The Double Game (46 page)

“You said it yourself, this guy’s not good enough. If he’s stashed our things, we’ll find them. But no one will find him. I can finish it outside if you want, take him somewhere even safer than the pond.”

There was a sudden glimmer in Cabot’s eyes, and you could tell he was giving the idea one last hearing. Then the light dimmed, and he sighed deeply, another long rattle more forlorn than the others.

“It’s over, Kyle. Go into town. Have a beer.”

Anderson kept the barrel pressed against my head for another few seconds, then withdrew it and backed away. I exhaled, but didn’t move. Behind me, Anderson sighed wearily.

“I’ll wait out on the porch in case you—”

“
No,
Kyle. Take the Jeep into town, that’s an order. I’ll be the one to finish it, and I’ll do it on my own terms.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to hear the engine start, and I want you to call from the phone at the Mohegan Café. Stay put until I phone you back. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. His glumness was infuriating. He would have enjoyed killing me, and he left the room with the disappointed air of a hunter who’d failed to bag his limit.

He’d parked the Jeep farther up the drive than normal to keep me from hearing his arrival, but we heard the departure just fine—the roar of the engine, then the cracking of the shells beneath the tires as he reversed at full throttle. We saw the swing of his headlight beams through the lacy European curtains, then he was gone.

“Roll me over by the window,” Cabot said.

I did.

The sky was brilliant, a starry night.

“Fresh air, that’s what I need right now.”

Cabot didn’t have the strength to push up the sash, so I did it for him. He pulled his blanket tighter as the night air rushed in, but he seemed to relish the autumn scent of burning leaves, a hint of brine. The moon shone through a scudding cloud.

“Move closer,” he said. “Look off to the right.”

I did as he asked, and for a shaky moment I wondered if he’d given some coded order to Anderson to lie in wait across the lawn with a sniper rifle. But the only sound from outside was the sigh of the wind in the brush.

“Do you see that small rooftop maybe two hundred yards off, to the right?”

“Yes.” It was lit by a neighbor’s floodlight.

“That’s Nethercutt’s outbuilding. It’s where we found his papers. After Wils died I went over to comfort Dorothy. Then I told her I needed to go through his old belongings for the Agency.”

“She believed you?”

“She never knew how bad things really were between us, or what all the fighting was about. She gave me the keys. It was alarmed seven ways to Sunday, but she told me the code for the keypad. Even then it took quite a while to find it.”

“The floorboards?”

He frowned.

“Wils was better than that. It was in his refrigerator, behind a false wall. Cold storage.”

The pun made him wheeze with laughter, which returned the disturbing rattle to his breathing. It tired him enough that he had to pause before continuing.

The phone rang, and he sighed with impatience.

“You’ll have to fetch it. On the end table. The cord will reach.”

I handed him the phone. The volume was turned up high, and even I could hear the clink of glasses and the general roar of the tavern crowd at the Mohegan. It brought back memories of my dinner there with Dad the night of the funeral, and the way we’d first discussed this strange set of neighbors, Nethercutt and Cabot, as we carved our prime rib.

Cabot hung up. I shut the window and took the phone back to the table.

“By now I suppose you’ve seen what I found there,” Cabot said. “I was quite excited. Finally I had the leads I’d always needed to try and nail the bastard. Vladimir, if I could find him, plus a few other odds and ends. But the existence of Lothar’s book, that was the real revelation. Years ago Wils had put out the word that every copy had been destroyed, and I’d believed him. Now I knew there was still one out there. There were other leads, too, of course. But I needed an operative, a traveler. Kyle was eager to go, but none of his talent is between the ears. He never could’ve passed muster in Europe. Then I saw you and your father at the funeral, and I knew right away. And when that bastard Preston—he was Ed’s first handler, you know, the very fellow who let this happen right under his nose—when he got up in my face about letting sleeping dogs lie, well, hell, how could I do anything
but
go back on the hunt?

