Jigsaw Page 36

  After a time she slid out from under him, stood up, straightened her skirt, then kneeled alongside him. She touched the back of his neck. ‘There, there, darling Barron. You feel better now. Don’t you? You feel so much better.’ She stroked his cheek. Darling Barron, he thought. Her tone of voice sounded condescendingly proprietorial.

  He raised himself wearily on an elbow.

  His thoughts were suddenly filled with the rush-hour crowd in the London Underground, with death in Berlin, the explosion in Prague. His head was crammed with images of planes and ships ferrying guns into Cuba, Northern Ireland, Somalia, South Africa, the Philippines, the theatres in which he operated, all the projects he’d so nicely code-named. He had a feeling of being underwater, his oxygen running low.

  Carlotta took his hands between her own. ‘You have to move on. You can’t dwell on what’s past. You listening to me? Lesson number one, babe. You don’t come back from the dead.’

  He turned over on his back, looked up at the chandelier, an intricate maze of mauve Venetian glass.

  ‘Lesson number two. When you’ve buried the dead, you go on living.’ She took from the pocket of her blouse the Russian identity card he’d given her, and she tossed it on the rug. ‘Now. Suppose we discuss this little number. Suppose we talk about this Alyssia Baranova and what the future holds in store for her.’

  He picked the card up, felt the smooth laminated surface. Carlotta observed him, saw the way his fingers shook. She had a sense of having triumphed over him, dynamited the struts of his self-confidence. He was riddled now with the woodworm of uncertainty, his self-assurance had been eroded, his complicity complete. All the airtight compartments of the man had been punctured.

  And now she had control. And control was freedom. She’d liberated herself from him by bringing him down into her own world. She didn’t need him now. Suddenly she was thinking of London, the blood-rich room, the scissors. She thought: I killed to free myself. To liberate myself from Barron. I did it for my identity. Yes. That’s what I did. I left my own mark. Nothing to do with Barron. The scissors in her fist, the fist in the air, the dull mirror effect of old silver. And then she had a flash of Frank Pagan, the keen young officer who hadn’t been able to take his eyes away from her legs inside the interrogation room, who’d escorted her to the prison of an hotel room, she remembered the smell on him, the musk men emitted when they wanted to fuck her, the vibrations they sent out like signals. He wouldn’t be so young any more, and maybe the edge of his eagerness had gone, he might have become jaded, the gloss of youthful ambition buffed down, cracked. She thought of the writing on the lampshade: she wondered what effect it had had on him. He’d remember her, of course, and maybe he’d remember the sharpness of his desire, the way she’d played with him. The way she was still playing with him.

  ‘Suppose, Tobias, we talk about Helix.’

  Later, he locked himself inside his office and sat staring idly at the most recent influx of messages. He had a sense of the world buzzing out of control all around him, a big wayward puzzling place. He sifted the faxes with less than his usual enthusiasm, looked at the electronic wall maps as if he no longer understood their meaning. It was as if he’d created a mosaic years ago and now he’d forgotten the reason for its design. He felt, in a fashion that depressed him, possessed by death. Lesson number two. When you’ve buried the dead you go on living.

  His private telephone rang. He picked it up slowly, in the manner of a man who expects bad news. He recognized the voice immediately.

  ‘I have some new information concerning our friend Pagan.’

  Barron didn’t speak.

  ‘Unfortunately, our best efforts didn’t work. The man seems to have been born under a lucky star.’

  Barron leaned back in his chair. The wall maps blinked in a way suggestive of distant stars beginning to go out.

  ‘I had to pull my people out. I don’t like them being overexposed, if you know what I mean. So the ball’s in your court, Tobias.’

  Barron was still silent. He listened to the rest of the caller’s story.

  ‘You still there?’ the man asked.

  Barron said that he was.

  ‘It’s up to you now, Tobias. You understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Barron said.

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No fuck-ups.’

  ‘No fuck-ups.’

  ‘And no more theatrics.’

  ‘No theatrics, William.’

  The line was severed. Barron put the receiver back in place, but only for a moment.

