The British Cross Read online

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Did I say your name?”

  She stared with hard eyes at him but she felt afraid. She wanted to jump up, run out of this place. The plane began a slow dip to the right over Germany and the clouds broke. The shimmering half-frozen waters of the Baltic were in view. She glanced out the window and felt like a child who wants an interminable journey to end.

  Was she now a spy? Did he feel this way all the time? Had this driven him to silence, to isolation, to a coldness that could not accept human feelings from her?

  In a day she had betrayed her ideals and even her job to help him. The betrayals burned in her now. This is what he did all the time, betrayals and little lies until, over the years, the shadows had closed around his life and left him nothing, left nothing true or good in words or deeds, only in the slim grasp he kept on his own survival. He was using her now.

  Why did the dark man know her name? What would Devereaux do?

  Rita turned in her seat to stare at him again. The dark man smiled lazily, unpleasantly, as though he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  23

  HELSINKI

  He saw the city from the window of the old hotel where they had put him.

  He had watched it from the first light of morning, when the first buses began streaking in from the Helsinki suburbs, when the first people had emerged onto the brick-covered streets, and when the first schoolchildren skipped along to their classes. He saw automobiles as though he had never seen them before. He touched the coverlet of the bed, and that amazed him as well. In a small refrigerator below the desk in the room, he found orange juice. He drank it and made a face and then found it quite wonderful. The room was warm. He took off all his clothes and went into the bath and took a long private shower until his skin was itchy and dry. A private shower. He soaped himself again and again. He rubbed his old body with the towel until it was red. He turned on the television set but there was nothing. He turned on the radio and he understood only a little of the language because he had never met many Finns in the Gulag. The Finns always seemed to want to kill themselves instead of being prisoners. He found writing paper in the desk drawer. He made designs. He wrote words in English:

  Tomas Crohan.

  Liverpool.

  Dublin.

  Tomas Crohan.

  Michael Brent.

  The last name he had not written for a long time.

  The pen felt stiff in his hands.

  He went to the window. It was a sunny morning. After a while, the streets were clotted with people. He smiled down at them as if he were God. He saw the streetcars and delighted in them as a child delights in an electric train. He saw trucks moving into the streets.

  He saw a drunken man stagger, fall down, and rise again.

  He saw a blue police car at a corner waiting for the traffic signal to change. A young man crossed in front of it.

  He smiled at everything he saw.

  Naked, he climbed back into the bed and pulled the coverlet over his clean body. He snuggled beneath the clean sheets.

  He closed his eyes but a thousand images flooded his mind and he could not sleep. He awoke and touched his hair. His body smelled of the light perfume of the soap.

  He climbed out of bed and stood in front of a mirror. He touched his penis and pulled at it until he felt warm.

  He went to the closet and looked at the clothes hanging there. He went back to the bathroom and turned on the shower again and climbed inside and let the water fall on him. He opened his mouth and drank the water. He got out and selected a new towel and rubbed his body again with it until his skin hurt. He sat down on the toilet and made it flush. He moved his bowels and wiped himself with the soft paper. He took another shower and washed his private parts and rubbed himself with the towel again.

  He opened the refrigerator and took another orange juice from the cabinet and then he saw the bottle of beer.

  He pulled it out clumsily and knocked over another bottle. He opened the beer and drank it.

  The beer warmed him and he felt like crying. He cried and let the tears fall down on his cheeks and onto his pale, flat belly.

  When he was finished, he washed his face in the bathroom again. He smiled to himself. Two teeth were blackened, one was made of stainless steel. Places for three teeth grinned empty in the mirror.

  And no one disturbed him.

  24

  LONDON

  George picked up a cigar and considered it and put it down. After a moment of silence, he picked it up again. It was a Dutch cigar of a make called Panter Mignon and came in a yellow tin package. He lit it at last.

  Q sat beside him on the leather chair in the room that was behind the room where Q normally held his audiences. This room was not bare; the walls were covered with rosewood cases filled with books. There were carpets on the floor and two fireplaces tended by young men who were positively vetted every three months. Q was a great believer in positive vetting.

  “I like Dutch cigars,” George said at last. His face was in repose. His blue eyes appeared lazy, which was their most dangerous perspective.

  “I had to quit,” Q said. “Abnormal heart rhythms.”

  “Doctors,” George said. “We’re getting old.”

  “I don’t mind that as much as I mind deprivation. Even of such little pleasures. On the other hand, when they come in the night, the heart palpitations frighten me. I realize I don’t want to die.”

  “Well, dying is not much concern to me,” George said.

  More silence.

  The little room contained a striking clock with a German Jauch movement hanging on the far wall. Every hour, Westminster chimes rang and the hour was struck with firm, resounding notes. Every quarter-hour, an incomplete tune was rung. The music of the clock never intruded. The room was completely soundproof and therefore silent save for the striking of the clock and the ticking of the minutes.

  “What happened?” Q said quietly.

  “I don’t know. Ely found the body in his room. He found identification. That was careless of Sparrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who killed him, I wonder?”

  “Ely?”

