“What were who talking about when?”
“What were the president and Harkness talking about in the library?”
“You’re a curious one, aren’t you.”
“Why didn’t you let them know you were there?”
He didn’t answer. As they neared their home and she realized that he wasn’t going to tell her anything, she felt foolish and angry but didn’t wish to spoil the night. Remembering Jackie’s breathy purr, she softly asked again, “Tell me. I’m your wife. You know it doesn’t go any further than this car.”
He turned onto their street, the cambered road tilting her toward him, and she kissed his ear and whispered, “Tell.”
He pulled irritably away. They were at the driveway now, their headlamps sweeping the dark house. She said, “Why on earth wouldn’t Marcie leave a light on?”
Emmett was out of the car, running into the house. He rushed into the living room and turned on a lamp. When she arrived a second afterward, she found Emmett strangely frozen, and Lenore sitting on the couch with her bare feet tucked under her dressing gown. Suzanne thought Lennie had been left home all alone, but then a man stepped out of the shadows at the far end of the room.
Chapter Two
“I let the babysitter go,” said John Norfield.
Suzanne went to Lenore, “Are you all right?”
“We were sitting in the dark,” Lennie observed.
“She doesn’t mind the dark,” John said. “Do you.”
“No.” Lennie seemed unafraid but far too alert; it might have been noon. Suzanne thought, She should be afraid, why isn’t she afraid?
Emmett went back outside to the car on the driveway and closed its doors. When he returned to the house, he was carrying Suzanne’s evening bag. He gave it to her, then went to check the rest of the house. They heard him go out the back door.
“What’s going on?” Suzanne asked John. She heard herself sounding as if she were afraid of him, afraid of John, it surprised her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t wish to be dramatic. Ill judgment on my part. It’s become a habit, I guess, preferring the dark.”
He wore a jacket she thought she recognized from years ago and he did look seriously ill. Lennie was sitting very still, quivering. He said, “Lenore has been wonderful, keeping me company while we waited. Perhaps you’d better go up and put her to bed now.”
Suzanne was about to protest when she saw Lennie give her a look of relief, and she guessed that Lennie was tired of playacting, that she needed to let down her guard. When Suzanne went to her, Lennie even raised her arms as if her mother could carry her, then they both realized, she’s too big now, and they walked clumsily up the stairs, Lennie leaning on her step by step.
After several minutes, Emmett returned through the back door. He entered the living room. “What are you doing here?” he asked angrily.
“I’m losing my touch.” John stood as if he needed support, as if he’d lost reference to everything,
“Sorry,” Emmett said. “I guess we both panicked when we saw Lennie like that.” He went to get them both a drink.
“She’s going to be beautiful. Like her mother,” John said, accepting the drink. “And how was dinner?”
Emmett realized that it was obvious they’d been at a formal dinner, both of them wearing evening clothes. “It was fine.”
“Are they glamorous in person?” John sat down, putting his drink aside and lighting a cigarette. “Jack and Jackie.”
Emmett went to the window, pulled the drapes aside and carefully looked out. “John?”
“Yes, Emmett?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“No one followed you here?” A small figure was walking away between the houses across the street.
“No. I was careful. And I believe that the dandy, our old friend Robert Morton, has kept his word and left you and your family in peace.”
John’s bargain with Robert Morton, his sacrifice, giving himself up on Morton’s promise that the RCMP would leave Emmett and his wife alone, returned to Emmett in all its humiliation. John continued, speaking gently, as if he understood Emmett’s embarrassment but had further news. “I think Morton was more interested in Suzanne. He sure thought she was one hot ticket.”
Emmett said, “I know about that.”
“Bob Morton’s infatuation? You know?”
“He’s probably still watching her.”
“Then you should protest.” John looked yet more abandoned. “He gave me his word,” he said softly. Emmett hesitated. Then John knew, “Oh. You’re bluffing. Well, let’s hope he’s not. She hasn’t turned into a ban-the-bomb lady, has she?”
