Flecks on the Horizon
"Buon giorno. Come posso aiutarla?"
A metallic click. Then a faint crackle, humming across the radio waves, something that, a few seconds ago, in another country, might have been a gasp.
"This doesn't need to end badly. Who's your contact?" the American demanded. Jack assumed him to be Agent Hydra, the Company's man in Naples. He spoke in tones suggestive of emery cloth and whiskey; a bullish ex-serviceman, maybe, thick-necked and broken-nosed. Not someone he knew. In all probability a thug. It was no compliment to be hand-picked as the operational monitor by such a person. So why had he been chosen?
"Prego? Parla più lentamente –"
"Who's your contact?"
"Non lo so – non capisco - Signor, io sono un insegnante di letteratura. Io insegno ai bambini Dante."
Despite all his training, and all the times since when he had listened as people bartered and begged and screamed thousands of miles away, he felt for this distant voice, in whose Standard Italian he detected traces both of a Venetian accent and repressed stutter.
"You can still save yourself. We know what you've done. Just give us the name of your contact, and we'll let you go."
"Non lo so…Lei parla troppo veloce. Cosa vuole che dica?"
"You've been meeting someone at night by the Porta Capuana. Who is he?"
"Non lo so. Non so il suo nome. Giuro che sto dicendo la verita. Lui lavoraperilgoverno. Abbi pieta! La mia bimba non ricorderà di me. Lei ha solo tre anni."
"You can go back to your daughter. Give us the name."
"Idonotknow. Forse il nome era Mazzini – Giovanni Mazzini…"
"You're lying. That was a mistake."
"Oh Dio!"
First one sharp burst of sound made the receiver vibrate, and at the second, the desk quaked under his fingers. Or perhaps that was him, shuddering. Someone howled, then groaned in pain, and went on groaning. Jack tried to steady the receiver against his palm. He stopped when he saw his hand trembling. Not very professional. He needed to be professional. So: two gunshots, neither immediately fatal. That meant that the target could still be questioned.
"Ti perdono!" There was no echo of a stutter in the self-assured voice, as it informed the downed traitor that he was forgiven. Jack leaned back in his chair. He exhaled through his nose, once, as he re-evaluated the nature of the play; and it had been a play, on one side at least – he realised that now.
When he heard the voice again, it was addressing him. Although the howls had become louder, and intermingled with sobs and curses, they were merely indistinct background noise: the speaker must have moved to stand directly in front of the transmitter.
"Turn orff the wire," said Agent Hydra, the man who taught Dante to children, speaking from Napoli, Campania by way of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Jack hesitated. The demand contradicted protocol.
"Turn it orff right now. Consider that an order."
He turned it off. On his right, the reels of magnetic tape were spinning and clicking, recording nothing. He turned them off too. No need to waste CIA resources.
An hour later, the phone rang.
"What the hell were you doing back there? You may not have noticed, but I am risking my life for my country, Mr Prisceaux or Brestoi or whatever your name is, while you are sitting" – the accent almost turned it into 'sidding' – "in a leather upholstered swing chair with a flask of coffee by your left elbow and today's New Yorker waiting in your coat pocket. More pertinently, I am your superior officer and if I tell you to turn off the wire, you turn off the damn wire before I am forced to fly to headquarters and rap it round your neck. The next time you quibble with my orders, I will have you fired. No excuses. Are we clear?"
"Quite clear." He hoped he sounded suitably icy.
"Good. Oh, and what did you think of my schoolteacher?" Jack blinked. The voice at the end of the line had without forewarning shifted into an infinitely different – and warmer – register. "He's my newest creation. I've never played nervous before. I think the stammer was going too far, making it too unbelievable…well, you can give me your thoughts tomorrow when you move to my unit. I've been following your career with great interest. In fact, with admiration. See you at twelve. Fifth floor, third room down from the elevator."
The line clicked. That was that. Trying not to look at the flask of coffee squatting guiltily on the left hand side of the desk, Jack replaced the receiver. For a while, he stared at the wall. His nails were digging into the palms of his hands. He knew; he didn't care. While one small part of him was wondering if the new posting came with a chance of more challenging field work, the majority was still writhing in indignant fury from Agent Hydra's opening tirade. But the small part was gaining in strength and momentum. In later life, he would grimace at the naivety of his younger self. At how stupid he had been and how vulnerable to flattery; even a village idiot would have looked at the attendant circumstances and have realised that he hadn't been picked out because of his merits.
