Ruckles was right, thought Green. It had been extremely simple.
At first, Green was worried about carrying off the deception. He wondered if he would have the courage to kill Elizabeth if she questioned the false cable from Devereaux. Ruckles had said it was important enough for Green to blow his cover if need be; if Elizabeth became suspicious, Green was to eliminate her in the house and then flee.
Ruckles had assured him that he would be taken care of.
Still, Green had worried about the cable and about the killing all the way back from The Orange Man.
Elizabeth had not questioned the cable at all.
She had only asked how far Victoria Station was and would she be there in time, and he had been at his best, soothing and reassuring. She’d changed her clothing and taken only her purse and passport.
It was so easy.
Green hailed a cab in the street and had it waiting at the door when she emerged onto the sidewalk, shrugging into her coat.
She thanked him. He blushed.
And then she was driven away.
Elizabeth sat hunched in the back seat of the cab, thinking of Devereaux, wondering if it was all over now, and what would that mean to her? Would it be safe? But he had said it would be safe.
The cab swung into the hurly-burly of autos crowded around the entrance of Victoria Station and the cockney driver reached to turn the handle on the back door for her. She paid him, overtipping, and hurried through the crowd at the entrance into the great terminal with its high, soaring ironwork over the tangle of iron tracks.
Victoria Station was exciting, even on a quiet Sunday afternoon, when one realized it was the main rail terminus for trains to and from the Continent.
Elizabeth glanced around, confused for the moment at the advertising signs and the bright W. H. Smith Sons magazine kiosks. Then she saw the ticket counter. She did not notice the man who stood behind her, absurdly trying to bury his large face behind a small Sunday Mirror. In fact, she had not noticed the car that had followed her cab all the way from Blake House to the train terminals.
Devereaux. He must be so close, she thought, as she purchased the second-class ticket for Dover and found the gate for the Dover train. The message had said he would meet her in the last second-class carriage.
She climbed aboard. It was one of the older British Rail carriages. The seats in the compartments were stiff and musty.
The train was not crowded; it was late in the fall and this train did not connect with a ferry at Dover. Finding a compartment that was empty, she slid open the door and went inside. She sat down at the window and looked out, expecting to see Devereaux at any moment waving to her, coming down the platform.
Elizabeth smiled to herself; it was too romantic. But it was a pleasant thought. They would be alone.
The door of the compartment slid open again and she turned, her daydream shattered by the appearance of a large, middle-aged Englishwoman in tweed skirt and formidable black hat.
“Hello, dear,” the woman said and lurched inside, throwing a small, flowered satchel on the rack above the seat near the aisle. “Terrible weather, ain’t it.” The woman was loud and vulgar and her breath smelled bad.
Elizabeth turned away and looked out the window.
“I hope it ain’t to be overcrowded.” The woman in the black hat chattered on. But Elizabeth didn’t look at her.
“Ya like some chocolates, dear?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said, not turning.
“I like me chocolates,” said the woman. “This ain’t the smokin’ carriage, is it?”
No Smoking signs were pasted on the glass of the door and the windows. Elizabeth pointed to them.
“Ah, that’s a relief, dear,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to make the mistake I made Friday. I was in a smoking carriage and this gentleman he came in and sat down and he lights himself a great black cigar. Now I says, ‘Can’t ya bloody read it’s no smokin’?’ And he comes back and says, ‘Yer the one that can’t read, it says smokin’, don’t it?’ and he was right.” She cackled then.
“Sure you don’t want a chocolate, dear?”
“No, thank you.”
Elizabeth looked again out the window. The clock at the concourse gate read three minutes to four. He wasn’t out there. No one, except the conductor and a man with a newspaper in front of his face.
Where was he?
The Englishwoman pulled a long thin hatpin from the crown of her black hat. But it was not a hatpin. It was too thick. The Englishwoman rose slowly.
Elizabeth continued to stare out the window at the man with the newspaper. He had lowered it suddenly and was staring back at her. His eyes were wide and frightened behind the rimless glasses. Suddenly, he raised his hand as though he wanted to make an alarm.
