Jigsaw (62 page)

He shut his eyes and slept, dreaming of snow and dogs and the clank of chains and the motionless figure in the watch-tower. When he woke the sun had thinned in the room and his throat was dry and he knew that for the rest of his life the watch-tower would play a role in all his dreams.

Later, when the sky was dark, a visitor came, a tall man in an elegant double-breasted grey suit. His hair was neat and silvery. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a large black ring embossed with a gold eagle; it was the only hint of ostentation about the man. Pasco wondered if it were some kind of fraternity ring.

The man introduced himself as James. Was that his first name or last? He didn't say. He shook Pasco's hand briefly, pretended not to notice the scars. He smiled and flashed some expensive bridgework. He drew the curtains and sat down in an armchair at the window, crossing his legs.

‘You've had a difficult time,' he said to Pasco.

Pasco wondered about the man's affiliation. Was he Langley? Did he work out of some anonymous branch of the Federal Government? Was he something else altogether? Pasco had been expecting a courtesy visit from somebody in an official capacity, maybe even the offer of a job back in Virginia. Something behind a desk, a few sedentary years paper-shuffling, followed by a pension. And then good night, chump, and thanks a lot. A consolation prize in return for his hardships.

‘Injustice is always a hard pill to swallow. You chew on bitterness long enough, it leaves a lot of poison in your system,' James said.

Pasco nodded, said nothing. He was curious about this James, this talk of injustice and bitterness and poison. This wasn't quite what he'd anticipated. He'd fully expected the three-course American speech, you did your patriotic duty, self-sacrifice, we're all choked up with gratitude, we're thinking of naming a street in Le Mars, Iowa, in your honour, et cetera et cetera. This character James was heading off on quite another tack altogether and Pasco wasn't sure where he was going.

‘The camp was unpleasant, of course,' said James, and touched his big pinky-ring.

‘It was no Club Med,' Pasco said.

James smiled thinly. ‘You have a lot of time to think in places like that. Think and remember.'

‘Yeah, there's plenty time for that all right,' Pasco said.

‘You think of the people that let you down. People that disappointed you. Then, maybe, you go beyond the people and start thinking about the country itself. It wasn't just so-and-so that left you stranded, it was the system, the company, America, the things you believed in. You think – the whole system is flawed. It's all a con. You were misled. You were bamboozled and brainwashed. All the colours have been bleached out of Old Glory.'

Pasco nodded. Where the fuck was this going? James was quiet a moment. Pasco studied him. He had a sudden flash that James wasn't Langley at all, he was coming from some other place. The question was where.

James got up, crossed the room, opened the mini-bar and took out a can of ginger ale, which he popped. Froth fizzed and surged across the back of his hand. This small spillage troubled him because he fussed with a paper napkin, dabbing the soda from his skin as though the liquid were caustic. He crumpled the napkin, discarded it carefully in the waste-basket. A fastidious guy, Pasco thought.

James said, ‘You lost a leg. What for? The greater good of your country? Some patriotic reason you've never been able to understand?'

Pasco said, ‘Tell me one thing. Who are you?'

James answered the question with several of his own. ‘Do you intend to return to the fold, Richard? Is that how you see your future? They'll find you a meaningless little notch in a cubicle and you'll be thankful to them?'

‘Maybe,' Pasco said.

‘I don't think so, Richard,' James said. ‘I don't think that's even remotely on your mind.'

‘What are you? Clairvoyant? Suppose you tell me what's on my mind?'

‘I think it's simple, Richard.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Desperately simple. Revenge.'

Pasco had a paranoid moment. Had this character been sent to test his loyalty, assess his state of mind? Langley was capable of shit like that, all kinds of underhand schemes. Everything was mirrors and distorted reflections and treachery.

‘Revenge?' Pasco asked. He wasn't about to admit that. Not yet.

‘Correct me if I'm wrong.'

Pasco coughed. His health was uncertain. The camp had caused severe deterioration in him. Shortness of breath, chronic chest pains, the pinched nerve in his shoulder, the ulcerated mouth. Revenge, he thought. It didn't give you back your health, and it didn't restore sanity. But it had other benefits. A great glow of satisfaction, for starters. The kind of jubilation that came from righting wrongs – as destructively as possible.

