19

1–2 Oct 90—SANTA BARBARA

The telephone call came at midnight. Denisov listened and said nothing and waited for the code word. But the distraught voice on the other end repeated a name over and over. He was drunk. This wasn’t any good at all.

“Shut up, Peterson. You have the package. Now get it to me.”

“But she knew. The goddamned reporter knew,” the voice said. “There’s a double-cross going on and you’ve got me in the middle.”

“Get me the package. I have the rest of the money—”

“Money doesn’t do me any good if I get sent up for murder.”

“There was no murder.”

“She said—”

Denisov looked at Ruth across the living room. Midnight and Ruth was a little drunk and very naked. She was sitting with her legs apart on the couch and she was making a lewd gesture with her mouth and tongue. A line of sweat stood out on Denisov’s broad forehead but the eyes were clear and calm. As calm as his voice. “It doesn’t matter about her.” Cold and calm, soothing as ice on a flaming hurt.

Peterson broke the connection.

“Was that the package?” Ruth said.

“The package.”

“There’s a problem.”

“There’s no problem.”

“Then come here and make love to me,” Ruth said. He stared at her. The moment had drained him. Something was wrong but this was such a simple matter; he had spent a year crafting all the corners of the plan, stripping it down to the essentials of the operation and then the final deal. And now a name: Rita Macklin. He thought of Devereaux behind that name. He shivered and went to the couch and began to make love to Ruth Sauer.

Ruth awoke him in the middle of the night with kisses on his belly. Denisov opened his eyes but he did not move. She was kissing him lower and lower and he was stirred by it but he did not believe it was possible. They had made love and then fallen asleep in the bedroom of the small, spare apartment on Alisos. She was her brother’s spy and she was a strange lover; she was using him and he was using her and it would end, one way or another, by the end of the week. He didn’t trust her at all.

She was licking his skin.

The money had paid for the Fujitsu and for the Northern Lights and for the Pequod. The money had found its way into a Vietnamese network to do the first part of the work and then more of it had found its way into the hands of a ship captain who normally smuggled cocaine into Alaska and then another part into the hands of a petty smuggler in Hawaii.

The Japanese gangsters who protected the secrecy of Masatata H.I. were already following the trail but when they came to the end of it, they would find only a dead German spy and his dead sister. Denisov was quite certain of that. He had always been a careful agent in every secret matter and it was simply a matter of planning. Fifteen million dollars more would buy him a new life as a good burgher in Switzerland. It would buy him his freedom after ten years as a reluctant defector in America. Rita Macklin and the shadow of Devereaux behind her. Why was she in Hawaii at this time and place and why did she know enough to frighten Peterson?

She made him moan. He stirred in bed and she said, “I want you to be inside me.”

“Ruth.”

It was strange, all of it. To make love to a woman he would have to kill in a little while. He pushed her down on the mattress roughly and put himself over her and they made many sounds that were not words.

Denisov looked at the clock. Three A.M. She was sleeping naked next to him again. He sat up in bed and looked at her. Perhaps she really did love him. Perhaps she was only lonely. She was an exile, the same as he. It was too bad. He touched her brown hair tenderly. He might only kill her brother but that wouldn’t be any good. He could never trust her. If he killed Kurt and she stayed alive, there would always be a bond of doubt between them. She was a spy and when her useful time was over, she would have to accept a spy’s fate.

He thought of her lovemaking. There was something in it that was more hunger than anything he had ever experienced before.

“Dear little one,” he said to her but she was asleep.

He could not sleep anymore. The thought of a woman named Rita Macklin intruded again. He was sweating again. He wiped his forehead.

He threw his legs over the side of the bed and got up. He went to the window and looked down on the empty street, at the sleeping houses of the city.

He would not be sorry to leave. He would have a place in Vevey, in the hills above the city, where he could look at the lake every day.

He pulled on his robe and went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out a can of Budweiser. He took the can of beer to the kitchen table and sat down and looked at it for a long time. He was very calm when an operation had begun. He had no doubts about it or himself. There was Kurt; there was Ruth; he could see them in his mind. There was the money; and now, there was the machine. There was no other complication, save that the Japanese company would be sending tracers on the trail that started with the sunken ship in the Sea of Japan, but that was a matter of time. No complication until a midnight call from a drunken man who had the machine and said a name from his past. The woman in California he had once tried to kill. The woman who lived with the agent named Devereaux. He must be right behind her and that meant he must be running toward Denisov.

The kitchen light was fluorescent and the can of beer, still unopened, was sweating.

The apartment was dark. In the darkness beyond the open kitchen, he saw the movement.

That stuck in his throat for a moment, just a moment.

Then he got up and went to the kitchen drawer where he kept the pistol. He opened the drawer.

“Sit down, Russian.”