"So, what was that all about? Sounded nasty," said Murphy, feet up on his desk, his sense of tact, as ever, remarkable by its absence.
"I think I've just been promoted."
"Condolences. Where are you holding the funeral?"
"Fifth division, with the D-11s. Thank you."
"You need all the sympathy you can get, if you're stuck working with the Generalissimo." Murphy clapped him cheerfully on the shoulder. "But don't worry. People don't last long in his office. You'll be back here in record time. Or encoffinated."
He spent a miserable evening wondering what he should do. Accepting the promotion seemed, according to the rumours about D-11, likely to torpedo his career, in addition to bringing him into regular contact with the abrasive personality at the other end of the telephone; unfortunately, refusing seemed just as likely to nail him to a desk in the basement for all eternity. When Helen appeared on his doorstep at eight, looking radiant in a figure-hugging green dress and a fur wrap, he realised he had completely forgotten about their date. Throughout dinner, he let her chatter about her friends and the difficulties of life in the modelling business wash over him, and managed to grunt sympathetically at what seemed like the appropriate moments. He didn't notice what he ate, barely glanced at the emerald pendant that was resting provocatively on his girlfriend's cleavage, and only felt reality crystallising around him after the waiter had presented him with the bill. Printed on card rather than paper. Too many figures before the decimal point.
By the time they were out of the restaurant, she had run out of trivia, and he had run out of patience. He wanted to go home, open the piano and play so that his problem could gently resolve itself in the nocturnes of Chopin. As he opened the taxi's door for her and she slid into the dark interior, he caught sight of one of her narrow ankles. This, he recalled, was that woman whom for three months he had fruitlessly pursued through what felt like every restaurant, theatre and concert hall in Washington. The memory of a chaste kiss at the gate of the Botanic Gardens stirred him just enough to say, "Helen, I'm sorry about tonight. I was – preoccupied."
She pulled the end of her wrap into the taxi. "What's troubling you?" she asked. The question seemed to have been asked for the sake of politeness, not out of real interest, which made him more forthcoming than he had intended to be.
"I have…a dilemma. What's worse? An important job with a difficult manager or a …'servile'?...job with a good one?"
"Reign in hell or serve in heaven? Honey, I've chosen hell every time. But I think if I were a more together kind of person, like you are, and I could make my choices over, I'd decide on the long-term profit and clock in with St Peter. The devil is only ever trouble."
"I was serious."
"So was I. Goodnight, Jack. Thanks for the lovely dinner. Pity you couldn't have been there."
He pressed her hand before closing the door. She didn't blow him a kiss. Damn, he thought, as he stood on the curb and watched the taxi pull away with the better part of two weeks' pay inside.
The next day, he was back at his desk. He had locked his wristwatch in a draw and was facing away from the office clock. Chopin had told him in an uncompromising manner in the key of C Minor that by waiting a few more months, he could secure his transfer to a more upwardly-mobile division without the unpleasantness of being caught up and spat out by the Defense-11 special ops unit. He would go to the meeting and tell the man straight-out that he was grateful, but preferred to stay in the basement. If asked for a reason, he would cite personal considerations. It was his favourite excuse. No one ever dared ask what exactly the considerations were.
"Twenty-four minutes from Tulsaaa…" sang Murphy in a piercing falsetto.
"I thought you were writing a report."
"I thought you were going to a better place. I won't tell if you don't. The meeting's at twelve, isn't it?"
On the other hand, D-11 contained no Agent Gregory Murphy. It was one hundred percent Murphy free. No one would ever promote Murphy. No one sane, anyway. Just sharing an office with him seemed to have tainted Jack in the eyes of his superiors. The Department Head actually winced when he passed him in the corridors. He used to smile.
"You know, he and the General Omnipotent Director are on first name terms. The G.O.D.'s only son calls his father Mr Director Sir, and I've heard that Mrs God has to salute the stars and stripes and sing 'America the Beautiful' before she's allowed into the matrimonial bed. Sloane calls him Richard."
"How nice for them."
"Hey, if you decide to go play in the big boys' yard, you could put in a good word on my behalf with the Lord's Anointed. Make me sound like James Bond, but less sissy and British."
