Time to Kill

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘And she was?’

  ‘She was managing. She was committed by then, like I was.’

  ‘What about that time, that moment? Did you have any regrets then, any second thoughts?’

  ‘I wished – hoped – that it wouldn’t be too much for her.’

  ‘What about you? Wasn’t it too much for you?’

  ‘I was trained. Ann wasn’t.’

  ‘Was it too much for her?’

  ‘I didn’t think so, not then.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’ve just told me.’

  ‘I thought Ann had come through it OK, even that we had the perfect life. Now I know how brave she’s really been, all these years. She’s been frightened, all the time, without my knowing it. Terrified, for all those years, that Jack would find us.’

  ‘What do you think? Do you think he’s found you? Is stalking you and that he killed David?’

  Slater didn’t answer, slumped with his head on his chest as she had been when he had first recounted their story.

  ‘Daniel?’ she prompted.

  ‘He can’t have found us.’

  ‘Ann told me you installed a lot of extra security when you first heard Jack was being released ahead of when you both expected. That you even went into Washington to speak to the man who wrote the warning letter?’

  Slater nodded. ‘It was a hell of a surprise … a shock, I guess. Over the years his release had gone out of my mind …’ Slater paused once more. ‘My mind, certainly. I now know it had never gone out of Ann’s mind, not for a moment. Then we were suddenly confronted by it. And yes, I guess you could say I panicked, before I thought properly about it. I hoped Ann would be reassured, by all the extra stuff I installed.’

  ‘Weren’t you reassured?’

  ‘By the time it was all done I’d calmed down – knew it was unnecessary.’

  ‘Do you still think that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Did he? Slater asked himself.

  ‘What about what happened to David?’

  ‘It’s got to be a coincidence. A terrible, dreadful coincidence from which neither of us is ever going properly to recover. I just hope that we can stay together, that it doesn’t destroy us. David was our life – without him I’m not sure what life we’ve got left.’

  ‘A lot of people suffer the sort of tragedy you and Ann have suffered.’

  ‘Not against our sort of background.’ Had she been as forthright, as brutal, with Ann? Ann hadn’t seemed upset when they’d swopped rooms.

  ‘True,’ the psychiatrist conceded.

  ‘Is Ann going to be all right?’

  ‘Do you think you are going to be all right?’

  Slater looked curiously at her across the desk. ‘I didn’t think we were here to talk about me.’

  ‘We’re here to talk about everything and everyone,’ said Hillary Nelson. ‘And I think we’ve done enough of both for one day. Ann’s told me she can come back again tomorrow. Can you?’

  ‘If it will help.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have suggested it, if I hadn’t thought it would help.’

  ‘What’s today achieved?’ demanded Slater.

  ‘I needed to decide whether you’re both telling the truth,’ declared the woman. ‘I think you both are.’

  ‘You mean you believe Ann did see Jack Mason!’

  ‘I haven’t yet got that far with Ann.’

  ‘I was trained to lie,’ reminded Slater, not knowing why he said it.

  ‘I was trained to spot lies. And liars.’

  Jack Mason’s re-encounter with the Lexington Park rental manager was, predictably, a virtual repeat of their first meeting and as they toured the second property – the location and remoteness of which Mason had already checked out after driving direct from Dulles airport – he decided that his first visit had been a very necessary orientational rehearsal. Prompted by that thought Mason took the cottage for a full month, knowing he could quit sooner, as he had before, if he got lucky with Slater and Ann. Objectively though, as he had been after running their son down, Mason accepted it would be a miracle if he got lucky a second time; he might need much longer, even having to break away to set up some sort of stalling situation with Peter Chambers, which would be an irritating but necessary interruption.

  As he had before, Mason shopped after completing all the formalities with the realtor, deciding as he packed his groceries and wine away that he actually preferred this new place to that which he had rented before. Everything was in a much better, newer condition and the shoreline longer which would enable him to resume his now too long neglected fitness regime. He tried it out that late afternoon and calculated that by running its full length, during which he isolated only one other cottage and that too far away for anyone in it to be able to properly see or later identify him, and then back again, he’d covered at least two miles. His legs and shoulders ached, reminding him how out of shape he’d become since his release from White Deer. Before making dinner Mason carried out his daily computer trawl through all his emplaced sites and found nothing new, ate early, and slept a full uninterrupted, dreamless nine hours’ sleep to fully recover, in one session, from the effect of the overnight red eye from California. At no time, since leaving the West Coast, had Mason once thought of Beverley Littlejohn.

