The Spy Who Never Was

by Tom Savage

  He was standing at the back of the orchestra section below and on her extreme right, in the aisle behind the last row of seats near the doors to the lobby. Nora saw him, and his face registered. She blinked and peered more intensely, making sure.

  Daniel Fenwick was watching the stage at the moment. The star’s daughter’s suitor had just arrived, disguised as a Turkish prince and carried in a sedan chair with a ridiculously huge army of attendants that included an elephant, and the audience was roaring with delight. Nora used the distraction to lean over and whisper the news to Amanda. Both women turned in their seats to face the stage, away from him, and they remained that way for the rest of the performance.

  As they rose for the inevitable standing ovation, Amanda said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do…”

  Nora listened, nodding. When the curtain calls were finally over and the houselights came up, she waited while Amanda slipped away, murmuring into her cellphone as she moved. Then Nora took her time following the press of people back down the grand staircase to the lobby. She waited by the main doors, casually glancing around until she saw Fenwick watching her from across the room, then quickly turned and left the theater. She pulled her shawl closer around her in the cool evening, watching as the crowd dispersed into private cars and taxis. She stood in plain sight just outside the doors, waiting.

  The black limousine rolled to a stop in front of her. Nora had been instructed to ignore it, so she didn’t make a move toward it. She couldn’t see through the tinted glass, but she knew that Amanda was driving. Chuck and the chauffeur, Luc, were lurking somewhere nearby, or so she hoped.

  They were. The action, when it occurred, was swift and smooth, almost choreographed. Chuck—looking a bit pale, with a knitted cap on his head that presumably concealed a bandage—materialized from the shadows of the theater’s façade on her left to hail a cab, which pulled up behind the limousine. Chuck opened the cab’s back door, leaned inside, and said something to the driver. Then he moved over to the limo and opened its back door just as a hand grasped Nora’s arm from behind. Thinking of the man who’d accosted her in the lobby, she braced herself and turned around. It wasn’t an amorous Frenchman this time.

  Daniel Fenwick had gray eyes; they were mere inches in front of hers. He was wearing the black dinner jacket and a subtle, expensive aftershave. The urgent expression on his face was not what she’d expected to see, and his urgent words were not what she’d expected to hear.

  “Please don’t be alarmed,” he said. “My name is Daniel Fenwick. We must talk about Rose. It’s a matter of life and—” He stopped abruptly, his gray eyes widening in surprise when he felt the muzzle of the pistol in the center of his back.

  Nora looked beyond Fenwick at Luc, who now stood close behind the older man, poking him with the gun. She stepped aside, clearing the path between the men and the open back door of the limo. Chuck rushed forward to grab Fenwick’s arm, and the two young men hustled him into the car, one on each side of him. The car was already moving away from the curb before the back door was fully shut.

  Nora watched the limousine speed off down the avenue beside the Palais-Royal and turn at the next corner, vanishing into the night. She looked around at the few remaining theater patrons lingering outside Salle Richelieu; they hadn’t noticed the incident. She went over to the waiting taxi and got inside.

  “Hotel Lisette, s’il vous plaît,” she said.

  Chapter 19

  The mission was over.

  When Nora arrived back in her hotel room at eleven-thirty, she found a tray with a ham sandwich, homemade potato chips, strawberry mousse, and a half bottle of white wine on the table, and a voicemail from Edgar Cole on her gray CIA phone. She removed the black velvet gown and took a hot shower before sitting down to the meal in her bathrobe and playing the message.

  “I asked the hotel to make you something to eat. Amanda was planning to take you for a late dinner at the restaurant in the Palais-Royal after the play, but that didn’t work out. Sorry. Anyway, mission accomplished! We got our man, and he’s confessed. I’m sure you’ll want to go home now, and you do so with our thanks. I’m delighted with the way this worked out, and I’ll be recommending you for future ops, if you want them. Again, thank you for everything, Nora, and I hope to meet you again soon.”

