by Bill Granger
He yawned and finally gave up. Going to the couch in his office, he stretched out on it, and in a moment, fell asleep. He did not even remove his shoes.
But his last waking thought was of Devereaux.
Call. Damn you. Call.
At the precise moment that Hanley had decided Green was the traitor, Green pushed through the door of The Orange Man public house in Wingate Crescent, off the Marylebone Road.
It was Sunday noon in London, five hours ahead of Washington.
The usual pleasant crowd was already there, stoking up on pink gins and pints of Bass Ale at the bar. They all smiled at the young American and they made way for him and he exchanged friendly sallies and pleasantries; copies of the Observer and Times and Sunday Express were scattered on the low tables. The atmosphere was like an American Sunday brunch but with more of a sense of celebration; these were the upper middle classes and Sunday in winter in London was a cozy, comfortable time.
Green ordered and the bartender, taking a beautiful, round, stemmed glass from the rack above the bar, held it beneath the upside-down bottle of Grant’s whisky. He pushed twice on the measure, letting the drams of amber liquid fall into the glass, then put the glass on the bar in front of Green and let the young man mix his own water. Green drank it without ice, in the English manner.
There were many things about Green that were in the English manner. He had only been in London nine months, but it had seemed longer to him; he had let his admiration for things English develop into a quiet mania. His clothes were from Savile Row, quiet dark pinstripes or smoothly fitting Harris tweeds, custom-made. He could not begin his mornings without thick, black tea and cold toast and the Times and the Telegraph. He even thought he might buy a bowler hat this winter, though he secretly feared he would look ridiculous in it.
This was the part of the assignment that had most pleased him. They had emphasized he must “keep up appearances.” There was a generous expense account, fortified with a gold American Express card that provided an “open sesame” to the whims of his purchases.
He was twenty-six years old, and had never been overseas before.
Green was the nephew of Senator Hubert Green of Ohio, a member of the Senate Agricultural Committee who, incidentally, oversaw part of the budget for R Section.
Green had been attracted to intelligence work while still in the Navy. His father had insisted on the Navy after college. A nice Midwestern college where Green did well enough; “the Navy,” his father had insisted, and he had gone along. Green was a mild man, really, and he had gone along with his father all his life. And with anyone else who had decidedly strong ideas about things.
The Navy had not worked out well. He had been a bit of a failure as an ensign, and by mutual agreement—with the aid of Uncle Hubert—he had been allowed to quietly resign. It wasn’t that Green was not conscientious; he was, almost too much so. But he could not seem to handle simple assignments in a simple manner. His very sense of duty seemed to get in the way of direct solutions to direct problems. Finally, even the Navy had come to realize it, especially when a series of blunders were laid down—coldly—in his 201 file and his last commander had read the file and then had begun to watch Green and then harass Green and, at last, drive Green a little crazy.
Not crazy, really. No. But a little nervous. Just a little bit overwhelmed by events.
But that was in the past, nearly three years ago. Uncle Hubert had understood when Green told him he wanted to continue in intelligence work.
Green had tried to get into the CIA. But the CIA was a special club and it was not particularly afraid of the Ohio senator on the Agricultural Committee.
Green did not know then that the CIA was staffed at the upper reaches almost exclusively by an “old boy” network every bit as closed and foolish as that which had pervaded British Intelligence in the years between—and immediately after—the Second World War. The Kim Philbys and Burgesses of the CIA were there and so were the Graham Greenes and other amateur patriots who “knew someone” from Yale or Groton or Harvard and dabbled at intelligence-gathering. The CIA drew heavily on members of the Establishment. The CIA was a club and Green could not get in.
At first.
Uncle Hubert had managed to get Green assigned to R Section, and he had routinely passed through the training program. Green was bright enough and his Midwestern education did not matter since his uncle was a powerful man on the subcommittee charged with overseeing R Section’s budget.
In fact, Green had done quite well and had been rapidly promoted within the Section. There had been a year with the African desk in which he had brilliantly coordinated a series of seemingly unimportant reports which first showed the Cuban presence in the Horn of Africa.
During the period in Washington, Green was happiest. His work was sufficient and it was interesting to him. A bit dull, but then, perhaps Green felt most comfortable with things that were a little dull. He was conscientious and when that quality of his character did not involve dealing with enlisted men or the vagaries of military life, it made him an outstanding worker in a limited way.
Green worked to the level of his capabilities.
He had an apartment in Georgetown and he had a pretty girlfriend. They had met one afternoon on the Ellipse while he took his lunch hour. She was friendly and pretty and not too demanding of him; Green was inherently shy and a little frightened of women.
After a while, he thought he was in love.
For a long time, almost up to the time he left for the London station job, he didn’t understand that she was part of it all. Part of the plan.
That hurt him at first, a little, but Green’s love was not so deep, he came to realize. She had genuinely liked him, she told him, and she still did. Perhaps they could see each other again when he was posted back to Washington.
In the meantime, she explained, there were certain things he would be expected to do.
Green said he could not be a traitor.
They had said he was not a traitor. After all, he had wanted to work for the CIA in the beginning; he must consider that he had always worked for the CIA.