“Look. You know that we can’t talk here.”
“I came to give you a message. Once I’ve given you the message, I’ll leave. I won’t be back. Not even to see Lenore.”
“Why would you want to see Lenore?”
“Shall I tell you?”
Emmett sat down.
“Good,” said John. Now that he had Emmett’s attention, he put his head back against his chair and rested.
“I’ve been travelling,” he began. “It’s rather difficult to find work. The RCMP track me, you see? Not as they used to, not the excitement of surveillance, though there’s that too, in a dreary, everyday sort of way, my mail and so on, not that there is any. They follow me to my jobs if I’m lucky enough to get one, and tell my new employers I’m a Red. And I’m let go. So I travel.”
“I’m sorry,” Emmett said again.
“Not your fault.”
Morton had botched John’s arrest years ago by using unauthorized police surveillance, but, Emmett saw, Morton didn’t need to arrest John; his imprisonment was general.
John saw Emmett’s face, his pity, and he repeated, “It isn’t your fault.” He rested again for a moment. “I saw Winnipeg,” he said then, falsely bright. “My home town.”
This surprised Emmett. He’d gotten the accent wrong.
John continued. “I haven’t had any word from Leonard Fischer. Or his letters don’t reach me. I don’t know if he’s alive.” They were quiet for a few moments. “I hope he’s all right. But I don’t know. His lungs . . . ” he trailed off, rested again, and smiled. “Pathetic, isn’t it.”
It was unlike him to talk so much, and Emmett realized how lonely he must be. Emmett wished he could hold John, he hurt with the yearning to hold him, in his shabby suit, with not much more than his adopted upper Ontario accent intact. John had even lost his old sense of irony. “They contacted me a little while ago,” John said.
“Who did?”
“Old friends. They’re looking for some information they say only you can supply.” John ignored Emmett’s tense face; he leaned back in his chair as if indulging in nostalgia, and mused, “Generous of them, really, to make me feel useful again. Don’t you think?” Emmett said nothing but listened carefully. After a moment John repeated, “I really do think it’s generous, decent, to let me serve in this way, after I’ve quit the game and all.”
Emmett took a drink. “Why would they choose you to be the messenger? They know how risky it is for you to be here. The RCMP would consider it a breach of the contract. You could go to jail.”
“They knew I couldn’t resist.” John shrugged. “I guess they know I love your wife.” He laughed with his cigarette between his lips. “There. I’ve said it.”
“What information could I possibly have that would interest them?” Emmett asked again.
“Actually,” John began and paused, staring at Emmett almost like a man with amnesia, as if trying to recall Emmett’s identity. Wonderingly, his tone, mystified, “They said I was to warn you.”
“Warn me? Warn me of what?”
“That you’re not moving fast enough.”
Chapter Three
Emmett stared at John. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s what I’m instructed to tell you. That you’re not movi
ng fast enough.” John rested in his chair as if after some great effort. “I don’t know what it means.”
Emmett was silent, thinking. Then he said, “The missiles are filled with sand.”
John laughed. “Are you talking in code?”
“No. They’re actually loaded with sand. The Bomarcs and rockets for NATO are loaded only with sand. I don’t know which is crazier, nuclear bombs, possibly aimed at us, or sand in our defence missiles.”
“Sand in our defence missiles. Well. That should please them.”
Emmett, bitterly, “This country has zero defence. Not even Kennedy can make Diefenbaker load nuclear warheads into the missiles.”
John shook his head and said, “Do you ever feel old, Emmett?”
“Sure. Sure I do.”
“It occurs to me that we have been set up.”
Emmett didn’t answer. It was terrible to hear John express what Emmett had dreaded and resented ever since the investigation in ’53, ever since being sent to Cuba soon after being “cleared,” and later, to Japan, where he so conveniently fell into the sphere of Jim Smith and his special requests from the CIA. The set-up.
