The Last Goodnight

by Howard Blum

  “We were both naked and his mouth was covering my face and throat with kisses that he pressed into my flesh as though to seal the contact. He was taller than I and my body fitted his like a built-in part of it, making us one welded substance in which I completed him from his shoulders down to his thighs.”

  Chapter 21

  AND SO THEY BECAME LOVERS.

  “We made love every night after that, almost for as long as I remained in that part of Spain,” Betty told Hyde, frank as always about sex. “He was a passionate man, very tender and kind.”

  But were they in love?

  Betty’s romances were mercurial. She could throw over everything on a sudden whim, only to decide in the clarifying light of a new day that it was a passing fancy. The fulcrum of her emotions went wildly up and down, exhilaration one day, tedium the next. At great risk, she could embark on an adventurous quest to rescue her “one true love,” only to find herself beginning an intense affair with a man she barely knew.

  “John Leche was never condescending or censorious,” she stated to Hyde, trying to offer up a plausible explanation for the all-too-obvious inconsistencies in her life. He was “a friend and companion, and peaceful to be with when I wanted peace.” That, she hoped, would serve as sufficient justification for her passion.

  But even as Betty shared this rationale with Hyde, she knew it was hollow. She knew it was just one more cover story. She had run off to Ireland with him—another man! another betrayal!—to get to the bottom of things, to try to reach an understanding of her helter-skelter life, to come to terms with the many versions of herself she had presented to the world. As she goaded herself to find a deeper, more truthful explanation, a snippet of a conversation she’d had with Leche sprung up in her mind. The words resonated in her head as if she’d spoken them just moments ago. It was as close as she’d ever gotten, she now realized, to making an honest confession.

  They were in bed, their desire spent, and Leche still could not let her go. He wanted more. “I want you to love me completely,” he pleaded.

  Betty considered what he was offering. At that moment, her life was in turmoil. She had a husband and a child in France; a lover locked in a Spanish prison; she was sharing her bed with yet another man; and a brutal war raged all around her. It would have been a great comfort to find some certainty, to put herself under Leche’s total protection.

  But as much as she tried to convince herself that she wanted that sort of constancy, she knew it would always be beyond her grasp. She could only offer small parts of the various selves that shaped her. In a burst of intimacy, an honesty that took her by total surprise, she confessed to Leche, “I could never love anyone completely. I am twenty-six already and the thing you mean is never likely to happen to me.”

  Now at fifty-three, a lifetime of experiences behind her, she saw that her prediction had proved true. Her heart could soar. Yet it would never find long-term fulfillment. A steady, companionable happiness would always elude her.

  LECHE’S COMMITMENT, HOWEVER, WAS AS ambiguous as hers. He too had his own interior restrictions. It wasn’t simply that he had a wife who had fled to her native Boston to avoid the dangers of war. Leche had never deceived Betty about that. But even as he professed his love, there was another unacknowledged presence in their relationship.

  One morning as they were driving back to Valencia, Leche asked for her help. A small matter, he said breezily.

  With the passing of the years, Betty now knew he had been following orders. The same people on Broadway in London who had been keeping an attentive eye on her activities in Spain had given Leche his instructions. She had no trouble imagining how it came about.

  The Pack woman showed a bit of pluck in San Sebastian and handled herself jolly well in Madrid, she could hear the MI6 spymasters telling one another. But dodging bombs is one thing; staring into the face of some Spanish thug when you’re armed with just a smile is another matter entirely. Let’s see how she handles herself on an actual mission. Test her cool one more time before we rush in and propose marriage.

  Looking back at it now, Betty couldn’t work up any anger over Leche’s disingenuousness. He’d helped push her farther along on the path to the Service—and that, after all, was the closest thing to a complete love she’d ever find.

  “CAN YOU ACT?” LECHE HAD asked, seemingly out of the blue. They were driving to the chancery after a night together at Las Palmeras. “It would be useful if you could.”

