League of Terror

by Bill Granger

  Trevor stared at him.

  “Except for the poor schmucks who decided to take that plane to Chicago on Friday,” Henry said, and chuckled.

  37

  This is what happened four hours before Henry’s meeting with Trevor Armstrong.

  The bell to the flat off Maida Vale rang. Shrill and long. Marie padded to the door in stocking feet and pushed aside the gauze curtain. She saw the red-haired Irish girl through the glass panel. She was wearing a light raincoat. She did not see the Peugeot up the street. Gloomy morning made the street beyond the door dingy.

  Marie opened the door and stepped back, as though expecting an attack. She didn’t know what she expected. Not from the moment she had found the Smirnoff bottle in the refrigerator and the radio receiver hidden in a jar of caviar. Or whatever it was. She only knew Henry had sent this girl to her. She only knew that Henry did not intend for her to live very much longer.

  “Me name’s Maureen, I’m from him. You were expecting me?” The last words turned on a high note and it sounded like a question and maybe it wasn’t.

  “I don’t know if I should be expecting you,” Marie Dreiser said. The little rat girl was dressed in a plain black jumpsuit that covered her thin frame in an unflattering way. She knew what she was, had always known she was nothing, just a thing, and she had chosen to wear the jumpsuit for this meeting because she wanted everyone in the world to know she was just nothing. So why was it worth Henry McGee’s trouble to use her and not discard her but actually kill her? It made her angry with Henry for the first time. She wasn’t worth killing and if her life was all she had, then Henry shouldn’t take the last thing left in the world.

  They stood in the entryway, unmoving. The door was open.

  “You’re lettin’ the chill in,” the Irish girl said.

  Marie stared at her for a moment. The girl was taller and heavier than Marie but that didn’t bother her. Marie had survived all these years—what was it, nineteen or twenty or twenty-one years?—and she would survive longer. Henry McGee was a man and she had survived men. Even loved one man who was too weak to survive. Even been saved by one man who was as strong as she was. If Marie could survive in a world of men, she wouldn’t be afraid of any woman.

  Marie brushed past the girl to close the door. Then she turned to Maureen.

  “What do you do for Henry? Do you kill for him or do you fuck for him?”

  A latent sense of guilt and Catholicism blushed Maureen’s face.

  Marie smiled. “Or both? Do you do both for him? He’d like that. Just remember the day comes when you’re used up and then he’ll send you away by final means.”

  “I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “Didn’t I use good English?” Marie was grinning at the Irish girl, putting her on the defensive, advancing a foot, standing very close to her. Her voice growled and grated, the sound of a sewer beast driven to a corner of the underground and unable to escape. “I know everything and I know you’ve come to kill me and I want to know if you’re doing it because he fucked you so good or because you’re being paid for it.”

  “Jesus,” Maureen said. She took a step back. This was too close. She had only used the knife once before, and that time on a British soldier who had wandered off into the wrong part of Belfast. That time, that night in Belfast, he had fondled her and kissed her and when he closed his eyes to remember the girl he left behind, she had cut his throat and been greatly surprised by all the blood that came out all of a sudden. But at least he was a bloody soldier, not just a girl, someone she didn’t even know, someone she had to execute to fulfill her rite of passage. This was too close.

  “Come on, love, don’t you want a cup of tea before we get down to it?”

  The maniac was grinning at her and Maureen took another step back, wary and hesitant, feeling in her coat for the knife.

  “Is it a gun or a knife? The Irish always use guns, don’t they? But I’m too close, aren’t I?”

  The German girl took another step and now she pulled Maureen to her. Her strong hands were locked around Maureen’s arms and Maureen was surprised at the strength in the little body.

  “What are ya doin’, girl?”

  “Give me a kiss,” the rat girl said. “Just a little one before we have to do what we have to do. What Henry wants us to do.”

  Maureen shook her head.

