by Matthew Dunn
My heart sank. “Phoebe? What about Phoebe?”
“We’re all okay. No accidents. Nothing like that. It’s just, Phoebe . . .”
“Yes?” I could feel myself getting anxious, but tried not to sound that way for fear of upsetting Phoebe’s boyfriend.
“She’s lost her job, Will. The art gallery wasn’t making enough money. She went to work this morning, and that’s when they told her the news. She’s in my apartment, in tears. I’m speaking to you from the stairwell so she can’t hear me. She’s devastated. Money. She doesn’t know what to do because she’s got no savings.”
“Shit!”
“I wanted to speak to you, because I don’t know what to do either. I’m desperate to help her, but I’m on a mortician’s salary. It’s peanuts, just enough to pay my rent and not much left over. I did think about offering her to move in with me, but . . . thing is, we’ve only recently started seeing each other. It would be forced. We’re not ready for that commitment yet.”
I agreed. “Have you told Dickie?”
“You think I should ask the major for some financial help? I know he’s got money tucked away. I’m sure he’d be happy to at least help Phoebe out with her rent.”
“No.” I thought about the last time I saw Dickie and he offered me cash because he thought I might be broke and would need to move. I turned him down for the same reason I was about to tell David not to ask. “Dickie needs all the money he has. He’s at an age where big medical bills might come his way, if his health fails and he can’t get treatment quick enough on the NHS.”
“Yes, yes.” David sounded panicky. “You’re absolutely right. But, what should I do? I just feel so terrible that I can’t help Phoebe. I should be the one to help her. Jesus!”
I knew Phoebe had no family to turn to because nine years ago her hippie mother had divorced Phoebe’s tabloid journalist dad, gone to Morocco, and shacked up with a man who claimed that he was a prince; since then Phoebe had rarely heard from her again. At the same time, Phoebe’s father had been lured into a relationship with a woman half his age who told him she was an aspiring actress when in truth she was a burglar who one day ran off with his most valuable possessions. He’d turned to drink, though that ended late on a rainy evening when a number 15 red double-decker bus hit and killed him as he was exiting Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub on Fleet Street.
And Phoebe’s arty friends used most of their money to buy coke to shove up their noses. They wouldn’t give her a dime.
Phoebe had no one reliable to help her aside from David, the major, and me.
I had an idea. “Do you have any notion how much her monthly fixed costs are—rent, utility bills, council tax?”
“I can ask her, but all of our places in West Square are the same size. My monthly bills come to around two thousand quid. Same for you?”
“Sounds about right.” It seemed surreal to be having this conversation as I was imagining the Edwardian surroundings of my home while sitting in such a wholly different environment. “Do me three favors.”
“Sure.”
“First: give Phoebe a cuddle, buy her Chinese takeout for dinner, and tell her she’s loved. Second: tell her to dust off her résumé and send it to every art gallery north and south of the Thames.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Third: SMS me your bank details.”
“My bank details?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I—?”
“Because today I’m going to do an electronic transfer of two thousand pounds to your account, and I’ll keep it up until she gets a job.”
“I didn’t call you to ask for your money.” David sounded emotional.
“Tell her it’s your money you’re giving her.”
“Will, I can’t.”
“You can, because I’m sending the money to you, not Phoebe. What you do with it is your business.”
“I’m going to repay you.”
“It’s a gift, so don’t insult me.”
David was momentarily silent. “I don’t know what to say. I’m between a rock and a hard place.”
“One day I might be there too. Maybe I’ll come to you then.”
“Please . . . please do. I’ll send you my bank details in one minute. Where are you?”
“Angola. The work’s boring but it pays well.” We said our good-byes, and after we ended the call I stared out of the window. I didn’t know what I was doing. At the moment I had money, but soon I could be broke. Forethought was always anathema to me when it came to cash. Maybe I was stupid.
But I couldn’t help it. Phoebe was down on her luck.
After receiving David’s bank details, I swapped SIM cards again and started up my GPS. The break seemed to have done the GPS’s female robot some good. With authority, she told me I had to keep driving for one mile, where I’d reach my destination. I had no reason to trust her but did as she instructed. I drove the car off the road, felt it shudder as I put it in low gear over rough ground between trees, and brought it to a halt when I was satisfied it could not be seen from the road.
“You have arrived at your destination,” said the automaton.
I got out of the car, moved through woods, and crouched on the crest of a hill. I was wearing the same suit I’d worn when visiting Mrs. Koenig. But a suit wasn’t going to make a difference today.
I was hoping to meet a man whose family I’d killed.
Suits don’t sway the outcome of such encounters.
In the valley below was a glistening lake, adjacent to which was a large home and three outhouses. They were the only buildings to be seen. Swallows flew above the lake, alternating between diving for bugs and swooping on a bat whose daytime sleep must have been unsettled. A stream fed into the lake from the tree-covered mountainside behind it. It was the kind of place me and Johnny would have fished as kids. I wished I could turn back the clock, put my arm around him, and tell him not to accept my challenge to crawl along the tree’s branch. Life was different then.