It was really like a dream. He turned and saw the form in the darkness but he could not see the man.

And then again: “Sit down.”

He went to the table. “Who is there?” But he knew that voice; it had haunted him enough over the past ten years.

“I did never expect to see you again.”

“No.” Devereaux stepped into the light. He held a pistol in his hand. Denisov looked at the can of beer on the table and at the gun and he was really thinking about the new element, one that did not fit at all.

“Why are you here?” A mild question in a mild voice, as though the intrusion at three in the morning into a locked apartment might not be so unusual.

“It’s a good time,” Devereaux said. “Call the woman.”

“There’s no woman here.”

“Call her.”

He called her name. They waited, staring at each other. Denisov glanced once at the open drawer. Devereaux saw it and slowly shook his head. Denisov sighed and sat down.

Ruth stumbled naked into the kitchen. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes blinking away sleep. When she saw Devereaux, she turned and covered her breasts.

“Hello, Ruth Sauer,” Devereaux said. “You’re still your brother’s whore after all these years.”

Then she turned back toward him and dropped her hand and stared at him. “You were the conductor,” she said. The voices were all soft, muted by the night, civilized by the barbarity of the hour and occasion.

“He’s an American agent,” she said to Denisov.

“An American agent,” he repeated. Three of them in a still, small room.

“Sit down, Ruth,” Devereaux said, and he pointed the pistol at her.

She sat at the table with exaggerated calm, like a drunk pretending to be sober. She stared at the pistol and smiled in a peculiar way.

They both stared at her smile.

She nodded once, to herself, and locked her hands together at the table and gave a small, sharp laugh. “My brother had to kill you to save himself, you know that. I knew that even if he never said it to me. But he didn’t kill you. That must be funny.”

“You sleep with Denisov for whatever he can give you for your brother,” Devereaux said. He was staring at Denisov. “She’s the sister of a Stasi agent, Denisov. He wants what you can give him.”

“Is that true?” Denisov said. No inflection colored the words of the question.

“It’s true,” Devereaux said. “You’ve stolen something and I want it from you.”

“I don’t have anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What about it, Ruth? Where is it?”

“It’s not here,” Ruth said, still smiling as though listening to another conversation that the two men could not hear. Denisov had never seen her act so strangely. She was staring at Devereaux.

Denisov stared at her. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“The package, he wants the package,” Ruth said.

“And I want your brother. Where is he now, Ruth?”

The smile finished. Ruth said, “You want to kill him.”

“I won’t hurt him.”

“Yes. Ivan, he was the conductor and he used me, I was just a girl then. Do you know what he made me do for him? And then he wanted to kill my brother. Then. And he wants to kill him now after all these years. He’s come all the way from Zurich to kill him.”

Silence. They both were staring at the naked woman whose hands were locked on the table and who was now nodding to herself, answering unspoken questions.

“You can’t trust him, Ivan,” Devereaux said. “Kurt Heinemann is her brother and you think you can sell the code machine to him but he’ll kill you. He has to kill you. And take his sister away.”

“He can take his sister away at any time,” Denisov said in a very calm voice.

Ruth started, looked at him.

“You love me. You said you love me,” she said.

“It’s not important,” Denisov said. He was looking at Devereaux. “What do you propose to me, Devereaux?”

“You give me the code machine,” Devereaux said.

“If the machine exists at all.”

“You know and I know that it’s a matter of time and place now,” Devereaux said.

“And if I give you this machine, what will you give me?”

“Your life.”

“You’ve given me my life before. When you defected me,” Denisov said. “I should be so grateful to you for another gift that was the same thing.”

“Be grateful. Life is a fine gift,” Devereaux said.

“Who do you work for now?” Denisov said.

“Section. The same as always.”

“No. Not the same. We both know that.”

“We both know what?”

“Why are you using Rita Macklin?”

Devereaux said nothing.

“All right. This is no coincidence. What are you willing to pay? And what could be done about Kurt Heinemann?”

The question caused the naked woman to suddenly cry out.

“You bastard, you want to kill Kurt, the same as this… this November. That was his name. His name was November and he made me sleep with him on the train, he made me do—”

“Be quiet, Ruth,” Devereaux said.

“I’ll scream and—”

“And then I’ll have to make you quiet,” Devereaux said.

“Both of you are murderers.”

Devereaux said, “Be quiet, Ruth. You did what you could. You whored for your brother again and the customer knew he was getting a whore, nothing more.”

Her head shook violently. Again, an arm covered her breasts. “Look at me, you’ve made me naked.”

“Get some clothes,” Devereaux said.

She bolted from the table, knocking over her chair, and shut the bedroom door. The two men stared at each other again.

Denisov spoke. “I don’t understand your business in this.”

“I want what you’ve got.”