  And the rat girl, grinning, pressed her lips upon Maureen’s face and bit her lips. The blood began to foam and run. Maureen cried out and struggled back and still the little girl held on, her arms like steel wires, cutting her circulation. She felt the knife handle in her pocket but there was no way to draw it out.

  “Come on, liebchen, let’s dance down the corridor and maybe I’ll kiss you again. Did Henry want us to kiss each other? But no, Henry wouldn’t have thought of that. He just thought his little rat girl was going to wait for him and his new lover and meekly go to slaughter with the lambs.”

  “You’re crazy, you are, lemme go now—”

  And still Marie held her and pushed her down the hallway, bumping into the walls of the narrow passage. “I’m leading you, Maureen, do you like to dance? I know the music.” And she laughed a little shrieking laugh, her manic eyes glittering in the soft light of morning that edged the darkness.

  Maureen twisted in her grip and tried to pull her arms away and, finally, burst the grip.

  Marie shoved her the final few feet into the kitchen. The lights were all on. There was a cup of tea on the table and a Brown Betty pot. Maureen hit the edge of the table, felt the knife, drew it out. Suddenly, there was six inches of steel between the two women.

  And Marie laughed.

  The knife was held straight out and rock steady. Maureen narrowed her eyes and tasted the blood on her lips.

  “You’re crazy,” she said.

  “And you came to kill me. That doesn’t make me the only crazy one, does it? Why do you want to kill me? Is Henry going to make you rich? Are you doing it for the money, love? Don’t bother. Henry McGee takes and takes, he doesn’t ever give. It’s the thing I like about him, the reason I put up with him. He is so simple. Really simple. He thinks I didn’t understand but I always understood. Women do. Don’t you understand?”

  “I understand you, you’re a crazy woman—”

  “What of it? Are you afraid of me because I’m crazy? Or because that knife isn’t enough defense for you? Sit down and have a cup of tea; you’ve got time before you kill me.” And laughed again.

  Maureen edged back, she didn’t know why; she had the knife but she had to retreat from this strange creature.

  “When do you think Henry is going to have you killed?”

  “No one’s gonna kill me.”

  Marie was still smiling in a particularly mad way, moving toward the kitchen counter. She reached for an envelope and flung it on the table. “Take a look, love, take a good look at things as they really are.”

  “I don’t want to look at nothin’,” she said.

  “Look.”

  Maureen kept her eyes on Marie and reached for the envelope with her left hand. She spilled out photographs on the table.

  Photographs of Matthew delivering the parcel to the house in Mayfair.

  She looked up. “Where did you get these?”

  “I took ’em,” Marie said. “I’m his photographer. He wanted one set of prints but I made two. In fact, I went back to the house in the evening. Do you know what happened? Four people were killed in the house and one of the coppers said there wasn’t a mark on their bodies. I get along with coppers when I have to. Not a mark on the bodies. And then, this morning, I get this call from Henry saying he’s sending over his girlfriend. Only he didn’t call you his girlfriend but I knew what you were. Take a look, Irish girl, take a look at this.”

  Maureen stared at the bottle of vodka.

  “Not vodka. He got this stuff special in Italy when we were staying there. He must have picked it up in Naples. It’s not vodka.
I can guess what it is after I saw the house in Mayfair and after the cop said all those people died without a mark. That’s Henry, don’t you get it, Maureen?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Henry is setting up an act of terror for profit. He told you that, didn’t he? He always tells a little bit of the truth to us girls, just to keep us interested.”

  Maureen didn’t notice she had lowered the knife. She opened the bottle of vodka and sniffed it.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, I’m no chemist, I’m just a little rat girl who lives by her wits and Henry forgot that, forgot that I could steal for him and even kill for him if I had to but I wasn’t a fool. Henry forgot I wasn’t a fool.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I think it’s a kind of gas. A poison gas. That’s what killed those people in Trevor Armstrong’s house in Mayfair.”

  “Jesus,” the Irish girl said. The knife was at her side. She understood the photographs of Matthew O’Day.

