by William Boyd
She waited two hours for Morris at the theatre, sitting in the back row of the near-empty cinema, watching a succession of Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, and Tom and Jerry cartoons interspersed with newsreels that occasionally contained news of the war in Europe. ‘Germany’s war machine falters at the gates of Moscow,’ the announcer intoned with massive, hectoring insistence, ‘General Winter takes command of the battlefield.’ She saw horses floundering up to their withers in mud as fluid and gluey as melted chocolate; she saw exhausted, gaunt German soldiers with sheets tied around them as camouflage, numbly running from house to house; frozen bodies in the snow taking on the properties of shattered trees or outcrops of rock: iron-hard, wind-lashed, unmovable; burning villages lighting the thousands of Russian soldiers scurrying forward across the icy fields in counter-attack. She tried to imagine what was happening there in the countryside around Moscow – Moscow, where she had been born, and which she couldn’t remember at all – and found that her brain refused to supply her with any answers. Donald Duck took over, to her relief. People began to laugh.
When it was apparent Morris was not going to show up, and the theatre began slowly but surely to fill up as offices closed, she made her way back to the apartment. She was not that bothered – three out of four of these prearranged meetings never took place – it was too complex and too risky to try to alert people of a postponement or a delay, but worries still nagged at her. Or were they genuine worries? Perhaps her own curiosity about what Morris would have had to say made her more edgy and concerned. He would call in the fullness of time, she told herself; they would meet again; she would discover what he had discovered. Back in the apartment she checked the snares in her room – Sylvia had not been poking around, she was glad, almost stupidly happy, to note. Sometimes she grew tired of this endless, vigilant suspicion – how can you live like that, she thought? Always watching, always checking, always fearful that you were being betrayed and undone. She made herself a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette and waited for Morris to call.
Sylvia came home and Eva asked her – very by the way – had she seen Morris at the Center today? Sylvia said no, reminding her of just how many hundreds of people worked there now, how huge BSC had grown – like a giant business enterprise, two entire floors of the skyscraper filled, crammed, overflow offices on other floors – Morris could have been there for a week and she’d have still not seen him.
At about eight o’clock a slight but poisonous unease began to afflict Eva. She telephoned Transoceanic and was told by a duty clerk that Mr Devereux had not been in all day. She telephoned Angus Woolf at his apartment but his phone just rang and rang.
At nine Sylvia went out to see a movie – The Maltese Falcon – with a friend, leaving Eva alone in the apartment. She sat and watched the phone – a stupid thing to do, she knew, but she felt better for doing it, all the same. She tried to recall her last conversation with Morris. She could hear in her mind his quiet ‘Jesus Christ’ as something profound had struck him, some missing piece in the puzzle had fitted into place. It had been more shock in his voice, she decided, than alarm, as if this potential solution was so …so unexpected, so drastic, that it had drawn this exclamation from him spontaneously. He had fully intended to tell her, otherwise he wouldn’t have set up the cartoon-theatre meeting and, more importantly, he had wanted to tell her face to face. Face to face, she thought: why couldn’t he have told me in plain-code? I would have got the message. Too shocking for plain-code, perhaps. Too earth-shattering.
She decided to ignore procedure and call his apartment.
‘Yes,’ a man’s voice answered. American accent.
‘Could I speak with Elizabeth Wesley, please?’ she said, instantly Americanising her own voice.
‘I think you have the wrong number.’
‘So sorry.’