  THIRTY

  LYON

  PAGAN DISLIKED HOSPITALS, THE SMELL, THE HUSH OF WARDS, THE FUSS of nurses. The French doctor who examined his neck was a scrawny fastidious man with a conscientiously attentive manner. He spoke in perfect English, which somehow made Pagan all the more irritable.

  ‘A lucky man, Mr Pagan. A very lucky man.’

  Pagan agreed. ‘Sure, I’m lucky as hell, but I want to know about my associate, I’m not interested in some superficial burn on my neck, for God’s sake.’ He tried to get up from the bed on which he lay, but he’d been given some kind of pain-killer that made him weak and groggy, and they’d taken away his clothes, dressing him in one of those ridiculous hospital gowns whose only purpose appears to be that of humiliation. He looked round the room, a narrow pale-green coffin. His clothing hung on wall hooks.

  ‘It’s not what I would call superficial,’ the doctor said, peering at Pagan over his half-moon eyeglasses.

  A nun appeared in the doorway; her crucifix glinted in the light of the lamp on the physician’s desk. She frowned at Pagan, who said, ‘Will somebody tell me about Foxworth?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the nun, an attractive young Vietnamese woman. She wagged a finger at Pagan. ‘You are the stubborn one.’ She glided inside the room. She appeared to consider herself more of an authority than the doctor on the subject of Pagan’s neck. She examined the gauze dressing that had been applied just below Pagan’s jawline. She had a gentle touch. Pagan could barely feel her fingertips. He knew that if he were to turn his head too sharply, or incline it at a certain angle, there would be painful friction. So: he’d walk around stiffnecked for a while, what the hell, he wasn’t going to lie in this goddam hospital.

  ‘There is the matter of shock,’ said the nun. ‘You must take things easy. Maybe tomorrow you can go.’

  ‘I want to see Foxworth,’ he said.

  The physician shrugged. ‘Your friend was less fortunate, Mr Pagan.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ For a moment Pagan was beset by the horrifying possibility that Foxie had been killed in the fire-blast, but he refused to entertain the prospect. He remembered the ambulance, Foxie slipping into unconsciousness, the attendants who applied an oxygen mask to his mouth. He remembered a wild ride through the streets of Lyon, the wail of a siren, the way Foxie had been rushed off on a trolley whose out-of-whack wheels rattled with the clank of iron on iron. These recollections were misty, distorted. The pain-killer was doing a number on his thought processes. He felt a slight detachment from himself, a sensation that came and went in waves.

  ‘He was a little closer to the flames than yourself,’ the nun said. By lamplight, her olive skin appeared darker than it was. She had high cheek-bones and long eyelashes: Pagan wondered what had driven her into the embrace of Christ.

  ‘I want to see him,’ Pagan said.

  ‘You can’t get out of bed,’ the doctor remarked.

  The nun was a little more lenient. ‘If you get up very very carefully, I will take you to your friend. Here,’ and she held out her hand to clasp Pagan’s, assisting him up from the bed. The doctor complained in French but the nun paid him no attention.

  ‘Lean against me if you need to,’ she said.

  He propped himself against the nun, who put an arm around his waist for support. Together, they moved slowly along a green-walled corridor bedecked with crosses and religious medallions. Inside
a glass case stood an elaborate plaster Mary, her arms held out, palms turned upward. Imitation flowers sprouted all around her; at her feet was a cracked plaster lamb in need of paint.

  The nun opened a door. Inside a darkened room Foxie lay surrounded by pillows. His arm, hanging over the bedclothes, had been wrapped with plastic that contained cubes of ice, some of them melting already. He turned his face when Pagan approached the bed; he had the zonked look of man on heavy-duty medication. His lips were cracked and dry, his pupils dilated. At the corners of his mouth were small white flecks of saliva. The unscalded arm was attached to an IV drip.

  ‘What happened, Frank?’ he asked. ‘All I remember is some bloody explosion.’

  Pagan sat on the edge of the bed. The nun hovered discreetly nearby. ‘He needs rest, Mr Pagan. Peace and rest. He has severe burns.’

  Pagan stared into Foxie’s face. On his forehead were fierce red scorch marks where fire had licked the skin. But Foxie too had been fortunate. An inch or so lower and the flames would have blinded him.