I withdrew a pair of binoculars and scrutinized the place. A Russian man was limping with a stick between an outhouse and his home. He was middle aged, wore a beard and glasses to hide the disfigurement on one side of his face, but had vigor and purpose despite the fact that my bomb had damaged him and blown his wife and daughter to smithereens. That had happened four years ago in Moscow. The man I was watching had been driving, but stopped his car when his cell rang and he was warned about the bomb by one of his assets. He’d gotten out of the vehicle to rescue his family, but was too late and was thrown across the street as my bomb exploded. He’d tried to rescue his wife and daughter, but the flames in the car made it impossible.
If I’d known his family was in the car, I would have willingly swapped places with him. Ever since, I’ve wished I was the one who was disfigured and had a weak limb. Or even wished I was the one in the car who was blown to pieces.
The man approached a thirteen-year-old girl called Crystal, who had been born after his premarriage dalliance with an American diplomat. Until a year ago, he hadn’t known she existed. When the girl’s nonbiological American father was killed by her mother, who was given life imprisonment as a result, I’d put the girl’s real Russian father and Crystal in touch with each other in return for the Russian agreeing to work as my agent, to betray his motherland and relocate to the States. No doubt he hated me.
He hugged the girl, pointed at a chicken coop, said something, and smiled as she ran to the chickens with a bucket in her hand. He entered his home; I walked down the escarpment. I wasn’t armed and didn’t want to be, because it seemed wrong to carry a weapon into the house of a man whose life I’d torn apart.
But I had to be careful of him. As well as being the victim of my assassination attempt, he was a former Russian spymaster, one of the smartest adversaries I’d ever faced. His code name was Antaeus.
During my last mission for the CIA-MI6 task force, I had identified and caught the mole Antaeus was running
in the CIA. That would have made him doubly pissed with me.
I knocked on his door, my heart pumping fast. I was more than a little anxious. His acute mind worried me. Also, though he knew what I looked like, we’d never met in person before. This was all unpredictable.
The door opened.
He was standing before me.
I felt sick looking at the scars on his face, the droopy eye, and the skin on his hand, stretched and unnatural. I’d done all of that, plus much more that wasn’t visible. “Hello” was all I could say.
I wondered if he’d swing the stick he was holding at my head. Maybe I would let him.
He didn’t. Just stared at me.
“May I come in? I mean you no harm or trouble.”
He said nothing.
“May I come in?” I repeated.
He shook his head. “My home is a safe place for my daughter.” His English was perfect and had only a trace of an accent. His eyes were intense. “It is no place for murderers, Mr. Cochrane.”
I held my ground. “You are a murderer.”
He placed his walking stick in front of him. “I am an amateur historian, a museum curator. I produce counterintuitive theses on prehistoric settlements to the Archaeological Institute of America in order to unsettle their received wisdom, and I am a good father. Your definition of me no longer applies. But it does to you.”
“I wish that were untrue.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I’ve left the service, but . . .”
“You are still associated with your former employer.” Antaeus glanced in the direction of his daughter. “I will gut you if you cause us any problems.”
“I expected you’d say something like that.”
He returned his attention to me. “You have guilt?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I blew up your family.”
“You didn’t know they were in my car.”
“A bomb is still a bomb. I put it there.”
Antaeus withdrew a cheroot from a 1940s-era tobacco tin. “Yes, you did.” He opened his mouth for the cigar, and I could see half of his teeth were his own. “Now that Crystal is with me, I have a rule not to smoke in the house. I’m going to have some tobacco and take a walk along the lake.” He lit his cigar and hobbled past me.
I watched him. He was tall, dressed in clothes from another era. He looked like an early-twentieth-century Arctic explorer. Recently I’d made him a father, and it looked like he was a good one. But that was only one layer of his personality and abilities. I reminded myself that this Machiavellian genius was once the most powerful and invisible man in the East.
I moved to his side. “Are there trout in your lake?”
Antaeus blew smoke. Though I’ve never been tempted to be a smoker, its aromatic smell was nice. “Yes. Rainbow.”
“Do you fish for them?”
“I take a rowboat and use a sinking line with a nymph and two droppers.”
“How do the fish fight?”
Antaeus stopped and turned toward the lake. “Like I’ve attacked them in their home. They fight angry.”
I looked at the beautiful surroundings and thought, I’d like to live somewhere like this. It seemed so peaceful and quiet. “I’m truly sorry.”
“You didn’t come here to apologize, and that means you’re insincere.”
“I’m still allowed to apologize.”
Antaeus momentarily looked at me, his expression one of contempt. “Women like diamonds, but only if presented to them correctly. You present your regret as if you’ve stolen it off the back of a truck.”
I wished he hadn’t said that.
Antaeus resumed walking along the shoreline.
As I kept pace, I felt effeminate in my attire, like Patrick and Alistair had looked when they’d visited me in Scotland. My polished shoes were soon waterlogged, as were the bottoms of my suit trousers. By contrast, Antaeus had galoshes and waterproof oilskin trousers. I said, “I gave you Crystal.”