Elizabeth was like a sleeper caught in a nightmare, struggling to cross from the dream to wakefulness. Her movements seemed slow. She saw the Englishwoman reflected in the window glass…
Turn.
The face of the Englishwoman was twisted into a hideous grimace as she thrust the stiletto forward, the gleaming tip at Elizabeth’s throat.
Elizabeth fell back instinctively and threw up her arm against the onrushing form. The deadly thin knife grazed her coat, tore the material, and neatly skewered the seat cushion behind her. The Englishwoman fell forward heavily onto Elizabeth and slapped her in the face with a doubled fist. She heaved the stiletto out of the seat cushion and plunged it again towards Elizabeth’s body.
This time it entered flesh.
Elizabeth screamed.
Blood appeared on the cloth of her coat where the knife had entered her upraised arm. Again, Elizabeth cried out and pushed against the bulky woman with all her strength.
The face of the Englishwoman was very near, broad and mottled, twisted in some sort of awful mask of hatred. She was so close that Elizabeth saw the little traces of mustache at the ends of lips; her lipstick was crooked and her teeth were stained dark with shreds of chocolate. She seemed overpowering.
Blood was already staining a dark circle on Elizabeth’s raincoat. Her right arm felt heavy.
She pulled her knee up and pushed hard against the woman, sliding the point of the knee between the broad thighs and then pulling it up, cracking hard against her public bone.
The Englishwoman cried out.
The knife came down again but Elizabeth moved under it and pushed up, lifting the bulk of the large body and slamming the woman’s head against the luggage rack behind her.
She reached for the wrist with the knife and, twisting, threw her body into the Englishwoman again.
The knife fell without a sound onto the seat cushions.
Elizabeth felt the blow on the back of her neck and fell forward, onto the seat, the knife under her. She felt the handle pressing against her right breast.
The next blow would kill her.
Her teeth ached, her eyes saw flashes of color, her right arm was numb.
Elizabeth rolled over, grasping the knife with her right arm. The blow came down at that moment onto her collarbone.
The bulky woman cursed and raised her arms again, together, as though she were a fighter raising his arms in triumph. And then came down again, hands together.
Elizabeth pushed the stiletto up, into the tweedy fabric of the short coat, into the breast. The weight of the woman’s blow struck Elizabeth again on the shoulder even as her fat body slid on top of her.
At that moment the train lurched to a start; it was four.
The Englishwoman only stared at her, as though she were asking if she wanted a sweet. And then the line of blood began to form at the corners of her mouth.
Elizabeth pushed—once, twice—and threw the staring body off her. Scrambling up then, she looked down at the stiletto stuck into the fat woman’s body.
She wanted to scream and then she wanted to run and then she wanted to be sick. The feelings came over her quickly and fled as quickly; instead, she pushed her way into the corridor. Empty. Running to the exit door at the end of the carriage, she pushed furiously at the latch. The door opened with a groan.
She was in the last car of the train; the engine was already out of the station’s canopy of iron and glass. The car was near the end of the long platform.
She dropped off the slow-moving train, falling onto the concrete, and rolled forward for a moment. She had lost a shoe as she fell. She scraped her hands and knees and felt dizzy. For a moment, she lay at the end of the platform, in the dusky light of the sky filtering through the glass roof. The train moved on, unconcerned; she saw the red lamps of the last car winking off into the twilight.
Slowly, Elizabeth rose.
There was no one near her. She found her shoe on the track and put it on.
Money and a lipstick tube had fallen from her purse. She picked them up slowly and replaced them, as though still in a dream.
The telegram lay on the platform.
From Belfast. From Devereaux. A telegram sent to kill her. She had worried about Devereaux and the Section; what would they decide about her? Devereaux had said it was safe; that it would be decided later.
She saw the blood darken on the sleeve of her raincoat.
So they had decided. Devereaux and the Section.
Slowly, she began to limp down the platform, back towards the main concourse.
She felt drained, used up. She had killed the one sent to kill her.
Sent by Devereaux.
