The British Cross

by Bill Granger

  11

  DUBLIN

  On the same night that Tomas Crohan was taken from his ward in the Kresty Prison psychiatric hospital in Leningrad and a man named Sims was murdered in a sauna in Helsinki, Rita Macklin finished her work at the rectory of St. Adrian’s parish and began the long trek to Baggot Street to find a cab to take her back to her room.

  It had not been difficult at all.

  Father Cunningham had no family left anywhere in Ireland and only a vague reference to “a family friend” who might live in Chicago in America. Rita Macklin assured the priests at St. Adrian’s that she was the family friend. The deceit was never questioned because there was nothing to be gained from the old man’s possessions.

  Indeed, there was no wealth among them.

  Rita Macklin was not looking for money, however. She catalogued the possessions meticulously, including his clothing.

  Her presence in the rectory for four days upset the housekeeper, Mrs. Ryan, but did not seem to displease the priests. If Rita Macklin was pretty, it was the sort of fresh-faced beauty that is not dispensed in creams or lotions but comes from genes and good health.

  “Priests again,” and ME had laughed when she called him.

  Even Rita Macklin, despite the painful memories, had smiled during the transatlantic telephone conversation. Priests again. Nearly three years before, she had worked on the story of the old priest named Leo Tunney who had come out of the Asian jungles after twenty years and had a dreadful secret to tell someone. He eventually told Rita, before he died, and put Rita’s life in peril. But that could never happen again in any case; the matter of priests was just a coincidence, she thought.

  “I’m sorting through his things, I’m trying to get some clue—”

  “I think I told you to be careful,” Mac said and his voice was so lazy and calm that she could imagine him now leaning back in his leather swivel chair with the phone cupped in the crook of his shoulder, with his hands folded on the back of his graying head.

  “I am careful.”

  “Watching both ways when you cross the street?”

  “You think he was killed. I mean, deliberately?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” She thought she did know.

  “There aren’t too many coincidences in the real world,” Mac said.

  “Except for priests,” she replied and she evoked another chuckle that sailed over the phone lines three thousand miles.

  “Find anything?”

  “Yes. And a big no.”

  “What’s the yes?”

  “Note on a meeting two weeks ago. With a man named Parker who lived in Dublin. That’s all it says, just Parker. He thinks Parker is a British agent. That sounds a little fantastic, doesn’t it?”

  “You mean secret agent, spies, booga-booga? Just the thing we’re looking for, Rita.”

  “Yes. Do you know how many Parkers there are in the Dublin phone directory? And what if the spy wasn’t even listed?”

  Again, Mac chuckled. “What are you going to do?”

  “When I get done, I’m going to the British Embassy and ask for him.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s the only idea I have. Flush him out. Never hesitate, as Kaiser used to tell me.” Kaiser had been her first editor in Washington; he had been her father and mentor and her cynical conscience.

  “You might not want to flush him.”

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of a British secret agent. Unless he happens to be a Russian double agent.”

  “Half of them seem to be,” Mac said. “So all this is tied to this Tomas Crohan?”

  “I don’t know but I think so. I guess I believe in coincidences more than you do. I mean, I think they mean something, that they connect things that shouldn’t be connected. I went to Dublin airport and ran down every plane that left within two hours after Father Cunningham was killed. I eliminated the flights to Shannon because it seemed unlikely he was doubling back to another airport in the country. I think the killer wanted to get out of the country. Well, there was supposed to be a flight for Belfast twenty minutes after the killing. That’s a possibility. And there was a plane for Amsterdam at noon. And one other international flight—for Copenhagen at twelve thirty-five. That would be perfect.”

  “Copenhagen? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Father Cunningham wrote that he had a visitor a year ago and it must have started him thinking about the whole business again. A man named O’Donnell, retired in the Irish government, he had been part of the De Valera government in the forties, during the war. He had known Cunningham then. Well, apparently they just had a get-together, a chat, but at one point, Cunningham brought up Crohan. He said he had known Crohan as a child and he had just received this letter about Crohan from his cousin, Mrs. Fitzroy, who lived in America. He told O’Donnell that Mrs. Fitzroy was convinced that Crohan was still alive in the Soviet Gulag.”

  “So?”

  “Well, you know how you need legs of a tripod to make the camera stand steady? Up to now, I’ve had two legs: Mrs. Fitzroy and the letter that Father Cunningham sent to her. Now I think I’ve got the third leg, except there’s a problem with it.”

  “Rita, you’re talking me in circles again.”

  She realized she was breathless, speaking too quickly into the ancient telephone receiver provided in a booth off the bare lobby in the little Buswell Hotel. The connection faded at times and it seemed Mac’s voice rose and fell like ocean waves.

  “This fellow O’Donnell, who is dead now—he died six months ago of cancer—this fellow O’Donnell, he said he wasn’t all that certain that Mrs. Fitzroy wasn’t right. He said that he learned that Crohan was being held in some prison hospital or something in Leningrad.”