"Mmm." Jack tuned him out. Not long now. To fill in the remaining time, he began to sort through the papers on his desk. Some needed destroying and some storing; nothing required his immediate attention. He gathered the scrap together and carried it to the box for documents to be incinerated. As he was about to drop the pile in, the door opened. It was Sloane. Black hair, clean-shaven, short. Like half the Agency, a user of the fragrance eaudeMarlboro. Jack knew him by sight, but until yesterday had never spoken to him.
"Ah, you're here. I'm Arvin Sloane. But please - call me Arvin." Jack let go of the paper, the cue for Sloane to take one hand in both of his and shake it energetically.
"I'm –" began Jack, when he was allowed his hand back.
"Jack Bristow. I know. And you're cleaning out your desk. Good." He scanned the room. His gaze passed over Murphy as if he were part of the furniture. "You'll be much better off with us, Jack. I'm glad I found you here in time. I've got to go back to Naples this afternoon – they want me to tie up some loose ends for them. While I'm gone, you'll be working on something with Agent Burns. He can give you the full briefing. Your file says you know Russian and German?"
"I do."
"And that you have some knowledge of microelectronics? And security systems?"
"That is correct, yes."
"I'm sure we will value your expertise. This case goes somewhat beyond our usual remit. I've already upgraded your security clearance. When can you join us?"
"Immediately, if necessary." So much for Chopin.
"You do that. Just don't disappoint me. The Director didn't think you were worth salvaging." Sloane's eyes flicked round the office again. "Prove him wrong, Jack."
"It will be my pleasure." Sloane looked amused.
"This business in Naples'll be finished before the end of the week. I look forward to working with you." In parting, Sloane shook his hand again, before darting up the stairs to the first floor, taking them two at a time. When he was gone, Jack sat down. He wanted to revise their conversation and see where it had gone wrong. At what point had he given up his plans of staying where he was? He would come to suspect, quite strongly, that in fact he had never possessed any such intention – that when Sloane opened the door for him on the phone, he knew then that he would walk through, if only for the sake of reconnoitring the other side. Everything else had been self-deception.
"'Call me Arvin'?" said Murphy, raising his eyebrows. "Nice guy. Loved the way he made a point of saying hi to me. It's so easy for the assholes in management to forget about the little people."
There was nothing left to do. Jack stood and picked up his briefcase. His jacket was on the peg. There was a copy of the New Yorker in the back pocket. "Goodbye, Murphy. My report's on your desk. If you're right about Sloane, I won't be gone long." He left the office and took the elevator to the fifth floor. He didn't go back.
Into the woods
"You should get married."
Jack squinted through the Venetian Blinds. Apart from a gaggle of tourists, all dressed in waterproofs that were an unflattering but necessary protection from the steady drizzle that had taken hold of Paris that afternoon, the square was empty. Unless Jean Fournier was able to metamorphose himself into a pigeon, he wasn't present.
For the tenth time since they had moved into the abandoned apartment that morning, he made his status report. "This is Ensign. No news."
"Copy, Ensign. Hang on there."
He put down the receiver. "Any particular reason?"
"Always moving round the world. No roots. No ties. No real family. A man needs something to hold onto. At twenty-six it's time for you to think seriously about these things."
Jack kept watching the tourists in case any of them started acting suspiciously. "You're eight years older than me." Probably. He had never really been sure about that. "And you're not married."
"I'm going to be." An elderly sightseer pushed back the folds of his overcoat, possibly reaching for his gun. Jack grabbed his binoculars: the gun turned out to be a camera. How disappointing.
"Congratulations. Since you haven't asked Emily yet, I won't rush out for champagne." Insofar as the lady in question knew Sloane existed, she thought he was a parasitical investment banker bent on repressing the world's poor and disenfranchised and extorting Rolex watches from kittens.
"It will happen." Jack turned round. Arvin was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a book open on his lap; he had been there in that attitude almost since they arrived. Fournier wasn't his responsibility, and he had made no effort to disguise his contempt for the whole operation from its planning to its methodology through to its originators in C-Branch. Scanning his face for some sign of levity, Jack found none. He hadn't really expected any. The book contained the poems of Tibullus. Yesterday, it had been Petrarch.
"What will happen? We'll get Fournier or you'll marry Emily?"
Sloane didn't bother replying. He hated being teased more than anyone Jack had ever met. If not for that, and his gift for annoying the wrong people, they both might be in Saigon or Berlin by now. Meanwhile, down in the square, the shutters were being closed on the windows of the ice-cream shop. Reality had triumphed over optimism.
