‘Not there,’ interrupted Richards.
‘All right, the Wax Museum – anything that comes to mind, except the track. If you say “No, I’m busy”, I’ll know I’m not being closed in on. If you say “Yes”, I’ll get out.’
‘I don’t even know where the hell you’re staying! You told me to pick you up on the corner of Granville and Carnarvon.’
‘My guess is that your unit will be called in to keep the lines straight, and the responsibility where it belongs. The British will insist on it. They’re not going to take a solo fall if DC blows it. These are touchy times for the Brits over here so they’ll cover their colonial asses.’
They passed the gate. Conklin shifted his gaze and studied the large Victorian entrance.
‘I swear, Alex, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That’s better yet. Do you agree? Are you my guru inside?’
‘Hell, yes. I can do without the marines.’
‘Fine. Stop here. I’ll get out and walk back. As far as anyone’s concerned I took the tram to the Peak, got a cab to the wrong house and made my way to the right address only a couple of hundred feet down the road. Are you happy, Matt?’
‘Ecstatic,’ said the case officer, scowling as he braked the car.
‘Get a good night’s sleep. It’s been a long time since Saigon, and we all need more rest as we get older.’
‘I heard you were a lush. It’s not true, is it?’
‘You heard what we wanted you to hear,’ replied Conklin, flatly. This time, however, he was able to cross the fingers of both hands before he climbed awkwardly out of the car.
A brief knock and the door was flung open. Startled, Havilland looked up as Edward McAllister, his face ashen, walked rapidly into the room. ‘Conklin’s at the gate,’ said the undersecretary. ‘He’s demanding to see you and says he’ll stay there all night if he has to. He also says if it gets chilly, he’ll build a fire in the road to keep warm.’
‘Crippled or not, he hasn’t lost his panache,’ said the ambassador.
This is totally .unexpected,’ continued McAllister, massaging his right temple. ‘We’re not prepared for a confrontation.’
‘It seems we haven’t a choice. That’s a public road out there, and it’s the province of the colony’s Fire Department in the event our neighbours become alarmed.’
‘Surely, he wouldn’t-‘
‘Surely, he would,’ broke in Havilland. ‘Let him in. This isn’t only unexpected, it’s extraordinary. He hasn’t had time to assemble his facts or organize an attack that would give him leverage. He’s openly exposing his involvement, and given his background in covert to black operations, he wouldn’t do that lightly. It’s far too dangerous. He himself once gave the order for beyond-salvage.’
‘We can presume he’s in touch with the woman,’ protested the undersecretary, heading for the telephone on the ambassador’s desk. That gives him all the facts he needs!’
‘No, it doesn’t. She hasn’t got them.’
‘And you,’ said McAllister, his hand on the phone. ‘How does he know to come to youT
Havilland smiled grimly. ‘All he’d have to hear is that I’m in Hong Kong. Besides, we spoke, and I’m sure he’s put it all together.’
‘But this house?
‘He’ll never tell us. Conklin’s an old Far East hand, Mr Undersecretary, and he has contacts we can’t presume to know about. And we won’t know what brings him here unless he’s admitted, will we?’
‘No, we won’t.’ McAllister picked up the phone; he dialled three digits. ‘Officer of the Guard?… Let Mr Conklin through the gate, search him for a weapon, and escort him yourself to the East Wing office … He what! … Admit him quickly and put the damn thing out!’
‘What happened?’ asked Havilland, as the undersecretary hung up the phone.
‘He started a fire on the other side of the road.’
Alexander Conklin limped into the ornate Victorian room as the marine officer closed the door. Havilland rose from the chair and came around the desk, his hand extended.
‘Mr Conklin?’
‘Keep your hand, Mr Ambassador. I don’t want to get infected.’
‘I see. Anger precludes civility?’
‘No, I really don’t want to catch anything. As they say over here, you’re rotten joss. You’re carrying something. A disease, I think.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘Death.’
