Authors: Margaret Truman
“Yes. He had remarkable control over her. I warned her. I tried to reason with her, but every time she’d see him, he’d capture another small piece of her mind.”
“I knew that was the case, but …”
“But what?”
“Why would he have killed her if she were so obedient to him?”
“Because that’s the flaw in their whole stupid mind-control program, Collette. They spend millions, screw up one life after the other, but still can’t—and never will—create a person they can
totally
control. It’s impossible, and they know it.”
“But they …”
“Yeah, they keep spending and trying. Why? The freaks who work in those projects, like Tolker, get off on it. They exaggerate results and keep promising a breakthrough, while the ones who control funding rationalize the millions by claiming the other side is doing it, and in a bigger way. Barrie might have been manipulated by Tolker, but he didn’t own her. Maybe it would have been better if he did. Or thought he did.”
Collette said nothing as she thought about what he’d said.
“Tolker filled Barrie with a lot of lies that turned her against me,” Edwards continued. “It was a tragic mistake on her part. She didn’t know who to trust, and ended up putting all her cards in the wrong player’s hand.”
Cahill went to a table. She leaned her hands on it and peered down at its surface. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t fully process what he was saying. Everything was so indirect, raising more questions than answers.
“Eric, why was Barrie killed? What did she know that made it necessary to murder her? Who would have been so hurt if she stayed alive that they’d be driven to such an act?”
He came closer to her. “You have to understand, Collette, that Barrie knew the risks involved in what she was doing.”
“Being a courier? Occasionally carrying things to Budapest shouldn’t pose that much of a risk, Eric.”
“Not unless what she was carrying could be construed as being destructive to the Company.”
“Why would it be destructive? She was working
for
it, wasn’t she?”
“In the beginning, then … Look, let me level with you, Collette, the way I’ve been doing right along. I won’t try to soften it, mince words. Barrie eventually saw the wisdom in cooperating with—the other side.”
Collette shook her head. “No, I can’t believe that Barrie would double-deal. No, sorry, I can’t accept that.”
“You have to, Collette. Open your mind. Don’t automatically make it negative. What she was doing was noble in its own way.”
“Noble? You’re saying she was a traitor.”
“Semantics. Is trying to achieve a balance of sanity in this world a traitorous act? I don’t think so. Is saving the lives of thousands of innocent people, Hungarians in this case, traitorous? Of course it isn’t. Banana Quick was ill-conceived from the beginning, doomed to failure, like the Bay of Pigs and the rescue attempt in Iran and all the other misguided projects we undertake in the name of freedom. If Banana Quick is implemented, it will only result in the death of innocent people in Hungary. Barrie didn’t see that at first, but I eventually convinced her of it.”
“
You
convinced her?”
“Yes, and I want to convince you of the same thing. This is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I met you, but I
was never sure you’d be receptive. Now I think you will be, just as Barrie was, once she understood.”
“Go ahead.”
“I want you to work with me to fend off this madness. I want you to pick up where Barrie left off. I want you to … to help me feed information to where it will do the most good, to what you call ‘the other side.’ ”
Cahill’s stomach churned and she felt light-headed. What they’d said was true. He
was
a double agent, and had recruited Barrie. She didn’t know what to say, how to respond, whether to lash out at him physically or to run from the room. She held both instincts in check. “I defended you at every turn. I told them they were wrong about you. I was the one who was wrong.” She’d said it with a calm voice. Now she exploded. “Damn it, damn you! I thought Tolker was the double agent leaking information about Banana Quick. I really believed that, but now you’re admitting to me that you are. You bastard! You set Barrie up to be killed, and now you want me to put myself in the same position.”
He shook his head slowly. “Collette, you have a lot more to offer than Barrie did. She was so naive. That’s what got her in trouble, what led to her death. When I took Barrie into my confidence, I had no idea of her potential for control by someone like Tolker. She told him everything, and he convinced her to inform on me. She’d learned too much. I never should have let her get that close, but I fell in love. I do that too easily and often for my own good.”
“Love? You call it love for a woman to recruit her into selling out her country?”
