Authors: Margaret Truman
“You need a silencer?”
“Ah, no, I don’t think so.”
“Good. It’s developed but we don’t have it yet. Break it down. I’ll watch.”
She disassembled and assembled the small plastic weapon four times.
“Good. You’ve got it down. What else?”
“I … I’m not sure, Red.” What she wanted to say was that she was about to go off on an assignment to kill someone, to kill a man she’d slept with, to terminate him for the good of her country and the free world. She didn’t say anything, of course. It was too late for that. It wouldn’t be professional.
“Red.”
“Yeah?”
“I’d like some prussic acid and a detonator.”
His eyebrows went up. “Why?” he asked.
“I need it for my assignment.”
“Yeah? I ought to …” He shrugged and heaved his bulk to its feet. “Joe said give you anything you wanted. Sure you want this?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
It took him a few minutes to assemble her request. When he handed it to her, she was amazed at the smallness of it. “Know how to use it?” he asked.
“No.”
He showed her. “That’s all there is to it,” he said. “You get it close to the nose and trip this spring. Make sure it’s not your own nose. By the way, if it is, use this stuff fast.” He handed her a package of two glass ampules. “Nitro. If you get a whiff of the prussic, break this under your nose or …” He grinned and patted her on the shoulder. “Or I lose a favorite of mine.”
His words cut into her, but then she smiled, too, and said, “Thanks, Red. Any last words of wisdom?”
“Yeah, I got a few.”
“What are they?”
“Get out of the business, kid. Go home, work for a bank, get married and raise a couple of good citizens.”
She wanted to cry but was successful in fighting the need. “Actually,” she said, “I was going to become the Attorney General of the United States.”
“That’s not much better than what you’re doing now.” He shook his head and asked, “You want to talk?”
She did, desperately, but what she said was, “No, I have to get going. I haven’t packed. The other stuff, that is.” She looked down at the white box she held in her hands. Sutherland had put the revolver, the prussic acid vial, and detonator in it, packing it carefully, like a bridal gift.
“Good luck, kid,” he said. “See you back here soon?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Unless I decide to go work for a bank. Thanks, Red.”
“You take care.”
It was a running joke among embassy employees—Malev airlines, the national Hungarian airline, sold a first-class section on its flights, but its seats, food, and service were identical to those in the rear of the plane. A Communist compromise with free enterprise.
It was also unusual, Cahill knew, for her to be flying first class. Company policy put everyone in coach, with the exception of chiefs-of-station. But when Cahill had walked into the Transportation Department, she was handed first-class tickets on every leg of the trip. The young woman who handled embassy travel arrangements lifted a brow as she handed the tickets to Cahill. It had amused Cahill at the time, and she was tempted to say, “No, there hasn’t been a mistake. Assassins always ride first class.”
Now, at thirty thousand feet, between Budapest and London, it was not as amusing. It carried with it a symbolism that she would have preferred to ignore, but couldn’t. Like a last meal, or wish.
She passed through Heathrow Customs and went to the approximate place where Barrie would have been standing when the prussic acid was shoved beneath her nose. She
stared at the hard floor for a long time, watching hundreds of pairs of shoes pass over it. Didn’t they know what they were walking on? What a horrible place to die, she thought as she slowly walked away, took a taxi outside the terminal, and told the driver to go to 11, Cadogan Gardens.
“Yes, we have a room,” the manager on duty told her. “I’m afraid the room you enjoyed last time isn’t available, but we have a nice single in the back.”
“Anything will be fine,” Cahill said. “This was a last-minute trip, no time to call ahead.”
She ordered a dinner of cold poached salmon and a bottle of wine. When the hall porter had left, she securely latched the door, undressed, removed the small plastic revolver from her suitcase, did the same with the spring and prussic acid detonator from her purse, and placed everything on the table next to the tray. She tasted the white wine the porter had uncorked. It was chilled and tart.
She ate the salmon with enthusiasm, and finished half the wine, her eyes remaining for most of the meal on the mechanical contraptions of death with which she’d traveled.