  It struck Betty as a silly question. “You said I was acting the fool when I went to Madrid,” she said dryly.

  Leche made it clear that this was no joking matter. He needed—London needed, actually, he quickly amended, underlining the seriousness—to get a prisoner out of a Republican jail. He had already given the matter a good deal of thought, and come up with an escape plan—and it required Betty’s help. “Will you spare a morning from Carlos to help me?”

  “Of course I will, John.”

  The prisoner, Leche explained, was ill; how much longer he’d survive in jail was uncertain. It was essential that they move quickly. The man had done some favors for the crown over the years, and now it was time to repay him. His name was Luis Villada, the Marquis of Aruezza.

  An old friend, Betty interjected, and Leche pretended to be surprised. The marquis had been part of the set she’d run with in Madrid before the war, she explained. A dancing partner, in fact.

  Well, said Leche as if he were weighing the significance of this news for the first time, that could work in our favor. Unless, of course, the sight of a familiar face confused him. That could alert the guards, and things might get sticky. Was she still on board?

  “Of course, John,” Betty repeated without hesitation.

  THE PRISON WAS A MAKESHIFT jail; before the war it had been a government office building. When the city’s prisons had run out of space to house all the suspects being so diligently rounded up, the Republicans had started housing the accused anywhere they could.

  The dim basement offices had been turned into cells—straw scattered about the concrete floor served as bedding, and a pail made do as a toilet. Despite the high emotions driving the war, security remained—or so Leche assured Betty—lax. There were squads of armed guards, but months of uneventful duty had left them bored and distracted. “Stick with the plan, and all will be fine,” he promised as they approached the prison.

  With the Union Jack flying from its hood and its diplomatic license plate, the chancery limousine was waved past the gate and into the courtyard. Leche instructed his driver to pull up to the front door of the red brick building. As if they were a couple out for an afternoon’s walk, Leche took Betty’s hand and led the way into the prison; tradecraft held that sneaking about attracted more attention than a casual stroll.

  Once inside, he ignored the guards and strode officiously toward the stairwell heading down to the cells like a man who had come for an appointment. Betty followed, and in the process stored away another lesson: the key to playing any role is to act as if you’re not playing at all.

  When they reached the cells, Leche told her, “I’ll keep the guards busy. You go see about our friend.”

  Leche flashed his diplomatic identity card and demanded to see the man in charge. He used, Betty couldn’t help noticing, the same booming, intimidating voice he had employed when they first met. This time, though, it worked. The guards started scampering about, eager to do His Excellency’s bidding.

  Left on her own, Betty searched for the cell number Leche had given her. The door, she’d been told, would be closed but not locked; during the day the prisoners were allowed to wander about.

  Betty found the cell quickly, but hesitated. She could feel the eyes of a dozen guards boring into her. If they caught a whiff of the fear oozing out of her every pore, she’d be finished. Taking a deep, calming breath, with the most casual of gestures, she opened the door.

  “Dearest brother,” she bellowed as soon as she entered the cell, just as
she’d rehearsed with Leche. It was crucial to control the situation. She could not allow her old friend to betray her real identity.

  The marquis stared at her in astonishment. Betty quickly enveloped him in a hug as she whispered into his ear: “Play along. Don’t ask questions. I’ve come to save you.”

  He looked back at her, bewildered. For an unsteady instant Betty wondered if it was too late. The man in her arms was horrifyingly frail, a thin, pale presence hardly recognizable as the sleek dancing partner who had glided her across the floor at Jimmy’s. Perhaps he was incapable of understanding what she wanted him to do.

  Finally he nodded.

  “Papa and I have come for you,” she said merrily, in a voice loud enough for anyone in the basement to hear. “Just come along quickly.”

