there first.”

  Devereaux had dressed. He had taken a little of the stale tea in a paper cup. When he rinsed his mouth with cold water, his teeth hurt. When he had stared at Hanley in the ghastly light, he had seen how defeated Hanley had become.

  “Do you understand the mission?”

  “Do you understand me?” Devereaux had said.

  And curiously, Hanley had then said, “Yes. I understand perfectly.”

  The silence held for half a minute, and when Devereaux spoke again, his voice was neutral. He did not want to sell anything; he wanted to explain. He sounded like the history teacher he had once been, long before he became mired in history.

  “Michael was right. He heard too much, and it’s in his head. The Soviet team means to brainwash him in a permanent way.” There was no humor intended in the words, and Rena felt sick to her stomach.

  Had she betrayed Michael in Malmö? For the first time, she felt the consequences of everything she had done. But she had no wish to hurt him. It was such a simple matter; no one should have known.… He was her pet, her lover, he was her pleasure in company and in sex. Now he was running. He was running away from her as surely as if he intended to.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “Six. If you get dressed, I’ll get you out of here. Past them. We can get—”

  “The bank. I have to wait for the banks to open—”

  “The money’s taken care of.”

  She stared at the form in the darkness. She could just see him. Already, very pale light was inflating the clouds over the city and the black reaches of the narrow streets were turning to a dingy ash color. Soot was rising again from the old fireplaces and drab, somehow very human Brussels would stir itself to make another day.

  “Can I turn on the bathroom light?”

  “There’s a window?”

  “A little one.”

  “Don’t risk it. There’s one of them in a car down the street. The other’s in back. If there’s only two—I don’t know. I don’t know what time the backup team comes. I don’t know how many watchers there are.”

  “How did you get in?”

  No answer.

  “You must have come in the back.”

  He did not speak.

  She felt this silence as well. She was becoming as sensitive to silence as a blind person.

  She went into the bathroom, fumbled for underclothes on the retractable line above the tub. How strange the darkness makes familiar things. She brushed her hair. She wore a sweater and jeans and tall black boots. Her purse and passport in hand, she looked at her bedroom.

  He was the ghost by the window, barely outlined by the pale light beginning to fill the room. It was not raining. The room was cool and damp. She felt sleepy, the way she did on rainy mornings. The ghost by the window was looking down at the court behind the building. His remembered words calmed her now. She would be able to do it.

  “I’m ready” came in a whisper. She shrugged into her raincoat and tied the belt.

  “Do you have a scarf? Wear it on your head. In case they see you.”

  There was a rear entrance, but it was always kept locked, and there was a small gate beyond, which was also locked. Both locks were open.

  “You had a key—”

  “Of sorts.”

  Down the old stone back stairs. The stairwell was painted a bluish gray. Back doors of sleeping neighbors watched them.

  In
the little court, she saw the shapeless bulk of the man lying on the stones. He was a pile of clothes hidden under a porch.

  A pile of flesh and clothes. There was a little blood on the stones. She must have made a sound, because he put his hand across her mouth again and pressed her against the building. This time, she saw the cold thing in Devereaux’s eyes and saw his lips drawn to bare his teeth.

  “No sound, Rena. I told you there were two. Maybe more of them. I don’t know, I have no way of knowing.”

  He pulled his hand away.

  She shivered and he held her.

  She felt cold, lost, alone in a storm without beginning or end. Her momentary bravery in the apartment dissolved. Michael was not in danger, not running. She was not going to rendezvous with him. He would not die. The world would be made fresh tomorrow.…

  Frantically she struggled to escape the death in the pile of clothes and flesh under the porch. And yet the killer—she clung to him.

  “You. Killed him.”

  “Maybe he isn’t dead,” Devereaux said. It was so terrible that she felt angry. She would kill him or hurt him and just tear the flesh of his face. He was hateful.

  Death felt so close.