  “Yes, Jesus and all the saints. I couldn’t understand why we needed Irish terrorists to work for us but I can see it now. Matthew O’Day is the setup.”

  The fall guy. It was exactly what Henry had said.

  “And you, love, you’re the other lamb for the slaughter.”

  “But you were—”

  “No, lamb. We both were. Do you see this?”

  “What is it?”

  “A radio receiver. And this over here is something that looks like caviar but it smells like an explosive, a Plastique of some kind. So the radio receiver gets a signal—did Henry drive you here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t even bother to come in and see his old German girl and give her a peck or a quick fuck. I suppose you’d taken care of that for him. He likes it very rough sometimes and you’ll have to get used to that.”

  “I’m not a whore,” Maureen said.

  “You fuck for money. What do you think that’s called? Or do you have other names for it in Ireland?”

  “I would have killed you—”

  “And we’d both be dead anyway, love, if the radio receiver was still sitting in that Plastique. The Plastique would have somehow turned this liquid into gas and we’d be terminally dead. And when they found us, there’d be me and you and there’d be a link to Matthew O’Day and no link at all to Henry McGee. Did you really think he was going to take you off with him when he shakes down Trevor Armstrong?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. I thought he’d just leave me, though, not kill me. I should have thought it would have been enough for him.” Now her voice was bitter and the rasp had returned to her words. The German gutturals cluttered the edges of the English words and made them even harder.

  “He’s made me angry, lamb. He thinks I’m so stupid.”

  “I was going to kill him,” Maureen said. There was no threat from the knife anymore. Her eyes were empty. “He thought I was a whore but I was going to kill him. He convinced me Matthew betrayed us and I thought Matthew was in it from the first with Henry and it makes me mad to think I was so fookin’ stupid. I was gonna kill him for the money. Take the money back to Ireland and use it the right way. Rebuild the network.”

  “You’re a patriot, lamb. That’s the most innocent thing of all.”

  “I was gonna even murder you for the money. And all the time he was humpin’ me, he was figurin’ I’d be dead in a couple of hours.”

  “It probably made it more exciting for him,” Marie said. “Well—”

  The telephone rang. The brisk burr of sound stilled both of them. Marie stared at Maureen. “It’s Henry. He wants to make sure it worked.”

  “The bastard, I’ll—”

  Marie held up her hand.

  She took a step toward Maureen. She smiled again, the grin made into a leer by the harsh kitchen lights.

  “We’ll,” is all she said.

  38

  Hanley closed the door of conference room A. It was totally secure and could not even be bugged because of the silent electronic static emitted along the walls, floor, and ceiling. The room was painted white and had no windows. There was a single table of gunmetal gray with a Formica top and four metal chairs. Rita Macklin sat on one of the chairs with her hands folded on the table. She stared at Hanley and her eyes had pain in them.

  “I don’t know what this is about,” Hanley began.

  “Cut the lies, cut all the crap.” The voice was stronger than the face would lead you to expect. She was frail and sick but not in her voice. “He called me from London and you know what this is about. He blanked out on me. It’s the aftereffects of the drugs. He’s not well and you sent him on a fucking mission. You are bastards, I’ve known what bastards you are, but not this time. Not when I almost have him back. Not now. I want you to find him and bring him back to me.”

  “Miss Macklin, I can assure you—”

  She shook her head. “I can assure you, you bastard, that I’ll hang you and hang goddamned Section this time. You can’t booga-booga me and you can’t get me.”

  “Miss Macklin.” Hanley sat down across from her. His eyes were mild and his words were soft. “You’ve been under a strain. An understandable strain. You suffered a trauma. You were under neurological treatment as the result of your trauma.”

  “And I’m crazy, right?” she said.