‘Before we take this another step, I need to know who you are,' he said.

‘Is that important?'

‘I think so.'

‘Why? You imagine I'm here to make out a report for some Langley shrink and have you certified as a basket-case and therefore utterly useless as a candidate for even the most menial janitorial position?'

‘Yeah, I've considered it,' Pasco said. Guy was a goddam mindreader.

‘You're wrong, Richard. I'm not here in that capacity. Nothing like that.'

‘OK. So spell it out.'

‘Some things you just can't spell out,' James said.

‘Yeah? What are we talking about here? I'm to take you on trust?'

‘Trust. Why not?'

‘It's not my favourite word, friend.'

‘I sympathize,' James said. He looked at Pasco in a pensive manner for a time. ‘OK. I'll meet you halfway along the road, Richard. It's the best I can do. You have certain grudges. Understandable ones. You want to take action. You haven't quite thought it through yet. But there's a germ in your head and it's been festering there for ten long years. You've developed very deep resentments against certain people inside a certain institution. In a sense, you're still a prisoner. Not in some Russian gulag this time – no, you're a prisoner of your own hatreds and frustrations. Again, this is understandable …'

Pasco made as if to interrupt, but James stalled him with a motion of his hand. ‘Please. Let me finish, Richard. I represent certain parties who bear resentments very much like your own. They have different reasons, but I'm not here to split hairs. Their goals are the same as yours.'

‘My goals? What would you know about my goals?' Pasco asked.

‘I didn't come here blind, Richard. I didn't come here on anything as slender as hope. I don't rely on fragile things. I have reports about you from the camp. I have records of statements you made to your fellow inmates about what you'd do to the people who betrayed you if you ever got the chance. And some of them make very dramatic reading.'

‘Records? How did you get your hands on that kind of stuff?'

James said, ‘In Russia you can buy anything if you're prepared to pay the price.'

Pasco was impressed, up to a point. ‘OK. So I said some off-the-wall stuff to some guys. That still doesn't tell me anything about you, who you're working for. These certain parties, for example – what do they want?'

James shrugged very slightly. ‘They're interested in disruption.'

‘Disruption?' Pasco shook his head. ‘Too vague.'

‘Let me approach this in another way,' James said. ‘My associates are interested in what we might call, for want of a better term, organized vandalism. They have reasons for wanting to cause some grief to the institution that wronged you, and the system that used you.'

‘What reasons?'

‘They're complicated. I can't go into them. Try and understand that.'

‘You can't go into them.' Pasco forced out a little laugh. ‘So we're back to trust again?'

‘A little more than that, Richard,' said James. ‘Something less abstract, more practical. For example – have you thought about the mechanics of revenge?'

‘Mechanics?'

‘Face it, sport. You're not in great health. Your financial situation isn't conducive to a campaign of vengeance. And even if you have some experience of the stealth needed for this kind of business, you're out of practice. You're rusty, Richard. Best-case scenario, you might somehow manage a cut-price airline ticket back to the States and get your hands on a Saturday Night Special somewhere, and if you're really on a roll you might just manage to blow out somebody's brains before you're caught – that's not what I'd call ambitious, Richard. It's a gesture, and it's pitiful, if you don't mind me saying so. Ten years just to pull a gun on one person who might or might not have set you up? I don't think so. Revenge is complex. It has to be organized. The emotion itself isn't going to carry you very far.'

Pasco closed his eyes. He didn't want to admit it, but James was right, of course. He was dead-on. In the gulag, Pasco had seen vengeance as if it were some amorphous cloud. He'd never planned the particulars, never considered the details. He'd just lived inside this shapeless fog where he'd imagined all kinds of destruction and mayhem. This person would be taken out, that person would meet a horrible fate, he'd choke somebody with his bare hands if he had to – there was a whole goddam line of victims and targets. But he didn't have the stamina, and he didn't have the wherewithal, and James knew it.

He stared into James's face. ‘So what's the deal?'

‘A question first. How badly do you want it?'

