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DEAR FRIEND JASON,

If you ever get this, and by the time you get it, I will be dead. It is the typhoid, you see. It comes with the fleas and the lice. They are closing this camp now, breaking it up, to wipe it off the face of the earth as if it had never been, which it should not.

A dozen among the politicals have been granted an amnesty; there is someone called Yeltsin in Moscow now. One of those is my friend, a Lithuanian, a writer and intellectual. I think I can trust him. He promises me he will hide this and send it when he reaches his home.

I will have to take another train, another cattle truck, to a new place, but I will never see it. So I send you my farewell, and some news.

The letter described what had happened after the arrest in East Berlin three and a half years earlier. Turkin told of the beatings in the cell beneath Lefortovo and how he saw no point in not telling everything he knew. He described the stinking, excrement-smeared cell with the weeping walls and the endless chill, the harsh lights, the shouted questions, the blackened eyes and broken teeth if an answer was slow in coming.

He told of Colonel Anatoli Grishin. The colonel had been convinced Turkin was going to die, so he had been happy to boast of previous triumphs. Turkin was told in detail of men he had never heard of, Kruglov, Blinov, and Solomin. He was told what Grishin had done to the Siberian soldier to make him talk.

When it was over, I prayed for death as I have many times since. There have been many suicides in this camp, but somehow I always hoped that if I could hold on, I might one day be free. Not that you would recognize me, nor would Ludmilla or my boy Yuri. No hair left, no teeth, not much body and that torn by wounds and fever. I do not regret what I did, for it was a foul regime. Perhaps now there will be freedom for my people. Somewhere there is my wife, I hope she is happy. And my son Yuri who owes his life to you. Thank you for that. Good-bye, my friend.

Nikolai Ilyich

Jason Monk folded the letter, placed it on a side table, put his head in his hands, and cried like a child. He did not go in to work that day. He did not ring and explain why. He did not answer the phone. At 6:00
P.M.
when it was already dark, he checked the phone book, got into his car, and drove across to Arlington.

He knocked quite politely on the door of the house he sought, and when it opened he nodded at the woman, said Good evening Mrs. Mulgrew and walked on past leaving her speechless in the doorway.

Ken Mulgrew was m the living room his jacket off and a large glass of whiskey in one hand He turned saw the intruder, and said Hey what the hell? You burst—”

It was the last thing he said without whistling uncomfortably for several weeks. Monk hit him. He hit him on the jaw and he hit him very hard.

Mulgrew was the bigger man, but he was out of condition and still feeling the effects of a very liquid lunch. He had been to the office that day, but no one was doing anything except discuss in traumatized whispers the news that was raging through the building like a forest fire.

Monk hit him four times in all, one for each of his lost agents. Apart from breaking his jaw, he blacked both his eyes and broke his nose. Then he walked out.

¯

“SOUNDS like a bit of an active measure,” suggested Nigel Irvine.

“About as active as you can get,” agreed Jordan.

“What happened?”

“Well, thankfully Mrs. Mulgrew didn’t call the cops, she called the agency. They sent a few guys around, just in time to find Mulgrew being shoveled into the ambulance, en route to the nearest emergency room. They calmed down the wife and she identified Monk. So the guys drove around to his place.

“He was there, and they asked him what the fuck he thought he had done and he gestured at the letter on the table. Of course, they couldn’t read it, but they took it with them.”

“He was busted? Monk?” asked the Englishman.

“Right. This time they busted him for good. There was a lot of sympathy, of course, when the letter was read out in translation at the hearing. They even let me speak for him, whatever good that did. But the outcome was foregone. Even in the aftermath of the Ames arrest, you couldn’t have spooks with a grudge going around turning senior officers into hamburger. They fired him outright.”

The waiter was back again, looking plaintive. Both men rose and headed toward the door. The relieved waiter nodded and smiled.

“What about Mulgrew?”

“Ironically, he was dismissed in disgrace a year later, when the full measure of what Ames had done was more widely known.”

“And Monk?”

“He left town. He was living with a girl at the time, but she was away on a seminar and when she came back they parted. I heard Monk took his pension as a lump sum, but anyway he left Washington.”

