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Two gentlemen tramped through the gorse, destined for no particular place yet quite determined in their stride. The bracken and oat grass wet their leggings to mid-calf. A Dalmatian kept pace. The men were adequately dressed for the chill that rolled down from the Grampians and fell over the steep cliffs onto the North Sea. Although grouse were abundant, they carried no shotguns. Hands thrust deep in their mackintoshes, they wore identical gray short-brimmed hats with green-banded feathers.

They were both about sixty. Each carried a bit more weight than a decade ago. The taller man wore his in the legs, his rear and midriff. The other was of average height and build, a slight bulk around his chest and shoulders. He worked his way confidently along the path, taking the first steps over walls, along inclines, looking for the best path for his less able partner who walked with a limp.

The dog sensed a bird and froze, ears out and his tail straight, pointing at a clump of weeds the men had begun to circle. Its breath flagged a cloud of vapor and they stopped to watch him. He relaxed, looked up at the taller man for reassurance that he had done the correct thing for so old a bush dog.

“Good chap, Winner! Good dog,” the tall man said, reaching down to scratch his head.

“Grouse?” The strong man ventured, his muscular shoulders hunched forward against the cold wind that managed its way into his coat.

“Likely a thrush.”

They paused, stared alternately at the wide thicket of tall grass and offered approving glances at the dog. The solid gray overcast hung low along the cliff, high above the coastal road and the tumult of the rock-strewn shore.

“A bird in the bush, I suppose.”

The tall man looked at him. A fine spray of mist separated them. They walked around the clump, and the dog abandoned the prey to pick up their pace. A rock wall appeared beyond the mound with a narrow opening to accommodate the trail. They found the passage, and stepped over fallen stones. The tall man bent over to reposition a rock on the edge of the barrier and the other helped him.

“It’s why you came,” the tall man said, and stuck his fists on his hips and admired the way the wall had survived the hard winter frosts.

“You could say that.”

The muscular man considered his host. The tall man’s eyes, set deep and dark, always looked out of his thin face with the practiced blank of a professional. During their many years in Washington, he had admired that ability to conceal what went on inside the man’s mind. He could still do it.

“I didn’t come for that alone, but as long as you’ve brought it up we may as well talk about it.”

“What is there to say, Jeffrey? The inquisitors did their duty long ago.”

His visitor listened and stared at the stones, stirred his feet in the path and chose not to develop the subject. He spread his lips slightly, neither a frown nor a smile. It was the grimace that follows the recurrence unpleasant memories.

The fresh breeze whipped faster and deposited large raindrops on their coats, beating like the tap of fingers. The tall man raised his eyes at the threaten grays a hundred feet overhead.

“Sea’s changed, Jeffrey. We ought to go back and light a warm fire.”

The peat flared and snapped between the iron stanchions, but it offered little room light. Darkness hid the corners. They settled with snifters of Speyside malt and a selection from the owner’s humidor, Cuban Montecristos he bought by the box. The earthy fire’s aroma filled the space and warmed their drying legs. Jeffrey Downs faced Ambrose Merritt across the latter’s coffee table and it was the visitor who spoke first.

“Thanks for the loan of the coat. Ambrose. Sorry I didn’t come better prepared for your weather.”

“Not like your precious Malta at all, Jeffrey. I enjoy the extremes of this climate. Keeps me fit and ready for anything.”

“It’s been exactly seven years this month, Ambrose, since we scattered to the winds. I never thought you’d last the first winter up here.”

“The Mediterranean seems to suit you fine. What do you do in that miserable place?”

“Malta’s good for me. I travel. Last year I went to Egypt and I spent a few weeks in Anatolia. I’m close enough to enjoy getting around without tediously long flights. And I do receive visitors.”

“People actually visit that rock?” He swirled his scotch and flicked ash off his cigar.

“Family and old friends. They call and invite themselves down. I met the Bonhams in Rome. We spent a few days there and I toured Venice with them. Remember Terry?”

The host tapped an ash into their common tray, and raised his face to the ceiling. “Bonham. Wasn’t he in our Miami bunch?”

Jeffrey smiled and said, “He was.” A silence followed, filled with the hiss from a wet piece of fuel. The dog lay near the fire, but only his nose and paws were visible.

“And how is he getting along? Is he still with the outfit?”

“He is. He’s become a political with connections at the new White House. He moved up to Liaison.” Jeffrey swirled his own glass, held it so the fiery glow showed through the amber liquid and sparkled like a multifaceted mirror in a roller skating rink. “We discussed some loose ends.”

“Such as?” The host made a point to force the issue. He knew why his guest had come. It made little sense to equivocate, and the discussion was taking a long time to work around the niceties.

“In Venice one day, the wives decided to stay at the beach on Lido Island. Terry and I took a vaporetto to St. Mark’s. On the way he brought it up. It hasn’t been settled, you know. They still believe one of us was involved.”

“He told you this? Were you that close to Terry Bonham?”

“Not friends, if you know what I mean. We worked together in Miami, and I think he was warning me that it wasn’t finished.”

Merritt sipped again and looked his visitor in the eye. The fire sparkled. The Dalmatian stirred, and then went back to sleep.

“And as I said - birds in bushes. You’ve come to Scotland about it?”

“That’s one reason for being here. Yes.”

“Not in an official capacity?”

“Only for my own satisfaction, Ambrose.”

The host got up and excused himself while he went out to his pantry for a tin of biscuits. The visitor savored the aromas of peat from the fire and the exquisite single malt whisky. The crackling fireplace and the darkened room comforted him. Merritt returned and offered him something to chew.

“Thank you,” Jeffrey said, taking a small stack of sugar cookies. “You and I were always capable of sharing truth under the circumstances. In our profession, truth was not a standard by any means, but we did take the time to be careful about each other. I always thought it was the respect we had for one another that made it that way.”

“I think that goes back to when you came into the service, when I first met you in Johnson’s war, Jeffrey. You and I were magnificent there, and I treasured working with you. While I was your handler then, I always knew you would pass me up one day. You had the ambition, the inclination.”

Jeffrey finger-stirred his drink, and he continued. “When I took over the last operation and moved my shop to Miami, I asked you to come along because I valued your advice as well as your skills. It surprised me when you said you wanted to run the home desk. I thought working in the field with me was something you wanted to do.”

“So close to retirement, I decided to stay at home plate, Jeffrey. Didn’t feel I was spry enough for poking around in the woods. As it turned out, I enjoyed it, keeping track of you down there in the hustings.”

“You did a fine job for us. But that brings up the matter again, you see. Trexler’s disappearance.”

“Of course it does. What else would you be here to talk about?” Ambrose nearly shouted. Impatience crept to his face. He looked right at Downs and brought his snifter to his lips.

“If I’m making this difficult for you, I apologize. It’s just that I wanted to get to the subject without being abrupt. May I go on?”

“Please do, but I know what you’re getting at. Cut the bull. Come to the point.”

“I will. When the whole bucket of mud fell apart, when the operation collapsed, we had a meeting about the consequences and tried to figure out what happened. Remember? We noticed the concurrence of message traffic between Moscow Center and their Embassy in Mexico City. We discovered many coincidental items that pointed to someone in the Miami team feeding them information via Mexico. Two broken messages referred to meetings and times that could only be known by a member of our own team - in Miami. That brought us to the conclusion that someone in our team was working for the other side.”

The host nodded agreement, deep in thought and regret. He had coordinated from his desk at Langley, while his guest had commanded the field office in Florida. Everything that occurred had come to his attention. They both knew every last detail.

“We made the decision to complete a report - pointing out the discrepancies and the opposition’s traffic - and hand it to Counterintelligence. They went to work on it, and we went on with our fading careers. The failure hurt us both. We wanted to go out the door with a bang, didn’t we, Ambrose?”

“You could say that.” The tall man looked over at him, both their faces flickered like movie characters in the faint red light that came from the fireplace.

“But not quite the way we expected. We were both out in three months, and we blamed it on politics. Irangate never quite got to the meat of what we knew, but nevertheless it was a primary reason for our departures. While I had my own suspicions about the leak in Miami, there was nothing I could do about it. It was all in the hands of Counterintelligence, and we wanted them to find out who the rat had been. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t around long enough to find out.”

“Oh but we were,” said the host.

“Pardon me?”

“We knew. I knew. It had to be Trexler. He sold us. The CI snoops found him out right away. He went to Juarez three times during the operation. He crossed the bridge at El Paso and called his opposite contact from Juarez. They dug up the telephone records and the dates he was in El Paso matched the telephone calls.”

“Why wasn’t I informed about it before they sent us packing?”

“Jeffrey, they didn’t have a chance. Trexler disappeared before they could pull him in. We were the only scapegoats left. So, we absorbed the critical blame. They fired you and retired me.”

The two men watched the fire and the dog began to run in his sleep. The wind howled and rain pelted the windows behind them.

“After the operation fell apart, I wanted to lash out at someone. I had to find a way of releasing all my pent-up frustration. We had come so close to success. It would have been our finest one, you know. Then when it all collapsed, I had to make somebody pay.”

Jeffrey listened and decided not to ask for clarification. It would come soon enough.

“After I got pulled from the desk they put me in the records detail for the operation. I ferreted out the truth about Trexler in Juarez and gave it to the investigators. CI told me they did not have enough to charge him with. I insisted that they work at it harder, and they told me to keep out of the affair. Instead, I dug deeper. I discovered that nearly every operation Trexler worked on had resulted in exposure or tactical failure. He had a record like Attila the Hun.”

Jeffrey saw the look in his friend’s eyes. It reminded him of a wounded man pleading for a drug to relieve pain. Ambrose went on with his story.

“When they told me he wasn’t going to be charged, I took things into my own hands. I watched him and waited. All the time, I kept him in sight. I knew where he lived and where he spent his weekends. When it looked like he would get away with it, I acted.”

Stillness wrapped the room and the wind died away. The dog stirred and stretched his legs. A timber creaked. The fire had consumed itself, and peat ashes dropped to the hearth, whitened and spent.

“I followed him out on Chesapeake Bay. He was in his little sailboat, a twenty-two footer. I borrowed a skiff, and I went out on the water about a half-mile from where he had anchored. I put on my scuba gear and swam to his boat. He was surprised when I popped up over the side. We said hello, and I asked for a drink. When he started down to his cabin, I broke his neck.”

“What did you do with the body?”

“I pulled up his anchor, cut it loose and tied him to it with metal cable. I found some ballast sandbags on board, and I weighted him with them. I pushed him overboard, jumped in the water and securely fastened him to the bottom. He would never float to the surface, I made certain of it. Then I set the boat to drift south. I swam to the skiff and sailed it back. Nobody ever asked where I had been that day.”

“They certainly asked me, Ambrose. I had to come up with an alibi. I happened to be with friends at my home, so it wasn’t trouble. Why do you think didn’t they ask you?”

“I believe they were afraid that I would tell them what they didn’t want to hear. Anyway, he officially disappeared. No corpus delecti. They didn’t suspect anyone had done him in. The first suspicions were that he had fled the country, gone to ground somewhere. Then they thought he was in Moscow. They never did figure it out. Why an alibi? What did they tell you?”

“It was a perfunctory interview, on the day I got my notice. That was only two or three days after Trexler came up missing. But let me ask you something. It has nothing to do with recrimination or assigning blame. I want to know how you managed to keep this secret for the past seven years.”

“That’s our old craft, Jeffrey. Keeping secrets. The man was a traitor. He did things that wreaked havoc on our friends, our allies, and the nation. He ruined a damned good operation. He smashed careers. I have no regrets.”

Jeffrey placed his glass on the table between them and sighed, looking at his companion. The man lived alone on these sheer cliffs at the edge of nowhere. He held the secret to his breast for a long time, but now another shared it with him. He wanted to find the words to say that, to reassure his host that the two of them could bear the burden better than one. But the words never came. Instead, after a long silence, the visitor got up, laid a forefinger to his lips, and then gave the man a thumbs-up sign with the same hand.

“Ambrose, where do you keep your malt? It’s a night to really get wasted.”

“Second cabinet from the sink. Are we through with this discussion, Jeffrey?”

“All I’ve heard tonight is wind and fire, Ambrose. You’ve been dreaming about something, some other place, some other time.” He went to get the bottle.

©2004 Jon L. Adams