‘Ten years' worth,' Pasco said.

James rose, went to the window, parted the curtain a second. Pasco wondered if this was some kind of signal to a person in the street; he was having too many of these paranoid flashes, he decided. James turned, smiling. The ginger-ale can in his hand glinted. He produced a brown envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and passed it to Pasco.

‘What's this?'

‘Open it,' James said.

Pasco ripped the flap. Inside was an American passport made out in his own name; the photograph in the passport was one taken just before his enforced sojourn in Russia. The envelope also contained a savings-account passbook issued by Barclays Bank, also in the name of Richard Pasco. Pasco flicked the pages. The current balance in the account was $500,000.

‘What's all this?' he asked.

‘A token of our credibility, Richard,' James said. ‘A demonstration of our seriousness. The passport's authentic. The money's real. First thing in the morning, you can go to any branch of Barclays and verify it.'

Pasco raised an eyebrow, glanced at the credit balance again, then looked at James.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Tell me more.'

They talked for almost four hours.

When the man called Ralph Donovan came to the room at five minutes before eleven the following morning, he found no sign of Richard Pasco. The new suit still hung in the closet, but the other clothing had gone. All that remained of Pasco's possessions were the ugly black shoes he'd been wearing on his arrival, a pair of off-white underpants, grey socks, and a soiled shirt.

Donovan thought: Every so often in goddam life things went off the way they were planned.

3

LONDON

A copy of every London daily lay on George Nimmo's desk. The headlines in the tabloids were predictably bold and drastic, and the so-called quality press was less than subdued when it came to reporting the previous night's events at The Hackenbridge Hotel. Nimmo, who had the face of a spoiled choirboy, a pendulous lower lip and plump cheeks, gestured at the newspapers in dismay.

‘Death, death and more death,' he said. He was agitated and pale. He had three telephones on his desk that rang continually. Secretaries and assistants in an outer office picked up the calls. ‘People from all over the world. Two from the States. Two from Saudi Arabia. Another from Mexico. Two from Canada. Three from Germany. On and on.'

Pagan, seated on the other side of Nimmo's desk, could read the headlines upside down. The number of reported fatalities varied from paper to paper. Fifty-three in the
Sun
. Fifty-four in the
Mirror
. Medical spokespersons, acting on the orders of Nimmo, who was the Commissioner of Scotland Yard, were being tight-lipped about the matter – but you couldn't keep the sharks of the press at bay for long. They clamoured for detailed information, and if you didn't accede to their demands, they indulged in speculation. Truth was a malleable commodity anyway.

Afternoon sunlight burned brilliantly on the window. Pagan shut his eyes against all this brightness, all this news of death. He'd been awake for more than thirty hours but felt no real fatigue. What he experienced instead was a fuse sizzling inside his skull. On one level, it was the spark of anger; on another, it was a fiery line leading to a dynamite-charge of self-reproach. He assaulted himself with ifs. If he hadn't left the hotel the way he'd done, if he hadn't jumped as soon as he'd received the phonecall, if he'd been more thorough in investigating the backgrounds of hotel personnel – conditionals were like hot sands in his brain.

On the other hand, even if he hadn't made that fruitless trip to The Swan, what could he have done to change the outcome of events in any case? The dinner would have gone on, the conference members would have picked up knives and forks, cut into the food, ferried it to their mouths. He couldn't have stopped that. This realization was no balm. The bottom line was that he'd been responsible for sixty-three people; and most of them were dead. And they'd died painfully.

‘The medical chaps don't know what kind of poison was used,' Nimmo said. ‘They're running tests. The trouble with tests is they don't bring back the dead, do they?'

‘No, they don't,' Pagan said.

‘So far, all we know is that the non-carnivores in the group didn't die. Conclusion, the poison was in the meat dish. I've got a copy of the menu right here. There was a choice of fish or beef. The fish-eaters survived. The others didn't. We'll have the substance identified soon enough, I daresay. Though it isn't going to do us a lot of good, is it?' Nimmo shoved his chair back from his desk and picked up a pen, tapped the surface of his desk, rap rap rap.