Still not quite believing that Lucien had allowed her out of the house, she dropped her cigarette in the gutter, crossed to the box office and bought a ticket, expecting at any moment to feel Mr. Morose’s hand on her arm.
But, unmolested, she took her ticket and walked into the overheated lobby, mingling with the mainly older, moneyed, art-house crowd. She bought a cup of coffee but disdained the snacks on offer—her Godiva chocolates waited in her purse.
She’d removed them from the refrigerator and stashed them in her Chanel bag as Lucien had watched the kitchen TV that burbled on about the Fingergate scandal—her husband cropping up in almost every news report as “the disgraced ex-CIA operative Lucien Benway.”
His eyes had been on the screen but she knew he was observing her reflection, illuminated by the interior light of the Viking refrigerator, as she removed the Belgian chocolates and placed them in her purse.
She was proud of this little piece of tradecraft. It was vital that Lucien believe she was intending nothing but an evening watching a film that he found pretentious and boring.
He’d muted the TV and turned to her saying, “This campaign against me is in danger of metastasizing and I can’t afford to show any vulnerability. I’m counting on your support, Nadja. The sharks are circling and there can’t be any blood in the water.”
“Dear god, Lucien, what a mélange of metaphors. You must be upset.”
“I’d caution you to remember that you are dependent on my goodwill and kindness.”
She’d bitten back a sarcastic retort and shut her purse, the little click of its clasp like a gunshot in the echoing kitchen and manufactured a smile that was all innocence.
“Naturally, Lucien,” she’d said, as obedient as a chattel slave.
Nadja took her coffee and made her way into the cinema, enchanted as always by its huge screen and rows of padded seats.
She seated herself on an aisle and drank her coffee and ate a chocolate she had no appetite for, watching the giant images of Monica Vitti and Alain Delon on the screen, still expecting her husband or his creature to materialize in the doorway, observing her.
But neither of them appeared and, even though she’d seen the film too many times to count, Nadja was drawn into the tale of the beautiful woman who leaves an older lover and then has an affair with a young stockbroker.
The last time she’d seen the film, as a Netflix download, had been with Michael Emerson, lying naked on his bed after hours of lovemaking, drinking wine and smoking, and now, watching Vitti and Delon embrace, she felt a sudden lurch, as if something deep inside her had broken free and was falling into endless space.
She closed her eyes and she was back in that bed with Michael, smelling his scent, feeling his semen still warm and tacky inside her.
Michael had reached for the remote and paused the film and turned to her.
“Why do you stay with him, Nadja?”
“Michael, please, not now.”
“Answer me.”
“He saved me.”
“Is that enough?”
She’d laughed. “He quite literally saved my life. Yes, I’d say that’s enough.”
“So you’re content now to live half a life?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Aren’t you?”
She’d touched the hair on his chest. “I feel completely alive now.”
“And why is that?”
She’d lit a cigarette to cover her discomfort. “Come on, Michael, let’s watch the film.”
Nadja had reached for the remote but his hand had covered hers and he’d turned her face to his.
“He doesn't make love to you, does he?”
“Michael . . .”
“Does he?”
“No.”
“Has he ever?”
“No.”
“Has he ever even kissed you?”
She’d sighed smoke. “No.”
“But he condones your promiscuity?”
“Yes.”
“Welcomes it even?”
She’d said nothing. Smoked. Drank. Stared at the frozen image of the lovers on the screen.
He’d moved so that she was forced to look at him.
“He’s trapped you, Nadja. And you’ve enabled him to. Why?”
She’d felt a rush of anger. “What do you fucking know, Michael, with your bloody American certainties? What were you doing when you were fourteen? Playing Little League?”
“Actually, I was playing Junior League by then.”
“Well, I was lying on my back being raped by a Serbian colonel who passed me around his troops for sloppy seconds when he was done. This went on for a year until Lucien saved me and brought me here.”
“I get it, Nadja. I do. But you can move on now.”
“What are you saying, Michael?”
He’d taken her fingers and kissed them and said, “I know that I’m risking everything by saying this, but I love you, Nadja. I fucking love you.”
She hadn’t replied, not ready.
Not yet.
Hadn’t replied with words but the sex that had followed immediately after this declaration had been transcendent.
And now he was gone.
On the big screen the Roman cityscape was blurred by her tears and she delved into her purse for a Kleenex and dabbed her eyes and washed her dry, heaving throat with coffee.
Then Nadja tossed the empty Styrofoam cup under the seat in front of her and stood and made her way out of the theater where she flagged down a cab and ordered the driver to take her to the bar where Michael Emerson’s wake was being held.
FORTY-SEVEN
Philip Danvers sat by the fireside in his living room listening to Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies”, sipping a glass of Cutty Sark and smoking the single cigarette he permitted himself each night. The melancholy beauty of the music, in combination with the Scotch, the mildly narcotic tobacco and the industrial-strength painkillers he swallowed by the fistful, infused the room with a dreamlike quality, and Danvers, in the way of very old men, found himself dozing.
The Satie ended and, with a series of delicate clucks, the turntable arm lifted and settled itself back in its cradle.