  “Did he just divine this or did it come as a stroke of lightning from on high?”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s the part that gets interesting and frustrating at the same time—that’s the part I can’t understand. It seems there was some sort of connection between British Intelligence and the Irish special branch or whatever it is. This O’Donnell was a liaison. Cunningham was writing all this out, almost like a term paper, he was going over it over and over again as though he didn’t understand it any more than I do. But this is what I think it means: Somehow, the British know that Crohan is alive in the Soviet Union. And somehow, they weren’t unhappy to let the Irish government know, too. For all I know, the CIA knows it, too, which is why they’ve been playing hard-to-get with me from the beginning.”

  There was a pause so long that Rita thought for a moment they had been disconnected.

  Finally, Mac spoke slowly. “Why? Why, Rita, would they all know this and keep it a secret?”

  “Why do birds fly? Why do Swedes have trouble finding Soviet submarines in their waters? Why do we cancel grain sales and then renew them when nothing has changed? Why a lot of things?”

  “Because it is not profitable to acknowledge that Crohan is alive.”

  “That’s part of it. The Swedes didn’t exactly kill themselves trying to get Wallenberg out of the Soviet Union right after the war. The Swedes had to learn to get along with the Russians, even if they didn’t want to. And Wallenberg came from a big important family, a helluva lot more important than Tomas Crohan.”

  “I don’t see where any of this is going to lead,” Mac said.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Fortunately, you have the time. We are a wealthy magazine and quite given to flights of fancy that consume both time and money. So what are you going to do?”

  “Go to Leningrad,” Rita said.

  “The direct approach,” Mac said.

  “That’s the way Kaiser taught me,” she replied.

  “Well, your Kaiser did a good job.”

  Kaiser had done a good job on her. She hurried along Adrian Lane to Shelbourne where she could take a shortcut across the Kingwell Crescent to Baggot Street and find a taxi. It was
bitterly cold as all the days became as they sank into early evening. She huddled in her wool navy coat, her head turned away from the direction of the wind. Rita wore an Irish wool cap on her head, pulled down over her ears.

  There was nothing more to be gained from going through Father Cunningham’s possessions. Requiescat in pace.

  Kaiser.

  The thought of the old sausage of an editor had come back to her again and again while she sifted through the life of Father Cunningham contained in a few notes, a diary, and bits of memorabilia. Kaiser had no scruples but to get the story. There had been one photograph that finally struck her: Cunningham, a woman, a man. The woman must have been Mrs. Fitzroy, taken probably in the late 1930s. They were very young, probably teens or just into their twenties.

  They were identified on the back of the snapshot by nicknames. “Toby” was Mrs. Fitzroy and the other identifiable figure was “Danny.” It must have been Cunningham. But who was “Sarsfield”?

  Crohan. It must be Crohan. Wasn’t Sarsfield the name of an Irish rebel?

  Kaiser would not have wanted her to wait. “Get the story out, little Rita.” But Rita would have to wait. There was a story here that kept growing and growing the longer she waited.

  There was a tour out of Helsinki to Leningrad they had suggested at the American Express office on Grafton Street. It might be the quickest way to get into the Soviet Union. She would risk it and risk spending a couple of idle days in Helsinki waiting for the tour.

  One of the flights after Cunningham’s death had been for Copenhagen. Had the killer gone back to Russia through the northern door as well? Was he a Russian?

  Nothing is what it seems.

  Damn, she thought. She had been haunted by the thought of Kaiser all day, Kaiser who had killed himself during the business with the other priest. And now she had to think of Devereaux again, even though he had been buried out of her thoughts for nearly three years. Devereaux had said nothing good could happen if they had remained together; Devereaux had frozen her out at last and now she even wondered if he was still alive.

  She realized she was crying. The tears warmed her cheeks and then froze in the stinging wind.

  Damn, she thought. I don’t want to remember him. But now the memory was dominant. Devereaux had been an Intelligence man; she never really understood everything about him, but she had known at last that she had loved him. And he had denied it. “Nothing is what it seems,” he had said and he had turned away from her. “Even intelligence agents get married, you know, or have women, live-in,” she had said, half in jest and half in anger on that last day together. And he had looked at her so sadly: “What do you see, Rita? A lover? Protector? Kindness incarnate? Do you see a good life?”

  She was running now in the howling wind, crossing the Crescent, fleeing the thoughts that still unreeled slowly in her mind.

  “I see you, that’s all.”

  “No. Not me. You see what you want to see,” he had replied and he could not explain it anymore. He had left her alone in that place in the mountains and she had waited for him for six days and she realized he was not coming back and she had driven back to Washington and picked up threads of her life that she had been willing to sever for him.

  She saw the taxi turning the corner at Baggot Street and she waved and the cab came down the lane toward her. She threw open the back door and slid inside, out of breath and out of tears. Damn, she thought again, damn the thoughts of Kaiser and the dead priest and him.

  “Buswell Hotel,” she said and the driver turned.

  He was a middle-aged man with bright blue eyes and a fierce ginger mustache like a Guardsman. “Very well,” he said and started the engine and Rita could have sworn he had an English accent.