  From his initial surveillance Mason knew how heavily protected both 2832 Hill Avenue SE and Ann’s Main Street gallery were by CCTV, which logically dictated there would be matching internal alarms and precautions that precluded both from a direct, burglary-disguised approach; even if he evolved a way to override or sabotage their operating electricity source they would automatically revert to battery supply. If he had been supervising an authorized CIA assassination there would have been contaminating poisons or explosives, in both of which he had been schooled after his recall to Washington from his Moscow entrapment. Sabotaging their separate cars, both of which he already knew, was far more feasible when Ann’s was parked behind the gallery and Slater’s in the communal car park at the rear of the shared high rise in which he had his office, but again Mason had no access to technical resources in order to absolutely guarantee their deaths, nor a way to ensure that their killing would be simultaneous. He had not completely discarded the idea of killing just Slater – who after all had been directly responsible for his arrest and imprisonment – and leaving Ann bereft of both husband and son to sink back into gin-sodden despair. But at this stage of initial planning his intention remained to kill her, too, wipe the slate clean and move on. Mason had learned the unimaginative title of Slater’s company – Slater’s Securities – from the local newspaper’s coverage of David’s hit and run and looked upon that as another possible focus, although again limiting his target to just Slater alone. What other locations were there where he could get them both together and hit them both together? Mason demanded of himself, in impatient irritation.

  David’s grave!

  Frustration at once turned to a warmth of satisfaction at the obvious, fulfilling, beckoning answer. Where else would grieving parents go together to mourn but to the grave of their tragically killed son; the grave easy to locate at the church named in the Frederick News-Post coverage, the grave at which Slater and Ann had been photographed together, supporting each other together, consoling each other together! Mason sniggered. Where they could be killed together. Bleed together.

  ‘What did she say?’ demanded Ann, as Slater started the car.

  ‘She asked a lot of questions, about guilt and whether I hadn’t been frightened that you’d turn me in when I told you who I really was.’

  ‘I thought about it.’

  Slater looked sharply across the car. ‘I never knew that! You never told me!’

  ‘It never came up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ It was an automatic, unthinking question. Slater was confused, unable to believe Ann had never told him.

  Ann shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess at first I thought it was my duty but then I changed my mind.’
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  ‘Even though you loved me!’

  ‘I don’t think I was sure then that I did. I’m glad now that I didn’t.’

  Slater drove on for several minutes in bewildered silence. ‘So am I,’ he said, finally. ‘She asked if I felt any guilt. And if I was worried about how you’d get through it all.’

  ‘Were you? Worried, I mean?’

  It was as if they were strangers, thought Slater. ‘Yes. I thought it might have been too much for you.’

  ‘My recollection was that it didn’t seem real … didn’t seem to be happening. Are you coming tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course!’ said Slater, further surprised. ‘How could you think I wouldn’t!’

  Ann shrugged again, as if it weren’t important. ‘I don’t know.’

  Surely this odd conversation, her strange almost unnatural calmness, was proof that Ann had a problem? He’d have to remember as much of it as possible to tell Hillary Nelson tomorrow. ‘Are you glad we’re seeing her?’

  ‘I will be, if you believe that Jack has found us. And start doing something about it. Did she tell you she wants to hypnotize me?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘She does. I said I was quite happy for her to do so. What do you think?’

  ‘I think she should have told me. That we should have talked about it.’

  ‘That’s what we are doing, right now. So what do you think?’

  ‘I meant Hillary and I should have talked about it.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what you think!’ she demanded.

  ‘I want to know why she wants to do it.’

  ‘What are you frightened of?’

  ‘I’m not frightened of anything! I just don’t want her playing tricks with you.’

  ‘There’s no need to shout. And I don’t think she’s playing tricks with me.’

  ‘I wasn’t shouting,’ denied Slater.

  ‘I want to stop on the way home.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Slater, without needing to be told where.

  ‘And thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Checking in the mirrors as much as you’ve been doing, while we’re driving. Looking for him’

  ‘I always check the mirrors when I’m driving.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  Twenty-Three

  The routine was the same as the previous day: Ann invited to begin the session by Hillary Nelson, but before his wife could enter the psychiatrist’s room Slater said, ‘You didn’t tell me you wanted to hypnotize Ann today?’

  ‘It was a question for Ann. To Ann.’

  ‘Without involving me?’

  ‘Without involving you,’ confirmed the psychiatrist. ‘Ann involved you, which is good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I told you we wouldn’t do joint sessions. I’d like to talk to Ann now.’

  The curt dismissal was rude, decided Slater. Hillary hadn’t given any indication yesterday, but it was possible that she despised him for who he was and what he had done. To feel which, he supposed, she had every right by whatever standards she chose. He certainly didn’t intend losing his temper over it. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘We’ll be a while, if you’ve anything else to do.’

  ‘You’d like me to be here, wouldn’t you?’ Slater asked his wife.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ann, at once. ‘I want you to be right outside the door.’

  Slater wondered if he’d misjudged the psychiatrist: decided too soon how good she was? She was certainly a good interrogator but upon careful reconsideration of every exchange the previous day – or as much of the exchanges as he could remember, which he decided was a lot – he couldn’t see what practical benefit it had been to Ann. Which was the entire purpose – the only purpose – of their consulting the woman. Ann’s demeanour totally bewildered him, convinced as she appeared to be that they were under imminent and deadly threat from her ex-husband, insisting upon every precaution and protection, but at the same time appearing ephemerally suspended from reality. The only occasions upon which her demeanour changed, when Ann became someone he thought he knew and could recognize, were their nightly visits to David’s grave when, almost as if she were discarding a disguise, she reverted to being the weeping, grieving mother as he unashamedly collapsed into being the loss-racked father. They both had to recover – adjust – from that, Slater determined, positively. Not yet. It was far too soon yet even to contemplate their not going as often as Ann chose – nightly, as she was choosing now – to mourn at David’s graveside. But he shouldn’t – wouldn’t – allow it to become a maudlin, emotionally corrosive habit. Maybe it was something he should discuss with Hillary Nelson, despite his belated uncertainty of her methodology and ability.

