The Shattered Eye Page 4

  “And what would you have done, Gaunt? Raised the hue and cry? Alerted the countryside? ‘Find this man.’ I did what had to be done. I had to be certain.”

  Gaunt picked up the glass and sipped. The whisky slid smoothly over his palate and throat, but it did not warm him. He felt the chill of the old building, of the bare flat countryside, of the darkness without.

  “I had to be certain about Felker. Why did he leave a trail? And why did he leave at all?” Pim seemed to ask the questions of himself.

  “Turned. He was turned.”

  “Not at all. Reed was a weak man.”

  “It was a trap.”

  “A strange trap, then. No. I wanted to understand what Reed had said to Felker or what Felker had picked up from Reed or what Felker had that was suddenly worth what he did. Yes. Something of value had been obtained.”

  “How can you be certain Reed didn’t kill him or threaten him?”

  “That is not a possibility, I’m afraid.”

  “How can you be certain?”

  “I can be certain. It is not a possibility.”

  “Dammit, Pim.”

  “Consider the problem I faced last night.” Pim started to pick up his glass of beer and then paused; he let his hand, a delicate hand with finely formed fingers, rest around the glass.

  “Felker bolted. What was the reason? And what would follow? By bolting, Felker revealed the operation here. It was a matter of damage control—what would the Soviets think once they learned that Felker had skipped our control? They’d go after him. They’d contact their agent in place at Mildenhall. They would send investigators. They would be very thorough. And what about Reed? He could return to Moscow and lay out Felker’s defection for his masters and get back in the club. In any case, he would be transferred out of Mildenhall. The Soviets aren’t stupid. They would know we were after Reed.”

  Gaunt waited. In the half-light, his drawn features made his face a skull.

  “The problem of Felker could wait until I resolved the problem of the Soviet agent in place here. It was a field decision.”

  “You should have consulted me.”

  “I knew what you would have advised, and you would have been wrong. I didn’t have time to persuade you.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Felker had been your recommendation, after all. To the network. When I first proposed the scheme.”

  “Felker came to our little operation from Med Section. He was recommended,” Gaunt said. The bureaucrat surfaced suddenly as a shark. “I knew nothing of him except the recommendations I received. He did good work on Malta for Med Section.”

  “And what did Felker learn?” Crooned softly by Pim, his hands immobile on the table.

  “You might have thought to ask the Soviet agent,” Gaunt said with sarcasm.

  “Yes. I thought of that. Right away.”

  Suddenly, the door to the saloon opened and an American in cheap civilian clothing and a girl who was heavy in the hips entered. The American appeared to be a little drunk. He asked for the publican in a loud voice. She was English; she spoke with the same Suffolk accent as the publican.

  “Vodka, vodka on the rocks. With a twist. You got a lemon?”

  “Lemon juice. Lemons are very hard to come by at this time of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you guys haven’t heard of Florida. Jenny? Whaddaya having?”

  “Shandy, please, not too bitter.”

  The publican ducked his head with subservience intended as a reprimand to both of them. He placed an ancient plastic ice bucket on the bar in front of the American and then served the drinks. Gaunt and Pim were silent, staring at the bar, staring at nothing. Pim’s last weary words were slowly sinking in.

  Yes. I thought of that. Right away.

  “I’m gonna take three ice cubes, if that’s okay,” the American said.

  “Certainly. Sur.” The publican spoke without pleasantness; the veneer of servility had been stripped back to bone-chilling politeness.

  “Ought to be,” the American grumbled, dropping the cubes in his drink.

  “One pound twenty p then,” the publican said, and the American pulled a pile of mixed American dollars and English notes out of his pocket and handed over two soiled bills.

  “And you made contact,” Gaunt said, turning back from the tableau at the bar.

  “Yes. It was the only way, I saw that. I had to determine what made Felker bolt.”

  “But you broke cover…”

  “Of course. I made it perfectly clear to Reed that the game was up.”