The phone rang. “Was dinner satisfactory?” the porter wished to know.
“Yes, fine, thank you,” said Cahill.
“Do you wish anything else?”
“No, no, thank you.”
“Shall I remove the tray, madam?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. In the morning. Will you arrange a wake-up call for me at ten, please?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And breakfast in the room. Two eggs over easy, bacon and toast, coffee, orange juice.”
“Yes, madam. Have a pleasant evening.”
“Thank you.”
She stood at the window and watched a brisk wind whip leaves from the trees on the street below. People walked their dogs; someone was attempting to squeeze a too-large automobile into a too-small parking space.
She went to the table and picked up the white plastic revolver, assembled its components and, with two hands, aimed at an oil of a vase of roses that hung on the far wall.
There was no ammunition in the weapon; she’d have to buy it when she got to the British Virgin Islands. She’d never bought bullets before and wondered whether she’d be able to do it with aplomb. Like a teenage boy sheepishly buying contraceptives, she thought.
She squeezed the trigger several times, sat on the couch and took the weapon apart, put it back together again, and repeated the process a dozen times. Satisfied, she carefully picked up the detonator and tested the spring, making sure before she did that the ampule of prussic acid wasn’t in it.
She dialed a local number. It was answered on the first ring.
“Josh, this is Collette Cahill.”
“Collette, great to hear your voice. How’ve you been?”
“It’s good to hear your voice, too, Josh. I’ve been fine. I’m in London.”
“Hey, that’s great. Can we get together? How about dinner tomorrow? I’ll round up some of the troops.”
“I’d love it, Josh, but I’m here on business and have to leave early tomorrow evening. Actually, I’m calling for a favor.”
“Anything. What is it?”
“I need a photograph.”
“You’re looking for a photographer?”
“No, I need an existing photograph of someone. I thought maybe you could pull one out of the files for me.”
He laughed. “Not supposed to do that, you know.”
“Yes, I know, but it really would be a tremendous help to me. I won’t have to keep it, just have it for an hour or so tomorrow.”
“You’ve got it—if we have it. Who do you want a picture of?”
“A literary agent here in London named Mark Hotchkiss.”
“I don’t know whether we’d have anything on a literary agent, but I’ll check. You’d probably do better through a newspaper morgue.”
“I know that, but I don’t have time.”
“I’ll check it out first thing in the morning. Where can I meet up with you?”
She gave him the address of the hotel. “At least I’ll get to see you tomorrow,” he said. “If I come up with the photo, you owe me the chance to buy you a quick lunch.”
“That’ll be great. See you around noon.”
Josh Moeller and Collette had worked closely together during her previous CIA assignment to the listening post in England. They’d become fast friends, sharing a mutual sense of humor and a quiet disdain for much of the bureaucratic rules and regulations under which they lived and worked. Their friendship evolved into a brief affair shortly before Cahill’s reassignment to Budapest. Her move concluded the affair with finality, but they both knew it had effectively died by its own hand before that, one of those situations in which the friendship was stronger and more important to both parties than the passion. They’d initially kept in touch, mostly through letters delivered by way of the diplomatic pouch between Budapest and London. But then their correspondence tapered off, too, as will happen with the best of friends, especially when the friendship is strong enough to preclude any need for frequent contact.
Her next call was long-distance. It took ten minutes for it to go through to the BVI. Eric Edwards’s secretary answered.
“Is Mr. Edwards there?” Cahill asked, glancing at her watch to reconfirm the time difference.
“No, ma’am, he is not. He is in the United States.”
“Washington?”
“Yes, ma’am. Is this Miss Cahill?”
Cahill was surprised to be asked. “Yes, it is.”
“Mr. Edwards told me that if you called I should inform you that he is staying at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.”
“How long will he be there?”
“One more week, I think.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. I’ll contact him there.”
One final call, this one to her mother in Virginia.
“Collette, where are you?”
“London, Mom, but I’ll be coming home in a few days.”
“Oh, that will be wonderful.” A pause: “Are you all right?”
“Yes, Mom, I’m fine. I think … I think I might be coming home for good.”