  She put her hand firmly around the marquis’s waist to help him to the door. At the same time she spoke in a low voice into his ear: “Stay close to me. If the guards suspect any funny business, they may get rattled, but they certainly won’t shoot so near a woman.” Yet even as she spoke the reassuring words, she doubted them. The guards wouldn’t hesitate to shoot any prisoner trying to escape—or, for that matter, anyone assisting him.

  Moments later they were walking together across the courtyard. Her heels clicked against the cobblestones as she spoke brightly for everyone to hear. “Oh, dearest brother, it will be so good to have you home. Thank God the authorities realized this was a mistake.”

  It was a short way to the waiting car, perhaps fifty yards, but it seemed miles. She could hear Leche hectoring the guards in his stentorian His Majesty’s official emissary’s voice. Her arm remained tight around the marquis’s waist; she was nearly carrying him. Still, she feared the old man would not make it.

  It required all her discipline to keep her eyes fixed on the distant car. Her every instinct was screaming to look up at the guards, see if their rifles were raised, see if they were taking aim. Every moment she expected to hear someone shout, “Stop them!” But all she heard was Leche’s loud, plummy voice and the clack of her heels on the cobblestones.

  Then they were huddled in the car’s back seat, driving out of the courtyard. The barrier was still down, and Betty suffered through a terrible moment: they were trapped, she thought. She’d be spending her days sleeping on a bed of straw in a cell next to the marquis.

  Leche, playing his role to the hilt, offered a crisp salute to the attending guard. It was returned, and the gate was raised. The car pulled swiftly away.

  Leche hid the marquis in a safe house, refusing to tell Betty its location; the Republicans would be searching for their escaped prisoner, and if she didn’t know where he was, even a brutal interrogation would be futile. But the Republicans never questioned Betty. Two days later, the marquis was aboard a British destroyer and on his way to France.

  And Betty’s praises were being sung by the spymasters in Broadway. The Service’s recruiters had decided the Pack woman was a promising catch. Very promising, indeed.

  Chapter 22

  BUT WHERE WAS CARLOS? WITH more brashness than ingenuity, Betty had succeeded in one swift operation in rescuing the marquis. Yet despite all her efforts, all her cunning and tenacity, she still had not managed to find Carlos. She’d spent day after long day running about Valencia, trying to get a hint of his whereabouts from the disdainful Republican authorities, yet it had all been futile. Every shiny shard of a clue turned out to be fool’s gold. Every promising trail led to a dead end. She had even managed to get the lists of the inmates of the city’s four principal prisons, only to discover that Carlos’s name was not on any of them.

  Despondent, Betty was beginning to believe that it no longer mattered. By now Carlos must be dead. Either he’d succumbed to the misery of his prolonged incarceration in a Republican jail; the marquis, a frail shadow of his once dashing self, had poignantly shown her what the ordeal could do to a man. Or just as likely, hands tied behind his back, he’d been marched to a wall, stood at attention, and executed by firing squad. Convinced she had failed, she was heartbroken.

  But as every handler tells his novice agents, sometimes when a operation seems to be going wrong, when all else has failed, you need to fall back on every operative’s most resourceful ally—luck. You must have faith that the clouds will part, and Providence will reach out its long arms and gently push you back on track. In Betty’s case, though, Providence was an American general, and he grabbed her in an all-enveloping bear hug.

  As Betty was heading back to the chancery after one more discouraging day, an unfamiliar dark car screeched to a sudden halt beside her. This was ominous enough, but in the next instant a short, squat man in a military uniform bounded out with surprising agility and, just as she was preparing to run, enveloped her in both of his strong arms.

  I’ve had it, Betty thought. In the same unsteady instant she couldn’t help wondering if it was the Republicans hauling her in for helping the marquis to escape. Or had the Nationalists, still convinced she was a spy, finally caught up to her?

  She turned to confront her captor.