  “We had no scenario for that.”

  Pim pulled a face at Gaunt’s use of the Americanism. “We cannot anticipate every eventuality. It was important to act quickly, in the event of Reed wanting to break as well. I got hold of Reed as soon as I was certain that Felker was really blown. Reed broke down, hadn’t known Felker was an agent.”

  “Is that true?”

  “No. Naturally not. We were seeking to turn Reed, Reed had some inkling of Felker’s identity. I told him as much. Reed was not an accomplished liar, in any case. I think the Soviets decided to use him because he appeared so Anglo and because he had a certain physical attraction. And inclination. For the younger men at the base.”

  “Spare me the details.”

  “Reed.” Pim seemed lost in reverie. “He claimed his great-grandfather was John Reed, he was half American, he claimed. Y’recall, John Reed, the journalist who recorded the Russian Revolution? Buried in the Kremlin. Great hero over there. ‘I have seen the future and it works.’”

  “Pim, what are you talking about?”

  “Reed. He was weak in the end. I think I mentioned that in one of the interim reports. Led to the operation in the first place. Spotted him the second week he was here, I said he was a Soviet agent, and then I was certain we could turn him. Weak. Would have been useful to us.” Spoken sadly.

  “Where is Reed now?”

  “Broke down completely at last and requested asylum. Of course I said we would take him in—if he cooperated. So he filled me in a bit and then a bit more. Felker took a cipher book, you see. What was the cipher? Well, it was coded out of a Graham Greene novel—what do you think of that?”

  “Absurd.”

  “Well, code books tend to be. Such an old-fashioned device. England Made Me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “The name of the book. By Greene.”

  “It sounds like you and Reed had a lovely chat. Just where is he by now? Halfway to Moscow?”

  Pim looked earnestly at the cadaverous figure on his left. His hands rested on the table. “You do see that this is a mutual problem, don’t you? I can’t be left here all alone in this.”

  “You should have notified me right away.”

  “But you sent me Felker. You told me that Felker was reliable.”

  “I received Felker from Med Section with the highest recommendations.”

  “Med Section is a fairy farm,” Pim snapped. “La-di-da boys, traipsing around Auntie in drag…”

  “Dammit, Pim, that’s the second time tonight you’ve been offensive. I’m treated to racist jokes and now—”

  “Our problem,” Pim said softly. “We can’t indulge in the luxury of mutual recriminations. Not now, I talked to Reed about the book and then about messages. Received a request from Moscow ten days ago to determine the date of the next NATO exercise, something about airlifting hospital supplies and personnel to a mock battlefield. I mean, hardly high priority, it will be in the papers before long…”

  “Where is Reed?”

  Pim stared at him for a moment and then rose, resting his hand on Gaunt’s sleeve. The sleeve of the raincoat was still damp beneath his touch. At the bar, the American and his girlfriend were talking softly. The American had rested his hand on the thigh of the heavy girl; she had rested her hand on his lap. She was kneading the folds of his trousers across his lap. For a moment, Gaunt stared at them. Then he felt the tug on his sleeve and rose
noisily.

  “Outside,” Pim said.

  They pushed open the saloon bar door. The American laughed suddenly, and Gaunt thought he heard the English girl say “fags.”

  The outside door slammed behind them. The wind slapped their faces. It was much colder now, much wetter. Pim led the way across the lavatory building, erected from the same sharp black stone as the public house.

  “We better use the facilities now, while we have the chance,” Pim said.

  Gaunt followed; it all seemed like an absurd dream to him. The two men unzipped their flies and aimed at the ancient trough built into the base of the dark, damp wall.

  “You see, I had to save us,” Pim said. “The mission was blown when Felker took off. Reed was no use to us. You see that, don’t you?”

  In the trough, their mingled urine steamed in the cold. They zipped their trousers and stood still for a moment, staring at the wall of the lavatory.