They had slept together and traded promises. It would be safe. They would not die. He had wrapped his arms around her and she had felt the hardness of his body press against her, his legs against her legs; she had formed herself in the fork of his body. And then they had made love. He had opened her legs and placed himself in her, deeply into her, and stayed there for a long time, holding her, filling, surrounding her.
She saw the dead, staring face of the Englishwoman. Sent by Devereaux. She had never killed before. Killing was something they spoke of in training; she had seen death a long time before, in the dust of Addis Ababa, a slow death of bloated bellies and cries in the night.
And David’s death. So still, lying on the street where he had been struck.
There was no more horror left in her.
Now there was no safe house or way to end the game except to die; there was no way out.
She had betrayed R Section and the ghost Section; or were they the same? It didn’t matter. She was beyond both: Both wanted her dead and there was no way to stop it.
Not that death mattered.
She reached the concourse. A couple stared at her and then walked away quickly. A little girl with a Raggedy Ann doll stared at her and sucked her thumb.
Why did he send someone else?
She would have let Devereaux kill her, easily. She would have waited in the train for him to come to her. They would have gone to a place where he would have made love to her and then fallen asleep with her. She would have slept in the curve of his body, next to him, trusting and open in her nakedness. He could have taken her life as lightly as a whisper. She would have been a gentle victim, taking death like a gift.
Goddam him.
Now there was no safe house; there was no one to go to anymore.
At midnight, the great clock in the dim hallway sounded the sixteen notes of the Westminster chime and then began to boom the hours. Almost unconsciously, Green counted them while he sat in the library with his large glass of vodka in ice and orange juice. There was no more time for posturing drinks or for wearing the façade of an Englishman.
Of course, it was impossible to sleep; impossible to think since the signal from Ruckles.
He had been awakened from a drink-induced stupor an hour before.
The beeper beside his bed had begun the strange chirping sound—rather like a mechanical bird—which meant Ruckles wanted to contact him urgently.
He had struggled out of sleep with foreboding. His mouth was dry. He realized he had been dreaming about the woman with brown hair. Elizabeth. A traitor.
He called Ruckles at the special number.
“She got away,” was all the Virginian said.
Green waited, his hand trembling.
“Took out our agent,” said Ruckles.
No. It was part of the dream. He opened his mouth but could not speak.
“Wake up, boy,” said Ruckles. “Our bird has flown. We can’t find her. The agent was wasted.”
No, not a dream. “What can I do?”
“This is our last contact,” said Ruckles slowly. “We’ve just received orders to close down Operation Mirror.”
“But.” Green began to sputter, stopped, glanced around the darkness of his bedroom.
“Sorry, old man,” Ruckles said. “I wanted to tell you myself. Better get rid of the tape transmitter in the scrambler box. For your sake.”
“You’re closing down the operation?” Green was unable to comprehend the current sentence, only the previous one.
“It’s blown,” said Ruckles.
“Then I’m blown,” said Green. He was awake now. The horror of it began to strangle him.
“Probably. Although I don’t suppose our bird will surface for a long time, if ever. We don’t know though. But the company wants to close it down. We got the message an hour ago.”
“But you were going to take me in—”
“We can’t do that,” Ruckles said reasonably. “It didn’t work out. We were going to take you in when Mirror succeeded.”
“But it’s not finished.”
“Nope. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Green held the telephone receiver with two hands in fear he might drop it. “But Ruckles. I’m out here alone. You’ve got to take me in. If they know it was me.”
“It’d be easier if you were with the opposition. But we’re part of the same government. We can’t do it.”
“But we served the President, we—”
“Easy now, Green. It’s a rough stick, old pal. I had to call you myself, let you know.”
“They’ll kill me.”
There was a pause. “Not necessarily.”
Not necessarily. Green could not speak, so Ruckles interpreted his silence.
“Don’t go catatonic on me, Green. Be calm. Just get rid of the tape transmitter in the scrambler box and you’ll be just f—”
Green let the receiver fall. He sat for a long time in his pajamas and stared into the darkness. They would get him; they would make the connection. And now the company wouldn’t take him in.
So he fumbled downstairs in the darkness, the whole of Blake House silent save for the relentless tick-tick-tick of the clock. Would Uncle Hubert be able to save him? Would he want to save him?
