The Devil's Breath

by Hurley, Graham

  They sat together on the sofa, Emery sprawled against one arm, instantly at home. Laura sat beside him, her legs drawn up under her chin, the redness under her eyes barely visible beneath the summer tan.

  ‘It’s terrible,’ she said, ‘horrible.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Lying to him.’

  Emery looked at her. The glasses he wore always made his eyes seem bigger. She’d noticed that. When they were off, he could look quite handsome. She reached forward and took the glasses off. Bree, watching from the stairs, yelped with pleasure and skidded across the floor and seized them. She put them on, circling the room, her hands out in front of her, feigning blindness.

  Laura was still looking at Emery. ‘So what do I do?’ she said. ‘Only it’s driving me nuts.’

  Emery yawned, apologizing at once. Laura took his hand.

  ‘You’re tired,’ she said automatically.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You working hard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Same job as Ron?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded, knowing better than to push the questions. All that mattered were the symptoms, the fatigue, the lost tempers, the sleepless nights, the Tuinol in a neat pile on the locker beside the bed. She, above all, knew about those. How to mend empty bodies, broken minds.

  ‘I love him,’ she said absently. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at him again, reaching for him, wanting the simple comfort of a hug, her head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck. Bree was still circling the room. She was singing now. She had a remarkable voice, high and soft and pure. It was the one thing in life she did really well, and she sang often. Emery had awakened to her sometimes in the early morning, sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed in the spare room, the door carefully shut behind her, his own infant Buddha. ‘It’s a little bit funny,’ she sang, ‘this feeling inside …’

  Laura stirred. Her eyes were closed. The vein in her neck pulsed slowly, the morning’s storm blown out, the tears quite gone.

  ‘I nearly told him in New York,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s why I went. I thought it was time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We made love.’

  Emery looked down at her, stroking her hair. Her hair was thick, a rich auburn. She dyed it when she remembered to. It was greying gently underneath.

  ‘Not a bad trade-in,’ Emery said, ‘under the circumstances.’

  Laura said nothing for a moment. Bree had disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘Was I right?’ she said at last, ‘not to tell him?’

  ‘You asking me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Because you know him and you know me. You know the kind of people we are. So—’ she looked up at him ‘—you’ll have a view. That’s not a sentimental thing. It’s not copping out. It’s just the truth. You know the man. You’re a good judge. So—’ she reached up for him again ‘—help me. Tell me what you think.’

  Emery nodded and said nothing, staring across the room at the open kitchen door. Bree’s shadow lay across the white linoleum. She was trying to spell her own name on the fridge, a pile of red magnetic letters by her side.

  ‘How sure are you?’ he said at last.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘No grounds for doubt? No second thoughts?’ He paused. ‘Second opinions?’

  She shook her head. ‘None. We’ve been that way. You know we have.’

  ‘So this is really it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Thought it all through?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do or die?’

  She looked up at him and risked a small smile.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You know the man. Do or die.’

  *

  Telemann was back at Brussels Airport by early evening. It was Friday evening, and the check-in desks were thick with Eurocrats commuting back to their weekend homes in London and Paris and Rome. Telemann returned the hire car and bought a Lufthansa ticket to Hamburg. The flight didn’t leave for an hour and a half. He checked his bag and crossed the concourse to a bank of telephones. He checked his watch. In Washington, it was half-past twelve.

  He dailled the operator and gave her the number and asked for a collect call, scanning the big overhead departures board. Thirty seconds later, Juanita was on the line.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘it’s me.’

  ‘I know. The operator told me.’

  ‘This is a public booth. She tell you that, too?’

  ‘No. But I figured it out just the same.’

  Telemann hesitated for a moment. Using open lines and plain English was strictly left field. Nobody did it. Not unless you wanted to feature in an NSA intercepts digest, your name underlined for further action.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I need to speak with Emery.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I dunno. But he has the mobile with him. You got the number?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then I guess you phone it.’

  She paused long enough to let him come up with a better idea, then Telemann heard the trill of another phone in the background and a smooth apology from Juanita as she put the caller on hold. Back on the line, she asked him if he was OK. He said he was, and hung up. He waited for a moment in the phone booth, lacking the strength, or perhaps the courage, to make the call. He was out of the office somewhere. It could be a million places. It could be Langley. It could be the attorney’s place over on ‘K’ Street. It might even be the White House, Sullivan’s real office, right up there in the dress-circle. It could be any of these places, but deep in his heart Telemann knew that it wasn’t. Emery was where Laura was. Emery was with his wife.

  Bree was back in the room when Emery’s mobile began to ring. She was sitting on the floor in a puddle of sunshine, singing one of her favourite hymns, a Christmas carol she sang year-long, whenever she felt especially happy. She was singing it now. ‘O come all ye faithful,’ she crooned, ‘joyful and triumphant.’

  Emery reached over the back of the sofa and retrieved the mobile from the window-sill. Laura sat back, respectful, considerate. ‘You want me to leave?’