  Gaunt thought now that he understood. The thought came as a weight to him; it pressed on his chest. Now the whole trip to Anglia took on a different shading, as though the melancholy premonitions of the black fields viewed from the train window had been directed to prepare him for this moment.

  He followed Pim outside into the cold wind.

  “Where is Reed, then?”

  Pim looked at him. “Do you understand?”

  Gaunt nodded.

  “In the boot.”

  “My God. How long?”

  “This afternoon. I didn’t want to leave him. I thought it best if the body wasn’t discovered for a couple of days. It will give us a chance to act. To put out a net for Felker in a quiet way. Obviously, we know more about him than the Americans. Or the Russians.”

  “Was it necessary?” Gaunt’s face was bloodless, and he realized his hands were cold.

  “Felker must be seen to have been the beginning and end of the network. The Soviets can’t get wind that a whole damned section of Auntie is involved in spying on our American friends on a continuing basis. This had to be a onetime encounter, Felker to Reed. And Felker killed Reed and then decided to resume his previous status as an…independent agent.”

  “Felker had been with us for seven years.”

  “He wasn’t even British,” Pim said, as though that explained everything.

  “What are you going to do with…with…”

  “Our friend? In the boot? I wanted to wait until evensong was over and traffic was light. Everyone abroad is in the pubs now. I think it’s the best time for this sort of thing.”

  “How can you talk about this? You had no sanction to eliminate Reed. And on home soil, yet?”

  “Don’t go on about that,” Pim said. “It’s in your interest as much as mine to arrange a convenient story for the death of Reed. It explains Felker, it shifts the burden back to Med Section, they fobbed the fairy onto us in the first place, they assured us Felker was absolutely reliable. You and I, Gaunt, we never completely trusted him, did we? But our hands were tied.”

  “This is madness. Auntie will never accept such thin lies.”

  Pim was now leading the way up the high street back to the black Ford Escort. Despite his longer legs, Gaunt felt like a schoolboy trying to keep up with the older children.

  “Auntie accepts such lies all the time; Auntie will believe whatever she wants. It will be convenient for Q to think that Med Section bollixed the matter. Q has been down on Med and their work, especially in Malta.”

  “You know so damned much about the politics at Auntie…”

  Pim permitted the briefest of smiles. “After all, I am an intelligence agent.”

  “And why am I here? Why couldn’t you have done what needed to be done and then come down to London and given me a fill?”

  “That’s obvious, isn’t it, Gaunt?”

  “Dammit, Pim, you had no sanctions.”

  “What’s done is done.”

  They entered the car, and Pim quickly pulled out of the quiet village and followed the meandering A highway past the cricket grounds and toward the American air force facilities. As they neared the top of a small hill, Pim switched off the lights and the automobile plunged into the blackness of a side road that Gaunt had not even seen. In the distance, the faintest rim of half-light marked the horizon and indicated there was still a sun somewhere in the world; that there was still light.

  “Here,” Pim said. He stopped the car but did not shut off the engine. The motor purred quietly.

  Pim got out of the car. Gaunt hesitated for a moment and then opened his side. “Don’t you have a torch?”

  “Do you want to advertise?”

  “But how can we see?”

  “Your eyes will adjust in a moment.”

  “Where are we?”

  “At the edge of a farmer’s field. He plowed last week, I don’t fancy he’ll be down this way for a while. There’s always the chance, I suppose, but I think we should have three or four days at least until the body is discovered.”

  “This is horrible.”

  “It’s been a long time since you were in the field, Gaunt.”

  “My God, I never did anything like this.”

  “The occasion never demanded it,” Pim said. “There. I’ve got my night vision.”

  He opened the boot of the car. Reed had been a tall man with fair hair. His head was twisted down unnaturally and the whole body bent double. One of his hands was bloody, but the blood was congealed. Gaunt looked closely and felt sick.

  “Banged his hand when I slammed the lid of the boot down against it. Had to sort of wedge him in,” Pim said, like a clerk explaining the packaging of a new product.