She hung up and ran to fetch her coat. In the street she found a taxi quickly and told it to go to Murray Hill. Morris lived there in a tall block of anonymous service apartments, as they all did. She made the taxi stop a couple of streets away and walked the rest of the distance. Two police patrol cars were parked outside the lobby entrance. She walked past and saw the doorman sitting behind his lectern, reading a news-paper. She hovered for five minutes, waiting for someone to go in and eventually a couple appeared who had their own key and she followed them quickly through the door, chatting – ‘Hi. Excuse me, you don’t happen to know if Linda and Mary Weiss are on the sixteenth or the seventeenth floor? I just left them and left my purse there. Five A – sixteen or seventeen. Just running out to a club. Can you believe it?’ – the man waved at the doorman, who looked up from his newspaper at the animated trio and looked down again. The couple didn’t happen to know the Weiss sisters but Eva rode up to the tenth floor with her new friends – where they exited – and then went on up to thirteen and came down the fire stairs to twelve, where Morris lived.
She saw two policemen and Angus Woolf standing outside the door to Morris’s apartment. Angus Woolf? What’s he doing here, she thought? And a nausea hit her stomach as she realised, almost immediately, that Morris must be dead.
‘Angus,’ she called quietly, walking down the corridor towards him, ‘what’s happened?’
Angus signalled to the cops that she was admissible and swung quickly toward her on his sticks.
‘You’d better get out, Eve,’ he said, his face pale, ‘this is System Blue, here.’
System Blue was as bad as it could get.
‘Where’s Morris?’ she asked, trying to keep her head, trying to seem calm and normal, knowing the answer.
‘Morris is dead,’ Angus said. ‘He killed himself.’ He was shocked and upset, she could tell: she remembered they had been colleagues, friends, for a long time, long before she’d arrived at AAS.
Eva felt her mouth go dry as if some small vacuum inside her was siphoning off all her saliva. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.
‘You’d better go, Eve,’ Angus repeated. ‘All kinds of shit are hitting the fan.’
And then Romer came out of Morris’s apartment to have a word with the policemen, turned, glanced down the passageway, and saw her. He strode towards her.
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘I’d arranged to meet Morris for a drink,’ she said. ‘He was late so I came over.’
Romer’s face was immobile, almost vacant, as if he were still taking in and computing the fact of Eva’s presence.
‘What happened?’ Eva said.
‘Pills and whisky. Doors locked, windows locked. A note that makes no sense. Something about some boy.’
‘Why?’ Eva said, unthinkingly, spontaneously.
‘Who knows? How well do we know anyone?’ Romer turned to Angus. ‘Call head office again. We need a big-wig on this one.’ Angus limped off and Romer turned back to her. Somehow she felt his whole attention was on her now.
‘How did you get in here?’ he asked her, his voice unfriendly. ‘Why didn’t the doorman ring up?’
Eva realised she had made a mistake: she should have gone to the doorman, not used her little subterfuge. That would have been normal: the normal, innocent thing a friend would do if another friend was late for a drink.
‘He was busy. I just came up.’
‘Or maybe you were looking for Elizabeth Wesley.’
‘Who?’
Romer chuckled. Eva realised he was too clever – and he knew her too well, anyway.
Romer looked at her, his eyes were cold: ‘Never underestimate the scrupulous resourcefulness of our Miss Dalton, eh?’
And she knew.
She felt a shrilling in her ears, a keening note of hysterical alarm. She put her hand on his arm.
‘Lucas,’ she said softly. ‘I want to see you tonight. I want to be with you.’
It was all she could do – it was pure instinct. She needed to buy a few seconds of time before he realised everything.
He looked over his shoulder at the policemen.
‘It’s i
mpossible,’ he said. ‘Not tonight.’
In those seconds she was thinking: he knows Morris and I have talked. He knows Morris told me something, which is why I came covertly into the building. He thinks I have the crucial information and he’s trying to calculate how dangerous I am. She saw his expression change as he turned back to her again. She could almost hear their two brains – supercharged – churning. Two turbines going in their separate directions.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I miss you.’ It might just throw him, she was thinking, this lover’s plea. Just over twenty-four hours ago we were making love – it might just throw him for five minutes.
‘Look – maybe,’ he said. He reached for her hand and squeezed it then let it go. ‘Stephenson wants to meet you. It seems Roosevelt’s going to mention your map in a speech next week – on the tenth. Stephenson wants to congratulate you himself.’