  Emery shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay.’ He lifted the receiver. He listened to the operator, 3000 miles away. He smiled. He said yes, he’d take the call. There was a brief pause. Laura was watching him carefully, half-aware of what was happening, who was at the other end.

  ‘Ron,’ Emery said at last. ‘Buddy.’

  Hearing her father’s name, Bree’s smile widened even further.

  ‘Come and behold him,’ she sang. ‘Born the King of angels,

  O come let us adore him

  O come, let us adore him

  O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.’

  Standing in the booth at Brussels Airport, Telemann held the phone away from his ear, blinking, unable to believe it. Bree. His daughter. Her song. On Emery’s mobile phone. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the sound, hearing in the background another chord, deeper, a rumbling noise, the blood sucking noisily around his own body. This is madness, he told himself. Madness. I’m going mad. He lifted the phone again, hearing Emery’s voice, hesitant, worried.

  ‘Ron?’

  Telemann looked out at the concourse, up at the departures board, anywhere, anything to empty his mind of that one overpowering image, Emery, Pete Emery, out in the little house on Dixie. He stared at the departures board, blinking again. For some reason, quite suddenly, he could see two of everything. Two destinations. Two flight numbers. Two take-off times. He rubbed his eyes. Double vision, he thought. Madness made real.

  ‘Pete?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Your place. With Laura. And Bree. You wanna word?’

  The singing had stopped. Telemann swallowed hard. The balls on the man. No
sign of panic, or guilt, or remorse. Not a single missed beat in that deep, slow voice of his. Straight buddy talk. Like he was in some bar in Georgetown, and Telemann had happened by, and Emery had called him in from the sidewalk, summoned the bartender and ordered up the usual pitcher.

  ‘Some party,’ Telemann muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, some fucking party.’

  ‘You OK? Tired? Hey—’

  Telemann heard the noise of the phone changing hands. Then a new voice, softer, slightly wary, Laura. Telemann closed his eyes, letting his body sag against the corner of the booth. New York, he thought suddenly. That’s why she came to New York. She meant to tell me. Only she didn’t. Couldn’t. Hadn’t.

  ‘Ron?’

  Telemann looked at the phone. The man in the next booth was having a bad time in some other conversation. Telemann could hear him shouting in German, his finger jabbing at some imaginary assailant. His wife, Telemann thought. Another whore.

  ‘Ron?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Not much. You got Pete there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. I need to speak with him.’

  Telemann listened to the dialogue, his own voice, cold, and he marvelled at the control, the way this strange man in the booth had got himself in and out of such a difficult conversation.

  Emery returned, laconic as ever. ‘What gives?’

  Telemann ignored the question, unfolding the piece of paper he’d got from Vlaedders. He read the name and telephone number down the phone. He was too far gone to worry about open lines. Open lines were for the birds.

  ‘Reinhart Trumm,’ he said again. ‘Hamburg number. I’m flying there now. I’ll phone you from Fuhlsbüttel. Run a check. I need to know.’

  ‘Sure.’ Emery paused. ‘That it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. Kisses from Laura. Take care now. Bye, buddy.’

  Telemann gazed at the phone again, holding the receiver at arm’s-length, hearing the click as the line disconnected. Care? Kisses? Laura? Buddy? He turned on his heel, picked up his shoulder-bag and hurried towards the washroom across the concourse. As he did so, he looked up at the departures board, seeing double again, the second time in five minutes. He stopped and rubbed his eyes. He looked around. Everything was doubled, like a camera lens out of true. He took a series of deep breaths, eyes closed again, forcing the air deep into his lungs, counting slowly to thirty, and when he looked round again, his sight was perfect, the images no longer dancing. Odd, he thought, making for the washroom, wondering whether he still wanted to throw up.

  *

  Faraday’s body stayed in the big mortuary fridge at Newbury General Hospital for an hour and a half.

  The pathologist, summoned from her garden in Theale, arrived at 18.45. She read the accident report and conferred briefly with the casualty registrar. He told her that the drum of chemicals had been resealed, and the area decontaminated. Laboratory staff from the group’s Analysis Division were now en route to the waste transfer station. They would remove a number of discreet samples and return to company headquarters. A full report and analysis would be available within forty-eight hours.

  The pathologist borrowed a small office beside the casualty area and telephoned the Newbury coroner. Without a formal request from the coroner’s office, she wasn’t allowed to proceed with a post-mortem. The coroner was out when she finally got through, but a clerk confirmed that so far there’d been nothing from the police on the incident, and consequently no plans for an inquest.

  The pathologist put the phone down. She’d already visited the mortuary and had a look at the body. The attendants had removed Faraday’s clothes and laid his naked corpse on one of the big stainless-steel tables. As she’d expected, there was no sign of external injury, except for some superficial abrasion on the forehead where he’d been dragged away from the drum by his feet. The real story was usually internal – the secrets yielded by the body’s organs – but even here she knew she’d be lucky to find anything conclusive. There’d be no air left in the lungs to sample, nothing in the stomach that he might have swallowed. Death would be certifiable as respiratory failure, or heart failure, or both, but these terse phrases were of minor forensic value. Whatever had killed him would have left little, if any, trace. Perhaps the fatty tissue samples might respond to gas chromatography. Perhaps, like so many youngsters, he’d taken one sniff of solvent too many. But that, in view of his job, was unlikely.

