The Once and Future Spy (25 page)

Snow remembered asking Silas how he knew so much about his man Nate. It’s me, Nate, he had replied. Even then she hadn’t been
sure how to take that piece of information. “What about the third attempt on his life?” she asked Fargo now. “I suppose you
can explain that away too.”

Fargo pulled three sheets of paper from the folder and offered them to Snow. She read them quickly, handed them back. Fargo
said, “I took those depositions myself. The foreman, the two men who worked the cranes, swear on a stack of Bibles that they
searched the building when they came back from their lunch break. Of course they didn’t do anything of the kind, but they’re
not about to admit it and lose their jobs. They sounded a warning blast on the hand-cranked siren-you said you heard a siren,
remember?-and waited to see if anyone stuck his head out of a window. When nobody did, they started in with their wrecking
balls. Did you or Sibley go to a window and scream at any point to attract attention?”

“He saw the Admiral drive up. The man with the tattoos who tried to incinerate him in the parking lot, the woman, were with
him.”

Fargo asked very gently, “Did
you
see them?”

A whimper of frustration escaped Snow’s lips.

Fargo stood up. “I want to show you something.” He steered her into a waiting elevator, pushed the basement button. They rode
down staring wordlessly at the padded door. It parted. Fargo led the way through a brightly lit, spotlessly clean garage.
Half a dozen automobiles were parked in it. Some of them had been taken apart, piece by piece, in a search for hidden drugs.
Two agents in coveralls had jacked up a Mercedes 190SL and were removing the tires. They looked at Fargo and the woman, nodded
and went back to work. Fargo guided Snow to a tow truck parked in a corner of the garage. A beat-up brown Volkswagen Beetle
was still attached to its crane. The car’s front wheels were off the ground. “What kind of car did Sibley drive?” Fargo asked.

She remembered him mentioning something about a VW Beetle.

Fargo opened the driver’s door of the Volkswagen and reached for an envelope attached to the inside of the sun visor with
rubber bands. He removed a registration certificate from the envelope and offered it to Snow. “This particular Volkswagen
belongs to Silas Sibley. You’ll notice there is no middle initial, but the certificate was issued before he started using
the
N
. After the two attempts on his life in New Haven he abandoned the car near Yale. Do you notice anything curious about the
car?”

When Snow shook her head Fargo said, “He told you, and you told me, that the first attempt on his life took place when he
returned to the faculty parking lot to get his car. He escaped by locking himself
inside the Volkswagen, banging into the car ahead and then the one behind to give himself room to maneuver, and driving off
while the Admiral’s driver, the man named Huxstep, breathed fire on the car. That’s what he said, right? Huxstep breathed
fire on the car and Sibley could smell the singed paint and burning rubber. Take a good look at this Volkswagen, Snow. Does
it look as if it has been subjected to fire and heat? Look at the bumpers. They’re rusted, but they don’t look as if they’ve
been used to push cars around.”

Snow ran her fingers over a fender. Paint flaked off in her hand. She could see patches of rust coming through the paint in
places. She turned to Fargo and asked, “How long have you had the car down here?”

“Jesus, Snow, we didn’t repaint the damn thing and put on new bumpers.”

“You could have.”

Fargo slipped his arm through hers and steered her back toward the elevator. “There is one proof that will convince you,”
he told her. “It’s that nobody is going to kill Sibley. There is no reason to-there is no scheme to commit an atrocity that
has to be protected. He’ll have to be isolated for a while, naturally. He had access to Agency secrets. He can identify Agency
employees. But he’s going to be helped back onto his feet. When he’s well again the Agency will retire him with pay. They’ll
find him a job, give him a new life.” He smiled worriedly. “If you decide to, you can share that life with him.”

Snow studied Fargo’s face; he clearly believed what he was telling her. If there was a plot, he wasn’t part of it. But somebody
might have set out to fool Fargo …

“I’m telling you the truth,” Fargo said with emotion. “Trust me.”