  Nora ate the sandwich slowly, thinking about Edgar Cole’s words. We got our man, and he’s confessed. She glanced at her watch, thinking, How? How did they get Daniel Fenwick to break down and tell them anything in the brief time between his abduction—she couldn’t think of another word for it—and Cole’s phone call to Nora? Her cab ride back from the Palais-Royal had taken mere minutes, and his message had already been delivered when she arrived here. That confession in the backseat of a speeding limousine must have set a world record…

  Mission accomplished! That phrase nagged at her. What, exactly, had the mission been? Nora wasn’t certain. She’d never really been certain…

  I’m sure you’ll want to go home now. Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry? Mr. Cole was encouraging Nora to clear out of Paris and return to New York. He seemed downright eager for her to do this…

  Nora was learning that the end of a mission was not unlike the end of a play or film. Over the years, she’d performed in many plays and quite a few movies and TV shows, and there was always the phenomenon of the instant family. You met a new group of people and worked closely with them for a certain amount of time. If you enjoyed the work—and Nora usually did—you developed a camaraderie, a daily routine of work and play, often in strange cities far from home. Then the experience ended, sometimes abruptly but always sadly. You said goodbye to your group and moved on to the next one. You promised to keep in touch but usually didn’t, and what you missed most was the work itself.

  These ops for the CIA were very much like that. Nora had accepted this one for Mr. Cole on the understanding that she’d be doing something important for America and vital to the lives of several CIA agents. She’d smoke out TSB and protect three operatives, maybe even be present at the cash handover to watch the bad guys being apprehended. But none of this had occurred: The arrest had been abrupt, anticlimactic, and her contribution to the safety and well-being of her country had never been made clear to her. Now she was on her way home, back to the real world, with no sense of accomplishment, no feeling that she’d done anything at all.

  She didn’t want the white wine. She finished her meal and made a cup of chamomile tea. She called the airline and booked a seat on a late-morning flight from Charles de Gaulle to Kennedy. Most of her clothes were still in her suitcase, and she quickly packed everything else, leaving out only the suit she’d wear tomorrow.

  The phone number she had for Ben Dysart no longer rang or went to voicemail. Instead, a woman’s voice announced something in French that Nora roughly translated as number temporarily out of service. She thought about that for a moment, then called Jacques Lanier.

  “So, the work is done,” Jacques said when she had briefly sketched in tonight’s events for him. “This is good, yes? The people in the CIA must be very happy with you. I am sorry to say that we have heard nothing of your friend Mr. Dysart. Wherever he is, he is leaving no footstep.”

  “Footprint,” Nora said.

  “Yes, footprint.” He paused a moment, then added in a lower voice, “I am hoping that he is well.”

  “I hope so, too,” Nora said. “I can’t thank you and your family enough, Jacques. I must pay you something. You’ve been so good to me this—”

  “Ah! No more, mademoiselle. My ears do not hear this. You will be of help to me or my sons one day, and we will be even-steven. I do not understand who ‘Steven’ is, but this is the saying, yes?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “Even-steven. Au revoir, Jacques.”

  She went over to one of the front windows and stood gazing down at the lights and the late-night traffic on the boulevard. She hadn’t seen much of Paris in this brief visit, but she’d seen a g
ood deal more this time than she had on her last trip two years ago. Nora thought about that strange, desperate time, when she’d been so frantic to find her husband. She’d come to Paris for only a few hours, first running and hiding from enemies who wanted her dead, and the next day running and hiding from authorities who thought she was a murderer. Now, at the window, she winced at the memory. That op had been considerably longer and more dangerous than this one had turned out to be…

  Mission accomplished!

  She dropped her robe next to her shoulder bag on the chair beside the bed. She was in her favorite sleepwear, the old T-shirt and running shorts. She got in between the cool sheets, propped up the pillows, and called her husband, careful to use Jacques’s phone, not the other one. It was one in the morning, which would be seven in the evening in New York: dinnertime.

  Jeff answered on the third ring, and his muffled greeting told her he had a mouthful of food. “Hey, Pal!”

  “Hey, yourself,” Nora replied. “Chew and swallow, please. Thank you. What are you eating?”