“Love comes in all forms. It was a nice partnership, personally and professionally, until Tolker soured everything. Barrie made a lot of money from our partnership, Collette, a lot more than she was getting from the CIA.”
“Money? That matters to you?”
“Sure. It mattered to her, too. There’s nothing inherently evil with money, is there? Let me suggest something. Climb down off your high horse and hear me out. I’ll cancel my date tonight and we’ll have dinner right here in the room. We’ll get to know each other better.” He laughed. “And we can pick up where we left off in the BVI. No strings,
Collette. You don’t have to fall in with me. Nothing lost by talking about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“You don’t have much choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re already in because you know too much. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all.”
He shrugged, leaned over and picked up a barbell, lifted it a few times over his head. “I’ll make a deal with you. All you have to do is go back to Budapest and tell them I’m clean. I’ll give you materials that make a case against Tolker as having thrown in with the Soviets. That’s all you have to do, Collette, tell them you dug up this material and are turning it over like a good Company employee. They’ll take care of Tolker and …”
“And what, terminate him?”
“That’s not our concern. You knew, didn’t you, that Barrie was carrying almost two hundred thousand dollars to pay off some Hungarian bureaucrat?”
She didn’t reply.
“I have it.”
“You took it from her after you killed her.” She was amazed at how matter-of-factly she was able to say it.
“It doesn’t matter how I got it. What’s important is that half is yours for clearing me. After that, there’ll be plenty more if you decide to help me on a long-term basis. Think about it, lots of money stashed away for your retirement.” Another laugh as he did curls with the barbell. “I figure I’ve got maybe another year at best before it’s time for me to get out. I want enough money to start my own charter service, not a front I don’t own. What do you want in a year, Collette? A house in Switzerland, an airplane, enough money in a foreign bank so that you’ll never have to work again? It’s yours.” He dropped the barbell to the floor and said, “How about it? Dinner? Champagne? We’ll toast anything you want, anybody, and then we can …”
“Make love?”
“Absolutely. I established a rule with myself years ago that I’d never let anything get in the way of that, especially
when it’s a beautiful and bright woman like you who …” He shook his head. “Who made me fall in love again.”
She went for her raincoat on the couch. He jumped in front of her and gripped the back of her neck, his fingertips pressing hard against her arteries. She could see the muscles rippling in his bare arms, and the red anger on his face. “I’m through being nice,” he said, pushing her across the room and into the bedroom. He flung her down on the bed, grabbed the front of her sweater, and tore it off.
She rolled off the bed and scrambled across the floor toward the door, got to her feet, and raced into the living room. She swiped at her raincoat and tried to get behind the couch where she’d have time to retrieve the revolver. He was too quick; she’d barely managed to pull the weapon from the pocket when he grabbed her wrist and twisted, the white plastic gun falling to the floor.
“You bitch,” he said. “You would kill me, wouldn’t you?”
His ego was so damaged momentarily that he relaxed his grip on her wrist. She sprang loose and ran to where she’d left her purse on top of a large console television set, grabbed it, and tried to find something to get behind, a haven where she could catch her breath and ready the detonator. There wasn’t any such place—her only escape route was into the master bedroom. She ran there and tried to slam the door behind her, but he easily pushed it open, the force sending her reeling toward the bed. Her knees caught it, and she was suddenly on her back, her hands frantically seeking the device in her purse.
He stood over her and glared. “You don’t understand the game, do you? What did you think would happen when you decided to get some excitement in your life by joining up? What did you think, you can play spy but run home to Mommy when it hurts?”
“I’m … please don’t hurt me,” she said. Her purse had fallen to the floor, but she’d grasped the loaded detonator and cupped it in her right hand, her arms flung back over the edge of the bed.
“I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t hurt people for fun. Sometimes, though … sometimes it’s necessary, that’s all. Don’t make it necessary for me to hurt you.”
“I won’t.” His eyes were focused on her bare breasts. He smiled. “A beautiful woman. You’ll see, Collette, we’ll end up together. It’ll be nice. We’ll stash the money, then go away somewhere and enjoy the hell out of it—and each other.”