“I sat up late for six nights running, assembling the pieces. The more I went over it, the more everything came together, just like a plot line in one of Ed’s damn books. I had characters, twists, scenarios. It only took a few phone calls to set it up. I sent Kyle down to Georgetown to put some of his old tricks to work. I hired a few cameos here and there …”

“Like the girl in Georgetown.”

“With a red carnation. Your son is a sharp one. She knew he’d made her.”

“What if we hadn’t seen her?”

“No matter. It was window dressing. Like the story Litzi told you about the man in the seersucker.”

“You reeled me in perfectly, I’ll give you that.”

“But you really found Lothar’s book, didn’t you? That must be why they grabbed you.”

“Read it cover to cover. He had all the code names. He had pretty much everything.”

Cabot’s eyes were aglow, partly in envy, partly in fascination. But the glow was tenuous, flickering. I sensed he was down to his last reserves.

“Tell me,” he asked, voice fading. “He
was
guilty, wasn’t he? Our man Edwin? He was one of theirs, correct? You can tell me, now that you have everything else.”

I could hear the rattle of his breath up close now, and when I’d rolled his chair to the window I’d sensed the frailty in his birdlike lightness. I knew then with the certainty that only arises at moments like this that the real reason he’d spared my life was because he was dying. It softened something in me, or maybe I just decided that there had already been too many casualties. So, even for all his ruthlessness, why not part on a note of gentleness, a note of grace? No more hollow victories.

“Yes,” I said. “He was. I’ll never be able to write it, of course, but he was.”

For that moment, at least, I think I even believed it. It was sobering to think that I had helped uncover a traitor, one whom I had greatly admired for most of my life.

“Surely you can find some way to get around that agreement, can’t you?” Cabot said, his voice querulous again. “You could work with a coauthor. Handle his ‘research,’ that sort of thing. They wouldn’t dare sue you and risk having everything else come out.”

“Maybe I will,” I said, humoring him. “But it could take a while.”

“Of course.”

He probably knew I was lying, but he played along for both of us.

“So there’s your bonus then, in lieu of payment and expenses,” he said. “Thanks to me, you’ll be a writer again. You’ll have your career back.”

Not that he really gave a damn about that, the crabbed old bastard. But he deserved a few points for bothering to pretend.

Cabot ran out of steam then. His head sagged to his chest, and a long, tired breath sputtered out of him. If he’d been able, I think he might have died on the spot. Instead, after a brief pause, I saw his chest rise as he finally inhaled. He didn’t look up again. He just flapped his right hand in a weak farewell. Without a further word from either of us, I left the house.

I was on full alert the entire bike ride back to the hotel, expecting the Jeep at every turn. But I made it back without incident, and sighed deeply in relief upon entering the well-lit lobby.

I’d made it. I’d succeeded. I was done.

It was time to go home.

42

The desk clerk seemed pleased to see me looking clean and dry for a change, so I smiled and nodded as I crossed the lobby.

“Good evening, sir,” he called out cheerfully. “Did your friends ever catch up with you?”

That stopped me.

“Friends?” I tried to sound offhand.

“Two of them. Looking for you earlier.”

I eased over toward the desk, lowering my voice.

“They, uh, must have missed me. What did they look like?”

I braced for a description of Kyle Anderson and some equally brawny pal.

“Oh, one was a younger fellow. Checked in yesterday right down the hall from you. Then this morning, after you went out after breakfast, there was an older gentleman. Very nice man, here for some charter fishing.”

Two men, and it wasn’t even clear they were working together. Yes, it was definitely time to leave Block Island.

“I’ll keep an eye out for them.”

I looked around nervously, but the lobby was empty. Then I headed down the hall toward my room, more determined than ever to catch the next available ferry. Fortunately the door was locked securely, just as I’d left it. I turned on the light, retrieved my suitcase from the closet, and tossed it onto the bed.

That’s when Breece Preston stepped out of the bathroom, holding a gun.

“I was beginning to wonder if old Giles was going to do all the dirty work for me,” he said. “I take it he wasn’t too pleased with what you’d gone and done, but I suppose cooler heads prevailed.”

Preston put his left hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out the little green Certified Mail receipts from the post office, which I’d put in my shaving kit for safekeeping.

