“And they kept this old priest on ice for twenty years to use him at the right moment.”
Denisov said, “Who knows what they have done?”
“You’ve read too many Russian novels.”
“Conspiracies exist, my friend. Even if you must make a joke of them.”
Devereaux stared at the other man in the half-light. He had known him for eighteen years as an enemy. It was nearly as good as knowing him as a friend. They had sparred against each other across half a world. Was that what Denisov had risked in this contact? That somehow Devereaux would think again and again about this package of “evidence” and use it to extricate himself from this assignment?
But what if it were all true?
They both knew that the CIA had been involved in a complex double operation in Ireland, directed against both British intelligence and R Section. That was another day, as Denisov would say.
“There are Soviet conspiracies as well,” Devereaux said finally.
“Yes. But I have come to you. I have shown myself to you.”
“Because you had to. If this is the truth. Or if it is a lie.”
“I am not a martyr.”
But you have the face of a Russian saint, Devereaux thought. The face of a man without guile. My mirror image and yet you distort me. We are both liars, both spies, we would betray each other. Devereaux felt as though he stood on the edge of a trap.
“I betrayed you,” Devereaux said.
“Yes.” He said it too quickly and they both realized it. It wasn’t something they had forgotten.
“There was some problem. For a time.” Denisov let the words stand alone but they collapsed in the silence. When he continued, the voice was soft, without self-pity. “I was sent to Gorki for a time. For an examination.”
The neutral voice of the intelligence agent, reciting all he knew. Or most of it.
“I know. We have our watchers as well.”
“Did you care, Devereaux?” For one moment, the neutral voice broke. There was a bitterness to it that brushed against Devereaux’s conscience.
“No. I was interested.”
“Interested. A word that does not mean anything. As you say ‘perhaps.’ Without commitment to anything.”
“Why did they send you out again?”
“Because they trusted me. Because a contact had to be made. Because you were the other man.”
“And if you fail now? To convince me?”
“You must believe what I say to you.”
“No,” Devereaux said, the voice hard as ice. “I must not.” And yet it was so beguiling, so near the truth. The little “proofs” in the brown parcel. He could smell the beast in the trap, hear the breathing of the beast. The beast was very near to him. It was in this room.
“They need to make contact. They sent me to you.”
“And if I choose not to give the proof to my Section?”
“Other ways will be found to expose them,” Denisov said. “There are newspapers, there is television.”
“The media have been used before.”
“Yes. For the truth.”
“For disinformation.”
“I cannot argue, Devereaux. These are the proofs. Why has your Section sent you to this man if they trusted him? If they trusted the CIA in this matter?”
Yes. The question he had asked Hanley and Hanley chose not to answer. Denisov now sets a trap; Denisov does not set a trap. Choose or do not choose.
It would be easier to give them the proof and let them play out their games without him.
He thought of Rita Macklin then. He could walk away from this, he would not have to use her, he would not have to betray her.
“And if I did not give them the proof?”
“That would be a problem.”
“Yes,” Devereaux said.
Denisov picked up the pistol again. “Do you see, my friend?”
Devereaux stared at the black gun in the moonlit room.
Yes. He saw.
18
Another morning of rain. It fell in sheets outside the windows of the rectory; black clouds held council in the dead calm of the storm above the sprawling white city. The streets were shining wet and traffic edged slowly along Route 19, the congested old artery linking the bloated resort cities of the west coast of central Florida.
Tuesday morning, two days since the “incident” in the chapel.
Martin Foley opened his eyes just before dawn. He listened to the rain and thought himself a child again in Liverpool, sleeping on a free morning, listening to the rain in the darkness. Gray light searched the room until he opened his eyes. The gray light reflected his mood.
The “incident.” Father McGillicuddy had called it a “miracle” but Foley had angrily cut him down. “This is an incident, an unfortunate incident,” Foley had said. And he had been stern in his admonition to McGillicuddy: no more public Masses for Tunney and no interviews.
The world press had noted the miracle and dragged up Leo Tunney’s alleged connection with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Cardinal Ludovico, who was in Prague, had wired a sarcastic and scathing cable to Martin Foley. He wanted results from Tunney, not miracles. He wanted the truth.
But Tunney, stubbornly, continued to scribble in his red journal. “The truth takes a little time,” Tunney said. And Foley, caught between the new press of public attention and McGillicuddy’s exploitation of it and Ludovico’s admonitions, had felt trapped. So Monday had passed and now it was Tuesday morning.
He said his prayers in the darkness of his bedroom and then turned on the television set on the dresser. The screen pictured a young woman with chalk-white skin and dark, damp hair clinging to her high forehead. Lu Ann Carter talking about miracles.
The Bishop of the diocese had not been pleased but Foley had pulled rank on him. Foley was from the Vatican; Foley was the agent of the Pope. The Bishop had retreated and washed his hands of the “miracle” or “incident” that had occurred at Clearwater.
Foley shoved the “off” button savagely and ran his hands through his thick hair. A mess. On Monday, a thousand people had been waiting outside the little chapel to see Tunney. It had rained that day as well and they had waited in the rain, without complaint, waited on their crutches and in their bandages and leaning on their aluminum walkers, waited huddled under blankets and in wheelchairs. Old men and old women waited and children with broken bodies, ushered in their wheelchairs by anxious, suffering parents; men in gray work jackets and cloth caps waited as well as the simple tourists in colorful shirts and shorts festooned with Polaroid cameras and buttons claiming they had been visitors to Disney World or Busch Gardens.
Foley stood at the window now and watched the rain. Maybe they would not come out today.
It had been a circus yesterday. He had forbidden Tunney to say Mass in public but when the old priest had seen the immense Monday morning crowds in the side streets outside the chapel, he had gone out to greet them.
He had told them he could not offer Mass for them. He had stood alone in the rain, his face fragile and ethereal, and they had crowded around him and shoved umbrellas over his head so that he would not get wet. They had groaned in their expectations and their common misery; they had surged around him and cried out to him to cure them; they had held up their rosaries and old missals containing the words of the Latin Mass; they had shouted for him to touch them.
And, at last, Leo Tunney had begun to pray:
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.…”
He had prayed and then begun the decades of the rosary that someone had thrust into his bony hands. They had knelt in the street, in the rain, and answered his chants. At the outskirts of the crowd, policemen from Pinellas County and Clearwater had attempted to shove the crowds out of the thoroughfare but they could not bring themselves to push these old, crippled, broken bodies. Finally, the police had merely blocked the streets with their squad cars, the roof lights circling red and blue, making the scene even more eerie and unreal in the pale morning light.