"This is unbearable," remarked Sloane. Jack could hear him pulling on his jacket and walking to the door over the creaking floorboards. "There's a little restaurant at the south end of the Rue Saint-Jacques in the Latin Quarter. It's called Le Renard et la Belette. Find me there at nine, and we'll have dinner."
The stakeout became considerably more bearable once Arvin had departed and taken his excess of nervous energy with him. Half an hour later, a large man in a raincoat walked across the square. Receding hairline, small eyes, bulbous nose. He leaned against the edge of the statue of Michael Servetus and, cupping his hands together, tried to light a cigarette.
"Ensign to C9. Target in sight."
"Copy Ensign. Begin phase 2." Jack pulled out his gun and methodically checked the contents of the barrel. At last, the day was improving.
The second phase proceeded almost too smoothly, and Fournier gave himself up without a fight. He assumed Jack had back-up: Jack didn't disabuse him. Back in Virginia, he took a taxi to Alexandria Station; he was alone, since Sloane had opted to stay in Europe after hearing that Emily would be visiting family in Switzerland over Christmas. Jack left him bent over a map of Lausanne, planning an accidental meeting as laboriously as if it were the Battle of Austerlitz.
The streets were so empty on the twenty-fifth of December that it felt as if everyone else had gone to Switzerland, bequeathing the city to Jack Bristow and a few stray cats. He had a carriage to himself a minute before departure, when the young woman with the long chestnut hair climbed on board, or tried to. She had a small suitcase with her that appeared to be made of lead; after a struggle, she succeeded in getting both it and herself off the platform and onto the train. This was the kind of chance Jack didn't expect to be given more than once in a lifetime.
"Can I help you with that?" She was holding onto a metal post, a little out of breath.
"No – I'm doing OK – " She paused and swept her hair back from her face. "Well, maybe not that OK," she said with a self-deprecating chuckle. "Could you just carry it to a seat for me? Thanks."
He lifted the case quickly with one hand, and then fought not to drop it immediately. After depositing it by his own briefcase, and assisting her to the seat next to his, he asked: "Elephants? Dumbells?"
"Yes and yes. And library books. I'm finishing my thesis and the library has a stupid rule about returning all books by a certain date –"
"Which is today?"
"Which is today. They're very stupid people." She smiled. Her eyes were hazel. This was the first time he'd been close enough to distinguish the colour. And although her frock and cardigan were a demure choice of clothes, almost absurdly so, there was nothing demure in her gaze. "Haven't I seen you before?"
"Probably. I take this line quite often." He certainly had seen her before. They always seemed to be passing each other on the platform or sitting in the same carriage, but he didn't want to tell her just how well he remembered her; she might decide he was an obsessive stalker. "Now that you mention it, you do look familiar."
"You don't work at Georgetown, do you?" At that moment, he powerfully wished he did.
"No, I'm in finance. I work for a subsidiary of HSBC." When the Agency planners developed covers, he wondered if they deliberately made them sound as tedious as they possibly could. Clearly, they had never been young and desperate to impress a beautiful woman.
"That's strange," she said, cocking her head to one side. Her eyes creased at the corners when she smiled.
"Why?"
"Oh…well – this sounds ridiculous. It's because I've never met a banker that I liked before."
"Ah," he said. He wanted to make a witty reply. She averted her gaze, seemingly embarrassed. But when she looked at him again, her expression was unchanged, as bold as it had been before. "How many bankers have you met?"
"Three. Including you. And one had been in the SS."
"Ah," he said again. "Undergraduate?" It was possible; he had met some extraordinarily self-possessed undergraduates.
"Graduate. Six thousand words into a study of Walt Whitman and the place of the vagrant in the American psyche," she said, anticipating his next question. He paused. She chuckled. "I know."
The train was slowing. It was his stop. "My name's Jack. Jack Bristow."
"Laura. Thanks for your help."
"It was my pleasure." As he grabbed his case, it occurred to him that he should have asked whether the other banker was in the KKK, but it was too late for that now. From the platform, he looked back. She had followed him as far as the door. One white arm was resting on the grimy window frame. With her bright frock and chestnut hair curling round her shoulders, she looked like a darker, smarter reflection of Katharine Ross.
"Jack! I'm on this train every Tuesday morning at eight if you want to ask me out to dinner."
He at least was able to smile at her before the engine spluttered back into life and the train pulled away. As he wandered through Union Station, the magnificence of the vaulted ceiling struck him, as if for the first time. It was mean of him – no doubt a cridecouer from the exiled Canadian who lingered on inside the Company man – that for the last couple of years, he had viewed the grand marble spaces and sweeping arches with a dispassion that walked perilously close to condemnation.