Green felt ashamed though he hadn’t betrayed anyone; he had merely served his country and worked against his country’s enemies. Against traitors like the woman and like Devereaux.
He made his first drink. And then a second.
He went to the library and turned on a small table lamp and waited in the shadows; outside, it was raining, a cold, remorseless rain of winter.
When he looked up again and saw him in the doorway, Green was beyond surprise. He had been expecting him. He sat in the red leather chair and stared at the apparition in the doorway.
“Devereaux.”
He did not move out of the doorway into the light. “Where is she?”
“Gone.”
It was so hopeless. He took the glass from the table and drank and then put it down again. Even the booze didn’t work anymore.
“Where has she gone?”
He needed to explain; it wasn’t his fault. “They told me to give her a message. It was from Belfast. From you.”
The rain lashed against the panes of glass; the window rattled. “Where is Elizabeth?” The voice was low and almost still, like a dark pool.
Green looked up. He couldn’t see Devereaux clearly. “How did you get in?”
There was no answer.
“This is a safe house.”
“There are no safe houses.”
Green shrugged. “You’re right.” He looked at the ice cubes in the glass, melting into the yellow liquid. “Not for me anymore. Or for her.”
There was a snap.
He had heard that sound before. The click of a gun’s hammer. “Where is she?”
The hall clock sounded the quarter-hour with four notes of the Westminster chime. Then nothing but the stately tick-tick-tick.
“I gave her the message. To meet you. On the four o’clock Dover train at Victoria Station.”
Almost imperceptibly, Devereaux moved; Green could see the black gun in his hand.
“I don’t want to die,” Green said quietly.
“No one wants to die.”
“No. Of course. You’re right.”
“She went to Victoria Station to meet me?”
“Yes. She thought that. They sent someone to eliminate her. I don’t like that word.”
“And they killed her.”
“No. No. That’s the part that made them end the operation. I don’t understand it; they called me an hour ago.” He looked at his watch. “They waited until eleven to call me. But she must have gotten away right away. They knew that.”
“They didn’t kill her.”
Devereaux repeated it flatly, not as a question.
“No,” said Green. He grinned. He looked like a child. “She turned the tables on them. They said she killed their agent. I don’t know how. And she got away. They’re closing down the operation.”
“The ghost Section?”
“It was called Operation Mirror. To root out the traitors in R Section who had been disloyal to the nation.”
“And you were their man.”
Green looked up at the shadow in the doorway; his eyes had tears in them. “I had to. It was for my country. I had to work for them because they explained it to me, about you. You were a traitor in Vietnam; you worked for the opposition. And there was Hanley, he suppressed the Cuban report I prepared. Oh, they proved they were under the orders of the President. My country needed me and now they’ve left me to you to kill me. Mirror has failed and they’re letting the traitors live and the men who were loyal… they’re letting them die. I don’t understand it.”
Devereaux waited.
“Traitor,” Green suddenly cried at last. “You traitor! I served the company. I served them; I told them what I saw, what I heard. I had the transmitter tape in the scrambler and we got everything, everything you said, everything they all said, all the scheming.”
Green got up and went to the sideboard and poured vodka on top of the remains of the warm mix left in the glass. He gulped it, like a dog drinking water on a hot day. He set the glass down hard and turned to Devereaux.
“I was an agent. I was one of them.” He said it with defiance. “Kill me then, because I can stand to die for my country.”
“Where is she?”
The calm voice was counterpoint to the ringing declaration, like a cough in the middle of a speech.
“The housekeeper? I don’t know. She’s one of yours, you know. She didn’t know a thing; I hate her and her odious breath and her stupid cow face.”
“Where’s Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. They don’t know. She killed the hit man sent after her. You see how it was; you weren’t on the four o’clock train and she expected you.”
“Who is your contact? At the company?”
“I won’t betray my country.”
“They have abandoned you.”
“I won’t betray them.”
Devereaux waited in the darkness. The rain did not cease; the clock ticked on; there were a thousand little noises and sounds in the silence.
“You won’t make me betray them.”
