Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [39]
The conditions weren’t helping. With the doors and windows shut, a small grate provided the only ventilation in the hut, which was stifling and thick with the scent of suntan lotion to begin with. Perspiration streamed down Charlie’s face, soaking his shirt. Like being slow-cooked in coconut oil, he thought.
The woman broke the heavy silence. “So … have you been in Europe?”
“I don’t believe so,” Drummond said before pausing to reconsider.
“Didn’t you just fly in from there?”
Almost certainly, Charlie thought, the spooks had gotten hold of Bream’s flight plan listing Warsaw as his point of origin, a ruse capitalizing on Poland’s lax documentation requirements. A minimal amount of detective work on their part and Gstaad would be blown.
Unwilling to assist them, Charlie looked away, which, he realized, probably served as an admission—in his experience, people like these two were human lie detectors.
“Please try to understand that we’re on your side,” the man said.
“Interesting,” said Drummond, as he often did to avoid creating an awkward gap in conversation. He fastened the knot behind the man’s neck and moved on to the woman.
“We can help you,” she said.
Charlie considered that the sole aim of their conversation was diversion.
The man craned his neck to look Charlie in the eye. “We all want resolution to your case, right?”
There was a certain affability etched across his broad face, and his eyes were full of a forthrightness that didn’t seem like artifice. Langley must have invented a new sort of contact lens, Charlie thought. But on the off-chance this really was one of the good guys, he said, “The problem is that your company’s idea of resolution is diametrically opposed to ours.”
“I’m not so sure. What’s yours?”
“Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, stuff like that.”
“Those perks come with responsibilities,” the man said. “In your case, answering to charges of a capital crime.”
Charlie sighed. “Have you asked yourself why you don’t have spears running through you already? The only times we’ve ever hurt anyone have been in self-defense.”
“What about Hattemer?”
“I’m sure the Cavalry did a great job of littering the scene with our fingerprints and nose hairs and whatever, but anybody who thinks the Cavalry are good guys has to have been drugged by them.”
The man shrugged. “What motive would they have had to kill Hattemer?”
“Not Burt Hattemer?” Drummond said.
Drummond had fled the scene of the killing just two weeks ago, yet his friend’s murder seemed to be news to him.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Charlie said. They could ill afford the distraction now. He turned to the man. “Their motive was to keep him quiet.”
“Interesting,” the man said, with a bit too much enthusiasm.
“We’d better gag them now,” Charlie said to Drummond.
“Check.” Drummond pressed a rolled-up T-shirt over the man’s mouth, stretched it around his ears, and knotted it behind his head. If Hattemer’s murder remained on Drummond’s mind, he gave no sign of it.
“I wish you could trust us,” the woman said.
“Same,” said Charlie.
She smiled. “In the interim, my only request is that you don’t leave my arms so high behind my back. One of my fellow officers in Farafra developed blood clots in both shoulders after just one hour with his arms tied behind a tree.”
Grunting acquiescence, Drummond loosened the kite string, allowing her wrists to fall even with her waist.
Charlie thought of Farafra, or at least the silver screen version,