‘And this was what Robey did . . . is that what you’re telling me? That Robey did that out in Nicaragua and then brought it back here?’
‘No, God almighty, no. Robey would never have done that. Robey was, I should say is, a very grounded man. No, the one that you people were dealing with was someone else entirely . . . in fact you know him.’
‘What?’
‘The body you found in the trunk of the car . . . that, detective, was your so-called Ribbon Killer . . .’
‘And who the hell was he?’ Miller asked, and even as he asked, he understood that the truth was far worse than anything he might have imagined.
‘Who was he? His name was Don Carvalho, but who he was is of no importance at all. He was given instructions to deal with certain matters, he added an embellishment of his own for some reason no-one knows or cares, and he had to be excused from the playing field. The fact that John Robey was the one who dealt with that issue might be interesting to you.’
‘Robey killed him?’
‘Apparently so . . . but only because he wanted to prevent Carvalho from killing you.’
Miller was hardly able to breathe.
‘Don’t be so alarmed, detective . . . I should think that by now you would be undisturbed by any further revelations. Robey had a purpose in mind for you. He turned many years ago . . . turned against the company, against his own mentors and colleagues. He and Catherine Sheridan believed that the world had a right to know what happened in Nicaragua, what is still happening now, and for obvious reasons this could not be allowed to occur. The fact that he sent documentation to these people . . . Barbara Lee, Ann Rayner, the first one . . . I’m sorry, I don’t recall her name—’
‘Mosley. Margaret Mosley.’
‘Yes, that was it . . . the fact that after this fiasco with Darryl King five years ago he had the nerve to start this thing over, this bleeding heart liberal bullshit about the rights and wrongs of what happened back then—’ Thorne thumped his clenched fist on the arm of his chair and Miller jumped.
‘There is no question of rightness or wrongness when it comes to the security of a nation.’
‘You’re crazy . . . you’re fucking crazy—’
Thorne raised his hand. ‘I haven’t finished . . .’ He paused for a moment. ‘The public has judged you, Detective Miller, and they found you guilty. Doesn’t matter what the coroner’s enquiry said. Doesn’t matter what testimony your friend Marilyn Hemmings might have presented . . . the public has labelled you a maverick, a rogue cop. They believe without question that the police are more than capable of protecting their own, so it came as no surprise when you were exonerated in the murder of Brandon Thomas. They never expected it to be any other way.’
Miller was incredulous. ‘How the fuck do you—’
‘Come on, detective, you can’t honestly believe that this matter has gone unnoticed. Who the hell did you think James Killarney was? The FBI? You think the FBI was interested in the deaths of five lonely women, one of them black, and from the projects? Somehow I don’t think so. Killarney is CIA, as much as Robey ever was. He brought those reports straight to us.’
‘What d’you mean, straight to us? Who the hell are you people?’
‘You people? That’s who we are, Detective Miller. We are just “you people”. We are the ones who see the grand scale of all of this. We’re not down there concerning ourselves about the next paycheck or who our wives might be sleeping with or where we’re gonna take the kids on vacation. There is a certain view of the world that is maintained, detective . . . the view of the world that people want to see, the way they want it to remain, and we are the very people who give the world - or most of the world - exactly what it wants. The fact that we use the CIA for these operations, well . . .’
‘You believe this?’ Miller interjected. ‘You actually believe this stuff you’re telling me?’
Thorne smiled condescendingly. ‘I figured you for a man of some depth, you know? I believed you might have a higher degree of perception than your average blue-collar factory worker. But you have proved me wrong. I am seldom wrong, detective. Being wrong is something that a man in my position cannot afford. The future of the current administration, the administrations that are put in place beyond this one, beyond even the span of my life . . . these are things we decide now. These are the matters that concern people like me, not whether a few people who looked a little too closely at something wound up dead.’
Thorne took a deep breath and rose from his chair. He walked to the French windows once again and stood with his back to the room.