Devereaux spoke again, softly: “Green, listen to me. The CIA wasn’t after traitors. They only wanted to destroy the Section and they used you. They killed our real agents and they put the Soviets onto us so that eventually, no one would trust R Section and we would be destroyed.”
“Why don’t you come into the light?”
“You were the traitor, Green.”
“But I’m not a traitor. How can I betray an agency to an agency? This is the same side, the same country.”
“Why didn’t they take you in, then? They’ve left you. You said they left you. If it was in the interest of the nation, why didn’t they take you in?”
“I don’t know.”
Again silence. Green sat down and stared at the gun and then put a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know.”
“They’re not gathering information; they’re making murder. They killed Hastings in Edinburgh; they tried twice to kill Elizabeth, once in Belfast and once here. They tried to kill me. And they expect me to kill you, Green. They left you; do you think they would have left you outside if it had been on the square?”
Suddenly, tears formed at the corners of Green’s eyes. He reached for the glass of vodka and knocked it onto the carpet.
Devereaux stepped into the room and put the gun in his belt, under his jacket. Green stared at him. “We are not traitors,” Devereaux said gently.
“My God,” Green sobbed. “My God. I’ve made a mess.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t real, was it?”
“No. It was an agency game. Agency to agency. And you were used.”
“Those men dead.”
“They’re not important.”
Green wanted to cry in the presence of the calm, certain man. He wasn’t going to die.
“What’s going to happen?”
“Where is Elizabeth?”
“I thought you were going to kill me,” Green babbled.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I sent her to be killed. How could I do that? Was I crazy? There’s a tape transmitter in the scrambler, I—”
“I know. We’ll get it later. Who is your contact?”
Green looked up. The winter face was so kind, the voice so gentle. Perhaps he was forgiven. “Ruckles.”
“Ruckles?”
“With the CIA at the embassy in Grosvenor Square. I’ll tell you—” And Green began to tell about Operation Mirror.
Devereaux listened without a word, prompting only when Green faltered. Green wandered in his explanation but he eventually revealed it all.
And Devereaux watched him. Because he intended to kill him when the explanation was finished. At first.
But the glimmer of a plan began forming as he heard Green’s words. Green was a coward and a traitor, a fool, but he was invaluable now. The CIA had revealed too much to Green in order to recruit him, and now he was useful, not to the Section but to Devereaux. And so, Green saved his life while he narrated the events that led to Operation Mirror.
When Green finished, Devereaux sat and waited for a long time.
“Green,” he began. “They did send me to kill you, not to get information.”
Green shuddered.
“But I am not going to kill you. Now, listen to me carefully: They both want you dead now. Both the Section and the CIA. And there’s no way now you can come inside. Unless you do as I say.”
“The CIA? Why—”
“Don’t be a fool, Green. You’re a liability to them. Ruckles warned you to make you run, so that if we had any doubts, we would eliminate you anyway. And he warned you to get rid of that bit of incriminating evidence in the scrambler box. The CIA doesn’t want anyone to know—to have proof of—another one of their sleazy little operations, this time against another government agency. So they really don’t want you around.”
“But the Section?”
“You were part of them. You’re a traitor to us. And I’m not convinced now the Section really intends to move against the CIA with what it knows.”
Green shook his head. “I don’t follow—”
“I do,” said Devereaux. “Now I do. R Section could have sent any of a half dozen men from Europe when they knew you were the traitor. And one of them would have killed you and saved Elizabeth. But they didn’t care if she was wasted; they would have cared if they had wanted to use her information to discredit the CIA. I suspect they’ve already made an accommodation with the CIA—leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. That’s why I suspect Operation Mirror has suddenly been scrapped.”
“And you won’t kill me.”
“No. As long as you do as I say. Because it’s the only way you’re going to survive.” And, he did not add, the only way Elizabeth would survive if he could find her. Perhaps the only way Devereaux would survive—did Hanley even now have plans against him? A field agent was not terribly important when you placed his life against the life of the Section. An accommodation with the CIA would serve the Section well in the next few years.
“I want you to work your way to Liverpool. I want you to be in Liverpool Tuesday night, in the Lime Street railroad station, at nine P.M.”