  “Ugh! Ask your daughter.”

  Whenever one of them assigned sole ownership of their only child to the other, it didn’t bode well, but in this case Nora suspected she’d be siding with Dana.

  “Hi, Mom,” her daughter said. “We’re at my place, and I made dinner for Dad, but he’s not happy about it. He wanted cheeseburgers, but I got this fresh flounder at the market, with kale and quinoa. He’s eating it—in fact, he’s inhaling it—but he’s making these awful faces. How have you stayed married to him all these years?”

  Nora laughed. “Your father always wants cheeseburgers for dinner, or fried chicken—you know that as well as I do! You just keep feeding him the healthy stuff. He’ll thank you for it someday.”

  “I’ll bet!” Dana didn’t sound convinced. “When are you coming home? You haven’t forgotten about Friday, have you?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I’ll be home tomorrow; I’m landing at Kennedy at noon. If anyone there can meet me, that would be lovely. And I haven’t forgotten about Friday—dinner with the Sullivans!”

  “I have a rehearsal at noon, but maybe Dad can pick you up. Let me put him back on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Hey, Pal,” her husband said again. “I ate it all, and now she’s gone off to get dessert. Chocolate cream pie—I guess that’s my reward for choking down all that health food. I can be at Kennedy at noon, but what’s going on with you? That was a really short op. Is everything okay there?”

  Nora drew in a breath. The mission was over, according to Mr. Cole, so she didn’t feel guilty about filling Jeff in on a few things.

  “Well, it’s complicated,” she began, and she proceeded to tell her husband a simplified version of her story. She didn’t mention her cover name, Julie Campbell, or anything about Chris Waverly being a cover identity—that was still classified—but she told him about her Paris team without naming them, and about the two men who’d stalked her, and the murder of one of them, apparently by the other. She mentioned the club last night, her surprise meeting with Dwight Pershing. She ended with a brief recap of Daniel Fenwick’s threat to expose Chris Waverly and his arrest at the theater tonight. “So Fenwick was the blackmailer,” she concluded. “Fenwick was TSB.”

  Jeff was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Hold on, Pal.” His next words were muffled, as though he’d moved the phone away from his face. “Could you make some coffee, kiddo? I’ll be right back.” A pause, then: “Okay, I’m in the living room and Dana’s in the kitchen. I can talk now. Did you say, TSB? That was the blackmailer’s signature?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. “Daniel Fenwick. He wanted ten million dollars. Amanda told me he left MI6 in disgrace, and he’s a drunk, and he’s hard up for cash—”

  “Whoa!” Jeff said. “Did you just say, Amanda?”

  Nora blinked, realizing that she’d let the deep-cover operative’s first name slip. “Oh, forget about that, Jeff; I’m not supposed to tell you their names, and—”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” he said.

  Nora waited. Her husband rarely got excited or agitated when discussing CIA work, but he was clearly upset now. When she couldn’t wait any longer, she said, “What is it, Jeff?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said slowly, “but I don’t like it. Pal, I think somebody’s been pulling your leg!”

  Chapter 20

  “First of all,” Jeff said, “I know Daniel Fenwick—well, I don’t know him, but I know who he is. He was a British agent who’d now be in his early seventies. He’s from an old-money family—tall, dapper, gray hair, gray eyes, always dresses like James Bond. Is that the man you saw?”

  “Yes,” Nora said.

  “Well, Fenwick certainly never left MI6 in disgrace, and he’d never blackmail anyone for ten million bucks. Why should he—he’s worth a lot more than that. He was always a bit controversial in the community because he’s openly gay. He had a partner who died of AIDS a few years back, and Fenwick took early retirement, not because of any scandal but because he’s HIV-positive. He fell off the grid after that, and maybe he drinks too much, but I doubt his circumstances have deteriorated to the point of blackmail. Daniel Fenwick was a great agent—almost as great as his sister, and that’s saying something!”

  “Who was his sister?” Nora asked.