  ‘You’re not looking your best, old friend.’

  ‘I’m not feeling my best. I drift in and out of things. We are in France, right?’

  ‘We’re in France,’ Pagan said. He tried to concentrate, clear his head, but whatever they’d injected into him had been strong.

  Foxie grimaced. ‘Jesus, I’m sleepy.’

  ‘Drugs,’ said Pagan.

  ‘I’m not complaining. All things considered, I don’t feel too bad … Actually, I could get quite used to this.’

  Pagan gazed for a time at the ice packed against Foxie’s arm. Foxworth closed his eyes and for a few seconds seemed to float off into drugged sleep, but the eyes fluttered open. ‘Audrey Roczak,’ he said. ‘What about her?’

  Pagan shook his head. ‘I’m told she took the full blast.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ Foxie craned his neck and glanced down at his burned arm with an expression of distaste. ‘What are we to make of Streik, Frank? What was he telling us?’

  The nun touched Pagan’s shoulder. ‘Now I must insist,’ she said. ‘Your friend needs sleep. We must leave him in peace.’

  ‘Am I to be stuck here, Frank?’

  ‘It looks that way. I’ll talk to you later.’

  ‘They followed us, didn’t they?’ Foxie asked. ‘Bloody Undertakers had our number all along.’

  ‘It would seem so, Foxie.’

  ‘Please,’ the nun said.

  Pagan stood up shakily, followed the nun out of the room and back into the corridor. ‘How long will you keep him?’ he asked.

  ‘Hard to say. A week perhaps. It depends on the doctor’s opinion.’

  A week, Pagan thought. Shuffling along the corridor in frail hospital slippers, he stared into the meek face of Mary whose features were rendered slightly obscure by the way light refracted on the glass oblong in which she stood. He had never been a religious man, nor was he miraculously about to be converted in a French hospital where nuns went silently back and forth in earnest pursuit of Christian service, but if he’d been a believer he might have offered a word of gratitude to the Madonna that he’d survived, with so little injury, the incendiary device that had been tossed through the window of Audrey Roczak’s studio. But he had no hallelujahs, no hosannas in his heart.

  ‘Come,’ the nun said. ‘Back to bed.’

  He followed her obediently inside his narrow sick-green room. He lay down. The nun watched him.

  ‘Promise me,’ she said. ‘You will not make any effort to leave until tomorrow.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  The nun smiled, went out of the room. He looked up at the ceiling. What are we to make of Streik? Foxie had asked. What was he telling us? Pagan, his body trembling as if only now he was experiencing the blast, the outrage, the leap of flame, the sight of Audrey Roczak’s dress on fire, closed his eyes. What indeed was he telling us? Money came to Streik, from Streik it went to Harcourt, and from Harcourt to … Pagan replayed the conversation in his mind, or what he remembered of it, but his synapses were acting like tiny acrobats who kept falling arsebackward. Money, he thought. Millions of dollars, according to Streik.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The pain in his neck throbbed. He felt strangely delicate, his relationship with the real world fragile. He moved to where his clothes were hanging. His holstered gun was suspended underneath his shirt. He put his hand into the inner pocket of his overcoat and took out the folded papers Audrey Roczak had given him. He carried them back to bed, lay down, looked at them. His eyes ached.

  The writing was very neat, each letter carefully inscribed; Streik had obviously been concerned with keeping a detailed account because he’d guessed that one day a reckoning would come. There were dates, names, places.

  Washington, July 6 1993, three bags picked up from Montgomery Rhodes, approximate amount $2.5m.

  New York City two bags received from unknown man September 5, 1993, approximate amount $2m black Buick Vermont plates # 865 AX7.

  Norfolk Virginia four sacks approximate amount $4m received from unknown woman September 20, 1993, red Chevy West Virginia plates # 12RP925.

  Pagan sifted the papers; there were about twenty sheets in all, and the man called Rhodes figured in three of them. Streik had been aware of the amount involved in each transaction; obviously he would have been accountable if any had gone missing en route. Jake Streik must have seen this record as a way of covering himself – but in the end the papers had been of no help to him.