Her mother’s gasp was audible even over the poor connection. “Why?” she asked. “I mean, I’d love for that to happen but … are you sure everything is all right? Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Collette laughed loudly to help make the point that she wasn’t. She simply said, “Lots of things have been happening, Mom, and maybe the best of them all is to come home and stay home.”
The connection was almost lost, and Cahill said quickly, “Goodbye, Mom. See you in about a week.”
She knew her mother was saying something but couldn’t make out the words. Then the line went dead.
She stayed up most of the night, pacing the room, picking up and examining the weapons she’d brought with her—thinking—her mind racing at top speed, one person after another in her life taking center stage—Barrie Mayer, Mark Hotchkiss, Breslin, Podgorsky, Hank Fox, Jason Tolker, Eric Edwards—all of them, the chaos and confusion they’d caused in her small world. Was it that simple to restore order, not only to her life but to so complex and important a geopolitical undertaking as Banana Quick? The ultimate solution, they said, lay on the coffee table—a white plastic revolver that weighed ounces and a spring-loaded device that cost a few dollars to make, devices whose only purpose was to snuff out life.
She could almost understand now why men killed on command. Women, too, in this case. What value has a single human life when wrapped in multiple layers of “greater good”? Besides, eliminating Eric Edwards wasn’t her idea. It didn’t represent what she was really all about, did it? “But wait, there’s more,” she told herself as she paced the room, stopping only to look out the window or to stare at the tools of the trade on the table. She was avenging the death of a good friend. Barrie had died at the hand of someone who viewed life and death from the same perspective as she was being called upon to accept. In the end, it didn’t matter who the individual was who’d taken Barrie’s life—a Soviet agent, a doctor named Tolker, very different characters like Mark
Hotchkiss or Eric Edwards—whoever did it answered to a different god, one it was now necessary for her to invoke if she were to go through with this act.
As she continued trying to deal with the thoughts that had invaded her ever since Joe Breslin told her to kill Eric Edwards, she became fascinated with the process going on inside her, as though she were a bystander watching Collette Cahill come to terms with herself. What she’d been asked to do—what, in fact, she was actually setting out to do—represented so irrational an act that had it been suggested to her at any other point in her life, it would have immediately gotten lost in her laughter. That was no longer true. What had evolved, to the bystander’s amusement and amazement, was a sense of right and reason responsive to the act of murder. More important, it could be done.
She
could do it. She hadn’t thrown up her hands, raced from Breslin’s car, hid in her apartment, or hopped the first flight out of Budapest. She’d accepted the mission and chosen her weapons carefully, no different from selecting a typewriter or pencil sharpener for an office job.
She was numb.
She was confused.
And she was not frightened, which was the most frightening thing of all for the bystander.
In the morning, a series of taps on her door. She’d forgotten; she’d ordered breakfast. She scrambled out of bed and said through the door, “Just a minute,” then went to the living room and hastily took the tools from the coffee table and slid them into a desk drawer.
She opened the door and a hall porter carried in her tray. He was the same porter she’d talked to during her last visit to the hotel, the one who’d told her about the three men coming to collect Barrie Mayer’s belongings. “Will you be on duty all day?” she asked him.
“Yes, madam.”
“Good,” she said. “I’d like to show you something a little later.”
“Just ring, madam.”
Josh Moeller arrived at a quarter of twelve carrying an
envelope. After they’d embraced, he handed it to her, saying in slight surprise, “We had this in our own files. I don’t know why, although there’s been a push for the past year to beef up the general photo files. You’d think Great Britain had become the enemy the way we’ve been collecting on everybody.”
Collette opened the envelope and looked into the black-and-white glossy face of Mark Hotchkiss. The photo was grainy, obviously a copy of another photograph.
Moeller said, “I think this came from a newspaper or literary magazine.”
Cahill looked at him and said, “Any dossier on him?”
Moeller shrugged. “I don’t think so, although I have to admit I didn’t bother checking. You said you wanted a photograph.”
“Yes, I know, Josh, that’s all I needed. Thanks so much.”