He looked at his ex-wife and shook his head.
"No, he can't. Look, Barbara, there are people out there who hired him—"
"Who?" she demanded.
"Not yet. There's no proof. It's to do with Europe, with airplane companies, even security services it's all still vague. Except for Strickland. I saw him on a video in Oslo. He was there. He did it.
And he'll know who hired him." His eyes hardened. They want him too.
I don't have a lot of time." He looked up, glowering at Barbara.
"I need this blown up, examined on a computer. There has to be a clue, somewhere in the photograph, as to where it was taken."
Blakey was turning the creased snapshot in the light from a lamp, squinting as he did so. Barbara seemed to move in and out of interest as she might have done a mild hypnotic state.
"Could be anywhere. You think it's America, somewhere?"
"Strickland is American it could be. Or Europe. He had a house there." He sniffed. Those buildings in the background. Maybe there's a signboard—" He became angry with himself.
"It's all I have. I can't go to Langley and ask at the door!"
"You took a risk, coming back at all," Barbara offered.
"I had to. They tried to kill me twice. I needed to lose them."
"And that's why you're here?" she mocked. Gant understood her vengeful frustration. Over the telephone, when he had eventually demanded and received her attention, he had sensed a desire being awoken that he could only disappoint; as in their marriage.
"Sorry," she added suddenly. He waved the apology aside. Failure was eating her away as surely as a cancer, and he could not avoid his empathy with her.
"I can scan this to transfer it to computer. We can maybe play with it, Mitchell… but don't hold your breath, fella. It doesn't look all that much to me."
"Nor to me," Gant replied without turning to Blakey, his gaze still on Barbara, who shifted uncomfortably under his intense, even unwelcome compassion.
"It's all there is, Ron all there is."
Then let's get started," Barbara announced, standing up with a jerky movement.
"It's getting late, and I have to go on supervising the disposal of what's been salvaged from this disaster — keep on running the fire sale." She managed a brief, wintry smile.
"What was left?" he asked.
"Oh, some small component work some of the avionics stuff." She shrugged her thin shoulders.
"We can maybe keep on five per cent of the workforce in cheaper premises. We won't be building any more airplanes!" Invigorated by something close to hatred, she snatched the snapshot from Blakey's fingers. This is him, is it?
The bastard who killed Alan?" Gant nodded.
"And you know who hired him?
Who?"
"Not yet," Gant replied.
"Not yet. First, I have to find him."
The air-conditioning needed fixing, forcing him to leave the windows open against the clammy warmth of the early-summer night. He could hear the noise of music from the Ethiopian restaurant two doors down the street, African drumming from another bar, the laughter of the ethnics and the noise of traffic. Adams-Morgan as a place to live was the antithesis of everything Mclntyre would have chosen.
His estranged wife, May, with ambitions to become an artist, had moved them there because the narrow old house's top-floor apartment possessed a studio. She'd enjoyed the bars, the bookstores, the galleries and the sense of the exotic that was the tourist impression of that district of Washington.
For a time. She couldn't paint or sculpt, despite all the lessons that had cost him so much hard-earned money. It might have been the discovery of her complete lack of talent that had caused her to run off with an Hispanic jazz musician two years earlier; on the rebound from the untidy, unused studio that mocked her every day.
Or maybe it had been from his ridicule, his conservatism, his smug certainty that she would never cut it in art like in everything else.
Mclntyre stared at the letter he had had from her a week before. She was bleating about the delay in the alimony. The African drums and the whining Ethiopian reed instrument reminded him forcibly of May, reinvoking his contempt and anger. The Hispanic jazzman wasn't getting gigs too bad. May was waiting table in a diner too bad… He threw the letter aside on the cluttered desk that occupied one corner of the studio. May's potter's wheel, her brushes and canvases, littered the remainder of the room. May had walked out on him and left him without the money to move out of a neighbour hood he despised and in which he felt an exile.
His blunt hands flicked at the heap of unpaid bills, then rubbed his broad face in a washing motion. He yawned, then lifted the bourbon to his mouth.
He stood up and walked to the tall windows of the studio. Beyond the streetlights of Columbia Road was the hard glow of Washington. May's letter was just another hassle. There was pressure from everywhere.
He'd forced Gant into a corner, making him a fugitive from justice, now the Bureau wanted to know why he hadn't caught up with him. Fuck Gant… fuck May and her Hispanic. Fuck his chief, who didn't like or trust him.
The telephone buzzed like a trapped bee and he snatched up the receiver. It was the English guy, Fraser. Fuck Fraser, too… "Ma?
Well, here I am in Washington just checked in to the Jefferson Hotel.
Very nice suite." It sounded like a come-on line. The guy was so obvious the fucking Jefferson Hotel, one of the best, for Chrissake!
"You've had a wasted journey, Fraser," he growled. The man had once been a kindred spirit. They'd cooperated on a couple of ops when he'd been Company and Fraser was in MI6, the British intelligence outfit.
But who did the guy think he was, calling him earlier in the day, flying all the way over here? His free hand rubbed his stub bled cheek.
"A wasted journey," he repeated sullenly.
"Just hear me out before you make that judgement," Fraser replied, his confidence undiminished.
"You don't pull any weight any more, Fraser. You're in the private sector. You talked horse shit this morning you woke me up, for Chrissake-!" Fraser's chuckle was angering.
"Private sector, I like that. You'd like it, too, Mac. We want the same things don't we…?"
Strickland's name was an itch he could not scratch. Gant was after Strickland. That much Fraser had told him… Why don't we pool resources, get together on this one? The guy had a real neck. All he wanted was the Bureau's cover and assistance while he went after Strickland on US soil. There was nothing in it for Mclntyre, personally.
"Do we?" he responded almost involuntarily. If Strickland talks to Gant, what else might he say about the Company, about you? Fraser had asked him when he rang. It hung in the air of the studio like a blackmail threat, like May's paint smells and her rage at her lack of talent.
"What in hell do you want, Fraser?"
To help you, Mac. To find Gant with you, to… find Strickland. That's all—" He broke off.
"Ah, room service. Champagne, canapes—" He laughed. There was no attempt to make the deception subtle or convincing. The bribe was as vulgar as soiled notes on the desk in front of him.
"Fuck you, Fraser," Mclntyre snarled, turning again to the window and raising the bourbon to his lips.
Drops of the liquor stained his shirt front. The humid night moved against his body like heavy, sullen drapes, smelling of memory and defeat. Strickland had been used in the Company's dirty campaigns in Latin America in the eighties.
Some friends were helped by having their opponents removed — car bombs, house fires, the usual range of wet solutions that had called for Strickland's special, psychotic skills. He'd run Strickland, given him his targets for two years. Neither the Bureau nor the government would touch him with anything but a long stick if any of it came out. They'd make him a leper to prevent themselves being tainted with the disease of the past.