This is so far-fetched it might almost be true, she thought.
‘Stephenson wants to meet me?’ she repeated, dumbly. It seemed inconceivable. William Stephenson was BSC: it was his party, every nut and bolt – every cracker, cookie and slice of cake.
‘You’re our shining star,’ he said insincerely and looked at his watch. ‘Let me sort out this mess. I’ll pick you up outside your apartment at ten.’ He smiled. ‘And don’t tell Sylvia. All right?’
‘See you at ten,’ she said. ‘And then, afterwards, maybe we can …’
‘I’ll think of something. Listen, you’d better go before one of these cops takes your name.’
He turned and walked away towards the policemen.
As Eva rode down to the street in the elevator she began to calculate. She checked her watch: 8.45. Romer would be waiting for her outside her apartment at ten. When she didn’t show after five minutes he would know she was flying. She had just over an hour to disappear.
She decided she had no time to go back to the apartment – everything had to be left behind in the interests of immediate safety and flight. As she waited for a subway she checked what she had in her handbag: her Eve Dalton passport, some thirty dollars, a packet of cigarettes, lipstick, a compact. Was this enough, she wondered, smiling ruefully to herself, to start a new life?
On the train to Brooklyn she began to go back over that last encounter with Romer and slowly, methodically, examine all its implications. Why was she so suddenly, immediately convinced that Romer was somehow behind the events in Las Cruces and Morris Devereux’s death? Maybe she was wrong? …Maybe it was Angus Woolf. Maybe it had been Morris playing an elaborate game of entrapment with her, acting the innocent party? But she knew Morris hadn’t committed suicide: you don’t make a vitally important appointment and then decide to cancel it by ending your life. Romer had given nothing away, though, she had to admit – so why this unshakeable certainty? Why did she feel she had to fly now, at once, as though her life depended on it? The commonplace phrase disturbed her, made her come out in goose bumps – her life did depend on it, she realised. For Morris it was the fact that she hadn’t given the map to Raul that was the key indication, the essential clue. Why hadn’t she given the map to Raul? Because she had inspected it and found it wanting. Who told her to check the merchandise? No one.
She heard Romer’s voice, her lover’s voice, as if he were standing beside her: ‘Never underestimate the scrupulous resourcefulness of our Miss Dalton, eh?’
That was what had clinched it for her. That was what had made her understand what Morris had seen. She couldn’t see the whole picture, how the game was meant to end, but she had realised, standing talking to Romer outside poor dead Morris’s flat, that Romer had sent her on the Las Cruces mission, knowing one thing for sure: he knew – absolutely, confidently – that she would never hand over merchandise without examining it. He knew her, he knew completely what she would do in that situation. She felt a blush of shame glow on her face as she came to terms with the fact that she could be so easily read, so perfectly programmed and positioned. But why feel shame, she said to herself, with a little flare of anger? Romer knew she would never be an automatic, press-all-the-buttons, courier – that was why he had volunteered her for the job. It had been the same at Prenslo – she used her initiative, took spontaneous decisions, made hard judgements. And the same with Mason Harding. Her head began to reel: it was as if he had been testing her, evaluating how she behaved in these circumstances. She suddenly thought: had Romer put the FBI crows on to her as well, knowing, confident, that she would lose them – and thereby rouse suspicions? She began to feel outmanoeuvred, as if she were playing chess with a grandmaster who was always working ten, twenty, thirty moves ahead. But why would Lucas Romer want her dead?
In the Brooklyn apartment she went straight to the bathroom and took down the medicine cabinet from the wall. She pulled away the loose brick behind it and removed her Margery Allerdice passport and a small wad of dollar bills: she had nearly 300 dollars saved. As she rehung the cabinet she paused.
‘No, Eva,’ she said out loud.