He leaned forward and put a hand on either side of her head. His face was inches from her face. He kissed her on the lips, and she managed to return it, mimicking the memory of their night together, until he pulled his head back and said, “You’re beautiful.”
Then she brought her hand up and jammed the detonator against his lips. Her thumb pulled the switch and the ampule exploded, sending the acid and a thousand fine fragments of glass into his face. He gasped and fell back to his knees, his hands ripping at his sweatshirt, his face contorted.
Cahill, too, felt the effect of the acid. Her face had been too close to his. She reached down and shoved her hand into her open purse, found the small glass vial of nitro and broke it beneath her nose, breathing deeply, praying it would work.
“Me …” Edwards said. He was now writhing on the floor, one hand outstretched, his last living expression one of pleading. Cahill lay on her stomach, her head at the foot of the bed, her eyes wide as she watched him breathe and then, with one last convulsion, his head twisted to one side and he was dead, his open eyes looking up at her.
She made her final trip to Budapest a week later, to process out and to arrange for the shipment of her things back to the United States.
Joe Breslin met her Malev flight and drove her to her apartment. “I really don’t have much,” she said. “It was probably silly for me even to come here.”
“You didn’t have to bother with packing,” Breslin said, lighting his pipe. “We would have done it for you. Got a beer?”
“Go look. I don’t know.”
He returned from the tiny kitchen with a bottle of the Köbányai világos and a glass. “Want one? There’s plenty.”
“No.”
He sat on a deep window bench and she leaned against a wall, her arms folded across her chest, ankles crossed, her head down. She sighed, looked at him, and said, “I’ll hate you and everybody in the CIA for the rest of my life, Joe.”
“I’m genuinely sorry about that,” he said.
“So am I. Maybe if I grow up someday and begin to understand everything that’s happened, I won’t feel quite so filled with hatred.”
“Maybe. You know, none of us likes doing what we have to do.”
“I don’t believe that, Joe. I think the agency’s filled with people who love it. I thought I did.”
“You did a good job.”
“Did I?”
“Your handling of Hegedüs was as masterful as any I’ve ever seen.”
“He was telling the truth about Tolker, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah. I wish the Fisherman were still in place. He’s no good to us now.”
She made a sound of displeasure.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“ ‘He’s no good to us now.’ That’s the way it is, isn’t it, Joe? People are only worthwhile as long as they have something to give. After that … instant discard.”
He didn’t respond.
“Tell me about Hotchkiss,” she said.
Breslin shrugged and drew on his pipe. “MI-6, an old-timer who hung in. They—the Brits—set Hotchkiss up in the literary agency business years ago. Nice cover, good excuse to travel and get a pulse on what’s happening in the literary fraternity. In most countries, literary means political. Having him in that business paid off for them. They’re not talking, at least to us, but somehow they got wind that Barrie had turned, and was working with Edwards. They sicced Hotchkiss on her.” Breslin’s laugh was one of admiration. “Hotchkiss did a better job than they’d hoped for. He actually got Barrie to consider going into partnership.”
“Consider? They did become partners.”
“Not really. The papers were bogus. We figure your friend told Hotchkiss to get lost the night before she died. That eventuality had been considered for a long time. Those papers were drawn, and her signature forged, in anticipation of the deal going down the tube.”
“But why …?”
“Why what? Go through all that? The British have been complaining from the first day about Banana Quick. They felt we were running the show, and that they were being left in the dark about too many things. Answer? Get someone
on the inside, in this case Barrie Mayer. Knowing what she was up to was as good as sleeping with Edwards.”
“And Jason Tolker?”
A long draw on his pipe. “Funny about Tolker. He really was in love with Barrie Mayer, but he found himself between a rock and a hard place. The British suspected she was double-dealing, but never knew for certain. Tolker knew. He was the only one, besides Edwards, but what does he do with the information? Turn them in and destroy the woman? He couldn’t do that, so he went to work on her and tried to convince her to drop Edwards, turn him in, and hope that they’d let her off the hook. He was effective,
too
effective. She finally decided to do it. Edwards couldn’t allow that. That’s why he killed her. All such a waste. They’ve scrapped Banana Quick.”