The Glendower Legacy (27 page)

“Do you know who you’re working for? Do you know who you’re trifling with? Do you? Answer!”

“No, no,” Thornhill said, pale, a red splotch on his cheek where the old man had struck him. “Just a job …”

“The Russians, you pathetic cretin.” Prosser peered at the man. “The KGB … you’re fouling up a KGB operation!” Thornhill showed no reaction, stared off into space. “You’ve been killing people, bringing attention to this entire operation … a simple operation. A Watergate plumber could have managed it without the least difficulty. But not you. No, no, you were up against a Harvard student, an eighty-year-old man, a couple of Harvard professors—you couldn’t just do your job … Ach, a sad commentary …” He came back to the table like a vulture, unable to resist the carrion. “It’s not too much to say that I am disgruntled. And what do you think our KGB friends are going to say? Think about that.”

“I don’t know anything about Russians,” he said, trying to stifle hiccups.

“Well, pray to God you don’t find out.”

“You, will you tell?”

“Stand up. Come outside with me. I want to show you something.”

Thornhill struggled upright and clumped dejectedly back outside with the old man’s hand firmly in his back.

“Do you ever think about life?” Prosser spoke softly, conversationally.

Thornhill eyed him sideways: “What do you mean? Life … I don’t have much time to think about—”

“Well, it would have been time well spent. You lead a violent life. It ought to have occurred to you to give some thought to what it has meant, this life of yours.” They were walking toward the big tree. The shape of the red Pinto loomed suddenly, close at hand. Beyond the tree, a storybook well had long ago been sunk, a tiny shingled roof built over the top, a large winding crank. “Do you think you can drive, old man?” Prosser’s voice had softened, as if they’d known each other for years. “Feeling punk, eh? Weak in the knees? All right, all right. You can stay here. Give me the keys to this toy car … I’ll put it in the garage.”

“God, thanks,” Thornhill muttered, fumbled the keys into Prosser’s hand. “I think I’m going to puke …”

“Ah, well, no better place … Here, just fire away into the well.”

When Thornhill leaned forward, wretching into the mouth of the well, Prosser gently placed the muzzle of the large gun against the back of his skull and pulled the trigger. The more or less headless corpse collapsed over the rim of the well. Prosser eased him upward and dropped him down the wet, clammy darkness, heard a damp crunching sound at the bottom.

Prosser took a deep breath and leaned against the tree. The night winds had blown the clouds away, leaving a sprinkling of stars. He felt much better. Tomorrow he’d kick over whatever traces might remain. For now he’d run the stupid little Pinto in beside the Rolls and get his poor old body tucked into bed.

Christ. What a very long day …

Liam McGonigle sat in the leatherette booth, staring out the window at the pancake house’s parking lot, the grotesque sign shining in the darkness, beckoning the Sunday night family homeward bound and unwary. Andrew Fennerty picked at the remains of a mound of syrup-soaked blueberry pancakes, chewed absentmindedly, expressionlessly. The restaurant was noisy with bawling children and weary, snappish parents. Unasked, Liam extracted a packet from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table: Alka-Seltzer. Andrew nodded and pushed his plate away. He dropped the two white disks into a glass of water, watched them foam.

“Not one of our better days,” Andrew allowed, lifting his glass in a bleak toast. “I can’t remember the last really acceptable day I had in the field, no, I really can’t.” The bubbles were dying down. “But Kennedy was President …” He took a deep, slow draught and waited for the requisite, soothing little belch. When it had come and gone he finished the glass and wiped the white scum from his lips.

“Not very hard to figure out,” Liam murmured. “We’re too damned old for this sort of thing … But the old man had to have us, I can hear him now … he’s worked with us before, he needed our fine touch, all the old crappola—well, it worked, he got us.” He stroked the stubble on his chin with the short freckled fingers. A yawn burst through uncontrollably. “Anyway, we don’t belong here …”

“You know,” Andrew said, narrowing his eyes, “I hate to say it but I think the old boy is past it. He’s held on for a long time, he’s done a lot of very sharp work, but there comes a time, there just comes a time …” He reached back to his plate and forked up another layer of pancake. “He never should have asked for us, he should have known better and used younger men, but he knew he could handle us.” He chewed solemnly, watching the parking lot. A stern wind shook the evergreens below the glass. “He’s past it, he just doesn’t have the touch anymore.” He lapsed into silence, lit a cigarette and motioned to the waitress for a coffee refill.