“Good job finding all that old crap of his. And thanks for not sending it to Langley, or whatever bogus P.O. box they must have given you.” He looked down at the receipts. “Marty Ealing’s office. Not one of your better moves, although it will certainly make my job easier once I’m done here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Why don’t we discuss it over drinks? I’ve already poured yours.” He nodded toward the bedside table, where a hotel glass brimmed with a cocktail on the rocks.

“What is it?”

“Kentucky bourbon, your favorite.”

“I prefer it neat.”

“Well, this will have to do. Have a seat. I insist.”

I sat on the bed, eyeing the bourbon. He walked around to face me, still standing, and now blocking my path to the door.

“Drink up.”

“You’re not joining me?”

“Maybe in a moment or two.”

I picked up the glass and sniffed. It smelled only like bourbon.

“What else is in here?”

He smiled, which told me all I needed to know. I put down the glass.

“I guess you want it to look like a heart attack or something.”

“You can never know for sure what a coroner will say in a backwater like this. But if you’d prefer I can always shoot you. Now that I have these”—he held up the mail receipts—”it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“How long have you been following me?”

“Didn’t pick up your trail until I saw you heading into the post office, or I’d have moved sooner. It’s a little tough getting out of the Pakistani tribal areas on short notice. But with Ron out of commission …” He shrugged. “Fortunately you started using your cell phone again or I might never have found you. Once I saw you were calling from Port Judith, it wasn’t too tough figuring out the rest. What’ll it be, then? Your choice, but I haven’t got all night.”

So this was to be my bad ending, then, no better than what had become of Folly in his final chapter, or poor old Alec Leamas in his, writhing at the base of the Wall. One went out gracefully, the other in a despairing surge of anger. The only emotions I seemed to have at my disposal were fear, rage, and frustration. I thought of David, of my dad, of Litzi. Even of April, standing in morning sunlight in her kitchen as someone telephoned with the news.

“Well?” He leveled the gun at my chest. There was a big ugly silencer on the end of the barrel. What I really wanted to do was jump to my feet and lunge at the gun, if only to make this as difficult and messy for him as possible. But nothing I’d learned in the survival class had taught me how to cover that much ground without getting blown away first. So I grasped for more time instead.

“What are you so worried about in all this? Humiliation, because Ed went bad on your watch? Or were you the one who turned him?”

“You haven’t earned those answers, you sloppy fuck.”

He extended his arm and tensed to fire. I grabbed frantically for the glass. Just in time, apparently, because he relaxed and lowered the gun. I responded by lowering the glass, wondering how long I could keep him going back and forth.

“Goddammit!” he said, raising the gun once again.

Then someone knocked at the door.

We flinched. Preston put a finger to his lips and slowly shook his head, then whispered, “You don’t want to get some poor maid killed, do you?”

“Police!” a man’s voice shouted gruffly. “You reported a robbery, sir?”

The smugness drained from Preston’s face, and he slowly lowered the gun. In one motion I threw the bourbon at his head, glass and all, and bolted up from the bed, bumping past him as he spluttered and spat at the toxic liquid. Then I opened the door onto a local cop, knees bent, gun pointed.

The cop jumped back, almost as startled as me. It was a miracle he didn’t shoot me. I raised my hands, showing they were empty, then sidled past him into the hallway as I blurted, “The other guy has a gun! He’s the one who’s robbing me.”

Preston apparently had no stomach for such an even matchup, or perhaps he was too smart to involve himself in the shooting of a policeman. He dropped his gun to the floor, held up his hands, and began pleading his case.

“Officer, this is a ridiculous misunderstanding.”

The policeman look relieved, but didn’t lower his guard.

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to explain,” he said.

Just as I was becoming convinced that this would end well, I heard a door open down the hallway behind me. Of course. The second man. I braced for yet another twist that would turn the situation back in Preston’s favor, but when I turned I saw David step from the room.

Impossible.

In fact, it was so disorienting that for a fleeting moment I wondered if I hadn’t actually been shot and was dreaming up the entire scene from some last moment of consciousness while I lay flat on my back across the hotel bed.