by Bill Granger
“That’s no problem. We can turn them over to the FBI—”
“That is a problem, Mal,” she said. No one called him Mal. “You don’t think things through, you never did, that’s why I did a gotcha on you eleven years ago.”
“Don’t bring that up.”
“I won’t.” She stopped brushing her hair and looked at him. She was smiling and her eyes shone with pleasure. “You’re very good, Mal. You must make Terry very happy. What’s she like? Do you think she’s better than I am?”
“Come on, Patricia. Come back in bed.”
“You have to tell me first.”
“You’re very good,” he said.
“That’s not good enough.”
“I never made love to anyone like you.”
“You know what I would like right now?”
He nodded and got out of bed and went to her. They didn’t talk again for a long time and the position was absurd but when people have sex, they really don’t look at themselves from a distance.
“We have to decide about this,” she said after a very long time. They were standing by the bedroom window, naked, looking down at the sunlight on the water. The pines on the hillside stretched to the top of the ridge and there was an immense sense of loneliness in the scene.
“There’s no way the FBI will trace our money to us,” he said. “I can fly down to Hong Kong tomorrow and get it. In cash.”
“Should I trust you to get my share as well?” Patricia said.
He put his arm around her. “Can’t we be friends?”
“Of course we can, Mal. I like you now, I like the way you handle yourself.” She smiled. “The problem is these two. They link back to us. We got a message from the man about a bomb and we handled it ourselves. Do you think the FBI is going to believe this? They’ll start checking accounts and they’ll go over us like I don’t know what. Do you have anything to hide?”
He smirked and made a bad pun.
Men were really children sometimes, she thought. She turned from the window and put on her nightgown. It was sheer and black and, like everything she owned, designed to enhance her beauty and give her pleasure.
“The security people are private but that doesn’t mean they won’t wonder why we don’t turn these people over to the FBI. I’ve been thinking about it but we’re caught in a box of sorts. I thought about having them killed,” she said, going into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She brushed her teeth six or seven times a day.
“What?”
Malcolm Crowder stared at the open door of the bathroom. “What did you say?”
But she had the electric toothbrush in her mouth and Gleem was scrubbing her teeth. Her teeth were perfect. She had bitten Malcolm on his chest early in the evening.
“I really think we have to put a story together,” she said at last, coming back into the bedroom.
“All right. What kind of a story?”
“The people in Chicago and Dallas know they paid the blackmail and they want some results, so the easiest thing is for them to make the decisions. We were only peripherally involved,” she said. “You got the note, you got the demands, you considered the danger. After all, the FBI doesn’t know about the other attempts on the pipeline.”
“We have tried to handle it.”
“The problem is, the only illegal thing we’ve done is not notify the police when we saw a crime,” she said.
“That and siphoning off a million bucks from the blackmail money,” he said.
“Nobody knows about that, Mal,” she said in a very low voice. “Nobody is going to know about it. Let the money sit in Hong Kong, we’re not in a hurry, are we? Turn this over to the people in Chicago and Dallas and let them decide. They haven’t been inclined to go running to the Justice Department before, why should they now? Publicity is the thing that could hurt the pipeline; not even an atomic bomb could hurt it as much. The publicity is the thing and now we’ve got the two little shits who wanted to blow up the line, so we should just handle it normally. I’m not going to be involved, Mal, and I suggest you don’t get involved. Just turn it over to whoever you turn it over to in Chicago or in Dallas and let them figure out what to do.”
“I could turn it over to Clay Ashley in Chicago,” Mal said, thinking of the large man in the expensive suits who worked in a marble tower on Wacker Drive. “Clay Ashley would take care of it and he would tell the others just enough to convince them the problem was handled.”
“Good. You talk to Clay Ashley. That puts us once removed from doing it ourselves.”
“I don’t think I could kill them. I think Clay Ashley could, if he looked at it logically.”
“Will he do that? Look at it logically?”
“I think so. I don’t know about the whole bunch in Chicago and Dallas, but Clay Ashley can look at things logically.”