It had been a drastically bad day. First, the call had come in from the old man, rousting them out of bed, tired and middle-aged and bedraggled. Then the mess at Brennan’s house: the corpse of the large, bandaged Russian agent was not particularly refreshing, even as corpses usually go—dead and smelling awful from every orifice, blood filling his eyes, clotting his nostrils … And Brennan: they’d thought he was dead for a moment, but he’d turned out to be comatose but alive. They’d called Mass General and the police. Then they went away. They called the old man but he was gone, no answer on the number they’d been given. Exasperation.

They had then piled into the car and driven the agonizing distance through heavy traffic to Kennebunkport. But the Seafoam Inn had been locked up tight. In the driveway smashed flat in mud and gravel, they found the depressingly familiar porkpie hat.

“Well,” Liam sighed, “well, well.” He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. Unfortunately he stuck two fingers into a puddle of maple syrup. “Shit, Andrew, shit, shit …” He never raised his voice: Liam was never quite interested enough to raise his voice. He stuck his fingers into his water glass and rubbed them against one another, withdrew them, and wiped them on his napkin. “What do you think we should do?”

“Kill ourselves.”

“The easy way out. Coward.”

“We can’t find the old man. We can’t find anybody at the Seafoam Inn. The little bastard in the funny hat has come and gone, we know not where.” Andrew blew smoke at his own reflection, turned his eyes back to see Liam’s sorrowful face. “Look at our eyes, Liam. Between us, we’ve got enough bags to pack the Red Sox for a road trip …”

“Let’s get a motel room, get some sleep—”

“But we’ve got to have a plan,” Andrew insisted lamely. Like all fieldmen, they hated the feeling of being alone out there, uninstructed, unprovided for, unsure of what to do.

“Let’s figure we’ll get hold of Langley in the morning. Maybe they’ll scrub the whole stupid business.”

“What do you think it is that we’re after?”

“Look, it’s just a stupid job, more stupid than usual, that we should never have been asked to do. I don’t give a goddamn what it is. I just want to get back to civilization, see my desk again, cook some steaks in the backyard, hear my wife yelling at me …”

The fog clung to the ground, hung in the trees, beaded on their faces like rain. They had walked for an hour, making slow headway, with nothing by which to reckon their course. The idea had been to move parallel to the tree line itself until they were well away from Prosser’s summer home. For a while they had been able to make out the glow of the burning automobile but the fire faded and they seemed to be moving deeper into the woods. They were breathing hard and sweating when Chandler suggested they stop. It was then that they thought they heard something like a gunshot, but it could have been something else, it might have been nothing at all.

They rested in the darkness. The fog came and went but fortunately there was a hint of a moon somewhere above, among the clouds, throwing off enough light to give them a slight, functional visibility. They kept going after a brief rest, Chandler hauling the bag, following Polly who moved carefully, purposefully among the trees and damp grasses, slipping occasionally on bits of ice and snow. They seemed to be moving uphill but it was hard to tell, until Polly called back: “Do you smell it? I can smell the ocean—get up here.” He was afraid to put the suitcase down in case he couldn’t find it again so he struggled up the increasingly abrupt incline.

“Are you in danger of having any kind of attack?” She clutched at him as he drew level with her, grunting and swearing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’m fit as I ever was—”

“Big deal. Smell it, smell the ocean … seaweed or kelp and sand and all that—”

“Yeah “ he said sniffing. “I guess so.”

“Well, we know where we are then.”

“I don’t know where I am.”

“We will in the morning when we can see the map. We’re near that water and not very far from Prosser’s house.” She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow we’ll get to the highway—”

“And get picked up by the homicidal maniacs we’re trying to avoid.”

“Do you want to walk to Bar Harbor, then?”

“I want to be very careful.”

They moved along the crest of the ridge. Chandler felt sand underfoot. The wind was picking up, snapping at them. He heard something move down in the scrub, felt the back of his neck prickle.

“We can’t walk all night,” he said. “We’ve got to get some sleep.” He took her arm, pulled her down on the inland side of the ridge. “Come on, come on, mustn’t hang back.”

