by Bill Granger
“Is that him?”
Weiss clicked off three shots with the telescopic camera while McCarthy stared down at the man through Bushnell binoculars. Their room was dark, and they were certain they could not be seen at the window.
Weiss looked through the lens of his camera and said, “Yeah. That’s the asshole.” He looked at the sheet of photographs in front of him.
“You call,” McCarthy said.
Weiss picked up the telephone. He gave a number to the operator. He waited a long time and hummed to himself while he waited.
“This is Bluebird. Our party arrived at 0809 hours outside the Resident’s apartment. It’s Designated Hitter. Yeah. We’re sure it’s him. We’re watching. He’s not gone up. Yes. Yes. Okay.”
He replaced the receiver.
“What did Uncle Vaughn say?”
Weiss’s eyes glittered. He couldn’t help it. It was the moment you knew could come if you were willing to take the chance. When they went into counterintelligence, they knew there would be black jobs like this, and it was the same feeling you got being a paratrooper or a marine hitting the beach. He removed his weapon and clicked the safety. “If he makes contact, we make our determination,” Weiss said. “Designated Hitter is going to have friends he didn’t know he had.”
The man in the street called Designated Hitter on the photo proof sheet had disappeared.
The snow was leaving little traces on the sidewalks. Gray reluctantly moved into black shadows. Malmö was frozen and still.
“You think we’re gonna need that?” McCarthy asked. There was the same glitter in his eyes and it showed in his voice. He looked at Weiss’s Beretta.
“What do you think this is about? A fucking traitor. A guy with a piece, a hitter…” Weiss never swore.
“Yeah.”
“He’s killed. He took out one of ours ten years ago in London, but he had the clout, he could wipe it out. That’s the way it works.”
“Fucking dirty son of a bitch,” McCarthy said to make himself feel better, to get pumped for the game.
The tapes started up at the sound. A door was opened. Rolf said something they couldn’t make out.
“I want to talk to you about the tape,” said the other voice.
“That’s it,” Weiss said.
“That’s it,” McCarthy said. They looked at each other. They almost quivered with the force of the adrenaline surging in them.
“They knew this was gonna go down.”
“This is going down now.”
“This is going down,” Weiss repeated. They were very excited. Weiss popped up and put the gun in his harness. McCarthy buttoned his coat over his own piece. It was going down now. They were eyeing each other, making sure they measured up, making sure that no fear was showing.
Down the stairs and across the street. Weiss slipped on the snowy street and caught himself.
A car turned into the street, went to the corner, disappeared.
The bicycle shop was closed.
Inside the door, they were very quiet. Up the stairs carefully. The walls were painted brown.
They had guns drawn. They stood on each side of the door.
McCarthy kicked it in, gun covering the room, down on one knee, Weiss standing right behind him.
Devereaux turned.
He saw the guns and the faces of young men. He stood very still, his arms apart from his body.
Rolf was white.
“You’re under arrest,” McCarthy said.
Devereaux stared at him. His face showed curiosity.
After a moment: “Who are you?”
“You know who we are,” Weiss said. “Hit the floor, do the spread.”
Devereaux knelt on the floor and then spread out his hands. He was very calm and slow in all his moves.
He felt the first cuff and then the second. They removed his piece from the belt holster. Also the knife he always carried in his right pocket.
McCarthy pulled him up by the right shoulder. McCarthy was big, almost linebacker size, though he had never played in college.
“You’re coming with us,” he said.
“Do I get to call my lawyer?”
For a moment, McCarthy stared. Then he let the dead thing overcome the glitter in his eyes. Devereaux saw the change.
“You think this is funny.”
“My identification. You can get it, left-hand pocket. Where’s yours? Or doesn’t Langley trust you to carry cards yet?”
McCarthy hit him, and it staggered Devereaux. Rolf stood in his undershirt and shorts in the middle of the first of three rooms and didn’t say a word.
