Betrayals (29 page)

J
anet had a strange feeling and in the initial few moments could not decide what it was. Then it flooded in upon her, an awareness that for the first time in too many days—weeks—she was being treated with understanding, actual friendship, and not as an irritant to be kept at arm's length and moved on to become someone else's problem. Her reaction was one of relief and something more: a brief sensation of actual relaxation. It became very obvious as Knox talked that he and John
had
been friends: close friends, in fact. The young CIA man knew about their boat and the house in Chevy Chase and even the circumstances of their meeting at Harriet's oppressive Georgetown party.

Janet listened to it all, waiting, and when Knox paused she demanded: “Why? Tell me how it happened! Why nothing appears to be going on to get him out!”

In this more confined space, Knox's habit of studying a speaker's face, almost as if he were lip-reading, was more pronounced than it had been at the earlier conference. He gazed intently at her, weighing his reply. Then he said: “It was what John was trying to do.”

“A mission, you mean?”

“Very much a mission,” said the man. “We've got a whole bunch of Americans caged up here somewhere …”

“… I know the figures,” stopped Janet, impatiently. “The names even. What was John trying to do?”

“Remember what Bill said in the car coming back here, about all the lines being out?”

“Of course,” nodded Janet.

“That's what John was doing: what the mission was,” Knox said. “He was trying to set up the contacts: to initiate the negotiations to get our guys out. And then the sons-of-bitches grabbed him!”

“Just like Terry Waite,” said Janet.

“Probably one lot got the idea from the other,” agreed Knox. “John had been working at it for months: reckoned he was making real progress. He'd disappear for days at a time: actually go into south or west Beirut. At times he went deep into south Lebanon, near the Israeli border. He'd come back covered in filth and with a beard this long and every time say he was getting just that bit closer.”

“So they were cooperating, the Hezbollah!” Janet said.

Knox shook his head. “Some, not all,” he qualified. “It's a mistake to think they're a cohesive group, by whatever name they call themselves, obeying just one ayatollah. There's dozens of cells, groups sometimes not much bigger than ten, twenty men. There's liaison between a few: communication, at least. But mostly it's fratricidal war. And some aren't even operating in the name of Allah. They're just gangs, out for a buck.”

“Is that what you think happened to John? That he was seized by some group rivaling that with which he was dealing?”

“It's as good a guess as any,” said Knox. “That and the fact that he was CIA in the first place.”

“Wasn't it absurd to send another CIA officer out at all?” erupted Janet, regretting the outburst at once: it hadn't been Knox who initiated the assignment.

“Someone had to do it,” said Knox, unoffended. “John was bureau chief here: considered it his responsibility.”

“Yes,” Janet agreed, distantly. “That was the sort of attitude John would have.”

“There were reports, some files, of course,” the American said. “We had leads to follow, but a lot of it was in John's head, personal relationships …” He hesitated, the sadness obvious on his open face. “So far, nothing.” There was another pause. Then Knox added: “You've no idea—really no idea—how it hurts to say that.”

“Is there someone else?” Janet asked.

“Someone else?”

“Trying to pick up where John stopped?” Janet asked. “Putting out more lines?”

For several moments Knox gave no reaction. Then, bluntly, he said: “No.”

“No one trying at all!”

“We're tapping all the sources we can,” Knox tried to assure her. “Our liaison with all branches of Lebanese intelligence is good: through them we have a feed into some parts of Syrian intelligence, particularly the army. And a dialogue, of sorts, with a few of the Amal Shias themselves.”

“But no one is out specifically looking and negotiating, not like John was out specifically looking and negotiating!”

“It's specifically forbidden.”

“Since when?” Janet asked, anticipating the answer.

“Since John got snatched,” Knox confirmed.

With anyone else Janet would have been outraged, disgusted, but she couldn't feel any anger at the man who had been John's friend. She sagged with fatigue. “What am I going to do?” she asked, limp-voiced. “I don't know what to do, not any more.”

“No one does,” said Knox. “That's the biggest bastard. And personally I think they're aware of it, and it gives them a buzz to know just how helpless great big Uncle Sam really is.”

“Is he dead!” Janet blurted, abruptly. “Do you think they've killed him already?”

Knox hurried from behind the desk and put a comforting hand on Janet's shoulder. “Hey now!” he said. “Hold back a while!”

“I don't know how much longer I can hold back,” said Janet, emptily. “I feel so lost. Far worse this time than when Hank died. Then, at least, I knew: knew when I forced myself to accept the truth. It's the … it's the not knowing …”

“Yes,” agreed Knox. “That's what it is.”

“Thank you,” said Janet. “For being kind, I mean.” Recalling her impression upon entering the room, she said: “It seems to have been a long time.”

“I wish there were more I could do: a lot more.”

Janet looked down at the photo which she still held in her hand. She said: “This is something.” She raised her eyes. “I don't know what's going to happen back in Cyprus, but I think I'll stay on for a while. At the Churchill. Will you get me there, if anything comes up?”

“If anything comes up, I'll get a message through if I have to bring it myself,” Knox promised. He went back around the desk, checking his watch. “Al's late,” he said.

“Al?” she queried.

“Al Hart, our guy in Nicosia. He's coming in on the helo, to escort you back. I thought you'd met already.”

A name for the other anonymous American, Janet realized. She said: “Yes, we met. He told me to get out.”

“Why don't you, Janet?” implored the man, gently. “When you've done whatever they want in Cyprus, why don't you go back to England or to America? Getting mixed up in what happened here isn't going to get John out. It's just going to get you hurt: maybe badly hurt.”

“Maybe,” she said, vaguely. “I don't know.”

There was a summons from beyond the combination-locked door, and Janet started slightly at the unexpected intrusion. Knox pushed an unseen release button somewhere beyond the desk and Janet half turned, expecting to see the American with whom she had returned from the British embassy. Instead, it was the CIA officer who had confronted her within hours of her arrival in Cyprus.

“Here we are again!” he greeted. “The lady who knows bad words and can't take good advice!”

“I'm very tired,” said Janet, wearily.

“You're goddamned lucky to be able to feel anything,” said the American. He came into the room, seeking a chair. When he saw there wasn't one, he hitched himself on the corner of the desk and said to Knox: “How about this, George! Today I'm a baby minder!”

“Is this really necessary?” Knox asked, mildly.

“What are you talking about?”

“She's been through quite a lot,” Knox said. “I don't think the Humphrey Bogart routine helps much.”

Hart frowned and began to go red. Janet remembered how he'd left her room at the Churchill with his face burning. “What the hell's wrong with you?”

“Why don't we just leave it?” Knox said, disinterested in an argument.

Knox's dismissal appeared to anger the other American further. He looked from Knox to Janet and said: “Cosy times, eh!”

“Shut up, Al, for Christ's sake!” said Knox. “You're making yourself look like a jerk.”

Hart said: “Not as much of a jerk as Mrs. Stone here made herself look. Oh no, siree!”

The hostility didn't frighten Janet. Rather it revitalized her. Janet decided the abrupt and unexpected kindness that Knox had shown—and for which she'd been so grateful—had lulled her and that she didn't need to be lulled. She needed to face antagonistic attitudes like Al Hart's, who unquestionably was a jerk, to fight back. She said: “What about the man I stabbed? Have you heard anything?”

“I've heard a whole bunch of things,” Hart said. “A whole bunch of things. Like just what they had in mind for you, for instance.”

“What?” Janet asked, sure she knew.

“Did you think—did you really think—that they had an inside track to some Fundamentalist group holding John?” Hart demanded, intent on conducting the conversation his way.

“Yes,” Janet admitted. “I believed it. They were Cypriot fishermen who knew the area, so why couldn't they have had?”