Snow could hear Silas’s peal of laughter echoing through her skull. “Whose truth?” he seemed to say. “Which truth?” She tossed
her shoulders tiredly, brought a cuticle to her lips. “I don’t know whose truth to trust,” she admitted.

T
he Weeder came up slowly, carefully, pausing every twenty or so yards until he became accustomed to the depth. At one marker
he started to hear voices but they were too far above his head to make out what they were saying. Two markers farther up he
got a whiff of ether. The odor provoked a memory: One of the two men in the back of the car had pinned his wrists while the
other had clamped a thick wad of gauze over his mouth and nose. Before consciousness had slipped through his fingers he remembered
screaming Snow’s name into the ether-soaked gauze. He wondered now why he had done that. After all, she was on their side.
He floated up to the last marker, the one directly beneath the surface. Rays of dappled bluish light tickled his body. The
sounds coming from above became more distinct. “He’s all yours,” someone was saying. A woman said, “Thanks for the favor.
The Company owes you one.” Several people laughed pleasantly. They might have been taking tea. Car doors slammed. A motor
spurted into life. A machine whined, cranking open something big. Diffused light poured in. A car drove away. The machine
whined, closing whatever it was that had opened. The light became dappled, bluish again. “He’s coming out of it,” the woman’s
voice, close to his ear, called out. “Check the handcuffs,” a man called back from outside the room. “And make sure he don’t
yell.”

The Welder’s eyes batted open as the strip of cloth was pulled across his mouth He could feel someone knotting it at the back
of his
head. He bit down on the cloth and gagged, and gagged again, and started to suck air wildly through his nostrils.

“He’ll croak before we can question him,” Mildred called in panic. Pushing her chest into his face, she reached behind him
and undid the gag, then sat back on her haunches. She dangled the gag in his face. “Promise me you’ll be a good boy and not
dazzle us with witticisms,” she said breathlessly, “and I won’t put it on again.”

The Weeder managed to nod. He looked around. He was in some sort of cabin, sitting on the floor with his back to one wall.
His wrists were handcuffed behind his back and the handcuffs were attached to something metallic embedded in the wall that
stabbed into his spine. He shifted his position, rolling onto a haunch, to ease the pain. There were double doors at one end
of the cabin and a little round window at the other end. Mildred, wearing the 1930s feathered hat with the veil that masked
half her face, settled onto a bunk bed built into the wall opposite him, her legs spread, her skirt hiked, revealing garter
belts with clasps attached to the folds of dark transparent stockings. Huxstep’s face appeared in the round window. He pushed
it open on its hinge and aimed an enormous pistol with a silencer fitted on the barrel at the Weeder.

The Weeder gasped. Mildred whined, “What about the interrogation?” as if she were afraid of being cheated.

Smiling cruelly, Huxstep thumbed back the hammer. “We’ll invent it,” he said, and he pulled the trigger. The sharp click of
the firing mechanism struck the Weeder with the force of a bullet. He sank back into the piece of embedded metal and cried
out in pain.

Huxstep laughed under his breath. “It was a joke,” he growled at Mildred.

Sparks of admiration kindled in her eyes. “You could have fooled me.”

“History,” the Weeder remarked weakly, “needs a giggle now and then.”

“Uh-uh,” warned Mildred, leaning forward to wiggle a finger in the Weeder’s face. “Remember what I told you about dazzling
us with witticisms.”

Huxstep closed the porthole. The Weeder could see his back-he seemed to be manipulating controls. A motor started up with
a roar. The floorboards under the Weeder vibrated. Diesel fumes invaded the cabin. Mildred produced a handkerchief and held
it over her nose.
Huxstep shifted into gear and accelerated. Rolling gently from side to side, the cabin started to move. The sound of water
washing up against its sides reached the Weeder.

“We’re on a boat!” he exclaimed.

“The Admiral said you were a bright boy,” Mildred commented through her handkerchief.

“Where are you taking me?” the Weeder asked.

Mildred stared at him with the unblinking eyes of a turtledove. “To see the sea.”