He found, a sheltered area in the protection of several fragrant, low trees or shrubs, he neither knew nor cared what the hell they were, only that they cut the wind. He took off his Burberry, leaving his heavy oiled sweater over his shirt, and spread it on the ground. “Take off the sheepskin,” he said. “Now scrunch down on my raincoat. Good.” Listening to her as she settled in, he opened the bag and felt around: sport coat, another sweater, nothing really helpful. Polly was wearing a heavy sweater. He gave her the sport coat and told her to use it as a first blanket. He knelt and put the bag down as a pillow: he felt like a character from a Geoffrey Household novel; they always seemed to be out in the woods living by their wits and eating roots and berries. He flared the sheepskin coat out across them.

“Now we come down to the question of body warmth,” he said. “For maximum effectiveness we lie on our sides, you see, your back to my front. Right. In this manner, we become as narrow an area as possible and your coat just about does the job. I put my left arm around you, you rest your little woolly head upon your mammy’s breast … See, not so helpless after all. I can survive anywhere … Comfy?”

She groaned: “Asleep. I can sleep anywhere.”

“Well, goodnight, then.”

“Oh, God, don’t get huffy at a time like this.”

“I am not huffy. But you could show a bit of appreciation—”

She began to giggle: “Colin, I
am
appreciative. Now, go to sleep.”

“Well, don’t snore. I’m a very light sleeper.”

There was no response and he settled down, his head on his right arm. He felt surprisingly snug, even rather comfortable in a way you wouldn’t necessarily want to feel comfortable every day. But it was reminiscent of sleeping in the backyard as a child. As such, it was rather soothing. But he couldn’t quite get to sleep … he couldn’t even get near sleep. He heard Polly’s breathing grow deeper, regular, as she went completely under.

He was worried about Prosser, alone in the house with the bad guy wandering around outside. What could the old man do in such an uneven contest? But, then, he hadn’t seemed particularly worried at the prospect. But he had been unlike his usual self, bereft of the acerbic tongue, the elegance and the antagonism and the malice which were central to his personality. Worried, under unaccustomed pressure: surely, that was the reason for the change. The old boy was in just a little over his head, regardless of his colorful, terribly important past, and he was showing the strain.

But Brennan, that was something else. How to find out what condition he was in … He’d killed a man, the big man with the gold tooth, what a hell of a job that must have been—but what had they done to Hugh, what had happened to him?

He finally sat up and dug his pipe and tobacco out of his raincoat pocket and got a smoke going. He was beginning to feel like a character in a novel, but it all fell apart when he was supposed to actually do something. He was simply too innocent to regard his position critically and draw clever, predictive conclusions.

Particularly he didn’t know what he had done to land himself in the middle of the Maine nowhere with a beautiful woman he’d just made love with … A beautiful woman who had in fact dragged him into the whole ghastly business in the beginning.

By God, it was true. He’d forgotten that it was all somehow her fault.

And then he went to sleep, the bowl of his briar warming his hand …

P
OLLY WOKE FIRST, STIRRED HER
hips against his belly and thighs, and said: “What I’m worried about is Ezzard … God, how could I have forgotten?” She scrunched around on her back. “Wake up, boy scout.”

“I am awake. I have a sore throat.” He kept his eyes closed, tried burrowing his nose against her sweater. He snuffled in his throat, coughed, feeling vividly unattractive.

“It’s just the wet, cold air. It’ll go away.” She braced an arm on his shoulder and sat up. “Good God, I’m stiff. Getting old, I guess.”

“It’s just the wet, cold air,” he said. “You’re just entering your prime, my dear.”

“I suppose after one go-round on the floor before the fire, you’re some kind of big expert on Polly Bishop.” She poked his chest. “Beware of overconfidence. One swallow does not a summer make, for instance. I’ve got a million little sayings I’ve been saving for you … Either I start on a million examples of pith or you get up.”

“All right, all right, I’ll get up.” When he cranked an eye open she was standing over him, stretching, reaching as high as she could. Fetching, quite fetching. He opened the other eye. “Saucey Worcester,” he said.

“What?”

He shook his head: “Nothing.” He blinked at the beauty of a quiet spring morning. The sun was glowing gold behind the light fog bank and it was warmer than he’d prepared himself for: he had a flash of that carefree feeling that had come and gone erratically since he’d met Polly Bishop. “Well, what do you think?”