  “Ely didn’t have the guts for it. And he had no reason. Sparrow was a fellow agent. Two dead men on our hands, Q.”

  “The minister is wrought up a bit.”

  “I daresay he would be.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sent Ely to Helsinki. I didn’t want to involve anyone else at this stage. Besides, it may be too late. He wanted to go in any case. To follow the American agent. The girl.”

  “Yes. I got his report. She knew quite a bit.”

  “Why do you s’pose they’re leading us on like this?”

  “The Russians?”

  “Americans.”

  “Trap.”

  “Exactly. But why the squeeze?”

  “They want control of Cheltenham. Been hinting at it with the foreign office for more than a year since the scandals. They feel that our security arrangements are less than satisfactory. And now they propose to spring… spring Tomas Crohan. Damn Cheltenham. That was the business with the phony Russians and Wickham. They want to take over, call us incompetent to handle security.”

  “The PM would never stand for it.”

  “The PM can stand for quite a lot. It’s our necks,” George said.

  “And the PM’s neck. The spy scandals haven’t helped.”

  More silence. The clock struck the quarter-hour.

  “What can Ely do?”

  “Extricate us. He was a fixer in the old days.”

  “That was before Vienna. He lost his nerve.”

  “The Americans were onto Ely from the start. Damned reports that Parker was sending from Dublin station through Cheltenham to us. About his fictitious Russian submarines lurking off the Blasket Islands. Nonsense. And the Americans knew it and fed us.”

  “I hate to be played for the fool.”
/>   “What will Ely do?”

  “Max.”

  “Will he do it?”

  “Up to Ely, then.”

  “Well, it depends on him, doesn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Damn it. He was all I could think of. Before I can get another hitter to Helsinki, it will all be over. I think this matter is coming very quickly to the end.”

  “I don’t quite see how the Americans arranged to get Crohan away from the Russians.”

  “It must have been part of a trade. They brought out that Soviet cipher clerk last year, the one who turned out to be a double. Maybe it was that.”

  25

  HELSINKI

  When the plane stopped at the terminal of Vantaa Airport, half the passengers were already out of their seats, pulling down bags from the overhead compartments, stretching their arms through the sleeves of overcoats and furs.

  Rita Macklin got up and held her little bag close to her breast. Antonio remained seated next to her, his lazy legs blocking the passage.

  “Excuse me,” she said and pushed past him. Her legs rubbed against his legs as she edged into the aisle. She knew the contact was deliberate on his part. He touched her, not gently, on her behind as she moved past. Her face flushed angrily but she said nothing. She had to get away from this man; he was part of the new game she had joined so willingly when Devereaux asked her.

  Forty minutes to meeting Devereaux.

  Then it would be safe.

  Antonio rose behind her and pressed against her in the crowded aisle as the passengers shuffled to the exits slowly. He was smiling and Rita Macklin knew it but she would not turn around, she would not say a word to him.

  “Merci, madame,” said the Air France hostess at the exit door. Rita mumbled a merci in return and started quickly down the rampway to the main terminal corridor. She went through the sign marked CUSTOMS and then to PASSPORTS.

  Seemingly without effort, Antonio was always visible if she looked for him. He was just a doorway behind. He moved slowly, like a cat stalking in the high grass; his eyes never left her.

  She almost ran out of the terminal building into the bitter cold of Helsinki. The wind stung her cheeks red. She shuffled into another line for a taxi and slipped into the rear seat. She locked the door as she entered and again looked around for him; but Antonio could not be seen.

  “Stockmann’s department store,” she said quickly.

  The dark driver grunted some sort of reply and pulled the meter. The car surged forward across the ice-streaked roadway for the long pull into the center of Helsinki.

  Rita breathed deeply, once, twice. She felt afraid as she had felt three years ago, when she had met Devereaux, when her life had been endangered. Did he feel like this all the time? Was this the price she said she was willing to pay?

  Who was he?

  Why had he known her name?

  Why did she feel such menace?

  The next thought terrified her and she realized she was sweating and her eyes were wide: Devereaux. Had he set her up?

  My God, that’s paranoia, Rita.

  The idea would not go away. Devereaux killed; he knew how to kill and he killed as a surgeon slices a tumor; Devereaux had killed a man on the sidewalk in Green Bay when she had been pursued three years before. Even if there was no proof of it, she knew Devereaux had killed the banker in New York after that. She knew it and said nothing and when he had held her, gently, in the retreat in the mountains, she had nearly forgotten what he was.

  And then how could you love him if you didn’t trust him?

  She closed her eyes. The thought burned her like the impure thoughts that had come to her as a child, each thought carrying the pain of mortal sin and eternal Hell if she were to die; the thoughts tumbled one after the other into her consciousness as a child, each thought more sensual, more depraved than the one before as she struggled between sleep and wakefulness to wash her mind as clean as the nuns said it should be. The thoughts, on spring nights in the old house in Wisconsin, would never leave her and she would finally sink into them, sink into the guilty pleasure of them, let them touch her and caress her, let them open her and fill her. So now this nagging thought about Devereaux, this thought that all was a sham in his world of shadows, that there was no trust, no truth, no moment of decency, no ideals, no right, no wrong. Only survival; only to have existed and to exist tomorrow.

