Authors: Margaret Truman
Wheatley hadn’t mentioned Eric Edwards in his pages. Chances were he didn’t even know about him. But Cahill quickly created a scenario in which Tolker, viewing Edwards as a threat because of his close relationship with the too-chatty
Barrie, had convinced those involved in Banana Quick that Edwards was a double agent selling information to the other side. What other explanation could there be for his having been accused of double-dealing? Again, there was no tangible evidence to support her thesis, but the cumulative weight of everything that had happened, of every scrap of input she’d taken in, supported her notion.
She knew that she might be justifying her initial instincts about Tolker, but that didn’t matter now. The picture she’d painted was good enough. The paramount thing in her mind at this point was to avoid Tolker and Hotchkiss, find Vern and, together, make contact with someone within the CIA who could be trusted. Who could that be? she wondered. The only name she could come up with was Eric, but that posed a risk. He was surrounded by controversy. Still, he represented for Cahill the one person besides Wheatley who seemed to deal with things in a straightforward manner. Hank Fox also came to mind but she dismissed the thought. He was too much one of
them
, despite his fatherly approach.
The phone stopped ringing. Collette returned to the chair, opened her purse, and ran her fingers over the revolver’s smooth, plastic finish. Mark Hotchkiss! The confrontation with him had shaken her. What was he, MI-6? A contract agent. There were lots of them in the global system. Hotchkiss’s obvious close working relationship with Tolker both puzzled and dismayed her. It made sense, in a way, she reasoned. Tolker wouldn’t have physically killed Barrie and Dave Hubler. Too messy, not his style, or role. But Hotchkiss might have been the actual killer, working under Tolker’s direction. Yes, that played for her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Why was she bothering trying to make sense out of a system that depended, to a great extent, upon being nonsensical? Too many things in the gray world of intelligence were inscrutable, begging answers, defying the common man’s logic. Friends. Enemies. You needed a scorecard to tell the players on opposing teams. Hotchkiss had been in place geographically to kill both Barrie and David. Of course, it was possible that he had no connection with Tolker at all. If he’d
killed Mayer and Hubler, he might have been acting strictly on behalf of British intelligence. They’d preached during her training days that there were no allies in the spy business, no forbidden, hands-off nations. The Israelis had proved that recently, and it was well known that the British had dozens of agents in place within the United States.
The phone rang again. Cahill ignored it for a second time. Then another sound intruded upon her thoughts.
Someone was knocking at her door.
She went slowly, quietly to the door and placed her ear against it. A male voice said, “Collette?” She couldn’t place it. It wasn’t Hotchkiss; no trace of a British accent. “Collette.”
She remained silent and motionless, the small revolver at her side, her senses acutely tuned. She pressed her eye against the peephole in the door, saw no one. Whoever had been calling her name was against a wall, out of range of the wide-angle lens. She had no way of knowing whether he was still there. The halls were carpeted; no footsteps to give a clue.
She went to the phone and called Vern again on the chance that he might have returned early. He hadn’t.
Pacing the living room of her suite, she tried to sort out her next move. She was tempted to abandon the safety of the locked room, but that very safety kept her from doing it, at least for now. Still, she knew she’d have to leave sometime to go to the Allen Lee. Should she, could she wait until Wheatley returned and ask him to come to the Watergate? She answered no to both questions.
She looked down at the phone and read the instruction
for calling another room in the hotel. She debated it, then picked up the receiver, dialed the required prefix, and punched in 1010. It rang a long time. She was about to hang up when Eric Edwards came on the line. He sounded out of breath.
“Eric. It’s Collette.”
“I don’t believe it. Mystery lady surfaces. Let me get my breath. I’ve been working out. Where are you?”
“I’m … I’m in the vicinity.”
“I knew you were in Washington. My secretary told me. How long will you be here?”
She wanted to say forever, said instead, “I really don’t know. I’d like to see you.”
“I hoped you’d want to see me,” he said. “I was really upset the way you disappeared on me down in the BVI.”
