by Bill Granger
“I did not expect you at all.”
Denisov let his eyes grow wider behind the rimless glasses. “Is so?”
“Why are you here?”
“I have a message from Armistice Day, the same as the other messages. I am to meet you here, in this city, at eleven hundred hours today.”
“I sent no message,” Devereaux said. His eyes were steady. Henry McGee had arranged this story. It was the concussion but he felt very disoriented, outside himself, staring at his own body and trying to guess what words he would say next.
“Is so?” Denisov saw the truth of it in the sick thing at the edge of the gray eyes. The eyes betrayed nothing but Denisov knew. He thought then of the dead blond man in the parking lot in Anchorage.
The two men stood in the middle of the airport staring at each other exactly like the enemies they had once been. They had been enemies so long that it was nearly as good as friendship. They knew each other—or thought they did.
“What can this be, then?” Denisov said at last. His voice had lost its edge. Everything in his voice was flat, almost at the end of its rope.
“Tell me, Russian,” Devereaux said. It was the standard technique, they both understood that. You answered no questions but proposed your own.
“I do not understand this,” Denisov said. He again thought of the dead man in the parking lot on Northern Lights Boulevard. He had killed that man, an agent of R Section. Devereaux would know that in time. What would Devereaux do then? He thought of the man in Santa Barbara who had walked out of the fog that morning and identified him. The world had fallen off its axis that morning and had been plunging and bucking down through the spiral of the galaxies ever since. Denisov shook his head and muttered something in Russian and stood absolutely still.
“This is a setup,” Devereaux said in a very quiet voice. “You understand that.”
“Of course,” Denisov said. “But for whom?”
“For me, for you.” He thought of the photographs. He thought of Henry’s game in “killing” the girl called Narvak. He thought of all of Henry’s stories. He began to understand a little more. “We’re part of a scenario.”
“I do not know this,” Denisov said. His voice was completely lost in its flatness.
They were silent another moment. The small terminal was not very crowded and everyone else seemed interested in their own business. A woman with Alaska Airlines was dressed in a native costume consisting of beads and furs. She held a manifest list in a clipboard and seemed to be looking for someone.
“This trap,” Denisov said. He stopped. Did it matter if he told the truth? “Alexa is also here. We are found in the program. How is this so, Devereaux, that we are found in the program? She is threatened, I am compromised. We are running, we are trying to decide where we must run.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
The girl had just arrived at the Alaska Airlines counter and was opening up for the morning passage to Anchorage. She stared at the two strangers in the middle of the sparse terminal.
“Where is she?”
“It is dangerous. I have hidden her.”
“Where?”
“It is too much in danger to tell you this,” Denisov said.
“Try to make some sense—”
“Is this your desire?” Denisov said. “To make me run for you again, like the time in Zurich? You betray me to Moscow, is that this game?” And Denisov felt for the pistol in his coat. The bush pilot had been given too much money to bring Denisov here; the trail was wide and he only had a few hours before the chasers from R Section would be after him. They would find out about the airplane chartered to Nome, about the identity of the passenger. They would check the files and they would know that Denisov had committed murder in the United States. Worse, he had killed an agent of Section. Devereaux did not know this yet—or had he set it all in motion?
It was absurd, Denisov thought in desperation. He was trapped here. If he killed Devereaux, he was trapped. In any case, he was trapped in Alaska. Perhaps that was the choice—he had to go back to Moscow after all. The man called Karpov in the fog in Santa Barbara had been right after all.
An immense sadness came over him. It was as thick as fog and as gentle. He could not struggle against this thing. He released the grip of the pistol and shrugged, as though to himself.
Devereaux watched him. He knew that face, he knew that look. They had matched each other in Vietnam and in the wider theater of Southeast Asia and out on the rim of Asia. He knew this Russian and yet he was still puzzled by him because he could not get behind the Slavic stoicism.
“What did the message say?”
“A place called the Polaris Hotel at eleven hundred hours.”
“It impelled you,” Devereaux said. “And you brought Alexa.”
“It is more than that,” Denisov said. “If I tell you, then you will know why I must come. If you do not know what I am to tell you, then you are correct—this is a set against us, against you and me as well. And if you know these things I will tell you, it is merely a set against me.”
“A setup,” Devereaux said.
Denisov shrugged.
“You have to tell me, Russian,” Devereaux said. “This is a matter of timing and we don’t have a lot of it.”
“I tell nothing,” Denisov said.
“Why did you come here? How were you compromised?”
Denisov stared at him for a long moment.
“Let’s go to the Polaris Hotel, then,” Devereaux said at last.
“You think someone is there?”
“Unless you make this up,” Devereaux said.
The two men walked out of the terminal to the pickup truck where Nels Nelsen sat with the rifle across his lap. Devereaux opened the door. Denisov stared at the rifle. Devereaux picked it up and shoved the muzzle against Denisov’s burly chest. The truck was to the right of the terminal building and there was no one around.