A month later, and he was crouching in the back of a Volkswagen Type 2 alongside Brill and Sloane and the late Agent Burns, who had been rendered into an oppressive and, after three days following a desert track, increasingly malodorous bundle of tarpaulin. And that was the least of Jack's problems.
"What if they look inside?" Brill demanded.
"Sloane said they won't."
"But if they do?"
Sloane's eyelids hadn't even flickered when his name was mentioned. Despite the removal of the bullets and the antiseptic that Jack had applied, he was running a fever. One more day and the leg would be a write-off.
"If they do – it may be unpleasant." Jack let his gaze float meaningfully to his Beretta. "You should ride up front with Carlos. Make sure he remembers his script."
Brill was already better armed than some tanks; that didn't stop him from leaning down to rifle through Sloane's jacket until he located a revolver and a box of cartridges. It amused Jack to watch Brill jump when he found a hand clamped round his wrist.
"Say 'thank you', Thomas," Sloane whispered.
"Thank you, Thomas," Brill snapped back. They never had much liked each other. Once he was gone, Jack raided Brill's pack for a water bottle. Fair was fair, and if they lived through the next hour, the supply of both water and bullets would cease to be a pressing issue.
"Can you drink?"
"I think so."
Sloane exhaled sharply as he was lifted from a prone to a sitting position and let Jack support his head. After managing five gulps of water, he pushed the bottle from his mouth. Jack was glad that the older man was facing away from him; this was the closest he'd ever been to someone without two X chromosomes, and he thought his expression might betray his discomfort. He could feel the heat and sweat of the fever radiating from his friend's body.
With predictably perfect timing, Sloane turned his head. He didn't smile, but he did raise an eyebrow, which in their language was a kind of smile.
"You look uncomfortable. You should drink some of that yourself."
Jack shrugged and took a swig. Vodka. He made a face. "Did you know?"
"Not until you made me drink it," said Sloane, pretending to be obtuse.
"About Burns."
"I suspected. I needed evidence. Which I acquired," he said and gestured ruefully at his leg.
"We could all have been killed." That was true. They had very nearly been wiped out, and by the very gang they'd supposedly been ambushing. Yet Jack wasn't angry. Instead, he knew he was simply waiting, curious to hear what Sloane would say. Anger, he sometimes thought, would make him a better human, but a worse agent.
"Of course. This isn't the Girl Scouts, Jack. Of course, there was danger." Sloane looked offended. And maybe he truly was. Jack had learned not to worry about the sincerity of his friend's emotions. It was the only way to stay both friends with him and sane. "But we weren't killed, as I'm sure you've noticed. Tonight, a sympathetic doctor will call Emily and tell her that I may not survive the week. Brill will go home to drink vodka and play chess against himself. You'll go to your rendezvous with the mysterious Laura."
"She's not mysterious. She's a literature graduate from Ohio. I met her on the train to Washington."
"And she ordered you to take her to dinner. I promise you, Jack – she's trouble. Probabilmente una troia in carriera."
He frowned. Sloane was too ill to hit. "Once you've met her, you'll think otherwise."
Any objections were cut off, when the van came to a sudden halt. The floor shook, and Arvin became tense against his shoulder, hands balled into fists. Through gritted teeth, he hissed, "This is it. The tarp. Precaution."
Jack understood. If anyone looked through the windows at the rear, there must be no one visible. Gently, he restored Sloane to his original position, then, covering his mouth with his sleeve, he pulled the tarpaulin from Burns's body. They had wrapped it around him five times. Laid flat, it could cover about ten square metres.
"Ready?"
Arvin nodded. His face was drawn, his lips thin with pain. He would have little difficulty in prevailing on a doctor to call Miss Dreifuss with bad news. He looked like a corpse already; his days of taking the stairs two at a time were over. "Do it."
Jack pulled the tarp over three of them, and then he crouched, and finally he lay down; for a long time, he and Sloane lay in the stinking darkness as silently and as still as the dead man, whom they had killed three days ago.
That August, he and Laura went to a concert on the banks of the Potomac. Always existing at one remove from him, the distance that night was even more marked. She smiled often and, as a wave of warm air blew in from the river, rippling through her hair, she leant towards him and brushed his cheek with her lips; the touch was gentle that he was unsure afterwards if it was Laura or the wind from the Potomac that had kissed him. But she spoke little, and seemed to prefer the sight of the water gliding past to that of the orchestra playing The Bringer of Peace.