“An atom bomb on the pipeline. You think they’d want to admit the possibility of such a thing?” Patricia Heath said. “Wake up, Mal.”
He made a look of annoyance. He was naked and she wasn’t. He didn’t like that. A moment before, they had been chums.
“So we do what you suggest. We kill them,” he said.
“I never said that. You might have thought I said that but I never said that. If I had said something like that, I might be involved in whatever happened next and I’m not involved, I told you. When you talked to this man, this man who got in touch with you, when you talked to him, you told him you would need a couple of chumps to give to the people in Chicago and Dallas. He came through for you. You got the chumps and he got three million and everyone is happy. Even Chicago will be happy when they have a couple of live bodies in exchange for the money.”
“Just turn it over,” Malcolm said, thinking about it.
She went over to him and she put her hand on him. She did it the way she did it with all her lovers. They liked it, every one of them. They might not have known they would like it but they all did finally. It was the power that came out of her in those moments. Power was wet and warm and it rushed into them like a drug because of the power of her touch.
“God, Patricia,” he said. His voice was soft because it was all the voice he could muster. He took a step back and she held him with one hand and stared into his eyes.
“Just turn it over to your people,” she said. “They’ll know what to do with the chumps. The chumps have been cut loose, it was part of the deal and the other party kept the deal. You won’t have any more bombings on the pipeline. I think the two chumps did all the heavy lifting, and this guy, whoever he was, just sat back and was setting up the deal. There isn’t any power-to-the-people group behind this. Just a couple of chumps and a guy who knows where to get an atom bomb.”
“I can’t get involved in killing,” Malcolm said.
“Be quiet, Mal. I want you to do it again, the way you did it before.”
When she touched him, it was as though she were opening him. Terry was a good lay but this was a lot more. He kissed her slowly. She let herself be kissed. She knew she did not have to touch him anymore.
26
THE PARTNER OF HENRY MCGEE
Nels Nelsen took the turnoff just after dawn. It was ten minutes after one in the morning. The clouds were heavy on the white hills and the wind from the gray sea was full of threats.
He was talking to himself, he had been talking to himself in the truck for two hours. He talked about what a fool he was and what a fool Henry McGee was and what a fool the government man was. Everyone in the whole blessed world was a fool. It was foolishness for the government man to go off with that young girl. He wanted a piece of ass and no doubt he was safe and happy sitting in a cabin somewhere with the lovely bit of girl between his legs. It was just such foolishness for a fool like Nels Nelsen from Norway to be out looking for him. The man could take care of himself.
There wasn’t any smoke coming from the chimney in the cabin set at the end of the trail. The cabin did not have any windows. Nels stopped the pickup truck
and turned off the engine and sat a moment, thinking about what he would do next. Then he lifted the Winchester off the gun rack behind the bench seat and got out. Nels had his rifle cocked when he pushed open the door.
He saw the form on the bed. There was no light and no heat and the room was almost damp with cold. His breath came out in puffs.
Nels went to the center of the room and looked at the stove and then at the form of the man on the sleeping ledge.
He went to the man and touched his bloodied face. The eyes were closed. The face was cold. He touched his chest. He felt nothing.
He thought the government man was dead.
He put his hand around the man’s wrist—and felt the rope tied around it. He cut the rope quickly. He felt the wrist for a moment. The wrist and hand were cold. He rubbed at the white skin to see if he could redden it.
He piled furs on the body of the man at last. He began to search in the cabin for fuel. He found the kerosene behind the meat cache. He brought it to the stove and poured it in and relit the stove. It took a long time for the warmth to come back into the windowless square of a room.
Devereaux opened his eyes. Nels sat next to him with a cup of coffee in his hands. Nels wore gloves and Devereaux felt very cold beneath the heavy weight of the furs.
“Drink some coffee, get yourself warmed. I got some whiskey for later, when you get your temperature up a ways, but it’s no good right now. I thought you was dead.”
