The Glendower Legacy (38 page)

“But I thought he was one of the men following us,” Polly said, “one of the bad guys—”

“Quite so, my dear. He was just that, one of the bad guys, the one so often seen in the checkered porkpie hat. A professional killer by trade—”

“How the hell were you his boss, then?” Chandler said. He gave his head a violent shake.

“He was employed on this matter by a KGB agent,
me …
I have been for many years.” He puffed calmly in the stillness. The wind sighed outside. “That sounds a good deal more sinister than it actually is, but I’ll come to that. I was running those two cretins, the two who visited you at your home and really set this thing in motion. They overstepped the boundaries of their assignment from the beginning, by killing the Davis boy and Nat Underbill. There’s an appalling decline in the quality of these fellows. Then they went after you in that uncouth manner and you gave them a good what-for … and they were having no luck retrieving the elusive documents, which made it all the more ridiculous. And they had completely lost you, remember. So there we were, no documents and no Professor Chandler, and you were the only lead we had.” Prosser leaned forward and patted Chandler’s arm: “Buck up, old fellow. You’re alive and well and you’d never have found your lovely new friend if it hadn’t been for Oz and Thorny, the two ruffians. Best to look on the bright side, take my word. You, too, miss. Bright side takes you further every time.

“Then these two oafs interview Professor Brennan and he slaughters one of them outright … and I say more power to him. Send up a cheer for Brennan—”

“You’re totally crazy,” Polly said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, there’s much more to come,” Prosser said, the soul of gentle amiability. “You see, at the same time the two KGB hirelings are looking for you and the document, as well as killing everybody they come across … the CIA has gotten into it. That’s right, the CIA. But, as is customary, The Company hasn’t the least notion what they’re doing—all they know is there’s some KGB action in the Boston sector. So they send a couple of their men up from Washington—”

“And they are Fennerty and McGonigle!” Polly said.

“Very good, Fennerty and McGonigle, a couple of men who should never be sent into the field at all, perhaps, but good men. And, after all, this Boston thing is small … just a maybe. They know nothing about any documents, no names, all they have is the identity of the two KGB men. So they begin to follow them, and they discover that for some reason the KGB men are killing people and are also taking long hungry looks at Professor Colin Chandler. So they become interested in Colin Chandler, too. You know how that went—”

“But how do you know so much?” Chandler’s brain was working, slowly. He heard Prosser’s story but he wasn’t at all sure he was making sense of it. “How do you know all this CIA stuff?”

“Because I was running Fennerty and McGonigle, too. I am a company man, as well. I thought I’d made that obvious. That’s why this entire thing got started—because I could see both sides of the table.” He tamped the ash, got another flurry of good smoke going. “I am paid by special arrangement dating back a long time with both parties. A double agent, you see, paid by the case, as it were, CANTAB to the KGB, CRUSTACEAN to the CIA … And by reporting to the CIA that there was a certain amount of KGB action here I could double my income for the duration—simple greed, I am afraid. But how else could I have the Rolls, the house, the servants?

“Obviously I had no idea how complex and violent things would become, that goes without saying. My sin is greed, not sadism. I saw it as a very limited action, relieve the college boy of his little package, run the rats around the cage in a fruitless pursuit for a few days, take my money … that’s why I asked for Fennerty and McGonigle, hardly gung-ho types, ready to get out of the business altogether … but then it got so much more difficult! The boy didn’t have the package, Underhill didn’t have the package, and your name got into it, Colin. It was all out of control before I knew what was happening. I even grew confused, myself knowing so much … too much, trying to keep it all straight. Which brings us back to that night in Maine …”

“What happened after we left?” Polly asked.

“I killed the man in the porkpie hat. Executed him. I told Moscow it was coming and it simply had to be done. The man had come all unhinged …”

“All right,” Chandler said, tightening his grip on the facts. “This may all be as you say. But if you were stashing us away at Stronghold for safekeeping, why did we get invaded by everybody and his brother that night?”