“Any idea where for?”

“Last I heard he was in your neck of the woods.”

“London? Britain?”

“Not quite. One of Her Majesty’s colonies.”

“Dependent territories—they’re not called colonies anymore. Which one?”

“Turks and Caicos Islands. You know I said he loved deep-sea fishing? Last I heard he had a boat down there, working as a charter skipper.”

It was a brilliant autumn day and Georgetown was looking lovely as they stood on the sidewalk in front of La Chaumière waiting for a cab for Carey Jordan.

“You really want him to go back to Russia, Nigel?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“He won’t go. He swore he’d never go back. I loved the lunch and the wine, but it was a waste of time. Thanks all the same, but he won’t go. Not for money, not for threats, not for anything.”

A cab came. They shook, Jordan climbed in and the cab drove off. Sir Nigel Irvine crossed the street to the Four Seasons. He had some phone calls to make.

CHAPTER 11

THE
FOXY LADY
WAS TIED UP AND CLOSED DOWN FOR THE
night. Jason Monk had bidden farewell to his three Italian clients who, although they had not caught much, seemed to have enjoyed the outing almost as much as the wine they had brought with them.

Julius was standing at the filleting table beside the dock, slicing off the heads and removing the offal from two modest-sized dorado. His own back pocket contained his wages for the day plus his share of the gratuity the Italians had left behind.

Monk strolled past the Tiki Hut toward the Banana Boat, whose open-sided plank-floored drinking and dining area was thronged with early imbibers. He walked up to the bar and nodded to Rocky.

“The usual?” The barman grinned.

“Why not, I’m a creature of habit.”

He had been a regular for years and there was an understanding that the Banana Boat would take calls for him while he was at sea. Indeed its telephone number was on the cards he had placed with all the hotels on the island of Providenciales to attract clients for a fishing charter.

Rocky’s wife, Mabel, called over:

“Grace Bay Club called.”

‘‘Uh-huh. Any message?”

“No, just call ‘em back.”

She pushed the telephone she kept behind her cash desk toward him. He dialed and got the operator at the reception desk. She recognized his voice.

“Hi, Jason, had a good day?”

“Not bad, Lucy. Seen worse. You called?”

“Yeah. What you doin’ tomorrow?”

“You bad girl, what had you in mind?”

There was a scream of laughter from the big, jolly woman at the reception desk of the hotel three miles down the beach.

The permanent residents of the island of Provo did not constitute an enormous group, and within the community serving the tourists who made up the island’s sole source of dollar income, just about everyone knew everyone, islander or settler, and the lighthearted badinage helped the time go by. The Turks and Caicos were still the Caribbean as it used to be: friendly, easygoing, and not in too much of a hurry.

“Don’t you start, Jason Monk. You free for a client tomorrow?”

He thought it over. He had intended to spend the day working on the boat, a task that never ends for boat owners, but a charter was a charter and the finance company in Miami that still owned half the
Foxy Lady
never tired of repayment checks.

“Guess I am. Full day or half day?”

“Half day. Morning. Say about nine o’clock?”

“Okay. Tell the party where to find me. I’ll be ready.”

“It’s not a group, Jason. Just one man, a Mr. Irvine. I’ll tell him. Bye now.”

Jason put the phone down. Single clients were unusual; normally they were two or more. Probably a husband whose wife did not want to come; that was pretty normal too. He finished his daiquiri and went back to the boat to tell Julius they would have to meet at seven to fuel up and get some fresh bait onboard.

The client who appeared at a quarter to nine the next morning was older than the usual fisherman, elderly in fact, in tan slacks, cotton shirt, and white Panama hat. He stood on the dock and called up:

“Captain Monk?”

Jason clambered down from his flying bridge and went to greet him. He was evidently English, by his accent. Julius helped him aboard.

“You tried this before, Mr. Irvine?” Jason asked.

“Actually, no. My first time. Bit of a new boy.”

“Don’t worry about it, sir. We’ll take care of you. The sea’s pretty calm, but if you find it’s too much, just say.”