The Weeder shifted onto a haunch again and tried to ride the gentle rise and fall of the floorboards under him. The diesel
fumes gradually disappeared. He could hear over the motor the bark of sea gulls, the tinkle of a buoy passing close aboard,
the distant moan of a foghorn. Presently the sounds faded and there was only the drone of the motor and the lapping of water
against the hull, and the snoring of Mildred, who had been lulled to sleep by the motion of the boat. The Weeder grew stiff,
shifted his weight onto his other haunch. In her sleep Mildred rolled onto her side, continued snoring. After what seemed
to the Weeder to be an eternity the pitch of the motor changed. It was being throttled back, left to idle. Mildred stirred,
looked at her wristwatch, sat up so abruptly she banged her head against the side of the bunk. “Fuck,” she exclaimed. Rubbing
her head, she opened one of the double doors and called out, “Are we there?”

“I think I hear it,” Huxstep called back excitedly.

Mildred cocked an ear, flashed a toothy smile as she caught the put-put-put of rotors. The whine of a motor grew louder. To
the Weeder it sounded as if a giant eggbeater was hovering directly over the boat. Someone landed with a thud on the roof
of the cabin. The put-put-put of the rotors receded, then faded altogether. The Weeder could hear shoes scuffing the planks
over his head. Someone was working his way aft. Mildred threw open the second door and stood aside.

Dressed in a Navy windbreaker with a blue baseball cap set on his mane of chalk-white hair, Admiral Toothacher appeared at
the doors. He stooped and ducked into the cabin. “Well, well,” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “what
do we have here?”

“What we have here,” Mildred said, “is trouble.”

Still looking at the Weeder, the Admiral told Mildred, “Be so kind as to close the doors on your way out.”

Mildred’s feelings were obviously hurt. “Aye, aye, sir,” she said with a scowl. She slipped out of the cabin, banging the
doors shut behind her.

Hunched over like a parenthesis to avoid hitting his head, Toothacher settled onto the bunk facing the Weeder and unzipped
his wind-breaker. He ran a forefinger under the turtleneck of the black skintight sweater he was wearing to alleviate the
chafing. “I trust you won’t object to Mildred’s absence,” the Admiral remarked. “I myself prefer the company of men to that
of women. Don’t get me wrong. Women can be good company, but only when they are reasonably sure of their ability to seduce.
Mildred, you will have concluded from her readiness, her eagerness even, to expose a length of thigh, to rub a breast against
your elbow, is not at all sure of her ability to seduce. But then only the very beautiful or the very rich or the very ugly
are. So, Silas-I hope you will not be offended if I call you by your given name-on top of everything else you’ve been doing,
you have been spying for our Russian friends.”

The Weeder tried to register surprise, innocence. The letter he had planted behind the museum radiator had fallen into the
right hands after all. “What makes you think that?” he asked.

From the inside pocket of his windbreaker the Admiral pulled a wad of photocopies. “My Latin is not what it once was,” he
told the Weeder, “but with the aid of a dictionary it was child’s play to translate. ‘
Haemorrhoidane tibi etiam molesta est?
‘ That means, ‘Are your hemorrhoids still bothering you?’ How did you know Savinkov had hemorrhoids, Silas?”

The Weeder glanced around in desperation.

“There is no way out,” Toothacher said coldly. “Attempt to be rational. For your own good, for your peace of mind, answer
my question.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“What will happen to you happens to everyone eventually. You will die. The question is whether you will die painlessly and
with dignity, or …” He let the sentence trail off suggestively.

An image of Snow came to the Weeder-he remembered the photograph of her, nude, seen through a partly open door, a candle next
to her bare feet. She had invaded her own space, then she had invaded the Weeder’s space; she had not believed him, had betrayed
him. He would have to steel himself to pay the price of that betrayal.
He hoped he had the courage. He would take his cue from Nate. … “I am ready to die,” he told the Admiral.