“All these years.” John smiled a little, and his handsomeness, his beauty was evident. He wearily sat forward. As if to a lost lover, he said, “Remember how it used to be, Emmett? Remember why we got involved so long ago? Think about it. Think back to what inspired us. What led Leonard to Russia. What led you and me to” — he hesitated — “live the way we do.”
A stubborn trace of hope in Emmett shifted, gave way. He wanted to let everything go; every remnant of what he wanted to call his private self was like a contraption he could no longer carry. Lowering his voice, intending John to understand that they must not be overheard by Suzanne, Emmett spoke barely above a whisper, “Nothing stays the same.”
John went on: “You called it ‘redemption.’ You claimed you could ‘redeem’ your life.” He shook his head. “Lovely dream. Turned nightmare.” John looked too ill to stand; he hadn’t touched his whisky. “We imagined we were saving the world. We didn’t even save ourselves. Now they’re putting pressure on you.”
Emmett bent down, picked up his drink, and drained it. “I’ll deal with it.”
“They’re coming after you, my friend. They want more information than you’re giving them.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“It’s not something you can just quit, Emmett.”
“I said, I’ll deal with it.”
“I suggest — ”
But Suzanne came downstairs. She’d changed her clothes, wore a woollen housedress. Cinderella. John stared. Emmett believed that he was trying to memorize her. The excitement between her and John was intolerable. John said, “I must be off.”
Suzanne made a helpless gesture, grasping the air involuntarily, making a fist.
John said, “Pardon the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but would you mind closing the light?”
Emmett turned off the lamp, and John said, “Thank you.”
Emmett could see him make his way to the front door, Suzanne following. He heard John say goodbye, and when Suzanne returned to the living room, he asked her, “Do you want to go with him?”
She gave a low, nervous laugh. He could see her rubbing at her arm. In a small voice she said, “I hardly think I’m up to it.” It was more than she’d intended to say. She gasped a little, he heard her dry mouth, tsk, and she came to him and put her hand against his chest as she so often did, saying, “Emmett,” calling him.
Chapter Four
Suzanne took Emmett’s hand as he steadied her up the last few steps and out, till she was standing on the oily floor. “I never knew!” she kept saying as she emerged to the dank cold of the garage. A cold afternoon. “All this time and I never knew!”
“I only just found it by accident,” Emmett told her. “I got down on my knees here,” he indicated where the Alfa was normally parked, “to look under the car because I thought there was a leak in the oil pan, and then I thought, What the hell is that?” He’d already told her this story, but it was worth retelling; such an odd bit of luck. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“Imagine!” She nervously stood clear while Emmett lifted the hatch to let it down into position and stamped it into place. “Just when we need such a thing.”
“Dual purpose,” he said, a joke he’d kept running in this discussion. “Liquor vault and bomb shelter.”
She laughed, her recent weeping surging up in her chest. “Just imagine. It’s incredible we’re even talking like this.”
“I’m sure we won’t need it.”
“Shall I start getting supplies?”
He said that she should and again, her weeping laughter, “This is completely mad!” They agreed on that, and Emmett guided her out the crooked door of the garage and back to the house. “How will we stay warm in there?” she asked. Then, more shrill laughter, “This is mad!”
Now it was late fall and so bitterly cold even the squirrels had retired. Emmett bought a Geiger counter. He lined the liquor vault with insulation that he stapled tight in sheets of plastic. He purchased a chemical toilet and a carbon air filter. He bought boxes of candles, along with five lanterns and kerosene, thinking that, with their body heat and these light sources, they might stay warm enough. He shopped for batteries and cots and sleeping bags. As he descended the steep stairs into the bomb shelter he had the old sensation of being under surveillance — though now the spy would be a Canadian bureaucrat stumbling out from behind the shrubbery to commend an obedient citizen on preparations for his own annihilation. Emmett was reminded of how the Japanese had behaved, stupefied by obedience, till the atom bombs fell. He was angry all the time, even his dreams were angry.