“The problem was—is—that I am quite plainly past it, Colin. Ready to pack it in, go die in a warm clime, don’t you see? I’ve become so predictable, it pains me to acknowledge the fact but there it is, sitting in the corner staring at me … Two gentlemen, one at the top of the CIA, the other his opposite number in Moscow, took one look at the situation and reached the same conclusion—namely, Stronghold. An old dog keeps going back to the old tricks, the things he knows best. And they were right … thus, rehearsal for World War III goes off on my little island …” His face was sagging in on itself, growing plaintive, morose. “And all those young men, muttonheads though they were, had to die … It’s been badly fouled up from the start. I take the blame, I could have kept it from happening, from going so far …” He pulled on the dead pipe, looked at it with an air of mournful distaste.

The couple on the grass snatched up the kitten, dropped it into the briefcase. Polly said: “That means they live in an apartment that doesn’t allow animals. They have to sneak the kitten in and out. I used to live in such a place and that’s what I did. Do you mean to say that you’ve been working both sides of the street for, what, thirty years? That’s a long, long time not to get caught, Professor.”

“My only advantage has been the size of my employers, so huge that they think very slowly … they have no idea we’re having this discussion—they don’t know what the hell’s going on … but time,” Prosser mused, “time is running out … what is it they say? The Swiss measure it, the French hoard it, the Italians squander it, the Americans say it’s money, the Indians say it doesn’t exist … I say Time is a crook. I knew a man who used to say that. He died … Sure, it’s a long time, Miss Bishop, but I don’t flatter myself on being a superspy, not by any means. I’ve become one of the cowardly technicians I spoke about in my lecture this morning, a greedy functionary with no eye for morality, or causes, or ideals. I’ve done all this for the money because I saw right after the war how it was going, one side becoming so much like the other … it made no difference which master you served, don’t you see?

“And, of course, they may have been onto me for a long time, it’s possible that they know I’m a double agent and don’t really care. Maybe they look at it as my pension … Damnation, we know that the other side knows, we’re just like button salesmen and ribbon clerks, all in the same line of work … we know our business, that’s it. It is now and always has been, at least in my day, nothing but a game.” He paused, sighed under the weight of memory. “No, I take that back, it was no game when they parachuted me into Greece and Yugoslavia during the war, there seemed to be principles involved then … nothing to do with democracy, of course, but I was anti-Nazi and so were the partisans, communists to a man. But that was a long time ago and didn’t quite turn out as we’d planned, anyway. But since then, all the same, business as usual … And what would be the point of putting me in prison? Or killing me? Absolutely none … I’ve been a very useful conduit, at times. Almost a diplomatic adjunct. And if any harm befell me, well then, there would be a rash of reprisals. Pointless. So I’ve gone about my business, useful to both sides. That’s why I am absolutely safe, always have been. Either they don’t know what I am or don’t care. I’m a convenience they can afford.”

“But you’re telling me,” Polly said. “What’s to keep people from listening to me tell the story …”

“Now, now, your heart isn’t in that, my dear. You are a worldly woman. You know the kind of pursuers, discreet and not so discreet, your government can bring to bear when they are well and truly angered or humiliated. Or both. And what would you have accomplished? Frankly, I can’t think of a thing … Detente may be given a momentary hiccup, the public would shrug because they assume
anything
since Watergate, young Davis and Underhill would still be dead and in any case the men who killed them are also dead.” He smiled sympathetically: “It’s a case of no story, Miss Bishop. No one would care, even if they believed you, and I could issue a very believable statement about my service to my country and some rather important people in the government would leap in to back me up …”

“But how the hell do you live with yourself?”

“Colin, you haven’t been listening. I’m just a man, not one of your Great Men, and so are the men I’ve worked with and served. You’re trying to make us fit your classical standard and, sadly, ours is not a classical age. Give it up, Colin. Stick to history, where you belong, where you are at home.”

“I have a question,” Polly said: she had grown good-humored, as if accepting what he’d said about the realities of the situation. “Once you had the Glendower documents, why didn’t you avoid the whole fracas by giving them to the KGB men? That wouldn’t have compromised you in the least—you’d still have been paid by both sides, your first commitment in this case was to the KGB … Why did you make it so difficult for yourself and everyone else?”