Toothacher snorted. “You only regret that you have but one life, et cetera, et cetera. The fact is that nobody is ever ready
to die, although everyone is actually in the process of dying-Mildred with her ridiculous hat, the young girls with their
obscenely thin skirts clinging to their obscenely thin thighs, the hookers Huxstep unearths, God knows where he finds them,
with their insolent smiles. What is there to smile about? The only people who smile are those who don’t know enough, who don’t
know they’re dying.” The Admiral realized he had been carried away, smirked in embarrassment, repeated his question. “Savinkov?
Hemorrhoids? If you please?”

“During one of our meetings I noticed he was sitting on an inflated rubber tube. I assumed he had hemorrhoids. I remembered
an advertisement about a medicine and brought him some the next time I saw him.”

“We all seem to be good at diagnosing other people’s symptoms,” the Admiral remarked. “How long have you been working for
Savinkov?”

“I don’t work for him. I collaborate. Two, two and a half years.”

“How did you first get in touch with him?”

“He got in touch with me. He struck up a conversation while we were waiting in line for a movie. We had a drink together afterward.
He told me he was a Hungarian refugee. We met occasionally for lunch or dinner. We became friendly. One day he came right
out and told me who he was and what he wanted.”

“And what exactly did he want?”

“He wanted information that would help him, help the Russians, rein in the Agency’s global schemes of domination. Savinkov
understood I was a patriot, that I would only give him information when I believed my side had lost its moral compass-trying
to overthrow elected governments because they were socialist, organizing the assassination of officials who were anti-American,
that kind of thing.”

The Admiral unfolded a photocopy of the computer printouts that had been retrieved from the pawn shop. “When you found out
about Stufftingle you naturally passed this information on to him.”

“Not in the beginning. I tried to head off the operation by letting Wanamaker think there had been a leak. When I realized
that you had been called in to walk back the cat, that Wanamaker still seemed to be
going ahead with Stufftingle, I began to feed some of the printouts into dead drops. In the back of my head I suppose I hoped
that the Agency would get wind that Savinkov knew about Stufftingle and call it off.”

The Weeder, Toothacher realized, still considered Stufftingle to be an Agency operation. It had never occurred to him that
Wanamaker was freelancing.

“How often did you meet with Savinkov?”

“Once he started running me we met only occasionally. When I wanted to pass something to him I usually put it in a dead drop.
I’d alert him by dialing a number he gave me and letting the phone ring three times before hanging up.”

“How did Savinkov pay you?”

The Weeder feigned outrage. “I never took a penny from him. I told you, I had the interests of my country at heart. I am a
patriot, even if you don’t see it that way.”

The Weeder shifted positions again. Whichever way he turned now, sharp pains stabbed through his back. Toothacher, comfortably
installed on the bunk, was indefatigable. He doubled back over the ground he had covered, probing for contradictions, inconsistencies,
outright lies. “How many times do I have to tell you I wasn’t in it for the money!” the Weeder burst out at one point. “Savinkov
offered me cash payments-he said if I didn’t want cash he could open a secret account in Switzerland-but I flatly refused.”

“You are following in the footsteps of your illustrious ancestor, if I read you correctly,” the Admiral said.

“I hope to God I am,” the Weeder replied with emotion.

The interrogation dragged on as the Admiral tried to tie up loose ends. “I don’t remember the telephone number,” the Weeder
said, carefully steering clear of details that the Admiral could check. “Behind a toilet in the Smithsonian, under one of
those wire wastepaper baskets behind the Lincoln Memorial-there were so many dead drops I can’t remember them all.” “Of course
I told him about my eavesdropping program,” the Weeder admitted in reply to still another question. “I had an assistant who
worked with me. I had to be sure Savinkov never referred to me, never mentioned his penetration of the Agency near a phone.”

By midafternoon even the Admiral was beginning to tire. “There is one last item I’d like to take up with you,” he told the
Weeder.
“Some years back I was invited down to the Farm to lecture to a class of new recruits. While I was there you spent two nights
following me, then wrote up a report on my … activities. The report, signed by you, was shown to me when I was obliged to
take early retirement-”