  12

  HELSINKI

  Devereaux sat quietly on the chair next to the window. It was snowing again and flakes clung to the glass like survivors until they melted to nothing.

  The policeman sat in a straight chair next to the built-in walnut desk. He stared at Devereaux again. Periodically, during the long interrogation, the policeman had lapsed into a moody silence, as though he were contemplating thoughts that began far from this hotel room.

  “A commercial traveler who has spent two months in Helsinki and has done no business.”

  “Times are hard,” Devereaux said.

  “You discover a dead man in the sauna. Everything about you is very mysterious, Mr. Dixon and Mr. Devereaux or whatever your name is.”

  “I hate to be a mystery.”

  “No telephone calls. You never make phone calls. But two days ago, you send a telegram to someone named Derr… derr—”

  “Dougherty,” Devereaux said.

  The policeman named Kulak merely stared again. “Yes. You mention Arabia glassware.”

  “This is where they make it, isn’t it?”

  “This is a murder, not a joke. Why did it take you so long to make a business arrangement? And when we check with the glassware people, they will not have heard of you, do you know that? I am certain of it.”

  “I don’t have the authorization yet to make an offer.”

  “Why do you not make any telephone calls? I know you are lonely. You brought a prostitute up to your room. I know all about you.”

  “Were you peeking?”

  “Don’t make jokes, Mr. Devereaux. I think I will call you that. I think that is what your name really is.”

  “All right.”

  “Two murders.”

  “Two?”

  “Come on, Mr. Devereaux. You killed that prostitute. Natali.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You cut her open like a butcher. You left her body down in the construction pit across the street.”

  “When did I do this?”

  “You know, Devereaux. And now you killed this man in a sauna. This Mr. Sims, another man I do not understand. Are you a maniac?”

  “Are you a fool?”

  Kulak clenched his fists and his neck seemed to swell. His hard eyes went flat and hot, like rocks in a desert sun.

  “I arrange to enter the sauna, see Ulla at the desk and kill Sims. Then, without getting a drop of blood on my clothes, I come back and inform Ulla that there is a dead man in the sauna. I do this because two days before, I have killed a prostitute named Natali in exactly the same way and I know that everyone in the hotel will tell you that Natali had dated an American named Dixon who has been in the hotel for seven weeks.”

  Kulak slowly subsided but he still clenched his fists. “You are not what you seem,” he said at last.

  “Nothing is,” Devereaux agreed.

  “You might be mad.”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “I searched your room.”

  “I suppose you did.”

  “You have a weapon. This is not permitted in Suomi,” Kulak said, pronouncing the Finnish name for his country. “Why do you have a pistol?”

  “Enemies.”

  “Enemies?”

  “A businessman always has enemies. He can be robbed. You have already pointed out to me that Helsinki is a dangerous place.”

  “I don’t take this lightly, not murder,” Kulak said slowly. “I think I will have to arrest you for a while and see what you are made of. I think perhaps you can tell me more things when you have been in prison for a while.”

  “I think you are making a mistake,” Devereaux said. “I think I want to speak to Mr. Cleaver at the American Embassy.”

  “Oh, you know someone at the American Embassy? How nice.”

  “I think you will want to call Mr. Cleaver.”

  “And who is he?”

  “Third assistant.”

  “Well, what would you say if I told you I knew exactly what Mr. Cleaver really was? What would you say? Would you say that a dumb Helsinki policeman is a little smarter than I gave him credit for?”

  “He’s a third assistant in the embassy,” Devereaux said, watching the words ca
refully, watching the box that Kulak was opening for him.

  “He is a goddamn spy,” Kulak said.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I think you might be a goddamn spy, too,” Kulak said.

  “First I’m a double murderer and now I’m an agent.”

  “You could be both things. I don’t understand this business, not about you, not about Sims, not about poor Natali.”

  Devereaux did not blink, did not show emotion. She had been a prostitute who had felt warm against him in the night, who had reminded him of a time when there was no death and cold and bleakness. He could love a whore because he could not love anyone else.

  “The long winter nights have addled you,” Devereaux said calmly.

  “I could lose you for a long time in prison,” Kulak said.

  “My embassy would protest.”

  “We have heard protests. What is a protest? We fought two wars against the Soviet Union and we won them. So don’t tell me about protests, like pieces of paper.”

  “Are you certain you won?”

  “Damn you, Mr. Devereaux. I think you are coming with me.”

  “I want to call the embassy.”

  “Maybe in a few days. Or a few weeks. Maybe when I have talked to you some more—”

  “Now.”

  “No, not now. I don’t want murders, I don’t want spies thinking they can defile my city.”

  “Now,” Devereaux said.

  “No, Mr. Devereaux. Now you are the prisoner, now you are not the keeper of time. I am the keeper, Mr. Devereaux, when I found this gun in your room. Do you think your protest would mean very much when I show them this gun?”

  “I don’t own that gun.”

  “You said you did. I found it in the room.”

  “I said nothing,” Devereaux lied evenly. “You planted that gun. You are going to cause yourself harm.”

  “I don’t think so, no—”