“I don’t have anything yet. You must know that by now. I’m waiting, the same as you are waiting.”

“Where does it come from?”

Denisov almost smiled. “Why play this game with me now? You know everything. You must know there’s a price for this code machine. And you must know that Kurt Heinemann is part of the price. But you’re not working for Section, are you? You would not show yourself so easy. And the girl, Rita.”

“I don’t understand,” Devereaux said.

“Who do you work for, November? In Section, the method is different. Direct. If you wanted a thing, you would wait for it. But you cannot wait.”

“I won’t pay your price.”

“And what is your price?”

“Why don’t you set it.”

Denisov stared with mild eyes at the gunman and thought about it. Then he said, “Fifteen million. And Kurt Heinemann.”

“Where is she?” Devereaux said, staring at the closed bedroom door. “Ruth.”

The door opened.

She was dressed but barely. Her dress was tight and she was obviously naked beneath it. She had her hands behind her, looking like the parody of the frail schoolgirl she had been fifteen years ago on a platform in Paris. She came to the kitchen and stood in front of the man with the pistol. She stood very close to him.

“Do I look as I did?”

Devereaux stared at her and then at Denisov. The atmosphere of the room was charged now with sex and the tension associated with fear.

“Sit down, Ruth.”

“I took my dress off in the train and I waited for you to come back. I climbed down the ladder in the compartment and I stood there and you felt me, between my legs. You must remember that.”

“I remember your brother shot me.”

“He had to shoot you.”

“And the two Mossad agents. I killed them for the sake of your terrorist brother.”

Very close to him. Her lips were wet and parted. “I loved you,” she said.

“You loved me as much as you love Denisov.” Silence. “Who do you really love? Kurt? You love the one man who won’t sleep with you?”

And then she snarled and her hand swept out suddenly. The knife gleamed in the bright light and slashed up and struck Devereaux’s forearm.

He pushed her away with the gun. A spot of blood blossomed on his shirt and it grew but he could scarcely feel the flesh wound.

She screamed at him again and came back with the knife and Denisov reached for the open drawer.

Devereaux shoved, grabbed her wrist and twisted the knife hand and she screamed again, not in rage but pain.

Denisov grasped the pistol in the drawer.

Devereaux twisted the hand and the knife clattered to the floor and then he slammed her shoulder brutally and she fell against the counter. She was breathing hard and so was Devereaux.

Denisov held the pistol very straight, aimed right at Devereaux.

She saw it.

“Kill him,” she whispered. “Kill him, Ivan.”

Denisov waited. The two men with two guns were facing each other over a four-foot expanse of table.

“Put down the gun,” Denisov said.

“I couldn’t do that.”

“What do we do?”

“Kill him,” she snarled again.

Denisov said, “One of us must decide this. If you work for Section, it isn’t any good at all.”

“We must decide this,” Devereaux agreed.

And then Denisov looked at Ruth cringing at the counter. “She can’t be trusted at all. It really is too bad. And an irony. Did you sleep with her as well? After fifteen years, we are met and we have both slept with her, the German girl. And she doesn’t know who she wants me to kill or even who she is sleeping with, eh?”

Denisov smiled in the middle of his monologue and then turned the pistol slightly and aimed it at Ruth’s chest. “She tried to kill you with a little knife.”

Devereaux understood but he could not speak.

And Ruth understood in the last moment.

“If you harm me, Kurt will kill you,” she said.

“Kurt will try to kill me in any case,” Denisov said.

“But you need me, you cannot contact him but through me, you know that.”

“But I can’t trust you anymore, Ruth,” Denisov said.

“You can trust me. I love you, dear one,” Ruth said. “Haven’t I shown you I love you?”

“Show me now.”

And slowly, she came around the table to him, and stood next to him and he took her waist and pulled her close to him. He turned the pistol toward Devereaux again. She made herself small against him.

“You see, it is true. She loves me.”

Said without irony.

“And she does not love you.”

Devereaux said, “You play your game and I’ll play mine.”

“But who is it that you work for?”

“I told you.”

“I don’t believe that. Section does not want toys. Section does not use people like her.”

“Like who?”

“Ah, this goes to no place,” Denisov said. “If you won’t shoot me now, I won’t shoot you. Stay away from me unless you can tell me the truth.”

“Why won’t you shoot me?”

“Tell them the price and see what they will do, but they must do it in a very quick time. Do you understand?”

Devereaux nodded then. He took a step back and then another. They were watching each other. Ruth struggled but Denisov’s grip was tight and strong. Devereaux saw the way it was. Denisov wanted another player in the game in case he needed to make a different deal. Ruth had some hold on him, maybe as the contact between Denisov and her brother. But he was frightened, Devereaux thought. He was now very afraid of both Germans.

And so was Devereaux.