Every Secret Thing

by Susanna Kearsley

  I felt cold. I crossed my arms over my chest, tightly, tucking my hands under, close to my body, so Matt wouldn’t see they were shaking. But I didn’t sit.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you’re that cold, we don’t have to stay out here, you know. There’s a restaurant a few blocks away where they make a great steak. Have you eaten yet?’

  That did it. Here I was, practically frozen with fear for my life and the life of the woman I’d failed to protect, and he had the audacity to stand there speaking normally, as if we were old friends and there was nothing wrong. It was too much to bear in silence.

  ‘If you think I’m going anywhere with you,’ I told him evenly, ‘you’re crazy. I’m not moving. I’ll stand here all night, if I have to, so whatever you’re supposed to try to do to me, you’ll have to do it here. And I can tell you now, I’m going to scream. I’m going to make the biggest scene I can, if you so much as touch me.’

  And after this brave speech, I stopped for breath, and waited.

  It was the expression on his face, really, that made me start to doubt myself. He looked as if I’d hit him with a hammer.

  ‘Christ,’ he said at last, and sat, and drank his coffee back as though he wished it were a double Scotch. ‘Is that what you’ve been thinking? All the time we spent together, you’ve been thinking I’m a murderer?’

  I didn’t answer, but I took a chair, as well – still wary, and still watching him, but needing the support.

  Tight-lipped, he exhaled and looked aside…searching, I think, for the words to convince me. Finally, he said, ‘Kate, I haven’t been trying to hurt you. That’s not why I’m here. I was asked to protect you.’

  ‘Protect me? I don’t understand.’

  So he tried to explain.

  Matt Jankowski could remember, to the day, the first time he had heard of Andrew Deacon. It had been September 20th, a Wednesday. He’d been having lunch, at a small coffee shop just down the street from where he worked. He liked to eat alone. It was an hour of peace in what was usually, for him, a hectic workweek, serving corporate clients.

  He’d been sitting in a booth, as was his custom, with the high backs of the bench seats blocking out the noise and bustle of the coffee shop, when the old man had approached him.

  Matt had recognised him, naturally. He’d seen him many times at work, this senior partner who still kept a corner office in the building, even though he had officially retired some years before.

  He was a legend in the firm. He’d been in the FBI’s Special Intelligence Service in Latin America during the war, and lectured, still, at Georgetown University. An unassuming-looking man, with friendly eyes that took a person’s measure at a glance. He’d said hello to Matt from time to time, when they had passed each other in the hall, or shared the elevator, but they’d never really spoken.

  Till today.

  Today he introduced himself, and shook Matt’s hand, and took the seat across from him, depositing his briefcase at his side. And then he said, straight off, ‘I’m told that you speak Portuguese.’

  Matt thought that an odd way to begin a conversation, but he nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I’d like to ask a favour. Do you have a minute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a friend,’ the old man said, and stopped. Then, quietly, ‘I had a friend. He passed away, last week.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I. We had a long association. We were colleagues, in a way, except of course he wasn’t FBI. He worked for the British. A good man. An honest man. Rare, in these times.’ He paused, then, as though thinking of how to proceed. ‘Before he died, he sent me a document – details of a murder that happened in Portugal, years ago. My friend was there; he knew the murderer. Afterward, he tried to bring the man to justice, but…well, it gets complicated. Recently, he raised the case again, but the authorities in Portugal aren’t too keen to investigate. The case,’ he said, ‘is old, and cold, and based on one man’s recollections. Still, I feel I have a certain, shall we say, responsibility. My friend sent that report to me, and now it’s mine to run with. The problem is, it all comes down to just his word, his version of events. I know he’s credible, but if I’m to present his case, I’ll have to establish, beyond any doubt, that he’s telling the truth.’

  Matt admitted that would be a challenge, and the old man nodded.