Danvers roused himself, set down his glass, stood, and, willing away the spike of agony that defied the analgesics, crossed to the stereo perched beneath shelves of long playing records, lifted the plastic lid of the turntable and sheathed the disc in its sleeve which he returned to the shelf.
He spent a moment pondering his vast collection before he withdrew another LP—the Fischer-Dieskau and Weissenborn rendition of Schubert’s lieder—and settled it on the turntable. When he lifted the curved tone arm from its little cradle the record started to rotate slowly and he gently lowered the stylus onto the grooved vinyl.
There was a sucking hiss, like distant surf breaking, before the trill of Weissenborn’s piano and Fischer-Dieskau’s honeyed voice rose through the static.
Had Danvers allowed himself to be seduced by the digital era each note and phrase would have been rendered with sterile clarity, but the vinyl, despite the surface noise and ticking scratches, had a warmth, a humanity, that made the record uniquely his, the way the dog-eared pages and broken spines branded his books forever his and his alone.
He returned to his chair, closed his eyes and lost himself in the music until he heard the low rumble of a powerful engine in the driveway and the crunch of tires on the gravel.
Danvers recognized the car and wondered, for a moment, whether he should trek upstairs to where he kept a handgun.
He dismissed the thought and sipped his drink, waiting for the knock on the front door.
When it came Danvers walked to the door and opened it, seeing the pale bulk of Dudley Morse standing behind Lucien Benway, who looked small enough to be the big man’s glove puppet.
The noxious Lilliputian winked and said, “Hello, Philip. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in?”
By way of an answer Danvers ste
pped back and gestured for the men to enter.
Benway, who’d been to the house on several occasions years before, walked into the living room and made a show of warming himself at the fire, rubbing his palms together and smiling a counterfeit smile.
Morse stood beneath the archway to the hall, his hands behind his back.
“Sit, Lucien,” Danvers said and the little man lowered himself to the chesterfield, the toes of his boots just brushing the floor.
Danvers crossed to the sideboard and lifted the bottle of Cutty Sark. “Drink?”
“Why not?” Benway said. “For old times.”
Danvers poured an inch of Scotch into a cut glass tumbler, used tongs to add two cubes of ice from a bucket, and took the drink across to Benway who raised it and said, “Here’s mud in your eye.”
A salutation stolen from Danvers. Along with his accent and locutions.
No matter, there had been more egregious thefts.
Danvers seated himself, hands on his knees, and stared at Benway. “So?”
Benway took a sip of the Scotch, pursed his lips in a moue of distaste and set the glass down on the side table. “I needn’t ask if you’ve been following this Kate Swift debacle?”
“The Fingergate scandal? Quite the story. And there you’d had me believing that Kate was hiding out in Moscow having bikini waxes with Anna Chapman.”
Benway smirked. “I only reported what I heard.”
“So you say.” The old man coughed a phlegmy laugh.
“I’m here to tell you that I’ll play, Philip.”
Danvers raised his eyebrows, a pair of caterpillars crawling up the corrugations of his brow. “Play?”
“Yes. We both know that you saw Kate Swift in Berlin and directed her toward Harry Hook in balmy Thailand. We both know that he authored this finger business. A classic piece of Hookian opportunism. And we both know that Kate, and her child, are alive and well and slurping Tom Yum soup and getting suntans.”
“We do?”
“Yes, we do.”
“Well.”
“Who gave you the finger? The Plumber?”
“Hardly. He’s always been very polite.”
Benway allowed a small smile. “That’s very funny, Philip.”
“Thank you.”
“Surely you understand, Philip, that the Plumber is using you? He surrendered the finger so you could do what you did: stir up the media and embarrass the administration. The Plumber hasn’t survived all these years by being shortsighted, he’s looking ahead to his next master. Preparing the ground, if you like.”
“Fascinating.”
“Now, I’m happy to see this administration embarrassed.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“And, despite my history with Kate Swift, I’m prepared to go along with all of this. To swallow the fiction that she died in an Asian rice paddy. Bygones, I say. Bygones.”
“That’s big of you, Lucien.”
The little man blinked this away. “When it becomes tough to swallow is when I get dragged into this mess, when I’m associated with the downing of that plane. I smell a scapegoat turning slowly on a spit. Me.”
“Colorfully put.”
“If you’re the person who tied me to this story, untie me. If not, use your influence to direct the media hounds in another direction.”
“You’re overestimating me, Lucien. I’m just an old man watching the world from his fireside.”
“Bullshit.” For just a moment the careful diction slipped, but Benway composed himself. “David Burke is your useful idiot, mouthing lines scripted by you. Take his focus away from me.”
“I’m tired, Lucien. And old. Too old to play these games.”
“Fix this Philip.”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll send Morse to Thailand to track down Kate Swift and her spawn and prove they’re still alive.” Benway stood. “And then he’ll kill them both.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Kate sat at the kitchen table of the bungalow, sweating in the yellow light of a paraffin lamp, waving away mosquitoes, sipping a tepid Chang beer. What with the chaos of the day nobody had thought to stock up on gasoline and the generator had spluttered and died just after dark, stilling the fans and the lights.