It never ceased to surprise him how many tourists went out to sea with the presumption that the ocean would be as calm as the water inside the reef. Tourist brochures never show a whitecap wave on the Caribbean, but it can produce some seriously bumpy seas.

He eased the
Foxy Lady
out of Turtle Cove and turned half-right toward Sellar’s Cut. Out beyond Northwest Point there would be wild water, probably too much for the old man, but he knew a spot off Pine Key in the other direction where the seas were easier and reports had it there were dorado running.

He ran at full cruise for forty minutes, then saw a large mat of floating weed, the sort of place where dorado, locally called dolphin, were wont to lie in the shade just below the surface.

Julius streamed four rigs and lines as the power eased off and they started to cruise around the bed of reed. It was on the third circuit that they got a strike.

One of the rods dipped violently, then the line began to scream out of the Penn Senator. The Englishman got up from beneath the awning and sedately took his place in the fighting chair. Julius handed him the rod, slotted the butt into the cup between the client’s thighs, and began to haul in the other three lines.

Monk turned the nose of the
Foxy Lady
away from the reed bed, set her power just above idle, and came down to the afterdeck. The fish had stopped taking line, but the rod was well bent.

“Just haul back,” said Monk gently. “Haul back until the rod is upright, then ease forward and wind in as you go.”

The Englishman tried it. After ten minutes he said:

“I think this is a bit too much for me, you know. Strong things, fish.”

“Okay, I’ll take it if you like.”

“I’d be most grateful if you would.”

Monk slipped into the fighting chair as the client climbed out and returned to the shade of the awning. It was half past ten and the heat was fierce. The sun was astern and the glare came off the water like a blade.

It took ten minutes of hard pumping to bring the fish close to the transom. Then it saw the hull and made another run for freedom, taking a further thirty yards of line.

“What is it?” asked the client.

“Big bull dolphin,” said Monk.

“Oh, dear, I rather like dolphins.”

“Not the bottle-nosed mammal. Same name but different. Also called dorado. It’s a game fish, and very good to eat.”

Julius had the gaff ready and as the dorado came alongside he swung expertly and brought the forty-pounder over the edge.

“Good fish, mister,” he said.

“Ah, but I think Mr. Monk’s fish, not mine.”

Monk climbed out of the chair, disengaged the hook from the dorado’s mouth, and unclipped the steel trace from the line. Julius, about to put the catch into the stern locker, looked surprised. With the dorado on board, the routine would be to stream the four lines again, not put them away.

“Go topside and take the helm,” Monk told him quietly. “Head for home, trolling speed.”

Julius nodded without understanding and his lean ebony form went up the ladder to the upper control panel. Monk bent to the chilled locker, extracted two cans of beer, and popped both, offering one to his client. Then he sat on the locker and looked at the elderly Englishman in the shade.

“You don’t really want to come fishing, do you, Mr. Irvine.” It was not a question but a statement.

“Not my passion, actually.”

“No. And it’s not Mr. Irvine, is it? Something bothering me all this trip. A VIP visit at Langley, way back, by the big honcho from the British Intelligence Service.”

“Quite a memory, Mr. Monk.”

“The name Sir Nigel seems to ring a bell. Okay, Sir Nigel Irvine, can we please stop fooling around? What is all this about?”

“Sorry for the deception. Just wanted to have a look. And a talk. In privacy. Few places more private than the open sea.”

“So ... we’re talking. What about?”

“Russia, I’m afraid.”

“Uh-huh. Big country. Not my favorite. Who sent you here?”

“Oh, nobody sent me. Carey Jordan told me about you. We lunched in Georgetown a couple of days ago. He sends his best wishes.”

“Nice of him. Thank him if you see him again. But you must have noticed that he is out of it these days. Know what I mean by ‘it’? Out of the game. Well, so am I. Whatever you came for, sir, it was a wasted journey.”

“Ah, yes, that’s what Carey said. Don’t bother, he said. But I did anyway. It’s a long journey. Mind if I make my pitch? Isn’t that what you chaps say? Make my pitch, put my proposal?”