  “That’s an unfortunate psychological term. Neurological—”

  “Cut the crap, I told you that before.” Her voice fell to a monotone. “I want you to go after him and get him. If he goes against Henry McGee and forgets where he is or what he’s doing, he’ll be dead. If he’s dead, you’re dead. D-E-A-D. If he’s dead, I go after you and R Section and your whole spook department, I go after it one by one and I tell everything I ever knew. I tell about the dirty jobs you gave him and the dirty jobs he did.”

  “You would implicate yourself… in what you call ‘dirty jobs.’ You would put yourself beyond the pale of the law.”

  She said, “You don’t seem to get it, Mr. Hanley. I don’t care once he’s dead. If he’s dead, I’m dead, and then you can’t hurt me. Not with threats or the law or whatever you call it. He’s gone to sanction someone and that’s illegal. I want you to act on this. Right now.”

  It was four in the afternoon, four hours after Devereaux made his frightening call to Rita Macklin from Heathrow Airport. It had taken that long to get to Hanley, but only a moment for her to decide what she would do. She had told Mac some of the things she was going to do, in case they stopped her or arrested her or locked her up in a sanitarium. Mac said he would do anything and she believed him.

  “Oh, God, Mac,” she had said. “I’m so afraid he’s going to die this time. I really am.”

  And Mac had seen how much she had loved him. It had made him sad but he thought he could live with that.

  Now Hanley drummed his fingertips on the Formica top of the table. This damned woman and her damned threats. She couldn’t topple Section—Agee couldn’t topple Langley when he spilled his guts—but she could hurt Section because she had been so close to things Devereaux had been involved in. This damned woman was a security problem from the beginning but Hanley had wished it away because there was no way Devereaux would have acquiesced to ending the relationship. And Devereaux had been a continuing problem.

  “This is his last assignment,” Hanley said.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “We had begun the process of separation,” Hanley said in the same mild voice. “A disability. He had been a problem for us for a while and this… trauma he suffered provided us with reasonable medical grounds to separate him from active duty. He knew this.”

  “He never told me,” she said.

  “He knew this. He also told us he wanted to get to Henry McGee. Henry McGee has been a continuing problem for us as well and his… mere existence threatens Section. I had certain information about the whereabouts of Henry McGee—”

  “You sent him to L
ondon. He’s in London. How close is he to Henry McGee?”

  “Days. Hours. I don’t know. I had no idea he had suffered… a mental incapacity—”

  “It’s Dr. Krueger, your goddamned Dr. Krueger.”

  “We’re not in the medical business, Miss Macklin.” A little ice was added to the voice. “Dr. Krueger was recommended to us. He was discreet and he had security clearance. He’s in a mental ward right now, coming down from an overdose of lysergic acid. Apparently self-induced, but I think he must have had help along the way, don’t you? And what was your part in it?”

  Rita Macklin remembered the long scream from a darkened house and gripped her hands together. She looked at her hands and then at Hanley.

  “Where was he booked for?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “I’m going to London. I’m not kidding you, Mr. Hanley, so don’t think you can stall around. Where did Section book him?”

  “We don’t—”

  “The fucking travel agency, Mr. Hanley. I don’t have a lot of time, I’ve got to get to Dulles before seven. What hotel?”

  Hanley gave in. “Hilton. It’s in—”

  “I know where it is. All right. If you can’t help me, just remember I warned you.” She got up. Hanley remained seated. She stared down at him. “Just remember, he better not die.”

  “Don’t interfere in this. Let the matter be resolved—”

  “And solve both your problems? Is that it? Getting rid of either of them helps you and your goddamned Section. Or getting rid of both of them? You are bastards, all of you, spooks and liars—”

  Hanley waited for her to end but she interrupted herself.

  A moment of silence passed between them.

  “I mean it, Hanley. Just remember that. I really mean it.”

  “If you breach security, you can be prosecuted.”

  “Yes. And you can go to prison,” she said and buttoned her coat. Her eyes were alive in their gaunt sockets. It was the rage in her. “You can go to hell, in fact, and I’ll push you down the slide.”