  “Stephen!” she cried out with as much relief as joy. She was staring into the cheerful pink face of General Stephen Fuqua, US Army. The general was an old friend of her father’s, a jovial southerner who had dropped out of West Point because, as he put it, he “cared more about fighting than books.” Over the years he’d gone on to do his share of fighting, first in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and then in the Philippines. He’d been a guest at Betty’s wedding, but she’d last seen the general nearly two years ago in Madrid, where he was serving as the military attaché at the American embassy. “But this is a miracle,” said Betty, and at that moment it truly felt like one.

  “Well, girlie, I couldn’t ask for anything better on this side of paradise myself,” said the general. “Come to my hotel and tell poppa everything.”

  Sitting in the dark hotel bar, gin and tonic in hand, Betty did just that. She had the general’s attention as she spoke of nights spent racing through Madrid as the bombs fell. She boasted how she’d brazenly walked the marquis out of prison right under the guards’ eyes. Finally, coaxed along by the gin, she divulged the real reason for her return to Spain—the long, futile search for Carlos. There was, after all, no reason to be discreet. The general was part of the prewar diplomatic set in Madrid; no doubt he’d heard the gossip about the British commercial attaché’s wife and the Spanish Air Ministry official.

  “I know where Carlos is,” the general interrupted.

  Betty stared at him pointedly. If this was a joke, she was in no mood.

  Fuqua, though, went on with uncharacteristic gravity, a commanding officer reporting to his troops that all is lost. “He’s in that big military jail out on the Barcelona road. It’s the toughest joint in these parts. You can’t try any Pimpernel stuff there unless you want to make the return trip in a hearse.”

  Betty couldn’t think of anything useful to say.

  “Why, they wouldn’t even let you in unless you had a pass from Prieto himself.”

  Indalecio Prieto was Spain’s minister of national defense. Starting out as an eight-year-old boy selling newspapers on the streets of Madrid, he had wound up owning the paper. He had a self-made man’s brittle, confident assurance, and a dedicated socialist’s fervor. The people loved him, and he loved them back. He was the most popular figure in the Republican government, and arguably the most powerful.

  “Well,” said Betty, “how about my going to Prieto? He’s the boss now, and he’s also in Valencia. What do you think?” It was a spontaneous idea, but as soon as she had shared it, Betty was convinced she’d hit upon a solution.

  The general drank some more of his gin, staring into the mirror behind the bar, studying the reflection of Betty’s face in the half-light.

  Betty could only imagine, she related to Hyde, what was going through his mind. It was vital to her that the general believed she could succeed. She knew he had an eye for the ladies; he’
ll appreciate my allure, she decided. But more importantly, Betty wanted him to believe that she was her father’s daughter, that she had inherited his intrepid spirit, his pluck.

  “Sure,” he told her as he drained his glass, “it’s worth a try. You come up with a plan, and I’ll do what I can to help.” But he also warned, “You are getting into dangerous territory. Hell, I was at your wedding and I’ll be damned if I’ll go to your funeral.”

  Betty kissed the general on the cheek. She was certain Leche could arrange a meeting with Prieto. Her charm would do the rest. At last she’d be reunited with Carlos. She felt invincible. “Lunch with me at one tomorrow at the Ostero,” she suggested to her savior. “We’ll make a plan then.”

  That night, walking along the beach with Leche, she told the minister that she needed his help. She wanted an appointment with Indalecio Prieto.

  Leche hesitated. He was the British chargé d’affaires, and Prieto was the Republican minister of defense. It would not be correct to ask for a personal favor.

  “It’s the only chance I’ve of saving Carlos,” Betty pleaded. “Nothing else has worked.”

  Leche kept a stony silence. He knew what Betty was asking him to do was very wrong.

  Betty moved closer to him, her hips pressing lightly against the fabric of his trousers. “I wish you were with me as I was with you for the marquis’s rescue,” she purred. “We synchronize so well. I love doing things with you.”

  “You must make it clear that you are coming to him in a purely private capacity,” Leche said sternly.

  “Yes,” Betty agreed.

  “Then I will do what I can.”

  Betty gave him a long, sweet kiss. And then another.