“Fucking smart guy. You wasted one of ours.”
Devereaux said nothing.
“London. Ten years ago.”
“So you’re Langley.”
“So you’re shit out of luck,” McCarthy said.
“Let me give you a number in London,” Devereaux said in the same flat voice.
McCarthy said, “Come on, asshole.”
Rolf said, “What is this about?”
“Come on, asshole,” Weiss said.
They went down the stairs with Weiss in front and McCarthy in back. McCarthy slapped Devereaux on the head, just because he was so pumped up and he had to make contact and hurt someone.
“Kidnapping is against the law in Sweden,” Devereaux said. “You’ve heard of the law, even at Langley.”
“You’re a riot, a regular fucking riot,” McCarthy said. The vulgarisms were coming on fast now.
“I don’t get to call my lawyer?”
McCarthy wanted to hit him, just to shut him up, but they were on the street now. They started toward the corner. They had the rental Saab at the corner, and he would go into the trunk and be taken out to the airport, where he would be turned over to the others. They both guessed he would be shipped back to Washington by extraordinary means. They didn’t know about that part of it, but they wouldn’t have cared if they did.
“You get in the trunk.”
Devereaux decided. “No.”
McCarthy took a step, but he didn’t have the gun in hand. Devereaux’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Devereaux kicked McCarthy in the lower belly. The tip of his shoe caught the soft flesh between the navel and the scrotum. The pain was profound. McCarthy retched onto his black shoes.
Weiss, who was thinner and smaller, moved to one side and grabbed Devereaux’s right arm. He was very strong and pulled at Devereaux to knock him off his feet.
To his surprise, Devereaux willingly left his feet. The weight of his body crashed against Weiss, and Weiss was partially impaled on a protruding fin from an ancient Peugeot. The chrome went one inch into the flesh of his lower left back. He cried out. Devereaux fell against him again and shoved his knee into Weiss’s groin, compacting his testicles against the fender of the same Peugeot. Weiss felt white pain for about two seconds.
McCarthy staggered into Devereaux, and Devereaux kicked him in the belly again with the toe of his right shoe.
The little spectacle was over in twenty seconds. Weiss was crumpled on the walk, clutching his back and balls, groaning. McCarthy was on his feet now, deathly white, his Beretta held shakily in hand.
That is when they heard applause above the silence of the snow.
One man stood across the street, slapping his palms together. Grinning.
Devereaux stared at him.
But there was no mistaking him.
McCarthy turned the muzzle on the audience of one, and the applause died until it ended with a final, funereal clap.
“Get in the fucking trunk,” McCarthy said to Devereaux. The tough tone wasn’t there to carry the words.
“Jesus Christ, son, don’t you see he doesn’t want to go?” said the man across the street.
McCarthy, frightened and sick, stared at Weiss on the ground and at the witness. Don’t worry about witnesses, Uncle Vaughn had said.
“Get out of here,” McCarthy said.
“I know guys like
him,” the witness said. “You just can’t convince them all the time to do what they’re told. Stubborn streak, son, you gotta back off from it.”
This was absurd.
McCarthy grabbed Devereaux’s arm and spun him around and slammed him against the car. McCarthy opened the trunk.
The witness crossed the street.
“You back off,” McCarthy hissed. He had practiced that for years. He had learned the technique of coldness in Langley, and the cop’s technique of showing absolute violent hatred to get all but the craziest or bravest out of the way.
And he saw the eyes of the witness.
Mean little eyes even if the face was smiling.
“Get outta here,” McCarthy said. Weiss groaned.
He kept coming.
“You want trouble?”
Henry McGee hit him. McCarthy had a pistol in his hand, but Henry busted him in the mouth and broke four teeth. McCarthy knew he did not have the pistol anymore and was on the sidewalk and the back of his head hurt worse than the front. Jesus, it hurt all over.
And then he was up in the air and down, crashing into the trunk, blood on his nose.