‘So melodramatic? Come, Mr Conklin, you can do better than that.’
‘No, I mean it. Less than twenty minutes ago I saw someone killed, cut down in the street with forty or fifty bullets in her. She was blown into the glass doors of her apartment house, her driver shot up in the car. I tell you the place is a mess, blood and glass all over the pavement…’
Havilland’s eyes were wide with shock, but it was the hysterical voice of McAllister that stopped the CIA man. ‘Her? She! Was it the woman?
‘A woman,’ said Conklin, turning to the undersecretary whose presence he had not yet acknowledged. ‘You McAllister?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to shake your hand, either. She was involved with both of you.’ ‘Webb’s wife is dead? yelled the undersecretary, his whole body paralysed.
‘No, but thanks for the confirmation.’
‘Good God!’ cried the longstanding ambassador of the State Department’s clandestine activities. ‘It was Staples.
Catherine Staples?
‘Give the man an exploding cigar. And thanks again for the second confirmation. Are you planning to have dinner with the Canadian consulate’s high commissioner soon? I’d love to be there – just to watch the renowned Ambassador Havilland at work. Gosh and golly, I betcha us low-level types could learn an awful lot.’
‘Shut up, you goddamned fool? shouted Havilland, crossing behind the desk and plummeting into his chair; he leaned back, his eyes closed.
That’s the one thing I’m not going to do,’ said Conklin, stepping forward, his club foot pounding the floor. ‘You are accountable … sir!’ The CIA man leaned over, gripping the edge of the desk. ‘Just as you’re accountable for what’s happened to David and Marie Webb! Who the fuck do you think you are? And if my language offends you, sir, look up the derivation of the offending word. It comes from a term in the Middle Ages meaning to plant a seed in the ground, and in a way that’s your specialty! Only in your case they’re rotten seeds – you dig in clean dirt and turn it into filth. Your seeds are lies and deception. They grow inside people, turning them into angry and frightened puppets, dancing on your strings to your goddamned scenarios! I repeat, you aristocratic son of a bitch, who the fuck do you think you are?’
Havilland half opened his heavy-lidded eyes and leaned forward. His expression was that of an old man willing to die, if only to remove the pain. But those same eyes were alive with a cold fury that saw things others could not see. ‘Would it serve your argument if I said to you that Catherine Staples said essentially the same thing to me?’
‘Serves it and completes it!’
‘Yet she was killed because she joined forces with us. She didn’t like doing that, but in her judgement there was no alternative.’
‘Another puppet?’
‘No. A human being with a first-rate mind and a wealth of experience who understood what faced us. I mourn her loss -and the manner of her death – more than you can imagine.’
‘Is it her loss, sir, or is it the fact that your holy operation was penetrated!’
‘How dare you?’ Havilland, his voice low and cold, rose from the chair and stared at the CIA man. ‘It’s a little late for you to be moralizing, Mr Conklin. Your lapses have been all too apparent in the areas of deception and ethics. If you’d had your way, there’d be no David Webb, no Jason Bourne. You put him beyond-salvage, no one else did. You planned his execution and nearly succeeded.’
‘I’ve paid for that lapse. Christ, how I’ve paid for it!’
‘And I suspect you’re still paying for it, or you wouldn’t be in Hong Kong now,’ said the ambassador, nodding his head slowly, the coldness leaving his voice. ‘Lower your cannons,
Mr Conklin, and I’ll do the same. Catherine Staples really did understand, and if there’s any meaning in her death, let’s try and find it.’
‘I haven’t the vaguest idea where to start looking.’
‘You’ll be given chapter and verse … just as Staples was.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t hear it.’
‘I have no choice but to insist that you do.’
‘I guess you weren’t listening. You’ve been penetrated! The Staples woman was killed because it was assumed she had information that called for her to be taken out. In short, the mole who’s bored his way in here saw her in a meeting or meetings with both of you. The Canadian connection was made, the order given, and you let her walk around without protection!’