“Why?”
Because you are part of a surprise. “Because it is the plan,” said Devereaux.
“All right,” said Green.
“Pack a small bag. Now. And get out of London tonight. Hire a cab to Windsor and take the train from Windsor to Cambridge. Spend a day there, at least. And then take public transport to Liverpool. Don’t drive, don’t rent a car. And travel as though the world wanted you dead. Because they do.”
“But why?”
“Because both agencies will be looking for you. To kill you. And for all I know, your friends at the CIA may even pin that murder of their hit man on you. So get the hell out now.”
“And at Lime Street?”
“I’ll be there. Wait in the buffet. There’s always a buffet in a train station.”
He had met Hastings in the buffet at Edinburgh Central Station. It seemed such a long time ago.
“And if you’re not there?”
Devereaux looked at him coldly. “I’m the only chance you have, Green. If I’m not there, you’re a dead man. And if I’m there and you don’t show up, then you’re dead. Do you understand that? If you skip, I’ll find you or the Agency will find you or the Section will find you, anywhere you go in the world. And they’ll kill you. You can’t make any more deals, Green; you have to let me handle it.”
“I will, I will,” Green said. “I don’t want to die.”
Devereaux thought again about him and about Elizabeth; he would have been happy to kill Green then.
“And the house?” Green asked.
“I’m taking care of it. I’m closing Blake House.” He paused. “It isn’t safe anymore.”
Elizabeth cleaned up in the ladies’ room at Victoria Station and took the Circle Line tube underground to Paddington Station on the north side of Kensington Gardens. The area was one with quiet flats and inexpensive hotels. She had first stayed there when she came to London twelve years before as a student spending a “summer in Europe.” It was the only place she could think of to go to.
By accident, she found the hotel she had first stayed in; she felt a little wave of nostalgia for it and for her schoolgirl self. But there were the usual disappointments: The hotel sported a new lounge and had suspicious new owners who demanded three days’ rent in advance and surrender of her passport.
She locked herself in her room and removed her soiled, blood-spattered clothes. The raincoat was unmarked; she had stolen it from a parcel on the luggage rack inside the station. It didn’t fit her very well; but the hideously bloodstained raincoat she had worn on the train had to be thrown away.
She washed in the basin and then sat down on the bed and counted her money. Three hundred and twelve pounds to get away.
Taking the picture of her son out of the billfold, she looked at it. And she thought of Devereaux. He had returned the picture to her; he had not given it back, merely put it back on the dresser. She looked at the face of the little boy and the face of her younger self. Photographs broke your heart because they so clearly conjured up the past.
She had to leave London but she felt so tired, so weak. She had fashioned a crude bandage around the wound on her arm with her scarf. The cut had stopped bleeding but her arm felt numb; it was bruised black.
How could she get away? She only wanted to sleep, sleep away the pain and the hideous face of the Englishwoman. Would she dream of her if she slept?
Would the police be looking for her?
The CIA wanted her dead. She understood that. And now Devereaux had tried to kill her. There was no place inside. She must contact her ex-husband—but what could he do for her? And where was he? And how could she get to him?
He had known Hanley. Or what she understood now was the “ghost” Hanley. Was he part of the CIA as well? Would he betray her? What did he owe her?
A wave of self-pity threatened to overwhelm her.
No. She wouldn’t let it happen; she would survive. Somehow.
After a little while, she dressed again, buttoning the overlarge raincoat. She needed clothing and she was hungry.
She found a street with lights and went into a little bright fish-and-chips shop that bore the sign: Frying Tonight. Inside, she stood in line with the other shabby people, waiting for the plaice and chips wrapped in newsprint. She went outside then and ate greedily until it was all gone, then walked on. Paddington Station’s immense bulk loomed ahead in the next block. It began to rain.
Tomorrow morning, she would get clothes.
Tomorrow, she would leave London. If no place was safe for her, then she could go anyplace. Was she so important they would look for her forever? She only needed time.
She hurried back through the rain to the little hotel.
The thought of sleep, of finding safety, lightened her step. She did not even notice the man across the street, watching her enter the hotel.