Deadly Memoir

CHAPTER ONEMargaret Thackrey Margaret stared at the envelope before filing the letter. This notion of having her write a memoir of her days as a courier for an important government intelligence agency was an interesting notion, if somewhat frightening, even after so many years. And the money offered was good, though she was no longer driven by the need for income. She wondered if it might not be helpful to take those hidden years of her life from their dusty lairs and look at them clearly. The bones of the skeletons still concealed in the closets of her memory still rattled, from time to time. Writing about them might be the best sort of do-it-yourself psychiatry. Margaret hated the thought of delving into that particular past. So much of what she had seen had been sickening, dealing with matters she had wished, once it was too late, that she had never pushed her nose into, though her entry into her work as a courier for the Agency had been idealistically conceived. To her, it had seemed obvious that an eidetic memory would be a great advantage to anyone entrusted with secret messages by the government. By the time she knew the Agency and the system better, it was too late—she was a vital link in the information network. She recalled people whom she hoped never to meet again, even in the mists of memory. Some of the things with which she had come into contact made her shudder, even after so many decades. Of course, the Agency might object to her writing a book about her work for them. She would have to clear anything she wrote with the legal department before she committed herself to such a project, for she had seen too many irresponsible people reveal dangerous matters in print. People had died because of such things, some of them agents she had known, and she refused to put even one at risk. She swiveled her chair, turning toward the door into the living room. There Robert was tying flies and humming like an oversized bumblebee. “Robert!” He glanced up, and she went on, “Did you put this idea into Tally’s head? He says here that he talked with you about it. Do you really think it’s feasible?” She shivered again. “The idea makes me nervous, not just because I hate to think of some of the things that happened, but because I can never be certain something I reveal won’t put someone into danger. Something I only recall as an incident may be vitally important to the one involved in it.” He tightened a loop of black thread and snapped off the extra. Then he looked up and grinned. “I didn’t exactly suggest it, Meg. I might have hinted a bit—you know you still have nightmares about those days. Maybe writing it out would clear your system. “Besides, the advance would let us buy the fancy computer system with the laser printer you’ve been wanting. You’ve been too stingy to buy it so far, but with that you’d have no excuse not to.” He touched the fly with glue. “It might let off some of the pressure. You don’t have to sleep with somebody who keeps moaning and thrashing and saying, ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ in the middle of the night.” She looked down at her long-fingered hands, now tense in her lap. “So you want me to do it?” “I think you should consider it. Not because of the money—Lord knows if you didn’t make a dime more advance on your books we’d still live well on our savings and my pension and your royalties. No, it’s just that I think you need to.” He rose and came to the door, his bulky body filling it. “Nothing should still come crawling out of that part of your life. It’s too long ago. But something does with terrible regularity, and we both know it hasn’t been because of anything that has happened in the past twenty years. Write Tally and tell him you’ll ask the Agency for their reaction. That will make two sixty-year-olds very happy.” Margaret sighed, but then she smiled. Turning back to her desk, she slid paper and a carbon into the IBM typewriter. * To: Talmadge A. Hewitt Fitzgerald and Hewitt, Publishers 254 Park Ave. New York City 10017 Dear Tally, If the Agency agrees, I may write that book you want, but I can’t do anything until I have a release from their people. Even then, I must warn you there are matters I intend to leave out. This will be no exposé, remember that. If this is acceptable, and if the Agency agrees, have your contract department begin drawing up the papers. I will not accept any of the advance until we are farther along and the Agency has given its blessing. Tell Gladys hello and give our love to the grandchildren. Love, Meg * She addressed the envelope and set the letter out with the short story manuscripts that were ready for market. Robert would soon go down the perilous hairpin road to Silverton, for she felt more secure when they dropped their mail directly into the Post Office. A roadside mailbox was too exposed and insecure—her years spent suspecting everyone had left their mark. “Well, I did it!” she called. Robert’s hum grew louder, and Margaret laughed. He was such a dear! She turned back to the rewrite of her most recent book, but she found herself thinking instead of writing. She had been young and successful and incredibly daring, back in those distant Cold War days. Why else would she have approached the Agency with her hare-brained plan? She recalled her letter to them in its entirety, for