‘Talk? We could have talked without this.’
‘Not my choice, Provost, Kline’s choice. Your man’s choice.’
‘My man?’ He spoke like his mouth was full of bile. ‘Kline wasn’t my man.’
‘Then who was he?’
‘He used to work for the NSC. Have you heard of them?’
‘A bit.’
‘They retired him after an accident. I was the accident.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will.’ He stood up. ‘You really think Alisha was working for Kline?’
‘It doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.’
He glowered at me. ‘Don’t patronise me, Mr West. Kline told me about you. He said you were coming after me. He failed to specify why.’
‘Questions, that’s all.’
He turned away from me and sat on the cabin steps, holding his head in his hands. ‘Fire away,’ he said without looking up.
Fire away? I hardly knew where to begin. Bel had returned with the first aid kit and was starting to staunch Spike’s bleeding. I walked over to the steps and stood in front of Provost. I’d taken Sam Clancy’s recording walkman from my pocket, and switched it on.
‘A woman was killed in London,’ I said. ‘Her name was Eleanor Ricks. She was a journalist, investigating the Disciples of Love.’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘You didn’t sanction her killing?’
‘No.’
‘Then Kline acted alone.’
Now he looked up at me. ‘You killed her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then answer me a question. Why would Kline need to pay someone to do the job when he had his own hired army?’
It was a good question. So good, in fact, that I didn’t have an answer...
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You tell me.’
Provost smiled. ‘I can’t tell you. I can only tell you what Kline told me. He doesn’t know why you’ve been snooping around. He didn’t order any assassination, and he, too, was wondering who did. When you started asking questions, you became a threat.’
‘He’s had journalists killed, hasn’t he? He had Sam Clancy shot.’
‘Kline didn’t have much of a conscience, if that’s what you’re saying.’
‘But what was he trying to protect? Why was he shielding you?’
‘Money, Mr West, what else? Oh, I don’t mean I was paying him. I mean he paid me, and he’s been paying for that mistake ever since.’ He glanced down at Kline’s body. ‘He paid most dearly tonight.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘Kline worked for a part of the NSC involved with funding the Nicaraguan Contras. This was back in the eighties. He managed to wheedle ten million dollars out of... I don’t know, the Sultan of somewhere, some Middle Eastern country. At this time, I had a little money. Elderly relatives kept dying. I got bored attending so many funerals. I liked to keep my money my own business, so I held an account in Switzerland.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was quite a coup for Kline, getting so much money for the Contras, but he didn’t exactly know what to do with it. Someone at the NSC, I’m not saying it was Colonel Oliver North, suggested holding it in a bank account until it could be disposed of as intended.’
‘A Swiss bank account?’
‘The NSC held just such an account. Only the gods of fate and irony stepped in. Kline copied the details of the account down wrongly. I can’t recall now exactly why I decided to check the state of my account, but I telephoned Switzerland one Thursday morning their time, and was told the exact amount I had on deposit. It seemed larger than I remembered, about ten million larger. I asked my account manager how much notice I had to make of a large withdrawal.’
Provost stopped there.
‘You took out the whole ten mil?’
‘No, in the end I merely transferred it to a new account.’
‘Christ.’
‘It was Kline’s mistake. He was sent to reason with me — no matter how discreet Swiss banks are, the NSC has ways of tracking people down. We came to a compromise. I handed back half the money. The other half I kept.’
‘And he went along with that?’
‘He didn’t have much choice.’
‘He could have killed you.’
Provost smiled. ‘The NSC weren’t mentioned in my will, Mr West. He still wouldn’t have gotten the money. Besides which, his superiors were furious with him. They couldn’t possibly sanction something so messy.’
‘So they booted him out?’
‘No, they booted him into the shadows. His remit was to make sure no one ever got to learn about the whole thing.’
‘And that meant stopping reporters from snooping too deeply?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Which is why Eleanor Ricks had to be stopped.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve already told you, Kline denied it. And he went on denying it.’
‘Then it doesn’t make sense.’
‘Maybe someone else hired your services.’
‘Yes, but I’ve...’
He saw what I was thinking. ‘You’ve come all this way and killed all these people, and you’re no further forward?’
I nodded. My mind was reeling. I’d got most of my hearing back, but it didn’t matter, I could hardly take any of it in.
‘Two digits, that’s what did it,’ Provost was saying. ‘Kline wasn’t much of a typist. He transposed two of the digits on the account number. And in doing so, the NSC paid for the Disciples of Love. That, Mr West, is why they had to keep it quiet. They’d funded a religious cult, and the interest on their money is still funding it.’
‘Where’s the proof?’
‘Oh, I have proof.’
‘Where?’ I wasn’t sure I believed him, not completely. There had to be something more. He looked to be having trouble with his memory, so I tickled his chin with the Colt.
‘Remember what I do for a living, Provost.’
‘How can I forget? There are papers in my wall safe, and copies with my lawyer.’
Maybe it was the word lawyer that did it. I almost felt something click in my head.
‘You’re going to open your safe for me.’
‘It’s not here, it’s in my home in Seattle.’
‘Fine, we’ll go there.’
‘I want to stay here. The combination’s easy to find. I can never remember it myself, so I keep it written on a pad beside the telephone. It’s marked as an Australian telephone number.’
I knew I had to see it for myself. I had to hold some proof of his story in my hands. Even then, it wouldn’t be enough. I’d come through all this, and dragged Bel and Spike with me, and still there was no answer, not that Provost could provide.
A shot rang out. I spun round with the Colt. The guard had crawled from where Spike must have left him. There was blood all down his front. I didn’t make things much worse by snuffing out what life he had left. I’d robbed him of a few minutes, that was all.
But when I turned back to Provost, I saw that he’d taken a shot to the heart. The guard had been aiming at him, not me. Suicide orders from Kline, no doubt. I eased the body on to the ground. Bel barely glanced up from her work. She’d patched Spike up as best she could.
‘He’s still losing blood,’ she said. After feeling for Provost’s pulse and finding none, I walked over to her. Then I saw the car between the cabins. Its rear windscreen had been shattered, but when I went to look, it had its tyres intact. I felt in Kline’s pockets and drew out the keys, then reversed the car into the clearing.
With Bel’s help we got Spike into the back of the car. He groaned and winced a little, so I repeated my warning to him about gun heaven. Then we got in the car and drove off.