“Are you to kill me?” Denisov said.
Devereaux reached into the Russian’s pocket and removed the pistol. He dropped the rifle back onto Nels’ lap. He unsnapped the safety on the automatic. He stared at Denisov the whole time. The action took less than five seconds.
“Why did you come here?”
“The message.”
“Who compromised you in the program?”
“Is man named Karpov. But it is not him; he is messenger.”
“What did Karpov tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m not going to fuck with you, Russian. I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Denisov looked at the gray man with gray eyes. “I am to see you here. You will want to go to… you will want to go to Soviet Union.”
“Siberia?”
“Yes.”
“Karpov told you.”
“Yes.”
“You will take me.”
“I have no choice.”
“Why Alexa?”
Denisov began to tell him. Devereaux listened and he held the pistol. A taxi from Nome pulled up at the airport and two natives got out and paid and shuffled into the terminal with their bags. The wind was blowing very softly and steadily, a lingering howl across the tundra flatness.
“Are you so naïve? Why let yourself be blackmailed? They’ll kill you on the other side.”
“Who am I to speak to? To you? To the program which lets this happen to me?”
Devereaux thought about it for a moment. “All right,” he said.
Denisov thought about the dead man in Anchorage. There was no way out, no hope, no chance of turning back. He said nothing.
“You meet someone in Nome, then you pick me up at the cabin, then we go across. That has to be the rest of Henry’s story. That’s not what this is about, just what this part is about,” Devereaux said. He was connecting it in mind. It was a crossword puzzle but each word had to fit exactly so and in exactly the right sequence of time.
“I have to make a call,�
�� Devereaux said. He looked at Nels. “Turn on the motor, Nels, it’s getting cooler. Get in. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“What do we do?” Denisov said in a dull voice.
But there wasn’t time to answer, not if Devereaux had figured things out in the proper sequence. There was just time to do.
27
THE SOLUTION
“Where are we going?” Noah said. He was pulling at his little beard as though it might get him an answer.
“Shut up,” Ernie said. That was the name of the first one. The second man stayed in the cabin along with the man who had opened the apartment door with a sledgehammer. They had talked in the cabin and they had both been slapped around until a radiophone call came. The radiophone was in the second room of the cabin and Kools and Noah could not understand what was being said. After the call, everything was different. The men had not touched them again. The cabin got quiet after the call and Kools knew they were waiting for something to happen. He was afraid of what was going to happen.
Then they had heard the helicopter land on the level ground at the foot of the forested hill, and the first one, Ernie, had taken them outside, his rifle held on their backs.
The cabin was the only habitation on a lake north of Fairbanks. The countryside was full of mountains and the shining faces of glacier passes that never melted. The immensity of the Alaskan countryside diminished human dimensions; the chopper sat on the ground like a child’s toy, waiting to be played with. Kools looked around at the mountains and the blue sky and he could not get rid of the feeling of something bad about to happen.
“We got rights,” Noah tried again. Noah didn’t get it. Kools looked at him with the superiority of the lifer regarding the new fish. Noah knew all about bombs and explosives and he had the Russian contacts in the first place and he fucked Narvak and he patronized Kools and the old man and he seemed to know every step before you took it. But Kools had realized since the men broke down the door of the apartment in Fairbanks that Noah was a baby, that Noah didn’t understand a damned thing, and that the whole action with ULU and setting off bombs on the pipeline had been a kind of game to him, a violent childhood carried into middle age. Kools was disgusted with Noah. The fool wasn’t even doing it for money.
“We got rights,” Noah repeated.
Ernie said he was getting tired of reminding him. He hit him in the back with the rifle butt this time.
They were in handcuffs. The bracelets were tight across their wrists and their arms were twisted behind their backs.
Kools reached the open door of the helicopter first and put one foot on the ledge but he couldn’t make it up without help because his hands were behind his back. Ernie pushed his butt and Kools stumbled inside the chopper and sat down hard on the bench. Noah was next. Noah looked very scared by everything. Kools was thinking about what these guys were going to do to them. He had decided a couple of hours ago that they were going to kill them. It wasn’t anything they said, just the way they had looked at them after the radiophone call.
Kools was working on the bracelet on his left wrist. He was skinny and the bracelet was tight but not as tight as it had been when they took them in the apartment in Fairbanks.
Ernie got into the helicopter. The pilot was a big guy with a beard and a cap that bore the name of an oil company.
They lifted abruptly and made a dizzy turn and the cabin was below and then it was gone, hidden by the white glacier on the mountainside. It was a beautiful morning, full of sunlight on the tundra and on the hills.
Ernie smiled at Noah. “You first, honey,” Ernie said. He reached behind Noah and unlocked the bracelets and Noah rubbed his wrists for a moment and stared at Ernie. Ernie was about two hundred fifty pounds and he had hands like bear’s paws.
Kools pushed at the bracelet behind his back.