‘My advice, Detective Miller, is that you walk away from this. As far as you are concerned you are very lucky to be alive. You should have died in place of Detective Oliver. Do not consider that you have earned yourself a reprieve. I cannot guarantee that you will make it to the end of the day, let alone the end of the week, but if you walk away from this, if you accept the fact that this investigation now belongs to the FBI, then maybe, just maybe, you might disappear quietly from the minds of certain men. Some people are dead. It isn’t as though we’re talking a great many people. Fifty, a hundred, what does it matter? They should have walked away, just as you should now. But they didn’t walk away . . . they wanted to know what was going on, even though instinct and intuition would have told them that it was more trouble than it was worth. When people enrolled with this program they enrolled for life, and then they learned something of the truth of Nicaragua, believed that the authorities, perhaps even worse the public, had a right to know. They reported their findings to their superiors, and their superiors came to us, and we took care of things. They made an agreement, and then they broke that agreement. John Robey, Catherine Sheridan, Darryl King. It didn’t do them any good. Sheridan and King are dead, Robey is on the run somewhere, and though he might be one of the best killers the CIA ever trained he is still little more than one man against the might of the United States government and all its associated agencies. And as far as all the others are concerned, they were paid to protect the security of this nation, and they were found wanting . . .’ Thorne looked directly at Miller. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Miller felt as if a string was slipping through his fingers, and attached to that string were all the answers he wanted . . .
‘There are things you don’t understand, Detective Miller. That is something I can appreciate, but we only want one thing from you. We want you to walk away from this, walk away quickly and quietly. Accept the fact that you did a good job, you learned some things, but now it’s time to take the advice of Frank Lassiter and Nanci Cohen and find another case to work on.’
‘I want to know some things,’ Miller said calmly. ‘I think I am owed that much . . . owed some answers. There are too many things that don’t make sense for me to just turn around and forget everything that’s happened.’
‘It doesn’t matter now, detective . . . doesn’t matter how many things might or might not make sense.’
‘But you know what’s happened here. You can answer the questions for me.’
‘And why on earth should I do that?’ Thorne asked.
‘Because, like you said, it doesn’t matter what I know . . . I can’t do anything about it. People wouldn’t believe me, not only because of the sheer impossibility of believing it, but also because they already believe I am a liar, a dirty cop.’
‘Yes. Like I said, you have been judged by the world, Detective Miller, and they have found you wanting.’
‘So give me enough of an understanding to be able to walk away and forget about it. What’s to lose? That’s the thing you see, the thing about Washington police detectives, they’re stubborn . . . once they have a hold on something they won’t let go.’
Thorne laughed. ‘I like you, Detective Miller. I respect the fact that you have managed to stay alive this long . . . Alright, for no other reason than that it will do you no good, I will answer your questions. But I will answer only the questions that I want to answer, and those I do not I will refuse, okay?’
‘Who killed the first three women?’
‘The first three ever, or the first three you knew about?’
‘The ones I know about, Mosley, Rayner and Lee.’
‘They were killed by Don Carvalho, your trunk victim - and Ribbon Killer.’
‘But he was CIA?’
Thorne nodded.
‘And this thing with the ribbons was—’
‘Was just some stunt that he pulled . . . and even if Robey hadn’t found him and killed him, he wouldn’t have lasted the week after he killed the black woman.’
‘Natasha Joyce?’ Miller asked.
‘The one from the projects with the daughter? Yes, she was also killed by Carvalho.’
‘And Catherine Sheridan?’
‘You will have to ask John Robey about her.’
‘Was she also killed by this man Carvalho?’
‘Like I said, you’ll have to speak to your friend Professor Robey.’
‘And they were all killed because they knew about the Nicaraguan situation?’
Thorne laughed suddenly, unexpectedly. ‘The Nicaraguan situation? Now you’re really beginning to sound like Capitol Hill there, Detective Miller. You’re beginning to sound like an old hand at this sort of thing.’