  ‘I’m sorry if we’ve been too long,’ apologized the psychiatrist as she emerged behind Ann; Slater realized, surprised, that Ann’s second treatment had stretched over two hours. Ann was smiling, quite relaxed.

  ‘However long it takes,’ dismissed Slater, starting to following Hillary Nelson back into her rooms. He stopped at the door, looking between the two women. To Ann he said, ‘You going to be all right, waiting so long?’

  ‘I’m certainly not going home by myself,’ said Ann, no longer smiling.

  ‘I didn’t mean …’ started Slater, before tailing off.

  ‘Maybe we won’t be that long,’ said Hillary.

  There was only one chair directly in front of her desk today but there was a rumpled rug on a chaise longue he had been unaware of the previous day. Seeing Slater looking at it the psychiatrist said, ‘How would you feel about being hypnotized?’

  ‘I’m relaxed enough.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked you. I asked how you’d feel about being hypnotized.’

  ‘Would it help what we’re trying to do for Ann?’ Slater was uncomfortable at the idea, frightened of losing control and telling her how frightened he’d been of Mason.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about helping Ann, either. I was thinking about you.’

  ‘I thought we decided yesterday I didn’t need help.’

  ‘You may have decided that. I didn’t say I had.’

  ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘You think you could kill Jack Mason?’

  ‘What?’ demanded Slater, startled by the switch.

  ‘That’s what Ann tells me you’ve got to do. Kill him before he kills you.’

  ‘You really believe she did see him? That he has found us?’

  ‘I’m telling you what Ann thinks you’ve got to do. Could you?’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ protested Slater.

  ‘No, it’s not. If you thought Mason would try to kill Ann, and you, as he might have killed David, could you kill him first?’

  ‘Yes.’ said Slater at once. ‘I’d want to kill him.’

  ‘How well do you believe you got to know him when you were handling him?’

  Slater shifted, uneasily. ‘Pretty well. As much – maybe more – through Ann than through our direct contact.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘Because of the way he ill-treated Ann?’

  ‘No. Because he was a traitor.’

  Hillary didn’t try to prevent the disbelieving laugh. ‘But that’s what you wanted him to be! What your job was, in Washington! Handling – managing – a traitor.’

  Slater shook his head. ‘I know what my job was, running Mason. That, as well as other things, was my profession. But no professional intelligence officer likes another professional officer who goes over to the other side. I know it sounds illogical, to anyone else, but that’s how it is. It’s an expedient act as I told you yesterday, I was trained to lie and deceive. That was my job, my profession. I knew, for every hour of every day after I defected and went through all the debriefings, that every other intelligence officer who dealt with me and got everything they could out of me despised me as they did so.’

  ‘Did you despise yourself?’


  Slater considered the question. ‘Yes. Again, as I told you yesterday, I don’t remember feeling any guilt but I despised myself. Which is different.’

  ‘Why is it different?’

  ‘I stayed honest to myself.’

  ‘Do you think Mason despised himself?’

  ‘No,’ said Slater, immediately. ‘I think Mason enjoyed being turned. I think he despised everyone else at Langley, thought they were inferior to him for not knowing what fools he was making of them. And I think he probably despised me, too.’

  ‘I looked up the archival material last night, as you suggested. At the trial he was described as an outstanding intelligence officer.’

  ‘He was,’ agreed Slater, at once. ‘Again, as I told you yesterday, I had to be trained to lie. I don’t believe Mason needed that training. Lying came naturally to him. He was born to be a spy, for whatever, and whoever was prepared to pay him. Jack Mason had only two interests: money and women.’

  ‘Was he born to be a killer?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Almost everything came easy to him; he was one of those sort of guys. But I never thought of him as someone who could kill …’ Slater paused. ‘Every national intelligence agency has those types of people. They’re attached to specialized divisions, those people who don’t have any problem killing someone they’re ordered to assassinate. They’re psychologically trained, brainwashed, if you like, that their victims are enemies of the state and that their deaths are justified. The KGB called authorized killings “wet jobs”. The CIA referred to them as “terminating with extreme prejudice”. But you’d surely know better than me that a person would need a special mentality, a twisted, psychotic mentality, to kill to order.’

  ‘Ann thinks he’d be capable of killing.’

  ‘He certainly physically attacked her,’ conceded Slater. ‘But hitting a woman is surely different from finding it easy to kill!’

  ‘And he’d have a reason – a self-justification – to attack her and you again after all that you made happen to him, wouldn’t he? You told me, less than an hour ago and without needing to think about it, that you could kill him. Does that mean you think you’re a killer?’