  Antonio saw her leave the cab and walk across busy Mannerheimintie Street to the imposing bulk of Stockmann’s department store. Antonio thought it was such a pity not to have a little more time to play with her but there was no time left; they had been quite certain about that; the female agent, they had said, had to be eliminated quickly to avoid complications.

  His masters had become convinced in the past few days that Rita Macklin was not a journalist but one of the Opposition, a deep-cover member of R Section. It was the only satisfactory explanation for her second mission with the agent called November. Rather than abort the operation using November, the second agent called Macklin would have to be dealt with so no counter-operation would be mounted.

  So they explained to him, and the explanation bored him. Antonio did not care for motives or details. He was a simple man who wanted a target and then wanted to be left alone to effect the operation the best way he could.

  Rita Macklin strode with wide steps across the sidewalk.

  Antonio was seventy-five feet behind her. He felt the edge of the knife along the skin of his right arm.

  The knife was simple, working on a mechanical trigger pull fitted into his half-clenched right hand like a ring. It had been concealed as part of the brasswork on the briefcase he carried through the electronic security apparatus in Paris. He had fitted the knife to his arm in the lavatory on the plane and then sat next to Rita to play with her as a child plays with a doll.

  Games were over. He would clench his fist and the knife would fall into his hand and lock at the wrist. It was an effective weapon. He had used it on the whore, Natali, when he was finished with her. Natali had pleaded at the end, which he had expected, and it pleased him to pretend to listen to her pleadings. She had kissed his naked feet. They were in the bathroom; Natali had kissed his body while she remained on her knees on the cold tile floor. When he had finished his amusement, he had said her name and she had looked up at him, holding him around his hips with her hands, tears in her eyes. He had sliced her open from throat to belly in one swift, shallow movement.

  Antonio had a surgeon’s eye; he had once studied Gray’s Anatomy and reviewed the remains of corpses in the morgue at Reggio Calabria under the guise of being a medical student. He knew which parts of the body meant instant death and which parts meant slow death.

  Natali had not felt pain but surprise. She had said, in English, “You promised me.” It had been absurd. He could have let her die slowly but she had pleased him and so he finished her then with a quick thrust into the heart. Her blood washed over him, over the floor. He had put her in the shower and let the water wash the blood from her and then he had wrapped her naked body in plastic and dumped it in the excavation lot behind the Presidentti Hotel.

  Rita Macklin would die differently.

  He pushed through the doors of the department store and started up the steps to the second floor. He would not cut her deeply. She would die in agonizing minutes, writhing on the floor in this department store, horrified people gathering at the sound of her screams, her intestines spilling from her, the screams finally drowning in blood coming from her mouth and nose. She had chosen this way to die because she had not spoken to him, because she had not seen that her fate was decided anyway and that it was as well to play the game Antonio wanted to play. The thought of her murder—of the act and of the agony that would follow—excited Antonio and his eyes grew wide as he continued his careful track up the steps.

  The store was nearly empty. The cold sun and bitter wind were unrelenting in winter, though the ice on the shoreline was al
ready broken and spring was very close.

  He followed Rita Macklin from floor to floor.

  Two salesclerks—girls in fancy blouses and plain skirts—stood speaking to each other near a display of Russian chess pieces in a far corner of the fourth floor. Rita Macklin turned from the escalator and looked around the nearly empty floor. She glanced for a moment at a display of traditional Lapp hunting knives. The handles were of bone and leather; the blades of the knives were carved with intricate patterns and with scenes of reindeer roundups. In another corner, Finnish glassware sparkled in the bright lights. Fifteen minutes until her meeting with Devereaux. She glanced around and saw Antonio at the stairs. He was smiling.

  Her face went white. She stumbled back a moment and steadied her hand on the counter. She looked toward the two salesclerks but they had disappeared into a back room.

  Antonio walked toward her without any wasted motion.

  Rita made a sound that was half a cry and turned and grabbed an enormous Lapp knife from the display counter. She ran behind the display with the knife in her hand and around a second corner. The floors were shaped around the stairs like spokes in a wheel.

  FINLAND WELCOMES YOU exulted a poster on a wall. She ducked into an aisle between racks of fur coats. She pushed to the end of the aisle and realized she had trapped herself at a dead end.

  Antonio’s form darkened the entrance of the dead end.

  “Miss Macklin,” he said.

  Her nostrils were wide, her eyes were wide, her face was flushed with blood; her breathing was heavy, as though she were fighting or running. She held the knife in front of her, the handle against her belly.

  “Absurd,” said Antonio and he clenched his fist and opened it. The knife fell with a rasp into the lock around his wrist. It was thin and pointed like a dagger or stiletto; the angles of the knife glistened in the light of the store.

  “I’ll kill you,” Rita said. Antonio took a step toward her. She braced herself and smelled the fear of death; once she thought of Devereaux but the image of him was piled under with a thousand sudden images from a thousand days of her life, not passing in review but screaming in her mind for attention and then drowning in the tide of other memories. This is death, she thought, and she waited.