  “Fiona Fenwick.” Jeff whispered the name in obvious reverence. “MI6’s most accomplished woman agent—and one of their deadliest assassins. She and her husband are gone now, but they’re legendary. He was one of us, an American, and they were the first true marriage of the CIA and MI6—literally. They were known as the Deadly Duo. I’ll tell you all about them someday, Pal, but the point is, Daniel Fenwick is not your blackmailer. And he sure as hell wouldn’t use a dumb handle like TSB—that would be asking for exposure.”

  Nora was confused. “Why is it a dumb handle?”

  Jeff chuckled. “Honey, you’re new here. You haven’t yet learned all the terms, or all the jokes. TSB is an old punch line around the Company. One of the directors back in the sixties or seventies coined it; he said that instead of CIA, we should call ourselves TSB—The Spy Brigade. Whoever wrote that blackmail note wasn’t even bothering to be serious.”

  Nora thought about this. Then she said, “Why were you so surprised when I told you the agent’s name was Amanda?”

  “Because that was the name I couldn’t remember,” Jeff said. “I was telling you about Old King Cole’s Christmas party at his fancy-schmancy house in Bethesda five years ago. You asked about Mrs. Cole, and I said they were divorced, and the hostess of the party was his new girlfriend, a young blonde named Alicia or Alexa or something like that. The minute you said it just now, I remembered—her name was Amanda.”

  Nora was silent for a moment, thinking. What had Dwight said in the club last night? She looks familiar, though. “Jeff, was Dwight Pershing at that Christmas party?”

  “Probably; Dwight never misses a party if he can help it. Wait—yes, Dwight was there. He and Sam Reed and I went outside to look at Old King Cole’s Lamborghini. Why?”

  “Because Dwight thought he recognized my Amanda, which makes me think she’s probably your Amanda.”

  Now both of them were silent. Then Jeff said, “Honey, you just come on home tomorrow. Seems to me there never was any blackmail threat, so the whole thing was just a trap to catch Daniel Fenwick, though I have no idea why they’d want to do that. That human trafficker tried to stab you, and The Falcon thinks you’re Chris Waverly, and now we’ve got Edgar Cole’s girlfriend in on it. She must be buried deep—I didn’t even know she was one of us. I can’t imagine what Cole is doing, or why he got you involved, but I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit.”

  “Neither do I,” Nora said. “I’ve got to get some sleep, Jeff. I’ll see you at Kennedy, and we can discuss all this. Say good night to Dana for me. I love you, darling.”

  “I love you more, Pal,” Jeff said, and he was gone.

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nbsp; Nora set up the black phone to recharge on the night table, switched off the lamp, and settled down in the bed. She hadn’t drawn the curtains at the front windows, so the lights of Boulevard Beaumarchais cast a faint glow on the walls of the room. She stared up at the show of light and shadow on the ceiling, going back over it all. She recalled the entire operation, from the moment she’d entered the safe house in Greenwich Village last Thursday to the moment tonight when she’d stood outside Salle Richelieu, watching the limousine speed away. Somewhere in these events was a secret; she was certain of it. As in a stage play, crucial lines of dialogue repeated themselves in her mind.

  “You see, Nora, Chris Waverly doesn’t exist. She never did.”

  “So where is she now, and what does she think about you posing as her?”

  “Please, don’t ever go anywhere alone while you’re here. Call me anytime, and I’ll get you covered.”

  “You are pretending to be someone you are not, yes? And I think Le Faucon is here to kill you—I mean, to kill the person he thinks you are being.”

  The person he thinks you are being. Nora thought about that. There was something wrong in that logic. She considered it purely as an actor, someone who was playing The Falcon onstage. I’m the world’s greatest mercenary assassin, she thought, hired to kill a woman, but I don’t know what she looks like. When I’m presented with a woman who is apparently my target, I…I what? Follow her, watch her from a distance, track one of her enemies and kill him—but I don’t kill the target I was contracted to kill? No, Nora thought; that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Unless…

  More voices:

  “Mr. Cole once told Mr. Fenwick all about Chris Waverly. In fact, Mr. Fenwick helped him set up the ruse.”

  “We really need to get this guy.”