  Pagan worked at focusing his thoughts. The question is, he wondered, what am I going to do with this information? The number plates would probably be dead ends; rented cars most likely, hired by men carrying fake licences. And even if the cars hadn’t been rented and were lawfully owned, what benefit was that to him? The men who’d delivered the cash to Streik would claim they’d never heard of the guy, that the whole thing was a fiction made up by a dreamer. Streik, like The Undertakers, was deniable.

  And where was all this alleged cash anyway? It might as well be orbiting a distant sun: without evidence, you had nothing. Even if he could somehow prove that Streik had ferried money to The Undertakers, and thus into the US Embassy, he ran again into that other insuperable obstacle: diplomatic privilege. Money, guns, drugs – diplomatic bags could contain anything. And if by some miracle he could demonstrate that the money had found its way into the Embassy and was then ‘spread like fucking manure’, as Streik had claimed – spread where? he wondered – he had nothing in the way of substantiation. He was empty-handed. Flat. Busted. If he spoke to Nimmo about all this he could predict the man’s reactions, he could hear the outrage of Willie Caan at such dangerous allegations, he could hear teacups breaking inside the hushed rooms of the Foreign Office. He’d be put away, banished, ridiculed. Permanent quarantine. The Undertakers? My dear fellow, I think you’re missing a rung on the old ladder.

  The burn on the side of his neck buzzed angrily. He folded Streik’s papers, felt sleepy, fought against the sensation. Streik’s diction, his ellipses in speech: Peace is bad for business. Whose business? Pagan wished he could focus harder.

  The Vietnamese nun came back inside the room, looking agitated. ‘Mr Pagan, there are policemen who want to see you. I have tried to tell them you’re in no condition for visitors, but they are very persistent.’

  The gendarmes, he thought. Of course there would have to be cops. An explosion in the middle of Lyon was the kind of thing that would quicken their interest. He stuffed Streik’s papers under his bedsheets.

  ‘I can’t keep them away from you,’ the nun said.

  Pagan shrugged. He was floating again. ‘Send them in,’ he said. Chewing on her lower lip, her expression one of charitable concern – an angel of mercy, he thought – she opened the door. At once the room was filled with stern men, some of them in uniform.

  And in the centre, yo, stood George Nimmo.

  Pagan had a moment of light-headedness, one of those jarring displa
cements of self caused by the combination of drugs and the appearance of George Nimmo. He looked at the crucifix on the wall, which he found too finely detailed, as if it had been cloned from a cell of Christ and not carved from simple wood.

  ‘Pagan,’ Nimmo said.

  Pagan involuntarily touched the dressing on his neck and winced. ‘George. Good to see you.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here? What in God’s name have you been up to?’ Nimmo’s face was red. He was closer to apoplexy than sanity.

  ‘It appears I got too near to a fire,’ Pagan remarked.

  ‘And now you’re well and truly burned,’ said Nimmo, his hands clenched in anger. ‘Well and truly.’

  Pagan thought: You had to give George some credit for maintaining control of his voice, even if his body revealed his true mood. Nimmo stepped forward and for a moment Pagan had the absurd thought George was about to raise a fist and strike him, but that wasn’t Nimmo’s way, he wasn’t a man of action, he preferred to work with papers and memos and have quiet words in the right ears. His axe was a bureaucratic one.

  ‘Why are you in France? Why wasn’t I informed? Why did I have to hear of your reckless misadventures courtesy of the Lyon Police Department?’

  Pagan said nothing. Drugs distanced him from Nimmo’s wrath. He was more interested in Streik’s dying words than George Nimmo’s full-blown rage. Even as Nimmo went on snapping and fuming, Pagan was still hearing echoes of Jake Streik.

  ‘These gentlemen,’ and here Nimmo gestured to the congregation of law-enforcement officers, ‘are demanding to know your business in their jurisdiction. And rightly so. You don’t come blundering into somebody else’s backyard and bring down all kinds of destruction. You don’t carry on like that, Pagan. There’s protocol involved. You didn’t inform me. You didn’t inform these good men. No, you went in feet first as usual, you went your own damn way without regard. You’re a walking disaster, Pagan. A disgrace. And I’m taking you back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Nimmo stepped very close now. The hands were still fisted, the knuckles drained of blood.