her eidetic memory never lost anything: * Dear Sirs: This may seem presumptuous, and if you think so you are free to disregard it. I will understand your position completely. Still, I feel I must propose something that may serve my country. My name is Margaret Thackrey. You may recognize it, for it is becoming well known in publishing. My last three novels have been best-sellers, and my travel book has just gone into its third printing. I am sent all over the world by my publishers. This gives me an impeccable reason to travel abroad. I also have a completely accurate memory—eidetic, in fact. Nothing escapes conscious recall on demand. It has occurred to me there might be instances in which your Agency needs to send information abroad in a manner that cannot be traced, and I could provide such means, for nothing would need to go with me in written form. Even mathematical formulae, though I do not understand them, reappear in exact detail when I commit them to memory, and I can write them out as if I knew what I was doing. If you should be interested, I can be reached at my present address until April 4, at which time I leave for Zurich, where I will begin a series of appearances in connection with my European edition of Time and a Cold Rain. Yours truly, Margaret Thackrey * Sitting in her warm study, staring across the diminishing rolls of hills, with a glimpse of the Willamette Valley beyond, Margaret knew the person she was now could never have written that letter. At twenty-five, she had been full of energy and ready to tackle the world. Almost thirty years later, she wondered how she had been brave—and ignorant—enough to dare. She rolled a sheet of paper into her typewriter, but still her hands lingered over the keys as her mind strayed back in time. The Agency had, of course, investigated her. Her grandmother had called from Texas, demanding to know what she’d been doing. “Fellows in suits and ties been asking all kinds of questions here in Skillet Bend,” she’d said, her tone gruff but concerned. “Got everybody all excited. Have you bombed a politician or some such thing? And are you all right?” But there had been nothing suspicious in her background; she was probably the most innocuous person they ever investigated, though people tended to suspect writers of every sort of unbalanced behavior. Her contact had been an Avon Lady. Unlikely as it seemed, it was a sensible cover, and in the course of their visit she had not only been given instructions, she had also bought bath oil in a decorative container shaped like a Victorian lady. She laughed as she pulled the paper back out of her machine and tidied the desk. She knew she would write no more for now. The past had her in its grip, and the strange mechanism that was her memory would replay the past entirely, whether or not she ever wrote that proposed book. If she had, of course, known what was to come, she would never have written that brash letter in the beginning. Her unsleeping memory contained things she longed to erase. But she was uneasy about hypnosis, and she had decided that she must learn to live with what she had experienced. Now there might be a possibility of working it out of her system in a non-threatening way. Margaret rose and went into the kitchen to Robert. She smiled at him, thinking he was a late-appearing bonus she had no right to expect. Fate had been good to her, in that respect. “Ready for homemade soup?” she asked, moving to the stove and the big black pot on the back burner. Robert entered from the attached storage room, wiping his hands. “Damn glue sticks to me better than to the flies. Mmmm— that smells good!” She ladled the soup into thick bowls and found that the hot liquid warmed away some of the chill her memories had given her. Maybe writing this book would scare some of the mice out of her attic! Robert was watching her, reading her mind as he sometimes did. “It should help you,” he said. “Nothing else has, and I worry about you. Even Jonathan has said he feels something bothering you. If it’s something left over from the courier days, this may root it out, don’t you think?” Margaret grinned into his wide, worried face. The last thing she wanted was to trouble him or their son. Perhaps this was the therapy she needed to erase the bitterness she still felt inside, long years after her career as a courier had ended. “Let’s count on it,” she said to her husband. That night she dreamed. Not the usual hazy non-sequiturs of normal dreaming, but sharp vignettes stored in the computer-like recesses of her mind. Pictures, sounds, entire episodes came into focus after years of being ignored.... * * * * She was in her hotel room, typing out the instructions she had carried within her mind across many borders to their destination. Choosing the copy of her book into which to slip it, she marked it so it wouldn’t accidentally be handed to the wrong person at the signing, the next morning. There came a tap on the door, and she took the paper from her portable typewriter and put it into the chosen volume, setting that in turn into the stack of complimentary copies in her briefcase. Then she rose and opened the door, but it was only the maid with extra towels. Margaret kept her voice calm, her hands still, but when the woman was gone she returned to her chair, shaking. What had she got herself