Green listened to them.
The R Section had been set up in the old days, they explained, when the CIA had overextended itself. He certainly knew the history of it all.
Green had listened.
Now, the President wanted to get rid of R Section. He had reformed the CIA. The CIA was now completely under control of the elected officials to the point where the President could lobby to abolish the R Section. But the people in the Section were, naturally enough, obstinate. Even some senators who had powerful ties. Like Uncle Hubert? asked Green.
Yes, said the man he had first spoken to. The girl had been there as well and that had made him more comfortable. The man was very friendly. He was open and kind; he had made a drink for Green and his large brown eyes had looked Green directly in the face. He had been honest about Uncle Hubert. Hubert was an enemy of the CIA and Green knew it, and the CIA man did not try to hide the fact. They were being honest with him.
The President felt that R Section had become too powerful. That its loyalty was in question, according to the CIA man.
Green protested.
No, it did not have to do with the information they gathered; that was direct enough. But it had to do with what R Section did with the information. R Section was manipulating Congress and the country for its own ends, using legitimate information in a perverted way.
Even Green had been, unwittingly, a part of the process. The report on the presence of Cuban troops in the African horn. Why had it been suppressed by R Section, only to be finally brought to the public’s attention by the CIA?
Green had wondered about that as well. It had been something of a coup for the African desk but he had been told to say nothing about it, and, in fact, Hanley had admonished him twice about being certain that no word of the report leaked to others in the Section.
Green did not know that the President—engaged in a del
icate negotiation involving the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Ethiopia—had ordered the report suppressed. Or that the CIA, perversely enough, had found the report and leaked it, thus freezing the Soviet stance and the Cuban presence.
The interview with the CIA man had continued for several days at different locations. Green came to trust the man’s frank, open manner and he was a little envious of the other’s familiarity with French restaurants and wine lists and important names.
If the truth were known, Green was something of a snob, and the rejection by the CIA had always bothered him. But now the CIA was wooing Green. It was flattering.
And finally, Green had acquiesced. There was money, too, but he didn’t do it for that.
There had been the first little bit of information. Not from Africa. But on the Section. On Hanley. And on Miss Dickens, Hanley’s secretary. About Hanley’s luncheon habits.
They knew most of it, of course. But Green was coming their way and they were leading him gently.
And then the assignment in London. And the contact with the embassy and the CIA staff quartered there.
The CIA man he dealt with was Ruckles.
Ruckles was a Virginian, soft-spoken, with an amused chuckle just waiting at the edge of a conversation to break in. A Navy man, like Green. A Princeton man.
They didn’t talk about college.
They had chosen The Orange Man because it was a safe pub. No one they knew ever went there and they met there infrequently, only when Green gave Ruckles an urgent signal or the other way around. They had each signaled the other on Saturday.
Green took his second glass of whisky to the table in the corner of the saloon. He waited and fingered his tie. The stripe was a Cambridge school tie, Ruckles had pointed out. Green didn’t care; he said he had only bought it for the colors. But that was not true. The tie was Cambridge and it was part of his English wardrobe, part of his other self, the self only he saw.
After a few moments, Ruckles came, carrying a glass of dark ale to the table. He nodded to Green but he was not smiling.
“Where is she now?”
“In the safe house. She hasn’t moved out of it.”
“We have to get her out of it.”
“I don’t know how.”
Ruckles looked at him. “To meet Devereaux, of course. We’ll message Blake House and tell her to meet Devereaux at Victoria Station. We could arrange it at Victoria Station.”
“But that’s murder.”
Ruckles looked at him. “It’s a job. An elimination job. She’s betrayed us. She may have betrayed you.”
Green tried to smile. “But it’s not betrayal, is it? I mean, we’re all on the same side.”
“She’s not on our side anymore.”
“But this is crazy. This is a game.”
Ruckles stared at him.
Green felt giddy. They wanted to kill her. He had signaled them because she represented danger. He knew that as soon as Devereaux sent her back to him. It was only when he talked to Ruckles on his urgent Saturday mission to the embassy that he understood she was part of the “ghost Section.” Ruckles did not tell him that Elizabeth did not know she worked for the CIA.
Ruckles said, quietly, “If they—if Devereaux—discovers you, he will kill you. It is that much of a game. You’ll be eliminated by them.”
“But I’m not a traitor. I’m serving the nation. I’m serving the Agency, the President.…”
Ruckles nodded. Green was a little on edge. Ruckles didn’t want that. He wanted Green safe and a little too sure of him, of his own rightness.
“The Section is riddled with traitors. Real traitors. To the nation. It is not a game to them. We now know that Elizabeth was a double agent, infiltrating us, learning our secrets so she could betray us to Devereaux. And you know about Devereaux.”
Green sipped furiously at his drink. There did not seem to be enough of it.
The whole thing was hard to believe, but, in the end, he had been forced by the facts to accept the truth about Devereaux. Devereaux was a traitor, a double agent. Green had wanted to tell Hanley, to go to the Chief; Ruckles had persuaded him not to. Devereaux was not dangerous as long as the Agency knew he was a traitor; he was useful to the Agency.
