Cambridge; a name had come into focus. A man who had spent twenty-five years teaching corporate law at the Harvard School of Business. Bray had never met him; there was no way the Matarese could make him a target.
It was strange, thought Bray, as the cab clamored over the ribs of the Longfellow Bridge, that both he and Taleniekov had been brought back-however briefly-to those places where it had begun for each of them.
Two students, one in Leningrad, one in Cambridge, with a certain, not dissimilar talent for foreign languages.
Was Taleniekov still alive? Or was he dead or dying somewhere in Boston?
Toni was alive; they'd keep her alive... for a while.
Don't think about them. Don't think about her nowl There is no hope. Not really. Accept it, live with it. Then do the best you can.
The traffic congealed again at Harvard Square, the downpour causing havoc in the streets. People were crowded in storefronts, students in panchos and jeans racing from curb to curb, jumping over the flooded gutters, crouching under the awning of the huge newspaper stand.
The newspaper stand. NEwsp"ERs FRom ALL OVFR THE WORLD was the legend printed across the white sign above the canopy. Bray peered out the window, through the rain and the collection of bodies. One name, one man, dominated the observable headlines.
Waverly! David Waverlyl England's Foreign Secretary!
"Let me off here," he said to the driver, reaching for the travel bag and briefcase at his feet.
He pushed his way through the crowd, grabbed two domestic papers off the row of twenty-odd different editions, left a dollar, and ran across the street at the first break in traffic. A half a block down Massachusetts Avenue was a German-style restaurant he vaguely remembered from his student days. The entrance was jammed; Scofield excused his way to the door, using his travel bag for interference, and went inside.
There was a line waiting for tables; he went to the bar, and ordered Scotch. The drink arrived; he unfolded the first newspaper. It was the Boston Globe; he started reading, his eyes racing over the words, picking out the salient points of the article. He finished and picked up the Los Angeles Times, the story identical to the Globe's, a wire service report, and almost surely, the official version put out by Whitehall, which was what Bray wanted to know.
The massacre of David Waverly, his wife, children, and servants in Belgravia Square was held to be the work of terrorists, most likely a splinter group of fanatic Palestinians. It was pointed out, however, that no group had as yet come forth to claim responsibility, and the P.L.O.
vehemently denied participation. Messages of shock and condolence were being sent by political leaders across the world; parliaments and presidiums, congresses and royal courts, all interrupted their businesses at hand to express their fury and grief.
Bray reread both articles and the related stories in each paper looking for Roger Symonds' name. It was not to be found; it would not come for days, if ever. The speculations were too wild, the possibilities too improbable. A senior officer of British Intelligence somehow connected to the slaughter of Britain's Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Office would put a clamp on Symonds' death for any number of reasons. It was no time to....
Scofield's thoughts were interrupted. In the dim light of the bar he had missed the insert; it was a late bulletin in the Globe.
LONDON, March 3-An odd and brutal aspect of the Waverly killings was revealed by the police only hours ago. After receiving a gunshot in the head, David Waverly received an apparently grotesque coup de grdce in the form of a shotgun blast fired directly into his chest, literally removing the left side of his upper abdomen and rib cage. The medical examiner was at a loss to explain the method of killing, for the administering of such a wound-considering the caliber and the proximity of the weapon-is considered extremely dangerous to the one firing the gun. The London police speculate that the weapon used might have been a primitive short-barrelled, hand-held shotgun once favored by roaming gangs of bandits in the Mediterranean. The 1934 Encyclopedia of Weaponry refers to the gun as the Lupo, the Italian word for.,wolf."
The medical examiner in London might have trouble finding a reason for the "method of killing," but Scofield did not. If England's Foreign Secretary had a jagged blue circle affixed to his chest in the form of a birthmark, it was gone.