Devereaux did not speak. He sipped at the scalding cup of coffee in the chipped ceramic mug. The cold was so deep inside him that it would never come out. It was in the marrow of his bones. He was too cold to even shiver beneath the furs. His feet felt like slabs of ice; his fingers were turning red with the beginning of frostbite. Nels stared at him. Devereaux wanted to speak to the old trapper but the words were stuck in his throat. He drank more of the coffee, feeling it turn cold inside him as soon as he swallowed it.
“I went around looking for you. I asked at all the saloons. I was in the Wet Pussy when the night bartender came in and he said he saw you with the native girl going up the Teller Road.
“It was Narvak what had picked you up at the dock the day before and I thought it was kind of funny that you went off with her. I thought it was funny you had asked me how long I knew her, like you were suspicious of her. Then I thought maybe you went off to knock off a piece, she was a nice pretty thing. And then I thought about it some more and it didn’t seem right. Too much coincidence, her hanging on me one day and then on you and coming back for you. I don’t know; it seemed like too much coincidence.”
He paused, thinking about it: “So I came up the road looking for you. Got to Teller and started back. I just been looking without knowing even what I was looking for except I knew you didn’t make it to Teller.”
Devereaux stared at the whiskey-bright face of the old trapper. Nels Nelsen had been part of it from the beginning but he wasn’t part of it at all. Nels Nelsen had had the misfortune to be lonely one afternoon in Anchorage and he had fallen in with another old-timer named Otis Dobbins, who went by the name of Henry McGee. Just a couple of lost souls in the world who found each other and yet they were nothing but characters told in a continuing story by the real Henry McGee. Had Henry foreseen this? That the heater would go out and Devereaux would freeze to death? Or that Nels Nelsen would follow him and find him before he died?
Devereaux forced down the thought as though it might be good for him.
“The girl was no good then,” Nels said. “I thought she was doing me a favor, going down to the dock that day to pick you up. Except it wasn’t a favor, was it? She was in it after you.”
“She was in it,” he said.
“What happened?”
“I believed in what I saw,” Devereaux said.
Nels stared at him.
It was warmer in the room and now he felt like shivering beneath the furs. “How did you start the heater?”
“It was just out of fuel,” Nels said.
“You could see that?”
“There’s a gauge on it. Anyone can see it.”
“Then Henry McGee knew,” Devereaux said. He saw the heater, saw the gauge, knew the heater would kick off finally and Devereaux would freeze to death. Was it that simple? But these were all Henry McGee’s stories and Devereaux was just a character in them. Perhaps it was his time to die; perhaps he was needed for another chapter. It was up to Henry McGee, wasn’t it? “I wonder if he knew about you.”
“Henry McGee? You mean the man you’re looking for, the man I thought was my partner?”
“The real Henry McGee,” Devereaux said. He felt sick and still cold but there was an urgency to things now. He tried to sit up and the dizziness seized him a moment and he nearly blacked out.
“Looks like they beat you up.”
“Hit my head. Concussion. I’m just a little dizzy,” Devereaux said. He sat still on the bed a moment. The dizziness passed and a momentary feeling of nausea passed with it. He had suffered concussions twice before; he knew the symptoms. You could ignore the symptoms as long as you didn’t move your head too fast or upset your balance by reaching for something beneath you or behind you and twisting for it. “I’ve got to get into Nome. What time is it?”
“Six in the morning,” Nels said. “Just sit a while and collect yourself. I’ll give you some whiskey if you want.”
“Yes,” Devereaux said.
The whiskey burned its way down his throat. He felt flush and warm, the false warmth of alcohol.
“I’ve got to get to a phone,” Devereaux said.
“Maybe you just ought to rest a little. I can make some beans, I found cans by the stove.”
“I’m twenty hours behind Henry McGee,” Devereaux said.
“It was him? The same you told me about?”
“It was him.”
“I don’t understand it. Why would my old friend take his name? And why would he get himself kilt?”