Green thought he understood. Devereaux had betrayed the United States in Asia. He had been one of the many small factors that had led to the losing of that war; he had sent damaging and dangerous reports about the situation in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam which had led the government and the military to make gross miscalculations.
The evidence had convinced Green, finally, and had angered him.
Green was a quiet patriot in his own way.
Now Ruckles said Elizabeth was one of them as well. He felt shy with her in Blake House; he did not know what to say to her. He had done as Ruckles instructed him—and tried to learn what she had told Devereaux about the “ghost Section” and about the Agency but she would not respond. He wondered if she knew he worked for the Agency. He wondered if he was in danger.
The thought chilled him. Danger was alien to him. The reports, the work of intelligence in Washington, the games they had learned at the training school… none of it had been dangerous, none of it had, at one level, even been real.
The bright, polite, hearty afternoon talk of the others in the pub swirled around him. They were dressed well, dressed for Sunday, in tweeds and sweaters. Good fellowship, fed by good English ale and good Scotch whisky.
Green stared at the others for a moment like a person who knows he will always be on the outside.
“Here’s the message,” Ruckles said at last. He handed it to Green.
A cable from Belfast. It was brief, cold:
ELIZABETH. VICTORIA STATION 4 PM TO DOVER. LAST SECOND-CLASS CAR. D.
“Why would he go to Dover?” Green asked.
“Why not? What does she know? Perhaps he’ll meet her at the station. She will go.” He said the last as a declaration but there was a note of worry in it.
“I don’t know. I’m not… very good, that is… talking to her.” He blushed. “I think I’d like another whisky.” He got up.
Ruckles looked at him. “By all means.” Green was cracking up, he thought. He had read Green’s file. He knew about the Navy, and about Green’s psychological profile. He knew about Green’s drinking and his problems with women.
Green brought the glass back and sat down again.
They were silent for a moment.
“What will you do?” Green asked.
“Do? I won’t do anything. One of our other men, I suppose.”
“What will you do? You know what I mean.” Green looked at him.
Ruckles smiled. “We’ll get a plumber to stop the leak.”
Green paled.
“Eliminate a traitor. A traitor, Green.” Ruckles added.
“Eliminate. It doesn’t sound so bad when you say ‘eliminate.’ But you’ll kill her just the same.”
Ruckles looked at him. “It doesn’t affect you, Green.”
Green laughed a high shrill laugh. “It doesn’t affect me? I have to get her out of the house. It doesn’t affect me?”
Green felt trapped, panicked. It was as though he were in a submarine under tons and tons of water, pressed down by the water, surrounded by it, his every breath dependent on the thin supply of oxygen while the sea around probed at the vessel, looking for the way in. Green had never been on a submarine.
He took the bogus cable and placed it in the pocket of his Harris tweed jacket.
“This afternoon,” said Ruckles quietly.
It had to be done. It had to be seen through.
“This afternoon,” repeated Green. And then he finished the glass of whisky in front of him.
18
CLARE
Lynch was a little man, scarcely five feet tall, wrapped in a dark jacket and a cloth cap, and his face peered out from beneath the bill of the cap with the expression of a startled rat. His eyes protruded unnaturally from thei
r sockets and his nose took as many twists as a country highway.
Devereaux stood behind Cashel while the Dublin policeman questioned the little man.
Lynch owned the small filling station in the village and he remembered the red Fiat Bambino driven there by the fellow from Belfast on Friday very well.
Certainly he knew the fellow was from Belfast. Didn’t he know an Ulsterman’s way of speaking? The Ulstermen take the music out of the tongue; besides, when he, Lynch, had lapsed into Irish to describe the weather, the Ulsterman had looked at him curiously—he didn’t even know Irish! That was the fault of the education of the North—they didn’t require the Irish. Which was a great sadness, the little man said.
But Cashel persisted quietly. He wasn’t from Londonderry then? It was also in Ulster.
Derry, croaked the little man. Was this Dublin copper such a bloody sympathizer to the English that he would call ancient Derry by its hateful London name?
Not that, soothed Cashel, who apologized to a true patriot.
Mollified, Lynch went on: “I knew he was from Belfast by his way of talkin’.” And when Cashel looked disappointed by the answer, the little man added: “And by his motorcar insurance form.”
“His form?”
“It was a rental car.”
“Indeed,” said Cashel. “So we thought it would be.”
“Ah, but he left it and I needed t’see if he owned it.”
“And why?”
“Because of the damage.”
“Ah.”
“Me helper was there, moppin’ as he was, and he bumped the tool kit inter the bumper and gives it a scratch. So I looked inter the motorcar t’see if she was rented. It was that. So I gave it no thought because they’ll not hold him t’damages for it. He had the insurance y’see. Me conscience is clear.”
Cashel rubbed his finger alongside the edge of his mustache. “Would you know who was the rental agent then?”
“I would that,” said the little man. “Yer askin’ a lot of questions, then.”
Cashel waited.
“And him there what’s mute. A Sassenach?”
“An American.”