‘Is that why they died? Because they knew what happened out there?’
‘No, of course not. There are many, many people who know what happened out there, detective. If we got rid of everyone who knew what happened out in Nicaragua then most of Congress and all of the Senate . . . hell, you’d have three-quarters of the United States administration being buried at Arlington. The CIA uses some judgement, you know? Some sense of restraint. They make decisions that no-one else is capable of making. They make executive decisions, and once those decisions are made they are passed down through controllers and station chiefs and section chiefs and God only knows who else, and right at the end of the food chain you have people like John Robey and Donald Carvalho. The people you are so concerned about were killed because they found out that drug money was still pouring into the CIA’s coffers long after the war in Nicaragua was over.’
‘And the CIA sent assassins to murder them,’ Miller said matter-of-factly.
‘Cleaners, mechanics, hitters, fixers, dispatchers . . . any number of different job descriptions.’
‘And how many of these people are there?’
Thorne frowned. ‘I have absolutely no idea, and even if I did know, that’s not a question I would be willing to answer.’
‘And who orders that people should die?’
‘No comment. We go back to the wall, don’t we, Detective Miller? The wall that has to be guarded by someone . . . by someones I should say.’
‘A wall against what? Against some imagined communist infiltration? Hell, it’s not the 1950s anymore.’
‘And the reason it’s not the 1950s, the reason there is no longer a Cold War? I’ll tell you why, detective . . . because we did things like El Salvador, Libya . . . things that would never have been paid for had it not been for Nicaragua. Because there were people like me and John Robey and Catherine Sheridan who believed enough in what was right and democratic to go out there and do something about it.’
‘You really believe that?’ Miller asked. ‘That flooding the United States with hundreds of tons of cocaine in order to pay for illegal wars is actually justified?’
‘Oh come on, detective, don’t be so naïve. These people you’re talking about . . . blacks and Hispanics, the Cubans, the Mexicans . . . if they hadn’t gotten coke from the Nicaraguan sources, it would have come from any of a dozen other places. Seems to me we did them a favor. We gave them the highest grade coke they’d ever had. These people are animals, they do what they’re going to do regardless of what anyone tries to tell them. They take drugs. They’ve always taken drugs. They’re going to take drugs from here on out and there’s nothing, not a single thing you or I or anyone else can do about it.’
‘You really believe this, don’t you? You really believe that this is how the world is and you can just dictate who lives and who dies.’
‘You make it sound like I have some sort of God complex,’ Thorne said.
‘Looks to me that it’s not far from the truth.’
‘God is a myth. People are born, people die. They have whatever time they have to make a difference or not. We do what we do because we believe that people have a right not to be oppressed by Fascism and Communism. CIA operatives gave their hearts and souls to the Agency. They said they would do the job, they said they would protect the security of the nation, and then they found out something that upset them and they wanted to tell the world. A few dozen people. It was a few dozen people, that’s all. You really think that the stability and security of this nation can be jeopardized because a handful of people lost their nerve?’
‘You should record yourself and listen back to it . . . you have any fucking idea how insane you sound?’
Thorne waved aside Miller’s comment. He put his hands in his pockets and turned towards the windows. ‘So we are done?’ he asked.
‘What are you going to do about Robey?’ Miller asked.
‘Robey? Robey will show up at some point and someone will kill him.’
‘That simple,’ Miller said.
‘Why on earth would it be any more complicated? There are certain interests that have to be protected, and those interests are an awful lot more important to the wellbeing and security of this nation than the lives of a few dissenters.’
Thorne walked to the desk and lifted the phone. He punched a number. ‘Security . . . Detective Miller is ready to leave.’
It was as Thorne put the receiver down and looked at Miller that Miller realized what was going to happen. He realized why Thorne had been so willing to talk - not because no-one would believe Miller, but because he would never have the chance to repeat it.
The man who had collected him had taken Miller’s gun; it was even now secure in the reception building, ready for his return.