‘How’s it going?’ It was Peter.
‘Okay, man. How’s with you?’
‘Got a few minutes? I want to go over something with you.’ Henderson nearly swore to himself – he could tell Wally was stoned again.
‘Half an hour?’
‘See you then.’
Not a minute later, there was a knock on the door. Hicks stubbed out his smoke and went to answer it. Too soon for Peter. Could it be a cop? Fortunately, it wasn’t.
‘You’re Walter Hicks?’
‘Yeah, who are you?’ The man was about his age, if somewhat less polished-looking.
‘John Clark.’ He looked nervously up and down the corridor. ‘I need to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s okay.’
‘What about?’
‘BOXWOOD GREEN.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s some things you need to know,’ Clark told him. He was working for the Agency now, so Clark was his name. It made it easier, somehow.
‘Come on in. I only have a few minutes, though.’
‘That’s all I need. I don’t want to stay too long.’
Clark accepted the waved invitation to enter and immediately smelled the acrid odor of burning rope. Hicks waved him to a chair opposite his.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, thanks, I’m fine,’ he answered, careful where he put his hands. ‘I was there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was at SENDER GREEN, just last week.’
‘You were on the team?’ Hicks asked, intensely curious and not seeing the danger that had walked into his apartment.
‘That’s right. I’m the guy who brought the Russian out,’ his visitor said calmly.
‘You kidnapped a Soviet citizen? Why the fuck did you do that?’
‘Why I did it is not important now, Mr Hicks. One of the documents I took off his body is. It was an order to make preparations to kill all of our POWs.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Hicks said with a perfunctory shake of the head. Oh – your dog died? That’s too bad.
‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ Clark asked.
‘Yes, it does, but people take chances. Wait a minute.’ Hicks’s eyes went blank for a moment, and Kelly could see that he was trying to identify something he’d missed. ‘I thought we had the camp commander, too, didn’t we?’
‘No, I killed him myself. That bit of information was given to your boss so that we could identify the name of the guy who leaked the mission.’ Clark leaned forward. ‘That was you, Mr Hicks. I was there. We had it wired. Those prisoners ought to be with their families right now – all twenty of them.’
Hicks brushed it aside. ‘I didn’t want them to die. Look, like I said, people take chances. Don’t you understand, it just wasn’t worth it. So what are you going to do, arrest me? For what? You think I’m dumb? That was a black operation. You can’t reveal it or you run the risk of fucking up the talks, and the White House will never let you do that.’
‘That’s correct. I’m here to kill you.’
‘What?’Hicks almost laughed.
‘You betrayed your country. You betrayed twenty men.’
‘Look, that was a matter of conscience.’
‘So’s this, Mr Hicks.’ Clark reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. In it were drugs he’d taken off the body of his old friend Archie, and a spoon, and a glass hypodermic needle. He tossed the bag into his lap.
‘I won’t do it.’
‘Fair enough.’ From behind his back came his Ka-Bar knife. ‘I’ve done people this way, too. There are twenty men over there who ought to be home. You’ve stolen their life from them. Your choice, Mr Hicks.’
His face was very pale now, his eyes wide.
‘Come on, you wouldn’t really -‘
‘The camp commander was an enemy of my country. So are you. You got one minute.’
Hicks looked at the knife that Clark was turning in his hand, and knew that he had no chance at all. He’d never seen eyes like those across the coffee table from him, but he knew what they held.
Kelly thought about the previous week as he sat there, remembering sitting in the mud generated by falling rain, only a few hundred yards from twenty men who ought not to be free. It became slightly easier for him, though he hoped never to have to obey such orders again.
Hicks looked around the room, hoping to see something that might change the moment. The clock on the mantel seemed to freeze as he considered what was happening. He’d faced the prospect of death in a theoretical way at Andover in 1962, and subsequently lived his life in accordance with the same theoretical picture. The world had been an equation for Walter Hicks, something to be managed and adjusted. He saw now, knowing it was too late, that he was merely one more variable in it, not the guy with the chalk looking at the blackboard. He considered jumping from the chair, but his visitor was already leaning forward, extending the knife a few inches, and his eyes fixed on the thin silvery line on the parkerized blade. It looked so sharp that he had trouble drawing breath. He looked at the clock again. The second hand had moved, after all.
Peter Henderson took his time. It was a weekday night, and Washington went to bed early. All the bureaucrats and aides and special-assistants-to rose early and had to have their rest so that they’d be alert in the management of their country’s affairs. It made for empty sidewalks in Georgetown, where the roots of trees heaved up the concrete slabs of sidewalk. He saw two elderly folk walking their little dog, but only one other, on Wally’s block. Just a man about his age, fifty yards away, getting into a car whose lawnmower sound marked it as a Beetle, probably an older one. Damned ugly things lasted forever if you wanted them to. A few seconds later he knocked on Wally’s door. It wasn’t fully closed. Wally was sloppy about some things. He’d never make it as a spy. Henderson pushed the door open, ready to reprove his friend, until he saw him there, sitting in the chair.
Hicks had his left sleeve rolled up. His right hand had caught on his collar, as though to help himself breathe, but the real reason was on the inside of his left elbow. Peter didn’t approach the body. For a moment, he didn’t do anything. Then he knew he had to get out of here.
He removed a handkerchief and wiped the doorknob, closed the door, and walked away, trying to keep his stomach under control.
Damn you, Wally! Henderson raged. I needed you.
And to die like this – from a drug overdose. The finality of death was as clear to him as it was unexpected. But there remained his beliefs, Henderson thought as he walked home. At least those hadn’t died. He would see to that.
The trip took all night. Every time the truck hit a bump, bones and muscles screamed their protest. Three of the men were hurt worse than he was, two of them unconscious on the floor, and there wasn’t a thing he could do for them with his hands and legs bound up. Yet there was satisfaction of a sort. Every destroyed bridge they had to drive around was a victory for them. Someone was fighting back; someone was hurting these bastards. A few men whispered things that the guard at the back of the truck didn’t hear over the engine noise. Robin wondered where they were going. The cloudy sky denied him the reference of stars, but with dawn came an indication of where east was, and it was plain that they were heading northwest. Their true destination was too much to hope for, Robin told himself, but then he decided that hope really was something without limit.
Kelly was relieved it was over. There was no satisfaction in the death of Walter Hicks. He’d been a traitor and coward, but there ought to have been a better way. He was glad that Hicks had decided to take his own life, for he wasn’t at all sure that he could have killed him with a knife – or any other way. But Hicks had deserved his fate, of that one thing he had no doubts. But don’t we all, Kelly thought;
Kelly packed his clothing into the suitcase, which was large enough to contain it all, and carried it out to the rented car, and with that his residence in the apartment ended. It was after midnight when he drove south again, into the center of the danger zone, ready to act one last time.
Things had settled down for Chuck Monroe. He still responded to break-ins and all manner of other crimes, but the slaughter of pushers in his district had ended. Part of him thought it was too bad, and he admitted as much to other patrolmen over lunch – in his case, the mercifully unnamed three-in-the-moming meal.