  “I’m going to be ill,” Gaunt said.

  “No.” The voice was small and mean again. “You’re gonna do what you got to do. Help me.”

  Pim reached around the middle of the bent corpse and tugged. For a terrible moment it seemed the body would not be moved, but then it came squeezing out of the narrow opening, gradually, the head lolling like a broken doll’s head.

  “Damn you, pick up his head, I don’t want blood on the padding.”

  Gaunt moved in a dream. He felt the cold burden of the head in his hands. He pulled. He had touched a skull once, as a child, a skull in a display at the British Museum. Colombian art or something; a horrible thing. It had not frightened him in the museum, but later, in dreams in his own bed in the house off Bloomsbury Square, he had been seized by the most horrible nightmares. The bad dreams had lasted for years. The nightmares concerned the faces of the dead, and as he had grown older, he had seen the death mask in his own features.

  He was not afraid now. He helped the little man carry the burden up the grassy incline. Once he almost fell when his foot stumbled into a rabbit hole.

  The nightmares would come later, in his own bed again in London, in the darkness.

  “Now push him over,” said Pim.

  The body of the dead agent tumbled cleanly over the precipice and splashed into the waters channeled at the edge of the plowed field.

  “That should do it,” Pim said, a shopkeeper closing for the day. “Don’t linger now.”

  Pim touched the damp sleeve of Gaunt’s coat. Gaunt was pulled out of his reverie. He hurried after the little man down the incline to the waiting car.

  Pim closed the boot lid softly, and the two men got inside. Slowly, he started off down the one-lane road.

  “Lights,” Gaunt said nervously.

  “Wait till we get back to the highway. I can see well enough.”

  “What if you go into a ditch?”

  “I told you, this is my territory—my area of expertise, you might say.”

  Gaunt closed his eyes.

  He felt the burden of the skull beneath his hands. He opened his eyes and blackness remained, dead and formless as oblivion must be. Pim’s territory. But the nightmare would be his own.

  4

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  “Devereaux resigned.”

  The Old Man t
ook the news without visible sign. He picked up the black briar pipe from the rosewood pipe stand on his desk and slowly began to tamp shreds of rough-cut tobacco into the stained bowl. He worked smoothly, his fingers darting into the bowl and around its rim like spiders fixing webs.

  Hanley waited for him to speak. He did not look at the Old Man directly nor at the activity of his spider fingers. He fixed his gaze at a place on the teak desk where there was nothing at all and the gloss of the dark wood provided a partial reflection of himself. He felt aged; he looked old, in fact; but the lines of age had been most pronounced since the Old Man decided nine days before to suddenly pull Devereaux back into headquarters. The Old Man knew what the result would be. It was as though each had taken a speaking part in a tattered melodrama where the lines were hoary and inevitable and the denouement long expected; yet these players were expected to proceed to the end of the act as though none of them knew how it would all turn out.

  “I really didn’t expect that,” the Old Man said. He was done with tamping and filling at last. Now he selected a large wooden match from another rosewood holder and struck it against a flint and let the flame be sucked into the pipe bowl three times. The air in the small room was suddenly filled with the acrid, sickly sweet odor of burning tobacco. “This morning all this happened?”

  “Last night. He dropped into the Section after closing time. He said he wasn’t going to come at all but then decided he should do that. At least that.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing more.”

  “No fond farewells?” The Old Man stared at the puffs of smoke rising from the pipe; only the tone of his voice indicated a gossip’s interest in what had happened.

  “Did you expect any?” Hanley let the bitterness creep into his voice. Devereaux had been useful to the Section.

  The Old Man continued to study the clouds of smoke for a moment as though they contained certain visions reserved for him.

  “He wasn’t independent, you know, Hanley. You of all people should know that.”

  “That was never at issue.”

  “Of course it was. He was just an agent, Hanley. I think he should have appreciated the promotion.”