Deep Cover

“Everybody outside to the car. You drive, Jaime, and Alan sits in the front seat with you. Now move, everybody.”

“Will you all please just shut up. Jaime, pull over by the mailbox and don’t move a God damned muscle. Ro

Spode eased the car in by the side of the road and they waited for Ro

“Move. Eyes front, you two.”

A few raindrops spattered the hood of the car and Forrester felt sweat in his armpits, along his chest, in his palms.

“I told you to sit still. I mean it, I’ll kill both of you if you push me.”

Spode said in exasperated bewilderment, “Jesus H. Christ.”

The car swayed with Ro

“This must be it,” she said.

“Give it to me. Jaime, drive us back up to the house.”

The gun was steady in the fist and Suffield leaned his back against the big door to close it. “Everybody sit down. Ro

Forrester said, “This has gone far enough. Put that gun—”

“Will you all just quit yapping for a minute? I need to think,”

“You don’t need to think with that gun in your hand. What’s come over you?”

Suffield’s thumb curled over the hammer of the revolver. “I told you to sit down.”

Filled with disbelief Forrester backed up till his knees struck the chair. He settled onto its edge. “All right, Les, I’m sitting down. Just take it easy now. What do you want of us?”

“Don’t humor me, I’m not sick in the head.”

“Just take it easy then—there’s no need to fill the air with bullets. Just tell us what it is you want.”

Spode folded his arms and squinted; he was by the front window. “And make it good, Les, because I can spot you the gun and thirty pounds and still take you apart—make it real good, hear?”

Suffield’s red-brick lips peeled back from his teeth. “Don’t you think I can handle a gun? Don’t get notions, Jaime, just sit down on that windowsill and keep quiet.”

Forrester’s head was lifted; he was listening to the run of Suffield’s voice, trying to detect the note of madness that surely had to be there; but Suffield was not out of control and there was nothing in his attitude to confirm what had to be the case: that something in him had snapped.

Suffield said, “What about it, Ro

It was so heavy it had taken four first-class stamps on the envelope. “The handwriting’s like a child’s.”

“He was overwrought. What’s in it?”

“Everything,” she said. “Everything he knew. Dangerfield, Craig, the whole thing.”

“I suspected as much. He must have been pla

“It’s strange,” Ro

“I know about that. He sent Craig to tape the meeting but Craig fell through and Trumble was right back at square one. He never did find out.”

Forrester said, “Will you please—”

“Shut up.” Suffield’s florid face was clamped up tight; a vein showed at his forehead. “Does he name names?”

“Half a dozen,” Ro

“Burn it,” Suffield said. “In the fireplace over there. Do it one sheet at a time.”

Forrester gathered his legs. “Wait just a minute.”

Suffield cocked the revolver. “Sit still. Go ahead, Ro

She burned the letter sheet by sheet and stirred the ashes with a poker. Suffield stood by, vigilant over the gun. Consumed with rage Forrester cleared his throat and spoke; his voice trembled: “I think you’d better explain this. Whatever it is—”

“It isn’t,” Suffield barked. “It’s nothing for you to know anything about.” He backed up toward the fireplace so as to keep both Forrester and Spode conveniently in his view. Ro

“No!”

“Stop it. Don’t get hysterical. We’ve got to think, you know that.”

“We’re not going to kill anyone, Les.”

“Then tell me how else to do it. Just tell me that.”

“I don’t know. But there must be something.”

“We haven’t got time.”

Ro

“How? He wasn’t about to let me go get it. Anyway they’ve got to be silenced now—they know too much, they can identify us, our cover’s blown and the only way we can get it back is to kill them.”

“But it’s not Alan’s fault! You’re the one who gave it away!”

“You’re being irrational, Ro

“I forget what they say,” she said. “… You can’t make scrambled eggs without murdering people, isn’t that it? I won’t go through with it, Les. I won’t be a part of murder—not again. You can keep on forever explaining to me why it’s necessary but I’m all through listening to arguments that prove lies are true and murder is respectable and people are nothing.”

Suffield murmured, “You’d like to find a way out of it where nobody gets hurt. That’s the same thing as trying to stick a pin in a balloon gradually. It can’t be done, Ro

Forrester understood that as senseless as it all seemed, Suffield was going to kill him. Forrester’s eyes swiveled quickly toward Top Spode, and Top nodded almost imperceptibly. Forrester turned toward Suffield and started talking, to draw Suffield’s attention. “I don’t know what this is all about but if you’re going to kill us I think we deserve to know why. If you—”

“What comfort will it be when you’re dead? It won’t make the slightest difference,” Suffield said, but his florid frown had come around squarely to face Forrester. “Jesus, do you think I like this? But you and this God damned sleuth have stumbled into something and there are too many lives at stake; we just can’t afford the slightest whisper of suspicion.”

Ro

“No good,” Suffield said. “The world will know what happened but it can’t be allowed to find out how it happened. If the truth came out you could have total global war on your hands.”

“My God, aren’t we going to have that anyway?”

“You’re talking too much, Ro

There was rain. It struck the flagstones outside and began to steam. Ro

“There is no other way.”

“There has to be. Do that much for me, Les—let me have the time.”

In the corner of his vision Forrester saw Top Spode close his fist around the heavy glass ashtray on the table beside the window but in that instant the storm burst like a bomb. The thunderclap drew Suffield’s attention involuntarily toward the window. Suffield whipped around and spoke from a semi-crouch, pistol leveled: