The Magdalene Cipher Read online

  THE

  MAGDALENE

  CIPHER

  JIM HOUGAN

  Some people get better and better,

  even as they stay the course.

  This book is for them.

  Jeff Bale

  Kevin Coogan

  Gary Horne

  Pallo Jordan

  Norman Mailer

  Ron McRea

  Robin Ramsay

  Ben Sidran

  Judy Sidran

  Scott Spencer

  Joe Uehlein

  Carolyn, Daisy, and Matt

  “Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic.”

  Thomas Pynchon, V.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  2 May 1945

  Northern Italy

  Major Angleton floated through the moonless heavens above Sant’ Ambrogio, suspended in the night air by nylon cords and a canopy of black silk. He could see a line of fire burning along the forested ridge above the town, and wondered whether lightning or bombers were its cause. There was little else that he could see, still less to be heard, and only the wind to feel.

  To build the city of Dioce whose

  terraces are the colour of stars.

  As he drifted lower, the smell of wood smoke came at him from the nearby fires, a whiff of hyacinths and the fragrance of scrub pines. The pines were shadows, swelling against the dark hillside, until, quite suddenly, he was among them, falling past them, flying laterally across the face of the hill. And then, with a shock, he was on the ground, staggering forward on his heels, pulling against the chute, rolling it up. The air was cool.

  The major’s destination was a large and crumbling villa set amid ruined terraces on the slopes above where he’d landed. A soft yellow light spilled from the villa’s windows, gilding the untended vineyards that sprawled in every direction. Major Angleton unholstered his .45 and began walking up the hill until he felt the crunch of gravel underfoot and knew that he was in the courtyard. Crossing to a shuttered window, he peered between the slats. The man whom he’d been sent to find, reviled at home and hated in Europe, a poet of inestimable talents and a violent baiter of the Jews, sat at a worm-eaten library table, surrounded by books. He was writing by the light of a kerosene lantern in what appeared to be an enormous leather diary. Behind him, hanging askew from the cracked plaster wall, was a painting of Poussin’s, a small and wonderful oil in a cheap wooden frame.

  A soft breeze brought the scent of wisteria with it, and Major Angleton realized that he had been holding his breath, though he didn’t know for how long. The hand with the gun was clammy with perspiration.

  Leaving the window, he went to the villa’s door, sucked the cold night air into his lungs, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. The poet looked up, shocked to find an armed man so suddenly in front of him. Then his eyes focused on the soldier’s face, and his shock turned to incredulity. “Jim?” he asked.

  Angleton nodded.

  “Well . . . are you here to arrest me?”

  Angleton shook his head. His mouth was dry. “Helmsman,” he said, dropping to one knee and lowering his eyes. “Maestro di color che sanno. . . .”

  8 May 1945

  FROM: 15 Army Group 92 Division OSS, X-2

  TO: Commanding General Mediterranean Theater of Operations

  SIGNED: Maj. James J. Angleton

  American civilian writer EZRA LOOMIS POUND, reference FBI cable 1723, indicted for treason by grand jury, captured by Italian partisans 6 May at Sant’ Ambrogio. Held MTOUSA Disciplinary Training Center for confinement pending instructions on disposition. All security measures taken to prevent escape or suicide. No press. No privileges. And no interrogation.

  Ω

  Chapter 1

  13 December 1998

  London

  Dunphy huddled beneath the warm sheets, half-awake, his back to Clementine. He could feel the coldness of the room beyond the bed and sensed the gray London light seeping through the windows like a cloud. The time was anyone’s guess. Early morning. Or late. Or afternoon. Saturday, in any case.

  He mumbled something about getting up (or maybe not) and listened for her reply. “Mmmm,” she murmured, then arched her back and rolled away. “Dream . . .”

  He sat up with a low grumble, blinking himself awake. He swung his legs from the bed, pinched the sleep from his eyes, and got to his feet. Clementine whimpered and purred behind him as he shivered his way across the cold floor to the bathroom, where he brushed and spat. Filling his cupped hands with water from the tap, he lowered his face into the cold of it. “Jesus,” he gasped. And again.

  “Christ!” he whispered, and taking a deep breath, shook his head like a dog.

  The man in the mirror was thirty-two years old, broad-shouldered and angular. An inch over six feet, he had green eyes and straight black hair. The eyes glittered back at him from the surface of the mirror as Dunphy, dripping, pulled a towel from the rack, then buried his face in the raised letters of white pile.

  Dolder Grand.

  And that reminded him: he’d promised Luxembourg that he’d send a fax to Credit Suisse, inquiring about a wire transfer that had gone awry.

  There was no point in shaving. It was the weekend. He could jog to work, send the fax, do a bit of paperwork, and take the Underground back to the flat in time for lunch. Returning to the bedroom, then, he pulled a ragged sweatshirt from the dresser and dragged it over his head.

  Clementine remained in a fetal position, the sheets and covers bunched inefficiently above her knees. There was a quizzical look on her face as she slept, her lips slightly parted. Dunphy stood for a moment in the still, cold air of the room, wondering at her immaculate complexion, the paper-white skin brushed with pink and framed by a cascade of dark curls.

  It occurred to him to make love to her then and there, but the cold had had its effect. Shivering, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and white socks and jammed his feet into his running shoes. As he tied the laces, his eyes never left the soft parabola of hip beneath the sheets.

  Clementine shifted, turning onto her back. Dunphy stood. Maybe later—unless, as seemed likely, she’d returned to her own place.

  A sigh ran through him as he went out the door.

  Running was important to him. Though his life in London was a good one, it was suffused with a low-voltage anxiety that never really went away. He lived with a constant static charge of tension and a slight adrenal drain—the consequence, he knew, of spending his days in the cheap suit of a false identity.

  So he ran.

  He ran five times a week, about ten kilometers a day, following the same route from his apartment in Chelsea past the houseboats at Cheyne Walk, along the Embankment and across the Albert Bridge. This was the unple
asant part of the run. Even on Saturday mornings, the air was heavy with diesel fumes, the streets choked with trucks—lorries, he reminded himself—and cabs. There were a dozen streets to cross before he reached the Embankment, and, all in all, it was a dangerous way to stay in shape. Even after a year in England, Dunphy instinctively looked to the left for cars—which, of course, bore down upon him, horns blaring, from the right.

  The middle of the run was lovely, though. It took him into Battersea Park, along the south bank of the Thames, and past the park’s improbable pagoda. There was a sort of wildlife refuge among the trees, too pretty to be called a zoo. It held spotted deer and sheep, and a herd of wallabies that looked for all the world like prehistoric rabbits.

  In the early morning stillness and gloom, the wallabies reminded him of the statues on Easter Island, immobile against the hillside, gazing down at him with stony indifference. Dunphy smiled as he strode past the beasts, moving easily and with the virtuous feeling that the passing miles gave.

  This was the midpoint of his run, the place where he usually returned home the way that he had come. Today, however, he continued on through the park to Chelsea Bridge, across the Thames, and on to Millbank, heading toward his office in Gun House.

  It was bad tradecraft to run the same route every day but, then again, this was London, not Beirut. Running through the park, Dunphy was entirely at ease, not only with himself, but with the person that he was pretending to be.

  A light mist settled on him as he ran, soaking his sweatshirt, but never quite coalescing into rain. He was listening to the sound of his breathing and thinking about Clementine.

  He’d seen her for the first time only three months before, standing behind the cash register in a used bookstore on Sicilian Avenue, the one with the funny name. Skoob.

  And though Dunphy was not one to hustle clerks in bookstores, he’d known at a glance that if he didn’t talk to her (or as Merry Kerry would put it, if he didn’t chat her up), he’d never forgive himself. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, or that she had the longest waist he’d ever seen. It wasn’t just that, he told himself. There was something else, a sweet vulnerability that made him feel guilty for the cover story that he’d given her, and for the fact that when she whispered his name, it wasn’t really his name, but an alias.

  He’d make it up to her, he told himself, though he couldn’t say how. Coming upon Grosvenor Road, with his mind adrift in the Eden between Clementine’s navel and her knees, Dunphy glanced to the left and, striding out into the street, set off a fugue of horns and shrieking brakes that startled him into a reflexive sprint. A column of cars, taxis, buses, and trucks, approaching from the right, slammed on their brakes and, shuddering to a stop, erupted in curses.

  Dunphy waved ambiguously and kept on running, irritated with himself for succumbing to distraction. You have to be careful, he thought. In the business he was in, it was easy enough to get blindsided.

  Chapter 2

  Dunphy knew exactly when his skin began to crawl.

  He was seated at his desk in front of the computer, writing the letter to Credit Suisse, when the phone began to ring: the short, sharp, angry bursts that tell you you’re in England, not the States. Lifting the receiver to his ear, Dunphy heard Tommy Davis’s voice quavering against a background of airline departure announcements.

  British Airways, flight 2702—

  “Ja-ack?” Tommy asked.

  It was then, just then, that his skin began to move. Ever so slightly.

  —departing for Madrid.

  “Ja-aaa-ck?”

  Christ, Dunphy thought. Three syllables, and his voice rising at the end. We’re in for it.

  Syrian Arab Airlines—

  It didn’t take a genius. Even if Tommy had sounded normal, there was no good reason—no happy reason—that he should be calling. Their work was finished, and Tommy had been paid. That should have been the end of it.

  “Jack! For the love of Jay-sus! Talk to me! Are ya there, old son?”

  “I am, Tommy. What’s up?”

  “There’s a wee problem,” Tommy said, his voice a broad Irish brogue, flat with understatement. “I’ve only just heard about it myself. An hour ago.”

  “I see,” Dunphy remarked, holding his breath. “And what would this small problem be that it’s taken you to the airport?”

  “You can hear for yourself,” Tommy replied. “They’re talking about it on the Beeb.” Dunphy’s skin stopped crawling, got to its feet, and walked quickly away, leaving his carcass behind, stripped to the nerves in the swivel chair from Harrod’s.

  A deep breath. He blinked twice, sat up, and brought his lips close to the mouthpiece. His posture was suddenly perfect, his voice low and cold.

  “I don’t happen to have a radio in the office, Tommy. So what are we talking about? What’s the subject?”

  “Our professor.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, the poor man . . . I’m afraid he’s been injured.”

  “He’s been injured.”

  “Well—he’s dead, then.”

  “Was it an accident, Tommy?”

  “An accident? No, it wouldn’t be. Not under the circumstances. Not with his balls cut off—I shouldn’t think so.”

  “His balls—”

  “I have a plane to catch. If you need me, I’ll be drinkin’ in Frankie Boylan’s bar. You can reach me there.”

  And then the line was dead, and Dunphy didn’t feel well.

  Francis M. S. Boylan was a hard man who’d done a turn in the Maze for a string of bank robberies that he and Tommy had committed. Whether or not those robberies were politically motivated (the police described them as “fund-raisers for the IRA”), Boylan had taken the time to put aside enough of the loot to buy a small business. This was a bar on the south coast of Tenerife, overlooking the nude beach at Playa de las Americas. Tommy and his pals went to see him whenever their problems became unmanageable—which is to say, when they could not be solved by lawyers, guns, or money (or a combination of the three). Simply stated, the Broken Tiller was a hideout in the Atlantic, a hundred miles off the coast of Africa, two hundred miles south of the Rock, a hole in the twentieth century.

  Fuckin’ hell, Dunphy thought. The Canaries. Tenerife. His balls.

  His stomach clenched, turned over, and clenched again. The Beeb was on it.

  He let his eyes have their way with the room. It was a third-floor walk-up, a seedy redoubt amid the grime of Millbank. He liked it. The view through the window, spotted with rain, was gloomy and depressing: a wall of brick, a patch of gray sky, a peeling and faded billboard. ROTHMANS CIGARET E, it said.

  Dunphy had quit smoking nearly a year ago, but there was, he knew, a stale packet of Silk Cuts in his top desk drawer. Without thinking, he found one, lighted it, and inhaled. For a moment, nothing happened, and then he felt as if he was about to levitate. Then he coughed.

  There was no reason to panic, just because Tommy had. Looked at in an objective way, it was a matter of fact that Dunphy had paid Tommy to install an Infinity transmitter on the professor’s telephone. This had been done, and it had worked for more than a month. Admittedly, or at least seemingly, the professor had then been murdered, but there was no reason to believe that his death was in any way a consequence of Dunphy’s eavesdropping activity. Obviously, he told himself, he was in the midst of a terrible coincidence.

  Awkward, yes, but . . .

  These.

  Things.

  Happen.

  Except, as Dunphy well knew, they did not happen in England, or if they did, they did not happen in quite this way. If the professor had been done by professionals, by the SAS or some such outfit, there would have been two in the derby and one in the chest—and that would have been the end of it. But if Tommy was right, the poor bastard had been castrated—which meant that it was a sex crime, or something like it.

  He watched the soot stream down the windowpane until the phone rang for the second
time, jolting him into focus. He didn’t want to answer it. His stomach was a small balloon, filling slowly with air, wobbling toward his throat. The phone shrieked and shrieked again. Finally, he picked it up and held it in front of him, as if it were a snake.

  “Hullo?” He could hear the beep-beep-beep-beep of a public phone, the sound of coins dropping, and then, “Get out.”

  It was Curry, Dunphy thought, though he barely recognized the voice, which came at him in a strangled continuum of real-time burst transmissions. “Go-home!/Do-it-now!/Do-you-understand-me?”

  Jesus, Dunphy thought, he’s at a pay phone, and he’s got a handkerchief over the mouthpiece. “I think we need to talk,” Dunphy said.

  “Go home.”

  “Which a home?”

  “All the way home.”

  “What?!”

  “Flaps up. Do it now. Don’t bother packing, and don’t go to your flat. I’ll have a housekeeping team there in half an hour. They’ll ship your belongings in a couple of days.”

  Dunphy was stunned. “It’s Saturday,” he said. “I’m wearing sweats! I—I don’t even have my passport. How am I supposed to—”

  “You heard the news? I mean, you heard the fucking News at Ten a?!”

  “Yeah . . . sort of. I mean . . . my Irish friend just called and—Jesse, I have a life! Fahchrissake! I can’t just—”

  “You were supposed to clean up!”

  “We did clean up. I mean, he did—my man did. I told him to go over there—when was it? The day before yesterday.”

  “They found a device.”

  “A what a?!”