  Michael. She saw Michael dead. Hands out, like this one. Blood on the stones and his pretty mouth broken. Michael’s eyes wide from looking at eternity. What had she done?

  At the end of the court was the street. She saw the car at the end and the man behind the wheel, but why should she believe anything?

  “This is your fault,” she said.

  Devereaux looked at her. They were as close as lovers, pressed against the bricks of the next building. He was watching the driver and deciding something.

  “Your fault. Security. You said you were security at the conference in Malmö. Where was security? How could the wrong tape get into the wrong hands?”

  He did not speak.

  “What was the point of your security? You lost the tape. The tape went to Michael because of that odious little man. He worked for you.”

  “What man?”

  “What was he? A Swede. Gustafson. He worked for you—”

  “And brought Michael the tape,” Devereaux finished. “We questioned him, you can believe me. He didn’t know what was on the tape.”

  “But he brought it to Michael.”

  Devereaux stared at her, at the deep pool of her Lithuanian eyes. She was as delicate as porcelain and the blue in her black hair framed her oval face as perfectly as if she were a statue and had always stood on this spot in the little courtyard.

  Something jarred him. He closed his eyes and let memory go back a few moments. There, it was there. He heard her voice and played it back.

  “He brought it to Michael,” Devereaux repeated. He had only slept once in nearly three days, but it had refreshed him, and he could think now as he could not have yesterday. He brought it to Michael of all people.

  The car pulled out of the last space at the foot of the street.

  She made a sound.

  He turned and saw the car.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dawn filled every shadow. Streets glistened in sullen, damp light. The city was empty, sleeping through the rainy hour of morning, dreaming. Rena looked at the sleeping apartment buildings and wondered about life behind the gauze curtains, about the disheveled beds, men and women caught in sleep and dreams, about lovers turning over to their women, touching them, caressing them with their tongues and little kisses until desire overcame sleep and dreams and they were unguilty children indulging in pleasure.…

  “I love him,” Rena said. It was meant to explain everything.

  Devereaux stared at the face of the beautiful girl and saw the car and saw Rita Macklin saying the same thing. She had come to him a long time ago and said things about love, even knowing that he believed words were for lies. But that was far away. This was death on a gray Belgium morning, a dead man stuffed under a porch until only his hands protruded.…

  Devereaux gently held her and then slipped his hands through the opening of her raincoat and held her thin waist. He cupped his hands behind her back to pull her close to him. The gesture was intimate, arrogant. The movement startled Rena; she started to pull away.

  “No,” he said, watching the car over her shoulder. “Let’s see if he passes.”

  She understood. It was morning and time for lovers to part—reluctantly. A common sight in this French-speaking city. She buried her face on his shoulder. She closed her eyes. She smelled his clothing, his male smell. All men carried different smells, but she delighted in their differences, especially men who wore no perfume or cologne, who let their scents mingle with their clothes, with the weather, with the time of day.…

  The car was a washed-blue Peugeot and its headlights were off. It moved almost without sound; the immense low pressure of the night muted the faint putt-putt of the engine crawling in first gear.

  “Hold me,” he said, softly as a lover.

  She put her hands and arms around him. She was so close to him, as close as she had been to Michael, but all she felt was her knotted fear. They were pretending to hide by holding each other. Would it fool anyone?

  He took his right hand from her back. His hand was still hidden by her coat.

  He wore a worn, blue corduroy jacket that was damp with rain. He reached under his jacket.

  His hand reached again through the opening in the front of her raincoat. His hand returned to her waist but not to embrace her. She clung to him almost with desperation. He held something very hard in his right hand. The metal chilled her and she knew it was a weapon.

  The blue car slowed as it approached the entry of the courtyard. The driver rolled down his side window. He stared at the two lovers.

  The driver was Russian with a grizzled growth on his fat cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot. He was damned tired. He had taken a little vodka to keep him company, and maybe he had dozed off. Maybe he felt guilty about it. Maybe he wanted to make sure everything was all right.