Noah said he didn’t believe it. The trouble was, it didn’t matter if he believed it or not.
Ernie opened the hatch.
The helicopter chopped at the air and the violent, turbulent sound deafened everyone inside the eggshell frame.
Noah started screaming at him. Noah said a lot of things and even included a prayer in what he said. Ernie listened to him for a moment and his small eyes kept smiling. Kools watched Ernie’s eyes and rubbed his wrist against the steel bracelet behind his back. Noah kept screaming as though anyone could hear him above the roar of the chopper blades. Ernie decided it was time, and besides, it was getting cold in the chopper. Ernie grabbed Noah by the face hair and pulled him across the narrow cabin of the copter and shoved him out the hatch.
The rush of wind nearly drowned out the long, falling scream.
“Next,” Ernie said, reaching behind Kools to unfasten the bracelets.
Kools kicked him in the groin the moment the bracelets were off. The thing was, Kools had been a good prisoner and answered questions when spoken to and kept quiet the rest of the time and Ernie was in such good humor that it had not occurred to him until the last moment that Kools would do something like this.
Kools stared at him like a prisoner with those prisoner eyes that don’t have a trace of mercy in them.
Ernie stared back with eyes that were not smiling because Ernie was stumbling back through the hatch. A strong gust of wind and the sudden loss of two hundred fifty pounds on that side of the copter temporarily upset everything. The pilot held on to the controls as Ernie went screaming out the door. He fell a thousand feet before he was speared by the top of a fir tree.
Kools climbed behind the pilot and wrapped the dangling bracelet around his neck.
“I don’t want to die,” Kools said. “And you don’t want to die.”
“That’s right,” the pilot said.
“What’s your name?”
“Bill.”
“Well, Bill, what do you say?”
“I say the hell with it. Where do you want to go?”
“Where can you take me?”
“I got about ninety minutes of flying time in the tanks,” Bill said.
“Why don’t you take me to Anchorage?”
“Sure,” Bill said.
“Why don’t you find someplace to set down where there aren’t a lot of people,” Kools said.
“Sure.”
“You and me walk into town and you can tell them what happened, just the way it happened,” Kools said.
“You wouldn’t kill me.” Bill said it cool but just on this side of hysteria. He was already wheeling the copter south toward the Denali Mountains.
“No,” Kools said. “I didn’t have that in mind at all.”
“I just take orders,” Bill said.
“I understand,” Kools said. “I don’t want no trouble.”
“We’re two guys don’t want no trouble,” Bill said. He tried a smile and twisted in his seat so that Kools could see it. Kools was looking through him, all the way to Seattle.
28
THE SENATOR’S CHOICE
“Who are you?” she said in the darkness.
“The man who opened the account in Hong Kong,” Henry McGee said.
Patricia Heath thought she must not act afraid. The maid would come in the afternoon to clean the house. It was midmorning. If he came to rob her, he could do it; he could even rape her if he had to. The thing was not to be afraid.
Henry McGee told her to sit down.
They were in the darkness of the bedroom. She sat down at her dressing table. He walked over to her. He did not have a weapon.
“You fucked Malcolm all night, I saw him leaving. You are quite a surprise to me, even for all I know about you,” Henry McGee said.
“What do you know about me?”
“I know you and Mal got those two terrorists killed off. I know you and Mal found the bomb and it was a real bomb, wasn’t it? And I know you and Mal think you got a million waiting for you in a bank in Hong Kong. I know a lot about you, Pat. You’re a fine-looking woman.”
“What do you want?”
“Not
what you think,” Henry McGee said. He smiled at her and touched her chin and lifted her face. “Fine-looking woman.”
“What do you want?” she said. The black nightgown clung to her and her breasts formed themselves against the silky material that barely covered them.
“Someone has to be the chump,” he said.
“That’s why we got those two,” she said.
“But Mal got his tit in a wringer. He’s got the contact with the oil people, the pipeline crowd. They musta decided to waste the two chumps I set up for this. Mal is out there on a limb like a fucking monkey. I know you don’t want to be out on that same limb. I knew you’d waste them. You don’t want this to go to the Justice Department. Not the stuff about the pipeline bombings and this blackmail and how you and Mal got a piece of the action for your part in it. Even the people behind Mal wouldn’t like to know they were not only paying me off but you were skimming on the side.”
“I don’t know what you want,” she said in the same cold low voice. The voice always worked in Washington. It marked her as a woman not to be trifled with. She would lay it out like that in a hearing room or even in the secret committee hearings on intelligence matters and everyone would admire her command of herself. She looked at Henry McGee to see if it was working on him.
“I want you to know what the FBI will know at one P.M. so that they won’t surprise you when they come to see you this afternoon,” Henry said.
She shivered then. She couldn’t help it. She thought about what a fool Mal was. Why had she let herself be tempted by the money? It wasn’t so much the money but it was dealing with someone like Mal. Mal was an asshole, she had always known he was an asshole, anything he touched would turn out like this.