“I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, and thanks for the note. I have a dinner engagement later this evening but …”
“I really need to see you tonight, Eric.”
“Could you come by now? We can have a drink before I have to get dressed.”
Collette paused before saying, “Yes, I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Hope you don’t mind a sweaty host.”
“I won’t mind that at all. Will we be alone?”
“Sure. What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. Ten minutes.”
“Fine, I’m in Suite 1010.”
“Yes, I know.”
After hanging up, she put on her raincoat and slipped the revolver into its pocket. She slung her purse over her shoulder and went to the door, her ear again cocked against the cool metal. There wasn’t a sound outside. Then she heard the rattling of dishes and someone whistling—a hotel employee going past her room with a serving cart. She listened to the jangle as it faded into the distance, and until everything was silent again. She undid the chain as quietly as possible, turned the lock on the knob and opened the door, looking out into the hallway right and left. Empty. She made sure she had her key, stepped through the opening, and closed the door behind her.
The elevators were to her left, about a hundred feet away. She started swiftly toward them when Mark Hotchkiss stepped from around a bend in the hallway beyond the elevators. She stopped, turned, and saw Jason Tolker approaching from the opposite direction. His right arm was in a sling, that side of his suit jacket draped over his shoulder. She hadn’t noticed that downstairs. “Collette,” Tolker said. “Please, I want to talk to you.”
“Get away,” she said, backing toward the elevators, her hand slipping into her pocket.
Tolker continued to walk toward her, saying, “Don’t be foolish, Collette. You’re making a big mistake. You must listen to me.”
“Shut up,” she said. Her hand came out of the pocket holding the revolver and she pointed it at him. It stopped him cold. “I won’t miss you this time.”
“Miss Cahill, you’re being bloody unreasonable,” Hotchkiss said from behind.
She glanced over her shoulder and showed him the weapon. “I’m telling you to stay away from me or I’ll kill you both. I mean it.”
Both men stopped their advance and watched as she moved toward the elevators, her head moving back and forth like a spectator’s at a tennis match, keeping them both in view.
“Get her,” Tolker yelled.
Hotchkiss extended his arms and stumbled toward her. She waited until he was about to grab her, then brought her knee up sharply into his groin. His breath exploded from him as he sank to his knees, his hands cupping his wounded genitals.
Collette ran to the elevators and pushed the “Down” button. Almost immediately one of the doors opened. The elevator was empty. She backed into it. “Don’t come after me,” she said, the doors sliding closed and muffling her words.
She looked at the control panel and pushed Seven. The elevator moved a floor lower. She got out, ran along the hall, and turned a corner until she came to another bank of elevators. She frantically pushed the button until one of
them arrived. In it were two couples. She stepped inside and pressed Ten.
The couples got out with her at the tenth floor. She waited until they’d entered a room, then walked past it and went directly to 1010. She knocked. The door was immediately opened by Eric Edwards. He wore blue gym shorts and a gray athletic shirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. His hair was damp with perspiration and hung over his tanned forehead.
“Hello, Eric,” she said.
“Hello to you,” he said, stepping back so that she could enter. He closed the door and latched it.
She went to the center of the room and looked down at a pair of hotel barbells and a couple of towels tossed in a pile on the floor. She kept her back to him.
“Not even a kiss hello?” he asked from behind. She turned, sighed, lowered her eyes, and her body began to shake. Large tears instantly ran down her cheeks.
He put his arms around her and held tight. “Hey, come
on
now, it can’t be that bad. Some reaction to me. I should be offended.”
She controlled herself, looked up, and said, “I’m so confused, Eric, and frightened. Do you know why I’m here in Washington?”
“No, except you said you had some business to attend to.”
“But do you know what that business was?”
He shook his head and smiled. “No, and unless you tell me, I never will.”
“I was sent here to kill you.”
He looked at her as though she were a small child caught in a lie. She said, “It’s true, Eric. They wanted me to kill you, and I said I would.”