And just as suddenly Weiss was dumped on top of him. The trunk lid closed with a click, and they were in cold, frightening darkness, tangled with legs and arms and the stench of vomit. A minute before it had been all adrenaline and toughness, and now it was fear in the dark, groaning bodies on top of each other. McCarthy squinted with shame. Locked in his own fucking trunk!
Henry stared at Devereaux.
Devereaux waited. His hands were still cuffed behind his back.
“I got here just in time.”
“The Lone Ranger.”
“You surprised?”
“No,” Devereaux said. “Not from the moment you kidnapped Rena Taurus.”
Henry smiled. It was a good smile that made women like him at first. Only later did women understand the irony behind the smile.
“Good witness back in Bruges, huh? The woman at the hotel. Well, I was hoping she’d remember me, but I wasn’t gonna count on it. Got your girl friend. You got taste, I can see that. Fine piece of ass, if you ask me.”
“She’s not involved.”
“Bullshit, Devereaux. I’m an old bullshitter and I know it when I step in it. So. We reached the same conclusion, you and me.”
“What conclusion is that?”
“Shit,” Henry said again, shaking his head. “I guess these keys in the trunk lock… yeah, this here looks like the key.” He unlocked the cuffs.
Devereaux did not make a move. The snow was harder now. They heard noises from the trunk. Henry smiled at Devereaux and pitched the keys across the street. He banged the palm of his hand on the lid of the trunk, and the noises stopped for a moment.
“CIA? Puppies. Watching Rolf, huh? Whatta you think this is about, then, Devereaux?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, either. I thought I knew but I don’t know. That’s the truth for a change. I was going home to Mother Russia, and then I got my chain jerked a couple of times, and now I get deeper into something I don’t quite understand. I think I’m getting set up to take a fall, and I’m just not comfortable with that. Then I thought about you in that room in Chicago, asking me about Skarda. Now, what the fuck would you know about something like that, that wasn’t even operational? Then I thought, Why the fuck am I Mr. Guy-in-the-Middle?”
Devereaux waited. Henry lied. Henry told the stories that kept changing, and Devereaux never believed a word he said. But what if he wasn’t lying now?
“I don’t like to be the hare at the dog track, even if it’s for the noble causes of revolution and perestroika. I been just trying to get a handle on this thing myself. You aced those two assholes in Brussels, and now I returned you the favor with these Langley puppies in the car trunk. Hell, I’ll kill them for you if you want to make it really even steven. That was careless of you, letting them get the drop on you. You must be getting old.”
“Why was Langley watching Rolf?”
Henry McGee’s eyes glittered with a storyteller’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, now you’re starting to ask the questions in the right way. What were these puppies supposed to do?”
But they both thought they knew the answer to that.
Devereaux said, “Where is Rena Taurus?”
“Bless you, she’s safe enough. That girl is really pretty, you know that. Got those big eyes can look so lost and scared my heart just goes out to her. She looked scared at me, and it was a turn-on, I can tell you. Like to think of them as the frail sex, you know.”
“You’re a little sick, Henry,” Devereaux said.
“Goddamn. I know that, openly admit it. But that isn’t what we’re talking about. Not right now. Right now we’re talking about you and me and maybe Rena and certainly ol’ Rolf Gustafson up the street a ways.”
“What are we talking about exactly?”
And Henry’s voice was flat, without corners for a moment. The tone surprised both men.
“About a deal, Devereaux.”
24
ROME
“Eminence?”
Softly, with deference.
The voice cut through the dusk of sleep.
The old man opened his eyes in bed and stared at the dark as though he did not comprehend it. He blinked as he sat up.
The young priest, dressed in black cassock, bowed to the prelate and carried the telephone receiver to the plug on the ocher wall.
The cardinal sat in shadows. The red drapes were closed but a slit of light peeked through between them.
“Who is it, Antonio?”