  She pondered the problem a little longer, watching the attendants in the mortuary wrapping the body in shiny white plastic. The label on the side of the drum had definitely read ‘Poison’. It had been there in the reports, black and white. And the thing had been washed ashore, origin unknown, destination unknown, contents a mystery. The drum itself had evidently been a little out of the ordinary, reinforced top and bottom, heavier gauge steel than usual. She followed the attendants back into the fridge room and picked up the phone again, wondering how far to take it, whether to seek specialist advice. The number rang and rang, the switchboard busy, and after a couple of minutes she put the phone down again, glancing at her watch. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left. If she drove fast, she could be back amongst the roses by eight. The coroner would be back in his office tomorrow. Better to wait for a formal post-mortem.

  *

  Telemann stepped off the Lufthansa 737 at nine o’clock, Hamburg time.

  The concourse at Fuhlsbüttel was nearly empty, a couple in the departures bar sipping a beer together before the late night flights took off, the odd businessman nursing a schnapps and a creased copy of Die Zeit. Telemann found a phone booth and used his ATT card to call Emery. It was mid-afternoon in Washington, and he was back at his desk in the office on ‘F’ Street.

  Neither man wasted time with formalities. Emery had the details on a fax from Langley.

  ‘Trumm’s real name’s Nathan Blum,’ he said, ‘he’s a katsa. He’s been in Hamburg since April. Before that he was in Copenhagen …’ He paused. ‘He’s spent time in South Africa and Buenos Aires. In fact he was there the same time as you …’ He paused again, and Telemann could hear him chuckling. ‘But the big news is Palestine. The guy used to be one of their point men on the West Bank. Speaks fluent Arabic. Took lots of scalps. So be careful, buddy. The man has a reputation.’

  Telemann, memorizing the details as they spilled out of the phone, grunted. ‘That all?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not on this phone.’

  Telemann nodded and said goodbye. He picked up his bag and made his way out of the building, looking for a cab. He’d phoned the number Vlaedders had given him from Brussels. A woman had answered, and Telemann had simply given her the facts, knowing that Vlaedders would already have been on the line. The name’s Lacey, he’d said. I’m a journalist on assignment, and Mr Vlaedders suggests I talk to Herr Trumm. The woman had noted the details and promised to pass them on. Herr Trumm was in conference. She’d be able to talk to him within the hour. Herr Lacey should phone again.

  Telemann stood outside the terminal building, yawning in the darkness. It was a hot night, with a fitful wind stirring the flags on a line of poles across the car park. Telemann could hear the halyards slapping against the poles.

  He waited for another minute or so, then picked up his bag and began to walk slowly towards a line of cabs parked further down the terminal. Exhaustion had emptied him of everything but the simple imperatives of finding a bed and a shower, and a little peace. He’d shut his mind to Emery and Laura, and the fact that his marriage had hit the rocks. He’d done his best to erase the memory of his daughter’s voice, the words carrying clear across the Atlantic. He’d even, for now, put aside the business in hand. Nathan Blum, the Israeli, would have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow, with a clear head after a decent night’s sleep, he�
��d deal with it.

  He lifted his arm to signal the nearest cab. As he did so, another car parked in a bay across the road flashed its lights. He heard the engine start. It sounded like a diesel engine. The car began to move, pulling a tight U-turn, gliding to a halt at the kerbside. Telemann looked down. It was a Mercedes. Through the windshield, he could see two faces. One of them, behind the wheel, was a woman. She had a thin, angular face, hair pulled tightly back, a face he’d seen in a thousand magazines, the face of a model. She was looking up at him, smiling.

  The passenger door opened and a man got out. He was wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck. His face was dark under a mass of curly blond hair. A smile revealed a set of perfect teeth. He extended a hand. ‘Mr Lacey?’

  Telemann nodded, the exhaustion gone. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Reinhart Trumm. You telephoned from Brussels.’

  The two men looked at each other for a moment, then Trumm opened the back door and bent for Telemann’s bag. There was no discussion, no hesitation, simply the acceptance that Telemann would get in. Telemann did so, wondering why they were bothering with the formality of cover names. They checked the flights, he thought. A simple phone call.

  Trumm put Telemann’s bag in the trunk and got into the car. The woman engaged gear and eased the big Mercedes towards the airport exit. Telemann watched her from the back seat, quarter-profile, high cheek-bones, huge earrings, hair secured at the back with a knot of silk. She looked about thirty, possibly less. She smelled wonderful.

  Telemann lay back against the dimpled leather. There wasn’t much he could do, and they all knew it. The next hour or so belonged to them. They’d seized the initiative. They could dictate the pace.

  Telemann yawned. ‘Where are we going?’ he said.

  Trumm turned round, putting his elbow on the back of the seat. He was smiling again, completely relaxed. He might have stepped out of the shower after an hour or so of tennis.