“Yes.”
“Who knows this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who knows this?”
“About the journal or the miracle?”
“Forget the miracle a moment, little Rita.” The voice had become softer with an intimacy that suppressed the interest behind the words. “Who knows about the journal?”
“Me. And thee.”
“This is a secret, isn’t it, Rita?”
“Not if McGillicuddy can help it.”
“You mean he knows, too. Who is he?”
“The head man down here.”
“What about this other fellow… the Vatican man?”
“Young guy named Martin Foley. Irish Irish. He’s a cold-looking guy.”
“Why on earth would the Vatican take an interest in this old man?”
“Before we keep talking, Kaiser, we have to figure out where we stand.”
“Ah, the bottom line. Cutting the crap, eh, Rita?”
“I won’t work for you anymore.”
“No? Why this call?”
“Maybe I just wanted to stick it to you.”
“Did you? Revenge, Rita? I don’t think so.”
“I’ll freelance this for you. This story. And if there’s anything else, maybe I’ll freelance it for you, too. But I want money up front. You owe me for my last week of salary and two weeks’ vacation.”
“The check is in the mail.”
“The famous lie,” she said.
Kaiser chuckled. “I can have six hundred dollars in your hands by tomorrow night if I get what I want tonight.”
“That would be decent, I suppose.”
“I am a generous man.”
“I’ll call back in an hour.”
“Please.”
She paused again. “Kaiser. Did you ever hear of a reporter named Devereaux?”
“No.”
“I was wondering. What about Central Press Association?”
“Yes. They’re somewhere in the building. Mostly serves papers of the ‘right’ persuasion. Oklahoma, I think, and Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico, some papers in Texas. Why?”
“I met a reporter here.”
“From them? On this story?”
“No. Not on this story. On vacation.”
“Is that a fact?”
“What does that mean? The way you just said that?”
“It is a neutral statement, Rita. Do you think he’s a reporter on vacation who happens to be in Clearwater Beach at this moment?”
“Not when you say it that way.”
“But I am a cynical man, Rita, born for this cynical age. You are, I believe I have said, naïve in your human dealings.”
“I’m not naïve.”
“Perhaps you would prefer ‘open’ as an adjective. You are honest and open. You detect the devious motives of others at great emotional price. You are a believer, Rita, and I am not. Is this man a believer as well?”
“No. No. I don’t think so.” Her voice was slow, unsure, soft.
“Rita? In an hour?”
“Yes.”
They hung up.
Kaiser sat at his desk, staring at the telephone, staring at the smoldering remains of the cigarette in his sausage fingers. He ran his hand through his thick, greasy hair. “Rita,” he said softly, with gentleness. “You are a reporter.” His voice sounded sad.
He picked up the receiver and dialed a number with the area code of New York City.
“Yes?” The voice was soft, cultured, with the trace of a New England accent.
“Me,” he said.
The man in New York City waited. The line buzzed.
“Is the line clear?” Kaiser asked.
“Quite clear. I’m in the study. We have people coming over tonight.”
“Rita just called.”
“I thought she didn’t work for you anymore.”
“True. But she just called from Florida.”
“Yes,” the voice said, no judgment in the tone.
“She has one story. I’m buying it.”
“You’re a newsman. Does it concern me?”
“No. But she mentioned the other man we spoke of. He has been keeping a journal. And there’s a man from Rome watching him at the house.”
“Extraordinary,” the voice said.
“Well, I wanted to tell you.”
“Yes,” the voice responded, now in a tone of weariness. “This has been annoying from the beginning.”
“I have a business to run—”
“I’m aware of that. I don’t interfere with you. But in this one matter, I wish there had been more… well… discretion on all sides.”
“Rita is a reporter,” Kaiser said dully, as though she were beyond the pale.
“Yes. That covers a multitude of sins.” The voice made an imitation of a laugh, a dry chuckle that made Kaiser feel very old and very tired.
“What is it that you want to know?”
“Ah. That’s the problem. I can’t take you into my confidence without telling you what the secret is. And if I tell you what the secret is, it isn’t a secret anymore.” Another chuckle.
Each waited for a moment for the other to speak and then they started to speak at the same time. Kaiser deferred.
“—let the matter proceed. We will see how much farther it will go, before I have to become involved. I would prefer not to be involved at all.”
“Yes,” Kaiser said.
“Keep me informed.”
“Yes.”
They broke the connection.
Kaiser stood up and pushed his belly around the desk to the decayed coffeemaker. He poured a sludgy cup and tasted it. He went to the window and looked down at the deserted street. Night in a lonely city.
“Little Rita,” he said with fondness. His heart ached for her in that moment and for himself.
He was surprised that there were tears in his eyes.
16
Rita Macklin had left him a message at the front desk of his hotel, breaking that evening’s date for dinner. The story came first, the one that had exploded that morning in the chapel of the motherhouse.
The “miracle” had changed the situation in any case, Devereaux thought. He knew Hanley would now want him to make contact.
At five o’clock, Devereaux telephoned the number in Washington from a telephone booth off the lobby of his hotel. The number connected him with the security desk of the Department of Agriculture building, which was usual on weekends. When he reached the senior duty officer in the old, massive building near the Ellipse, he spoke four words that would have seemed innocuous to anyone eavesdropping on the conversation. The duty officer did not respond. Devereaux hung up and took a long walk down the island to the causeway that connected the beach with downtown Clearwater.
The causeway was nearly two miles long and on both sides of it, the shallow waters of the Gulf inlets stretched away from the sandy, rough shoreline. Palms lined either side of the four-lane divided highway. Devereaux had walked the causeway several times in his week-long stay on the island. Despite the constant surge of traffic on the roadway, the causeway seemed detached from the drumbeat of tourism. He could smell the sea and watch the pelicans and gulls whirl in the clear, lazy sky about fishing boats chugging back and forth from safe harbors to the deep.
What could he report to Hanley?
There was nothing to say beyond the reports already on television, which would be fully covered in the morning papers. An incident had occurred in a Catholic chapel during a worship service. A woman named Lu Ann Carter claimed to be the recipient of a “miracle.”
But what is the real truth of the matter, Hanley would demand.
He didn’t know. The agent in the field knew so little in the end.
Not for the first time during the past year, he thought of Hastings, who had been the station man for the Section in Scotland. Hastings had run a ramshackle network of spies — real and imaginary and all drawing salaries — out of his stinking little rooms in a dreary house in Edinburgh. All day long, Hastings had clipped items of interest from the Daily Telegraph and Irish Times and embellished them with his own considerable imagination, then passed them back as reports to Hanley in Washington. Devereaux had been sent to find out what Hastings really knew about a new IRA plot. Hastings had died because he had gotten in the way of another espionage agency.