  ‘Yes. The murderer confessed to him in private, no one else was there. But in my friend’s report he mentions several other incidents and conflicts that took place, and my thought is that if I could find the people who were there when those things happened, and have them back his stories with their own – if I can show that every other thing he says in his report is gospel truth, then…well, it’s simple probability,’ he said. ‘If someone tells you XYZ, and you know X is fact, and Y is fact, it stands to reason Z is likely fact, as well.’ He settled back. ‘I’ve done some digging, and I know of seven people, still alive, who might be helpful. And there’s one more woman I’m not sure of – I don’t know if she’s still living; I can’t trace her married name. One of the seven lives right here, in Georgetown. The rest, though, they all live in Portugal. And at least three of them don’t speak much English.’

  ‘I see. So you want me to help you with the phone calls? Be your translator?’

  ‘No, son. I want you to go there.’ He smiled. ‘Be my legs. I’m not young anymore. I’m not up to the trip. I need someone to go and find these people for me; take their depositions.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘It wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, and you wouldn’t be all on your own. The Legat’ – he pronounced it LEE-gat—‘at our Lisbon Embassy is a nice kid. He can’t help in any official sense, obviously, but he’ll be able to point you in the direction of people who can.’

  ‘Legat?’ Matt repeated, as he tried to take this in.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Legal Attaché. It’s what we call the FBI man at an Embassy abroad.’

  ‘I thought the FBI was only involved in domestic operations, here on American soil.’

  ‘No, most of our Embassies have a Legat. Sometimes a domestic case spreads overseas, and then the Legat takes it up, among other things.’

  ‘So if you have a guy in Lisbon, on the ground already, why do you need me?’

  ‘He isn’t mine. He’s FBI, and this is not an FBI investigation. He would lose his job if he went off and interviewed these people for me, even if he did it on his own time. No, this is my own operation – it’s personal.’ The tightening along his jaw was slight; Matt almost missed it. ‘Like I said, nobody else wants to pursue this. There are people in high places, even today, who would rather my friend had stayed silent.’

  Matt asked him, ‘Why did he stay silent so long?’

  ‘He had his reasons. He explains them all in here.’ The old man clicked his briefcase open and drew out a thick manila folder, sliding it to Matt across the table. ‘You can read it for yourself. You’ll need to read it, anyway, before you go.’

  ‘I haven’t said I will go yet.’

  ‘I know you haven’t.’

  Matt dropped his gaze from those confident eyes that belonged in a much younger face, and began to read.

  Time passed.

  The world of the coffee shop seemed to recede, growing more insubstantial. He didn’t hear the clinking of the dishes any longer, or the hum of conversation – he was sixty years removed from it, in Portugal, with Deacon. He could see the people moving through the offices at Reynolds like the players on a stage. He saw their faces, heard their voices, felt he knew the details of their lives, and the moment of the murder was as real to him as if he’d been a witness to it. He, too, felt the deep sting of injustice when he read about the murderer, and what had happened afterward, and he felt Deacon’s conflict in the bitter years of silence that had followed. But he understood the reasons.

  When he’d finished, he looked up, to meet the old man’s waiting gaze.

  Matt said, ‘If
what he says is true…’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then your people in high places have a right to be afraid. I can’t imagine that they’ll just stand by and let this all come out.’

  ‘They won’t. In fact, I believe they’re already trying to prevent it.’

  ‘How?’

  The old man’s eyes were very level, very calm. ‘My friend was killed – a hit-and-run. The driver and the car have not been found. A few days after that, the only family he had left, his nephew, was found murdered. A burglary, they’re calling it, though nothing much was stolen, really. Just the private papers of my friend.’ He paused, to let Matt fully grasp the implications. ‘There may be other deaths. Perhaps my own,’ he said. ‘It’s not without its dangers, what I’m asking you to do.’

  Matt didn’t reply for a long minute. Frowning, he ran his thumb along the folder’s open edge, in front of him. ‘I’m busy this weekend,’ he said, after thought. ‘And I promised a client I’d meet him on Monday.’ He raised his head, and met the old man’s eyes. ‘But then I’m free.’