"You…seem tense."
"I know. I'm very dull tonight, aren't I?" She took his arm in hers and leant her head lightly on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I've missed you so much, and now you're back, and I can't be completely happy."
"What is it?" He was surprised by how concerned he felt.
"That's just it – it's absolutely nothing. And now I'm annoyed with myself for being annoyed. One of the other Masters students – the one I told you about a few months ago, who thinks George Eliot was a man – said I was copying her research. Which is nonsense, because she's supposed to be writing about Melville, not Whitman."
"Does anyone take her seriously?"
"I should hope not! Melville's completely irrelevant to what I'm doing. It was the suggestion that I'd need to cheat – and cheat using her notes, of all people – that upset me." She chuckled in a self-deprecating way. "Vanity of vanities..."
During the fireworks display, she laughed and pressed her hands together like a child, and yet, as blue and white chrysanthemums and golden peonies exploded above them, he noticed that her eyes were shining, and not with joy. But even when she was unhappy, she dazzled him. Maybe that was love. He had never been in love, so far as he knew; people wrote about it and made tedious movies about it and behaved stupidly in its name. And she was a beautiful woman – and fiercely clever. Far too good for him, in fact. It would be a peculiarly ungenerous kind of perverseness if he wasn't in love with her.
Later, in the taxi, she turned her face to his, her lips a little open. And what could he do, except kiss her?
They told him at work the next morning that Allende was dead.
The forest closes round
Sydney changed everything.
Until she arrived, Jack had never thought houses as dangerous places. Afterwards it was impossible to view them in any other light. He was amazed that Laura could sleep so peacefully, while beneath her Sydney gurgled in a pink-frilled prison with wooden bars on the one side and a guillotine on the other. The floors in every room were covered in electrical trip-wires, the kitchen was a torturer's dream, the living room had clearly been booby-trapped with dangerous, sharp, heavy objects precariously balanced on tables and shelves and the bathroom was equipped with a pool of scalding water for the interrogation of prisoners.
In the last month of her pregnancy, Laura rested his hand on her stomach and, as they felt their child kick, smiled. "This one'll be trouble," she remarked. "I hope the Agency taught you how to dodge baby food."
But Sydney was never trouble. Not really. Not when she cried at night. Not when she threw mashed turnip at the visiting dignitary from MI-6. Not when she wandered out of the yard to look for Merovingian Fabrics, where her Daddy worked, and was retrieved three hours later from the North Hollywood subway station. Whenever she saw him, she smiled a vast, trustful smile that made her eyes disappear; whenever she cried, it was the world's fault, not hers.
Sydney rarely cried. Once she was past her first birthday, she could be relied upon to sleep peacefully through the night. During the day, anything could amuse her, whether it was the Grizzly-sized teddy-bear she got from her grandmother or a grey feather she found on the kitchen floor. Her mind was receptive to everything.
She did cry once, in the middle of the day, and for no apparent reason.
"She's tired," said Laura, though it was only ten o' clock in the morning.
"Poor darling." Emily's brow creased in worry. Returning in later years to that morning expedition to the rose garden, he would see guilt there as well. The kind that childless people feel when they suspect that they are being punished for a sin they never wanted to commit. Then, however, he only noticed the worthy and entirely valid concern of a woman he had slowly come to respect.
"I'm sorry about this," his wife said, as matter-of-fact as usual. "It's not like Sydney at all." She knelt down so that her long dress trailed on the grass. "What is it, sweetheart? What's wrong?"
Arvin had been leaning on one of the garden's creamy stone walls. Now he ambled forward to put an arm around Emily. "Perhaps we should go back," he said, the suggestion made almost inaudible by Sydney's cries. That proved unnecessary, for a cursory examination of his daughter revealed a thorn embedded in the sole of her foot. With it removed, the tears quickly dried and the sobs quieted into confused gurgles. Soon, she was contentedly toddling alongside Emily, trying to join in with words of a half-understood song in the piping voice of a four-year old.
L'hiver viendra, les gars, l'hiver viendra
La jument de Michaud, elle s'en repentira…
Behind them, hands thrust into the pockets of his jacket, Sloane trailed, slouching along in his patented schoolboy manner, if schoolboys ever wore several thousand dollars' worth of designer fabric on their backs.