into? Another scenario spun into her sleeping mind. She recognized the young woman who came to her table. Smiling, the girl bought a book, complimented her on her last novel, and picked up the volume holding her instructions. Margaret recalled the last line of those typed instructions: this is a matter of life and death! That turned out to be all too accurate, for before Margaret left France the same young woman was killed by falling onto a railway line in front of an incoming train. Meg had wondered if she had completed her task before dying, but she never learned the answer. Almost never did she know the results of the messages she conveyed. She drifted into another dream, this time finding herself in an airport. The crowd was closely packed, waiting for the arrival of some dignitary or diplomat. Yes, she recalled it well. A bit early for her own outgoing flight, she stood at the edge of the throng, watching the people, as she often did. Among them was a familiar face—her contact of the day before, one of the middle-aged agents assigned to foreign work. Of course, she thought. He was waiting for his charge to arrive, for his orders had specifically told him to guard Sheikh ’Abdallah with his life. He glanced up and she almost smiled at him before glancing away. It was always best never to recognize a contact again. Yet she had not turned away quickly enough to miss the swift motion of the man’s hand and the dull gleam of metal. Before she could turn back fully, she heard a sharp spat and many voices screamed together. By the time she spotted the agent again, he was moving away. Not running—that would have been suspicious. But his path lay at an angle, avoiding those clustered around the shape of the fallen diplomat. Even now she felt the rush of horrified fury she knew at the time. She did not know his name, at that time, but she reported his act to her contact when she arrived back home. She had not actually seen him kill the person put into his care, but she was certain of it, past any doubt. The Avon Lady took her report without comment. Margaret had often wondered if anything had been done about the agent—or had they thought she was mistaken? She hadn’t glossed over the fact that she had not recognized the flash of metal as a gun, and she had not seen him fire the shot, but she had stressed her conviction that he had, indeed, betrayed the trust the agency had given him. She turned in her sleep. The scene changed. There was another rapping at a hotel room door, and she found an apologetic young man waiting. “Do you mind, Miss Thackrey? There has been an error in your papers, and we need to correct it at once,” he said, looking suitably sheepish. She followed him, of course. The mess had taken half an hour to untangle, and when she returned to her room she knew something was different. Someone had been there, leaving behind a faint tang of aftershave. Her writing things were in very slightly different positions on the desk, and the rose in the crystal vase was a quarter-turn off its former position. The stack of paper beside her portable had been shuffled; the edges were no longer perfectly aligned. Rough stacks of paper were annoying to her, and she always left them precisely straight. Did someone suspect her of something? Who? And why? It worried her, but she knew she might never know. She knew equally well there was nothing that could have been found in her room. The short trip from typewriter to contact was always made within an hour, and she never entrusted anything else to paper. Unless they could search inside her head, they would find nothing.... * * * * Margaret turned again, moaning softly, and Robert raised his weight onto an elbow and shook her shoulder. “Meg! You’re dreaming again. Wake up! Come on, wake up!” She opened her eyes with relief. “Ugh! Thank you, dear. I think I’ll get up and get some milk.” He sighed and lay back. “Fine. That should do it.” He was asleep again before she was out of the room. But Margaret knew she would not go back to bed for hours, if at all. There were too many wild things waiting in the jungle of her dreams. * * * * From the Portland Oregonian: OREGON WRITER SIGNS SPY BOOK CONTRACT PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)—Margaret Thackrey, noted author of suspense and literary novels, has signed a six-figure nonfiction book contract with Fitzgerald and Hewitt, Publishers, of New York City. For that company, she will write an account of her experiences as a courier for a covert government Agency during the Fifties era of the Cold War. Although never an official member of the Agency, Thackrey performed as an unpaid volunteer while traveling about the world on publicity trips concerning her books. Married to Robert Bowen, U.S. Army Intelligence, Ret., Thackrey now resides near Silver Falls State Park, east of Salem. The couple retain five acres of the old Bowen family land claim, where they raise sheep and trees. The Agency, usually reluctant to grant permission for agents to write their experiences, in this case has relaxed its normal policy. A spokesman today declared that nothing in Thackrey’s book could be detrimental either to the Agency or to any agent now in the field. The publishers declare themselves delighted at this opportunity for publishing such an unusual account by this extraordinary writer.