  He had landed in Lisbon on Tuesday, the 26th of September.

  He’d picked up his rental car, taken a room at an airport hotel, and got straight down to business.

  The first of the names on his list had belonged to a man – in a nursing home, now – who’d been a member of the Vigilance Committee during the war. The man had told Matt what he could, which wasn’t much. Matt hadn’t gotten too much, either, from his second witness, a former shipyard worker who now lived just south of Lisbon, in the fishing town of Setúbal. But the next day he’d taken a run up to Caldas da Rainha and talked to a woman who’d once run a small hotel there. She’d remembered the details; her mind had been sharp. And she’d been able to recall Regina’s married name – if not the town she’d moved to.

  With this new information in hand, Matt had paid his first call to the American Embassy, and had found the FBI man there, the Legat, just as helpful as the old man who had sent him had predicted. The Legat had put Matt in touch with the local police, who had helped him to locate Regina Marinho.

  Matt had phoned through to Evora and, finding that Regina was away and wouldn’t be at home till Saturday, had gone back to his list of names, and started searching for the next one down: Joaquim.

  It took a little time to find him, he was such a private man, but by the Friday afternoon, Matt’s search had ended at the English Cemetery.

  ‘The problem was,’ he said, ‘you beat me to it. I was nearly at the church when I heard you two talking, in the porch. You mentioned Regina Marinho, and so I stopped, and listened. It seemed a bit more than coincidence, for you to be asking one of the people I’d been sent to talk to about another of the people I’d been sent to talk to. And you mentioned Andrew Deacon.’ He looked curious. ‘Why did you tell Joaquim that Andrew Deacon was your grandfather?’

  ‘I didn’t think he’d want to help me otherwise.’

  ‘Anyway, when you said you were the granddaughter, that rang a warning bell, because I was pretty sure that Andrew Deacon didn’t have a family. So I thought I’d better find out who you were.’

  He had put aside his plan to talk to Joaquim, for the moment, and had followed me. He’d planned to offer me a ride, but when that hadn’t worked, he’d tailed my taxi back to the hotel.

  He’d had a strong gut feeling I’d turn out to be important; so, although he had a perfectly good hotel room himself, near the airport, he’d taken a second room down at the York House, to keep a close eye on me till he could find out just how I connected with Deacon.

  Meantime, he’d put through a call to Washington. The old man in the corner office had been most intrigued. He’d taken my description, and assured Matt he would find out what he could at his end.

  Matt had gone down to look for me that evening, in the hotel’s restaurant. I’d already been sitting with Anabela, so he’d taken a table in one of the neighbouring sections, effectively screened from my view. He could see us, himself, but not hear. He could tell it was not just a personal meeting – he had seen her pass over the envelope. Curious, he’d followed Anabela out, and overheard her phone call; watched her leave. He had been coming back in hopes of catching me alone, when we had literally bumped into one another, at the door.

  All he could think of was to offer once again to buy me coffee, and to hope I’d take him up on it.

  He’d waited in the hotel bar till closing time. It hadn’t been a wasted evening, though. From where he’d sat, he had been able to see both the window of my room, that faced onto the courtyard, and the French door leading to the hotel’s lobby. He could tell I hadn’t left; that I was still inside.

  And on his way back to his room, he found there’d been a fax for him, from Washington: a photograph, a little grainy, taken from a newspaper, and under it the written question, Could this be the woman?

  Matt had studied it, and though he hadn’t been exactly sure, he’d seen enough of a resemblance to reply that yes, it could.

  And that, he told me, had changed everything.

  There wasn’t anybody sitting near us, now. The closest people I could see were several tables over.

  We were set apart, unnoticed.