Suzanne was listing the things she’d pack; there were lists all over the house. One list she’d left in the bathroom included nail polish remover. Since she’d started to make lists it seemed she couldn’t remember anything. She got Lenore up early to go to school yesterday. It was Sunday. Lennie didn’t bat an eye.
“This is retarded,” Lennie had said. “You can try sticking me in school on Sundays now, but I’m not going to ‘bomb drill.’ I don’t feel like burning to death with that bunch of nerds.” She hated school. General assembly was sickening, the other children’s bodies pressing against her, crammed into the gymnasium to learn about where to hide when the Russians come to kill them with gas and fire.
Monday, Emmett drove Lennie the few blocks to school. A cold, sunless morning, heat blasting in the car. Lennie coltish, a stiff mass of resistance. He pulled up at the red brick building with its chain-link fence just as the bell sounded and the other children filed inside, Lennie not getting out but watching them, dry-eyed with a wan sort of grief. She seemed old, as if she had already lost everything, had accepted an enduring betrayal. He spoke gently, “You’re going to be late.”
Lennie wearily opened the car door, got out and shut it without saying goodbye, and walked away, struggling with the heavy wooden doors, disappearing inside. Not angry but resigned. Abandoned by the things that had made her a child. Nine years old.
He was late for a meeting with the prime minister. Diefenbaker had taken a shine to him, especially on the subjects of Cuba, China, and Vietnam, and used him as a sounding board, his silent confessor, for Emmett was never asked his opinion, was only invited to agree. Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, we shouldn’t isolate the Cuban people. Yes, Mr. Prime Minister, it’s a great day for prairie wheat farmers selling $400 million worth of grain to Mao Zedong. No, Mr. Prime Minister, the president of the United States can’t push you around. No, Mr. Prime Minister, that callow son of a bitch Kennedy can’t turn our ploughshares into swords. Perfectly right, Mr. Prime Minister, we won’t use our wheat exports to manipulate the Chinese on Hanoi.
At noon, Emmett crossed Wellington Street to walk down to Sparks Street, to the jewellery store that housed in its upper storey the National Press Club. He told the girl at the front desk the
name of the journalist who was expecting him, then passed the men trading jokes at the bar and wove a path through the tables toward one of the booths at the rear of the club. Blue ribbons of smoke were illuminated by small yellow lamps on the tables and by brass fixtures with green shades on the walls. He recognized Wilson by the way he wore his hat, pushed back on his balding head.
Wilson stood up to greet him warmly, shaking his hand and gripping his shoulder, “Here you are, I’m glad to see you.”
Emmett sat across from him in the booth. “You look great.”
“Bullshit,” Wilson said.
“You don’t look any worse than you did ten or eleven years ago.”
Wilson tipped his glass of whisky. “Guess I’ve achieved saturation.”
When the waiter arrived, Emmett ordered a drink and a sandwich and a refill for his friend. Then he asked Wilson where he’d been since he left Japan. “Last time I knew your whereabouts, you were watching the retreat at Pusan.”
“My last and final foreign assignment.”
“Korea was?”
“Yup.” Wilson noted Emmett’s surprise. “Oh, come on. It happened to you too. Didn’t it?”
Emmett asked him to explain what he meant.
“You got yourself in hot water, didn’t you. Been anywhere since?”
“Jamaica.”
Wilson laughed.
“Worked on a deal to take bauxite alumina out of Jamaica. Went to Cuba. Havana. Where I met Ernest Hemingway at lunch at the embassy while arranging a delivery of salt cod from Labrador. I got back to Kobe once too. Aluminum. My career often intersects with aluminum.”
“How’s life in Ottawa?”
“Unremittingly dull. Is that why you’re here?”
“A fellow with the Canadian air force is creating a lot of heat over NORAD.” Wilson hesitated while someone walked close by, then resumed. “I met him in Colorado Springs. He’s drumming up opposition at NORAD headquarters. Here too. A lot of people are unhappy with your prime minister. Here in Ottawa, and in Washington too. Of course you know all this.”
Mr. Jones Page 30