Devereaux looked at him. “I don’t know now. I thought I knew but I don’t know. Henry had to get out of here so he had to go to the airport unless he had someone waiting for him. Then I’m never going to be able to find him.”
Devereaux pushed himself up from the bed of furs and felt dizzy again. This time, he held on to the ledge until the dizziness passed. He stood up uncertainly and felt dizzy yet again. It was a bad concussion, worse than he could remember having before.
He sat down suddenly. Nels started toward him but Devereaux waved him away. He was exhausted by cold and pain; it had happened before. He would wait a moment for whatever reserve of strength he had to come up.
It was not supposed to be physically demanding or even threatening in the field. Perfectly capable agents past their primes continued to function. Men who ate too well or smoked too much or drank too much or who loathed exercise or had heart murmurs or bad vision all carried on. Now and then, an agent disappeared; now and then, an agent was killed. These were the accidents of the trade. Devereaux had run into more than his share of them: Perhaps Devereaux had run outside the perimeters too often to expect the sedentary life of the intelligence agent. He had spent four years in Vietnam in the most dangerous part of the trade and the death of war all around him had hardened him in a way that an easier, softer career in R Section would not have hardened him.
He felt stronger. He got up again and this time shrugged into his parka.
“Are you going to be all right?” Nels said. He held the rifle in his hand.
Devereaux looked at the rifle and at Nels and did not say anything. He opened the cabin door, went through the winter entryway and outside. Morning was gray, the hills were gray, the tundra was gray, all of nature had lost its colors. He could smell the sea. The Siberian clouds crossed the sea and smothered the peninsula on the American side.
Devereaux said, “Did you look around the cabin?”
“No. What would I look for?”
“The man it belonged to. Or the woman.”
<
br /> “I don’t know,” Nels said. “It’s a nice cabin.”
“If you don’t miss having a view,” Devereaux said and started around the cabin. They found the owner behind the cabin, on the rise of land that led to a dry cut through the tundra. The man might have been a trapper like Nels by the way he was dressed. His face was gone.
“Kilt,” Nels said. “This is just a horrible thing, isn’t it?”
Devereaux said nothing. He turned back toward the pickup truck. Nels Nelsen got in on the driver’s side and they started down the gravel road toward Nome. Forty minutes later, Devereaux saw the battered old Thunderbird in the parking lot of the small, neat airport building.
“Park there,” Devereaux said, pointing to a place behind the car. Nels stopped the truck but did not turn off the ignition. Devereaux opened his door. “Wait,” he said. He climbed down from the gray GMC truck and shut the door and went around the car. He opened the door. Did Henry want to leave him a clue? He went through the glove compartment and found a package of cigarettes and a book of matches carrying the advertisement of the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage. There was nothing else in the car except the keys to the ignition.
He closed the door of the Thunderbird and walked across the lot to the airport building. They had flown out but they could be anywhere in the world. Devereaux was doing the dogged things now that he had done from the beginning. He had no idea that he would ever run across Henry McGee again—unless Henry planned it. He pushed open the door to the terminal. It was small and quiet and there were posters on the wall celebrating the annual Iditarod dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome.
Devereaux felt a sudden chill when he saw the other man. Life was out of context again.
Denisov took a step, decided something, took another step. “You told me to meet at the hotel. I did not expect this.”
Devereaux stared at him. A sense of dizziness not related to his concussion came over him in waves. Denisov was real, that was really his voice with the stuttering Russian accent, but there was nothing real about this meeting. He had existed yesterday in a series of photographs that captured him exchanging packages with a Soviet courier in Zurich. Henry McGee’s photographs, Henry McGee’s story about Denisov. Denisov was part of another scenario in Devereaux’s past and Henry McGee had casually lifted him into this milieu; would it turn out that everything in the world was connected to everything else? Denisov was in Santa Barbara, in a defector’s exile, watched and guarded by the government. Now he was at the edge of the Arctic Circle in the last place on earth Devereaux would have expected to find him.