“Signor Michael Hampton,” the young priest said.
Alberto Cardinal Ludovico reached for the receiver. The young priest held the rest of the phone as if it represented a chalice.
“Hello?”
“Thank God,” said the voice at the other end of the line.
The cardinal glanced at the young priest and made a motion for him to put the telephone on the coverlet. Antonio bowed again and withdrew from the large, dark bedroom.
The cardinal wore an old-fashioned nightshirt with a faintly ruffled collar. He rested a bony hand on the rich fabric of the coverlet and waited.
“I am at Milano, at the train station,” Michael Hampton said. “It was the express for Rome. From Paris. But when we got through the mountains, the engine broke down, just my damned luck.… I have to get to you.”
Cardinal Ludovico closed his eyes to better see the young American translator. So the English journalist had been right in all his parts—Michael was in trouble, and there was the matter of the tape recording. Above all, the matter of the tape recording.
“Michael,” Cardinal Ludovico said. “How may I help you in your trouble?”
“At the conference in Malmö… I was given a secret tape recording, something they didn’t want to let out. I can explain it later, it’s so bizarre.… Men in Berlin tried to kill me. And running day and night—”
“Michael, Michael.” Gently. “When can you be at Rome? Take an airplane.”
“No. It’s safer. Cheaper, actually, we’re running on cash because they’ve been following me through my credit card—”
“Michael, is there someone with you?”
Pause. The voice was clouded with sudden suspicion. “Why? Why do you think someone is with me?”
“You said ‘we.’ I thought someone might be with you.”
Another pause. He heard the background noise of the train terminus in Milano. Most of the trains that linked the rest of Italy and Yugoslavia and Greece with the countries of northern Europe found their way through Milano, and the terminal never slept.
“A girl with me. She helped me.”
“Miss Taurus,” the cardinal said.
Another pause, this time lasting more than a few seconds.
“Michael? Are you there?”
“Cardinal?”
“Michael…”
“Wh
y did you say that name? You said that name.”
Cardinal Ludovico felt the chill of morning in his old bones. He’d been too eager and made a simple mistake, and Michael had caught it. There was no lie at hand to cover it. “Please, Michael, come to Roma and talk to me.”
But he heard Michael talk to someone. The background muffled his voice, and then he heard Michael speaking German.
Then he heard another very specific sound. A German voice that was harsh and sudden. He did not speak German well and he could not understand.
“She says I shouldn’t trust you.”
“Who? Who are you speaking of, Michael? How can I help you if you don’t trust me?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Michael said. The voice was tinny now. “Maybe there is no sanctuary.”
“What have I done to make you mistrust me?” The cardinal gripped the ornate ivory-colored receiver very tightly. “My son, our dealings have always been honest.”
Michael said, “You knew I was in trouble. And you mentioned Rena. Rena betrayed me, and for all I know, they’ve got to you.”
“You must trust me, Michael, because I have never lied to you,” Cardinal Ludovico said. He waited.
Again, the harsh young German voice could be heard, and then Michael turned to the phone again. “I have to think, Cardinal.”
“All right.” Gently.
Cardinal Ludovico purged the anxiety from his voice and tried another approach. “As you wish, Michael. I have no intention of ever forcing you. I mention Miss Taurus to you because I know of her. Of your… interest in her. I have not been the secretary of our congregation for these years without being careful.”
The soft words were like a sponge dropped into the sea. Each sponge soaked a little of the sea and became like it. “I must trust you as you must trust me, but since you are the giver of information, I must know your friends. Miss Taurus is your friend and she is a translator at the European Commission in Brussels. I had to be careful when I… hired you, Michael. Miss Taurus interested me to that extent. Only that extent.”
Cardinal Ludovico lied with all the sincerity he mustered when telling the truth.
“Miss Taurus, Michael, is from Lithuanian parents, and the church is concerned by everything that goes on in that most Catholic country. We had to be careful.”