“Cypriot fishermen!” Hart echoed, in artificial incredulity. “Oh Jesus, lady! Dear Jesus! They're scum Arabs: the best guess is from around Jablah or Baniyas, on the north Syrian coast. They're all members of the same family, uncles and cousins and stuff like that. The family name is said to be Fettal, although that could be so much bullshit, like whatever names they used with you. The nearest they've ever come to catching fish is buying some at the market to spread the guts and mess about their boat, to make it look like fishing is what they really do. But what they really do is smuggle. Anything …” Hart paused, looking down at her. “… or in your case, anybody. And did they have a market for you! Do you know where you were heading, little lady? They had you already sold as a whore. You were on your way to some Amal militia camp, in south Beirut. And we're not talking perfumed harems, with satin sheets and scented fountains. We're talking being tethered like the piece of meat they were going to use you as in some hovel while they stood in line to hump you, the next in line hauling the other guy off if he took too long … we're talking gang-bangs and open mouths and whatever other trick you had to perform …”

“For Christ's sake, Al, shut up!” Knox erupted. “What the fuck do you think you're proving!”

They had spoken Arabic, Janet remembered. Like she remembered some of the things that they'd said.
Break you in, that's what I'm going to do. Really break you in
. And then the protest.
She's no good split apart
. And the reply.
Going to have her first
. Janet spoke with conscious evenness, almost casually, determined not to give Hart the satisfaction of knowing how much he'd sickened her. She said: “So what about the man I stabbed? What happened to him?”

“Zarpas didn't say anything about a stabbing,” Hart said, at last, visibly disappointed at her lack of reaction.

“How many are in custody?” Janet persisted.

“Two. The one who ran the boat and an old guy.”

So where was the one she'd known as Costas? Had Haseeb, the Arab engineer from Larnaca marina, known she was going to be sold as a whore? Other less-formed questions tugged at Janet's mind. The American had spoken easily of the Cypriot policeman, as if he knew him. But then there was every reason why he should. And Zarpas would be handling the currency case, wouldn't he, because it was he who had continually warned her? They'd both warned her, in fact, practically within minutes of each other, that first day. Janet looked up at the lounging crew-cut man, her head to one side, and said curiously: “It was you, wasn't it?”

“You're not getting through to me, lady.”

“That first day, in Nicosia,” Janet said. “When you came to my hotel room and warned me off. It was you who mentioned Larnaca marina and Zenon Square and Kitieus Street.”

“I'm hearing the words but I'm missing the meaning.”

“I thought you'd made a slip at the time,” Janet continued, in growing conviction. “But do you know what I think now? I don't think you made a slip at all. I think you knew I'd go there and you knew I'd get ripped off and then you thought I'd have to get out, like Langley told you to make me get out.”

“Bullshit,” Hart said, but there was just the slightest flush.

“Did you do that, Al?” demanded the other American. “Did you set her up, like she thinks you did?”

“Of course I damned well didn't!” protested Hart. “What sort of question's that?”

“The sort of question that needs an answer,” Knox said.

“I told you no!”

“I know what you told me,” Knox said. “What's the truth?”

“I didn't set her up.” Hart was redder now. “It would have been hard, getting in ahead of everyone else.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Janet asked.

Hart stared directly down at her, a nerve in his left cheek twitching in his obvious anger. “Think about it, lady. Think about how Zarpas knew where you were and how much money you'd deposited, within hours of getting to Nicosia! And how I knew where you were, to come in heavy with a warning, right after him!”

“The bank was required to make a report,” Janet said unsteadily. “You said you had a watch out at the airport.”

“A bank report would have taken weeks to get through the system, even if such a requirement existed,” dismissed Hart. “And I haven't the resources to run any sort of check on airport arrivals, not that quickly anyway.”

“So how?” Janet asked.

“Partington,” the American said. “He warned Zarpas that you were there and what you intended to do: all Zarpas had to do in turn was demand the banks call him immediately after you'd made the deposit.”

“But you …?” Janet asked, emptily.

“Partington again.”