“Telling you to kill me is one thing,” he said as he went to a chair near the window, “agreeing to it is another. Why would you want to kill me?”
She tossed her raincoat on a couch. “I don’t. I mean, I didn’t. I never intended to.”
He laughed. “You’re incredible, you know that?”
She shook her head, went to him, and sank to her knees
in front of the chair. “Incredible? No, I’m anything but. What I am is a terribly mixed up and disillusioned woman.”
“Disillusioned with what, our good friends at Langley?”
She nodded. “The so-called Company, everyone in my life, life itself I guess.” She took a deep breath. “They wanted me to kill you because they think you’re a double agent, selling information to the Soviets about Banana Quick.”
He grunted, shrugged.
“When I came to you and asked for advice about a vacation in the BVI, it was all a lie. They told me to do it. They wanted me to get close to you so that I could find out what you were doing down there.”
He leaned forward, touched her cheek, and said, “I knew that, Collette.”
“You did?”
“Well, not for certain, but I had a pretty strong feeling about it. It really didn’t bother me for a couple of reasons. One, I fell in love with you. Two, I figured that when you almost went up with me and the yacht, you’d lost your taste for doing their dirty work. Was I right?”
“Yes.”
“Having something like that happen puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? You can see how little you or I mean to them. We can go out and put our necks on the line for their crazy sense of duty and patriotism, but when push comes to shove, we’re all expendable. No questions asked, just ‘terminate’ some people and get on with the sham.”
His words had considerable impact on her, as words always do when they say what you’ve already been thinking. She thought of Tolker and Hotchkiss and their confrontation. “There are two men in the hotel who tried to stop me in the hall.”
He sat up. “Who are they? Do you know them?”
“Yes. One is Jason Tolker, the psychiatrist who was Barrie’s control. He brainwashed her, Eric. The other is an Englishman named Mark Hotchkiss, the one who took over Barrie’s agency.”
Edwards’s placid face turned grim as he looked out the window. “You know him?” Collette asked.
“I know of him. He’s British intelligence, an old buck who supposedly did some hits for MI-6, the Middle East, I think.”
Cahill said, “I think Tolker is the one who killed Barrie and David Hubler, maybe not directly, but I’m convinced he was behind it.”
Edwards continued to stare silently at the window. Finally, he turned to her and said, “I have a proposal for you, Collette.”
“A proposal?”
He managed a thin smile. “Not that kind of proposal, although maybe that’s in the cards down the road. As it would have been with Barrie if …” She waited for him to finish his thought. Instead, he said, “For all her intelligence, Barrie didn’t have one tenth the smarts you have, Collette.”
“If there’s one thing I don’t consider myself these days, it’s smart.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed her gently on the forehead. “You’ve seen more in your lifetime than most people can only imagine. You’ve not only witnessed the rotten underbelly of the CIA, what they call Intelligence, you’ve been a victim of it, like me. Barrie didn’t understand that. She never realized how she was being used by them.”
Cahill sat back on her haunches. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore about Barrie. She’s dead. It’s different for you, though. You could … you could step in where she left off, sort of in her memory.” His face lit up as though what he’d just said represented a profound revelation. “That’s right, you could view it that way, Collette, as doing something in Barrie’s memory.”
“View
what
that way?”
“Doing something to right wrongs, to avenge all the things that have happened because of them, including the loss of your good friend, and that young man who worked for her. You could do something very worthwhile for the world, Collette.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come in with me,” he said.
She had no idea what he meant, and her face indicated it.
He hunched forward and spoke in low, paternal tones. “Collette, I want you to think carefully about everything that’s happened over the past weeks, beginning with the death of Barrie Mayer.” He scrutinized her face. “You know why Barrie died, don’t you?”
“Sometimes I think I do, but I’ve never been sure. Do you know … for sure?”
His expression was one of bad taste in his mouth. He said in the same measured tones, “Barrie died because she wouldn’t listen to me. She did in the beginning, and it was good for her, but then she started listening to others.”
“Tolker?”