Antaeus flicked the stub of his cheroot into the lake. It sizzled, then sank. “You gave me what belonged to me. What do you have in your life?”
“Nothing.”
“Is that correct?”
“It’s what you want to hear.”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Antaeus increased the pace.
He looked older than his years, his body in pain because of me. His mind and Crystal were all that were left, though I admired his efforts to keep his physique strong.
The Russian pointed his stick at Crystal. She was in the distance, near the house, rubbing her dirty hands on her clean white dress, feeding the chickens and talking to them. “Why did you make the effort to give me Crystal?”
“Like you said, I merely brought you what was yours.”
“A thief who finds a wallet on the street rarely returns it to its owner.”
I wondered if I should put my hand on Antaeus’s arm, but imagined that if I did so his reaction might knock me off my feet. “I brought her to you to give you something I couldn’t have.”
“Peace?”
“Yes, peace. But also purpose.”
Antaeus lit another cheroot. “You and I served someone else’s purpose. We spied for our countries.”
“You did bad things. So did I. Even if by accident.”
“As you say, a bomb is still a bomb, and it seems you have primed many of them during your life.”
I grabbed his sinewy arm, not caring about the implications. “I was different then.”
“Really?” Antaeus glanced at my hand on his forearm. “Your actions say otherwise.” He shook my hand free. “Don’t try to build bridges.”
“Why not?”
Antaeus did not respond.
Crystal was laughing and talking to the chickens, oblivious to me. “Thanks to you, she’s safe and happy. A couple of days ago, I cooked for two eight-year-old boys. I can’t think of anything you and I’ve done in our professional lives that can equal those achievements.”
Antaeus stopped and turned toward me. “You think that is our bridge?”
“I don’t know” was my honest answer. “There comes a time when doing becomes more important than thinking.”
“And I am doing. Yes?”
“Yes.”
A large rainbow trout jumped nearby. It put a smile on Antaeus’s face, similar to the one I’d seen on Rory’s face in the Scottish glens. His tone was different when he said, “The CIA has wrung me dry. I’ve no more secrets to tell. What you see now is me.”
“Your archaeology. Your home. Your daughter.”
Antaeus smiled as he continued to look at the ripples caused by the trout. It was a natural smile, contented. “I’m free of the secret world. Here, I’ve everything I need. I pity you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to know there is more to life than the shit we’ve been through.”
Antaeus sat on a rock and kept his eyes on the lake. “You are lonely?”
“Regretful.”
The spymaster shook his head. “Lonely.” He picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the placid water. It bounced seven times. “Maybe both, I concede.”
I sat next to him. He probably didn’t like that, but I didn’t care because the view of the lake was too good to resist, plus, somehow I needed Antaeus to no longer see me as his enemy, given that I was trying to get help from him and he had once thought he was smarter than me. For years, he’d been the Moscow puppeteer who’d frequently attempted to thwart my efforts in the field. We were opponents. I was fed up with that. I liked that he’d put Crystal in a pretty white dress this morning and allowed her to get her hands, and the dress, dirty by feeding chickens and healthy outdoor playing.
“I am sorry,” I said.
“You are,” he replied. He was silent for a while, and looked to be deep in thought. In a quiet tone, he said, “The CIA doesn’t have all my secrets.”
“Of course.” He picked up another stone. While rubbing mud off it, he said, “Spies crave secrets. You are a spy. A scavenger.”
“A murderer, a thief, and a scavenger. Do you have any more labels for me?”
Antaeus kept his eyes on the lake. “Observations, not labels, Mr. Cochrane.”
I stood and turned to him, my back to the lake. “Have you ever heard of a man who uses the code name Thales?”
Antaeus kept his eyes fixed on the vista as he asked, “How does it benefit me to respond to your question?”
“You’d be helping me.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
I didn’t know, but I wanted him to know how I felt. “Since you’ve been here, have any of your former colleagues in the SVR knocked on your door with a bottle of vodka in hand and wanted to get drunk with you and relive the good old days? Have your CIA interrogators ever patted you on the shoulder and said you were the best Russian source they’d ever run? When you go to your local town to buy groceries, do people come up to you and ask to shake your hand in recognition of your incredible service to America?”
Antaeus said nothing, and his eyes were still averted.
“Soldiers returning from the battlefield may carry their own demons, but they are visible and people publicly applaud their heroism. Nobody knows who we are, and nobody cares, not even our former employers. Maybe you’d help me simply because I’m just like you and have no one else to turn to.”
Antaeus looked at me, his expression no longer angry. “Still trying to build bridges?”
“Has it worked?”
“No.” He smiled. “But it was a nice try.”
I had nothing left to say, and was desperate not to show my disappointment.
Evidently my efforts to hide my emotions had failed, because Antaeus said, “Don’t be hard on yourself. You and I have too much history to find common ground.” Again, he was silent for a while. Then he said, “Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and mathematician. He rejected mythology in favor of fact. In that regard, he was a pioneer of his time.”
I knew this, but kept my mouth shut.