  Matt looked down, and drew a pattern on the table with his coffee mug. ‘I heard a story, then, about a woman named Kate Murray. A reporter, pretty gutsy, pretty good at what she does. It turns out Andrew Deacon knew of her. He met with her in London – she was listed as a witness to his accident. The statement that she gave to the police said that the two of them were talking just before he died. Then, a week or so later, she goes back to Canada, back to Toronto, and that very same night someone fires a shot through her window.’

  I said very quietly, ‘Two shots.’

  ‘Two shots. Now her grandmother’s dead. And Kate runs. It’s a strange thing to do, but she’s read the report,’ – I saw no real need to correct him on that point, not yet – ‘she’s a very smart woman, and maybe she figures she can’t really trust the authorities, not when she knows who she’s up against. So she just runs. Disappears. No one knows where she is. No one knows if she’s even alive.’

  Matt had heard this story late on Friday night, and when the old man in the corner office had finished telling it, he had asked Matt, with an urgency that transmitted itself through the telephone lines, ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s here. At my hotel.’

  ‘You make damn sure you don’t let her out of your sight. And Matt? Get me a photograph, if you can manage it. I’d like to see for myself if it’s Kate.’

  So Matt had followed me to Evora.

  Or tried to. He had lost me on the road, but having reasoned that my purpose in going to Evora would be to try to see Regina – whose address he also had – he’d carried on, and set up watch near the Marinho house.

  He hadn’t known he’d be ahead of me. He’d somehow missed seeing my car near the tour bus, when he’d circled back round the rest stop, and so he had thought I would be at Regina’s already. He hadn’t expected to see me arrive, and go in. And he hadn’t expected to find that he wasn’t the only one watching.

  I couldn’t help breaking his narrative. ‘Was it a woman?’

  ‘A man. At the end of the street. He didn’t notice me, but I saw him.’ He’d followed me, apparently, when I had left Regina’s. Matt had followed, too, and when I’d stopped to look up at the old Roman temple, he’d quickly slipped into the tour group beside me, and that had been that.

  All the time that I’d thought I’d been using him to be my bodyguard, he had been volunteering. He’d done it, to begin with, out of duty to the man who’d sent him, but as the night had worn on, that had changed.

  Matt said, ‘Up to then, you were like an assignment. One more thing for me to investigate.’ I felt the brief touch of his glance. He looked away. Most lawyers I knew didn’t have a problem finding words, but even without them, I knew what he wanted to say. I had felt it myself, at the time.
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  I asked him, ‘Did you really have a room at the pousada?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you sleep, then?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  He’d stayed in his car. After dropping me off, he had gone round the block and parked well in the shadows, from where he could just see the hotel’s front entrance. He’d tried, as it happened, to speak to Regina – he’d called from his cell phone, and given his name. He’d been told that she wasn’t at home; that she wouldn’t be home for a good many days. He’d been concerned, as I had been, and so he’d stayed awake. He’d watched me when I went out on my balcony, he’d watched me while I sat there, and when I had gone inside he went on watching, through the night, to see I didn’t come to harm.

  The next day, he’d been following me back to Lisbon when I’d had my breakdown. He had managed to come back around in time to see the tow truck, and to guess my rental company would take me back to Evora to get me a replacement. Thinking he would find me there, he’d hunted down the local office of the company. My car had turned up, sure enough, but I had not been with it.

  He had panicked for a moment, then. The thoughts that he’d been thinking on his breakneck drive to Lisbon weren’t thoughts that he really wanted to remember. And of course, I hadn’t been at my hotel that night.

  ‘I thought the worst,’ he told me.

  Still, first thing Monday morning he had gone to see his young FBI friend at the Embassy, and the digital pictures he’d taken of me Saturday, standing in the ruins of the Temple of Diana, had found their way by email back to Washington. Within the hour he’d had another phone call from his old man in the corner office.

  ‘That’s Kate.’ He’d paused, and Matt had all but seen the clenching of the old man’s jaw, a half a world away. ‘You keep your eyes wide open. Don’t let anybody hurt that girl. Her safety’s more important to me now, than all the rest of it. You understand, son?’