Harry Hook had fished four paraffin lamps out of a kitchen closet and lit them with his lighter. He’d taken one into the living room and delighted Suzie with—Kate had to grudgingly admit—a surprisingly skillful display of hand shadow puppetry, casting birds and hares and wolves and galloping horses on the walls of the room.
Then—there was no end to his showmanship—he’d asked Kate if he could take the child down to the beach and show her the marine phosphorescence these waters were famous for.
She’d nodded and said, “Not for too long. And stay where I can see you, Suze, okay?”
Kate stood on the balcony watching as Hook walked the girl down to the water, Suzie yelping as giant fruits bats wheeled overhead, and took her into the shallows, stirring the water and igniting the phosphorescence that surrounded them like glimmers of fairy dust, the girl’s laughter and delighted squeals carrying up to her.
By the time Kate had got Suzie washed and into bed there was no sign of Hook and JP, and Kate wondered if they were out on the beach smoking weed.
So she sat and drank beer and sweated and, despite herself, felt curiously happy that the day was ending very differently from the way it had begun.
Once they’d got back to the island on the Zodiac—mother and daughter abandoning the long-tail amidst poly-lingual protests from the boatmen and the tourists—Kate and Hook had grabbed a moment in the bedroom of the bungalow to talk about what had happened in Washington, Hook firing up JP’s iPad and showing her the bearded David Burke raining down righteous indignation and hinting at dark conspiracies.
“Who is that guy?” Kate asked.
“I have no idea,” Hook said, “but since Benway is getting drawn into this, I’m prepared to wager that Mrs. Danvers does.”
“So, Philip found you your songbird?”
“Yes, I believe he did.”
And then the day had belonged to Suzie, and Kate had looked on as all of her daughter’s unhappiness was washed away by Harry Hook at his most seductive.
Hook, alone, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure.” She pointed at a chair.
He sat. “I had no idea that you were my daughter. That I had a daughter.”
“I know that.”
“How long have you known about me?”
“A long time.”
“Does Philip know?”
“Yes. My mother died when I was fourteen and she left me a letter telling me you were my father. When I was eighteen I started digging into your background and it led to the Agency and they thought it was a security breach. Then Philip saw I was just a kid.”
“A formidable and resourceful kid.”
She shrugged. “He must have thought so. He recruited me.”
“Smart guy. He always had an eye for talent. We never overlapped?”
“No, while I was in training you were busy melting down and by the time I graduated you were gone. Philip explained your fragile condition and asked that I leave you be. I agreed.”
Hook cracked a can of Coke and took a sip. “Tell me about your mother.”
“She was in publishing. Worked for a small outfit that didn’t make much money. We lived in Manhattan. She never married, always told me that my father was dead. She was a good mother. I loved her.”
“What was her name?”
“Sarah Swift.’
“I don’t remember her.”
“I know.”
“We’re talking the mid-eighties. When I was Stateside, which wasn’t often, I partied hard. Booze and chemicals. I remember sticking a straw in a big Bufferin bottle of killer coke before I hit the New York clubs. I guess that’s when I met her?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not sure why I’m apologizing, but . . .”
“Don’t apologize. It was her decision to have me. And not to tell you.”
“Yeah, okay.” He fiddled with the tab of the can, then he looked up at her. “What happened to her?”
“She died on 9/11.”
He narrowed his eyes. “The Towers?”
“No. In a car wreck in New Jersey. She’d been at a bookstore in Hackensack when the planes hit and she was trying to get back to Manhattan, to me, and collided with a bus and that was that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
There was a silence, and they listened to the wash of the ocean and the drone of mosquitoes and then, to fill the void, Kate reached for the iPad and searched the news sites and found a White House press briefing, the press secretary at the podium saying that it had taken time to verify, the administration didn’t want to misinform, but yes, they could now confirm that Kate Swift, and presumably her daughter, Susan, had perished on AirStar Flight 2605.
The press secretary paused meaningfully. “Kate Swift betrayed her country but the loss of the lives of her and her daughter is no less tragic for that.”
“So it worked?” Kate said, looking up at Hook who loomed over her shoulder. “Your crazy fucking plan? It seems that I’m dead.”
“Yes.” Hook smiled and ran a hand through his hair and said, “Which, if you know your New Testament, is the necessary precursor to being resurrected.”
FORTY-NINE
Even though she was thirty-two, child-sized Janey Burke still got carded going into bars. Every fucking time. Now, she wasn’t the world’s most ardent barfly, but she and David hit D.C. cocktail lounges a couple of times a month and got pleasantly loaded and then headed back home to make the bedsprings wail, and it’d become a habit to enter a drinkery with her driver's license in her hand, ready to have it scrutinized.
Bearded, bearlike David, who, ironically, was a year younger than his tiny wife, never got asked for ID. While Janey went through the formalities he just stood with his hands big as catcher’s mitts bulging out his pockets and a stupid grin on his face, whistling “Young Girl” which had been funny maybe the first half-dozen or so times but now was just a pain in the ass.
The Truth Itself Page 15