Prosser applied another kitchen match to his pipe and leaned back. The sun was dipping, throwing long shadows across the Back Bay. Traffic moved sluggishly on Commonwealth. Chandler had a headache.

“My first commitment,” Prosser said slowly, brushing a knuckle along his white moustache. “My commitment underwent something of a change that night in Maine, a cleansing you call it, when I saw what the documents, as we thought of them, actually were … not some tedious figures about units of production or troop allocations or how amenable a congressman might be to selling his vote. No, we were dealing with something else here, the kind of thing I’d begun to forget.

“You will appreciate this, Colin. I was thinking of history and of the great men who had made it, history—the only record of the course man has taken, all we really have, the real legacy. How have men behaved before us? And as I studied the documents even cursorily I made certain judgments about them … and against these judgments I balanced the corruption and venality of my masters, the purpose to which these pygmies who employ me would put the documents … I saw them being twisted and reshaped and used by men who could not begin to imagine what George Washington and his men needed in their bosoms to survive that winter, and not only to survive but to prevail in the end.” He straightened up abruptly and rapped on the table: “By jove, a man has his limits! And I have reached mine—I never minded about tampering with the present age of the pygmy, but to stick our poker and tongs back into the age of the giants, rearrange things from afar? Damnation, that is going too far … my blood was up, I tell you! Let the KGB have this information for use in some cheap joke? Never! I’d sooner die … and, children, I hadn’t come across anything worth dying for in such a long time …”

“What was your final decision about the Washington letter?” Chandler asked.

“First, the Davis lad was delirious—he was living in a charnel house, his friends were dying, there was virtually no food, they’d damn near run out of hope. Who knows what he actually may have heard as he stood there half-frozen, frightened out of his wits? We’ll never know. And what did he actually see? A large broad-beamed man in a cloak signing a paper … and then a gunfight that left him pissing in his pants. That’s what this undeniably courageous lad is dealing with, under the severest kind of stress. And, second, we know of all the shoddy plots afoot at the time to undermine Washington’s stature—good Lord, the man was like a God to much of the populace, they’d have gone through what they did for no one else … so there were rumors, innuendos, accusations and a great many forged documents purporting to show the godawful
real
George Washington …”

Prosser shrugged: “It’s a fake. George Washington never signed that piece of paper … Nat Underhill should have known better, then none of this would have happened. But he wanted it to be true … capstone to his career. I understand, I understand …”

The telephone rang in Chandler’s study late that evening. Polly had just put on her sheepskin coat for the drive home. The chill of winter was back in the air. They had gone over Prosser’s remarks in a state of dulled amazement, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the peculiarly meaningless absurdity of the entire business. And the telephone cut through their good-night kiss.

“Colin, for chrissakes, what’s happening? I thought I was a poor dead son of a bitch there for awhile … then I’m not dead but I’m in some fuckin’ quarantine with no goddamned fingernails and a helluva cold … ever try to get Kleenex out of a box with bandages all over your hands? Well, don’t …”

“Hugh,” Chandler cried.

“Old man Prosser was just in to see me—Prosser himself! Said he was bringing the message from you that all was well, and that I was getting sprung tomorrow … fuckin’ heart attack I thought I had, but you don’t know about that, do you? Anyway it was a pulled muscle …”

“Tomorrow?”

“You owe me a ride, too, you bastard …”

C
HANDLER’S TELEPHONE RANG AT SEVEN
o’clock Saturday morning. He came awake as if he’d been doused with ice water. Where the hell was Polly? He didn’t like sleeping alone anymore: it had taken him hours to drift off after she’d left. He’d wanted her to stay with him, brew another pot of coffee in his marvelously renewed house, sit at his kitchen table and talk about what had happened to them, but she had insisted, had said that she had a home, too, that she enjoyed being there with Ezzard, had missed it. And he had the good sense to let her go. But now the telephone was ringing and he reached for it with a burst of hope.