  Arkady was supposed to be in the courtyard at the back of the building, but he was probably asleep; it hadn’t been easy the last two days with only two men on the job. Control didn’t understand that, none of those fucking bureaucrats ever understood the field.

  Look at him. His hands under her coat. Getting a good feel for himself, rubbing her all over. It made you crazy to watch another guy having his way. It reminded you of the times when you had girls. It reminded you that you were sitting in a goddamn car all night in the rain, and here he was, probably was screwing her all night, sleeping with her, putting his hands and tongue all over her, nice and warm in the morning—

  Where the hell was Arkady? Didn’t answer the radio, sleeping in the courtyard. Missing the action with these lovers.

  Lovers.

  The agent in the car pushed the brake pedal. He had sat at the end of the street, and they had not come from the opposite direction—he was sure of that. So where had they come from?

  Standing in the entry of that particular courtyard. He couldn’t see the girl, she wore a scarf over her hair. Dark hair. So what, that doesn’t mean anything, ninety percent of the girls have dark hair—

  He slipped the pistol out of his coat pocket and unsnapped the safety. He put the car into park.

  On the other hand—

  He brought up the pistol almost to the level of the side window.

  Devereaux felt her form beneath his hand. Felt her breath on his neck. Felt her breasts molded against his body. Felt the loveliness of this woman in her fear and in the smell of her freshness, and he brought the pistol up. Under her coat. Until the last moment.

  He saw the pistol at the level of the side window. The driver was opening the door.

  He had not told Rena the truth. The agent crumpled inside the courtyard was completely dead, without any doubt.

  He fired once from the Beretta pressed against Rena’s waist. The round bulge
d the back of her coat and tore a small, dirty hole in the fabric. She started, even screamed like the bluebird. It was as though the shot had gone through her. The recoil bruised her lowest rib. Her eyes were wide, and she held him very tight in that moment.

  The second agent—the driver—fell forward. Black scorched his cheek. There was almost no blood. He fell forward, and his left arm pushed the automatic transmission lever. The car slipped into slow reverse, describing a small semicircle across the narrow street until it crashed quietly into a parked Mercedes. The driver’s door was half-open, and he slumped out of the car.

  It began to rain hard and morning became darker.

  He looked down at her, and there were raindrops or tears on her pale, delicate face.

  13

  MALMÖ

  Jaynes lay in bed. He was fully clothed and quite sweaty under the covers. He was past the point of absolutely raucous snoring, which came early in the pass-out; his snoring was routine now, droning like a chain saw.

  It was two hours into Monday. They had sent him payment via American Express on Saturday morning, and there had been no stopping him since.

  The conference was successful from the standpoint of supplying the large London Sunday newspaper with enough drivel to fill six columns and enough lies to appear plausible. Jaynes still had the old touch, still had the old connections. At least, at times.

  Jaynes had celebrated Sunday in the way he celebrated every day in his life. He began with no good intentions and proceeded to follow them. He ate the barbaric Scandinavian breakfast, or at least as much as he could stomach: soft-boiled egg, hard rolls, dark crackers, tasteless pale cheese (what he wouldn’t have given for a good cheddar!), and some sort of salami. He would have preferred bangers and toast and a Bloody Mary, but the restorative juices did not start flowing early in the Swedish countryside.

  The hotel was cheap and not very close to the city center. He decided to stay over the weekend and go up to Stockholm and dredge some new Sunday newspaper sensations out of the Olof Palme murder of three years ago. Palme was the leftist Swedish prime minister who was gunned down as he walked home with his wife from a movie. The ineptness of the Swedish National Police had just about obliterated any chance of satisfactorily solving the case until international intelligence connected the killers to Iranian extremists. The Swedes had arrested someone else. Couldn’t a journalist as talented as Evelyn Jaynes shake the Palme tree for a few more coconuts of scandal? The Palme tree. He had offered the pun twice during drunken Sunday, and both times had managed to offend a table full of Swedes. Bloody people had absolutely no sense of humor.