She had to remember this – she could never forget this – she was dealing with Lucas Romer, a man who knew her all too well, as well as anybody had ever known her in her life, it seemed. She sat down, almost giddy with the thought that had just come to her: Romer wanted her to fly, he was expecting her to fly – it would be much easier to deal with her if she was on the run, far from home. So think, she urged herself – double-think, triple-think. Put yourself in Romer’s mind – assess his knowledge and opinion of you, Eva Delectorskaya – and then surprise him.
She reasoned to herself: Romer would not have fallen for her heartfelt invitation to spend the night together, not for one second. He would know that she suspected him; he would know that she didn’t believe Morris had killed himself. He probably knew, also, that it was over the second she appeared in the corridor outside Morris’s apartment and therefore his suggestion to meet at ten was almost an invitation for her to fly. She was suddenly aware that she didn’t have a head start: not an hour, not half an hour – she had no time at all.
She left the apartment immediately, wondering if Romer would be aware of its address. She thought not, and as she walked down the street she confirmed that no one was following her. She slipped her Eve Dalton passport through a grating in the gutter and heard it splash gently in some water below. She was now Margery Allerdice – someone Romer knew, of course; he would know all the aliases he provided for his agents – Margery Allerdice would only take her so far.
But take her where? she thought, as she hurried on to the subway station. She had two clear simple choices: south to Mexico or north to Canada. As she deliberated she found herself wondering what Romer would expect her to do. She had just come from the Mexican border – would he assume she would head back, or go north – the other way? She saw a cab cruising by and hailed it. Take me to Penn Station, she said – south, then, to Mexico, the best decision, it made sense – she knew how and where to cross the border.
On the cab journey she continued to ponder the ramifications of this plan. Train – was that the right thing to do? He wouldn’t expect her to take a train: too obvious, too easy to check, easier to be trapped on a train – no, Romer would think bus or car, so taking a train might actually buy her some time. She kept thinking about Romer and the way his mind worked as she crossed the East River, heading for the lucent towers of Manhattan, aware that only this would ensure her survival. Eva Delectorskaya versus Lucas Romer. It wouldn’t be easy – more to the point, he had trained her, everything she knew came from Romer, handed down in one way or another. So the thing to do was turn his own methods, his own little tricks and specialities, against him … But she just needed a little time, she realised, weakly, just a day or two’s start on him, time enough to cover her tracks, make it harder for him …She huddled down in the back of the cab: it was a chilly November night – some Mexican sun would be nice, she thought, some Brazilian sun. Then she realised she had to go north. She reached over and tapped the taxi driver on t
he shoulder.
At Grand Central she bought a ticket for Buffalo – twenty-three dollars – and handed over two twenties. The clerk counted out her change and gave her the ticket. She said thank you and walked away, waiting until he had served two other customers, before she came back to the booth, interrupting the next transaction and said, ‘This is change for forty. I gave you a fifty.’
The row was impressive. The ticket clerk – a middle-aged man with a middle parting so severe that it looked like it was shaved in place – refused to budge or apologise. An under-manager was called; Eva demanded to see a supervisor. The crowd waiting in line became restive – ‘Hurry it up there, lady!’ somebody shouted – and Eva rounded on them, crying that she had been cheated out of ten dollars. When she began to weep the under-manager led her away to an office where, almost instantly, she calmed down and said she would be in touch with her lawyers. She made a point of writing down the under-manager’s name – Enright – and the ticket clerk’s – Stefanelli – and warned him that he and Stefanelli had not heard the last of this, no sirree: when the Delaware & Hudson Railway started robbing its innocent customers somebody had to stand up and fight.
She walked back across the huge concourse, feeling quite pleased with herself – she was surprised at just how easily she had managed to produce genuine tears. She went to a more distant booth and bought another ticket, this time for Burlington. The last train was leaving in three minutes – she ran down the ramp to the platform and boarded it with thirty seconds to spare.