He felt something brush his arm, and looking up, saw Laura. "You saved the day, Jack." She was wearing the dress he liked best: a flowing, colourful frock, a twin of the one he had seen her in the first time they spoke. Today, she seemed so perfect he could hardly look at her.
"I think you're overstating things."
"Sydney wouldn't agree." That wasn't the kind of argument he could take issue with. Instead, he took her hand, which was as cool as ever, and in silence they strolled together for a while past the raised beds of Damascus roses. In the humid air, the garden had turned into a perfumery, filled with an intense sweetness was almost cloying, like the oily fragrance sprayed indiscriminately on the walls of cheap funeral parlours and public toilets. When they reached the southern gazebo, he was glad to let the musty wooden shade enfold him.
His relief did not last long.
"Bristow? I don't believe it - Jack Bristow?"
"Murphy. Long time. It's good to see you." It surprised him that he meant it. If familiarity bred contempt, the distance of the last seven years had allowed for a kind of amused tolerance to spring up – a lack of professional rigour seemed much more forgivable now, in the age of Sydney; the power play and rivalry of his old life looked increasingly like the games of a kindergarten full of spoiled toddlers.
"And this must be your wife."
She walked forward slowly, and extended her hand with a languor that he would one day prefer to view as disguised reluctance. "It's always a pleasure to meet one of Jack's friends."
"Ah – well. It's been a long time since Jack and I worked together. But I hope that will change in future."
"Yes?" Laura tilted her head in polite inquiry.
"Starting next month I'm joining the M-Effers…I mean," he corrected himself, blushing as only a red-head can, "Merovingian Fabrics. That's where Jack works, right? I'll be at the German branch in Accounting." So Murphy was going into the field at last. Had he jumped or been pushed? Either way, Jack pitied the assets who found themselves stuck with such a lightweight as a go-between. Things were quiet now, but no one who knew anything expected the situation to last much longer.
"What's brought you to LA?"
"Ancestral piety." After shuffling his feet and grinning, he clarified: "Gotta reassure my mom that the Germans don't send nice boys like me to Colditz anymore. She's still living in forty-five."
"My parents were the same. The war was never over for them."
"I guess that's how it goes. You fight for so long that you don't know what peace looks like. Or how you fit into it." With that typically vapid remark, the conversation ended. Sloane arrived and, barely glancing at Murphy, announced in an oracular manner that Sydney was tired of roses and wanted to go home.
Jack toyed with the idea of inviting his old office-mate to dinner, since his wife was always pressing him to make friends with people who weren't Sloane; before he could decide what to do, Murphy had said his farewells and gone. It was for the better. He hoped to put off the black day when he would host his first dinner party until he and Laura were so decrepit as to be good for nothing except sitting on park benches feeding crumbs to the ducks - though he couldn't imagine Laura ever being old.
"He isn't a carpet salesman, is he?" she said, and drifted away before he could answer.
They strolled slowly back through the gardens. As he watched Laura and Emily swing Sydney between them, he sensed rather than saw Arvin materialise at his elbow. In the year he'd been away in Europe, the man had aged a decade. It was not hard to imagine him old and occupying a park bench in the distant future, albeit that any duck would have to be fatally unwise to accept food from him.
"It's funny…" Sloane said, addressing the air in an unfocused, evasive way that suggested he found nothing funny in what he was about to say.
"What?"
"Earlier. How quickly you found that thorn."
"It had drawn blood. No great mystery."
Sloane winced at the mention of blood. "Yes. Poor Sydney…" He fell silent. They were almost at the car before he was ready to come to the point. "Laura mistook her daughter's pain for bad temper. She didn't notice the blood. Isn't that a strange mistake for a mother to make?"
"No." He replied curtly. When his friend raised an eyebrow, he added, "I think you're over-interpreting the affair, Arvin. As usual."
Jack was too irritated with Sloane to speak to him on the journey back to the new house. It was easier to keep his hands on the wheel and glower at the traffic. In the rear view mirror, he could catch glimpses of Sydney as she drew crayon pictures of what looked like red cabbages, but which might in fact be roses. She was sharing the backseat with her mother and Emily; at least they were happy to talk to each other.
"But they never did understand each other," said Emily, apropos of whomever the undergraduates at UCLA were meant to be studying. "He was obsessed with his idea of her, and with her beauty. Called her 'the trouble of his life'. And yet she was a stupid woman. Fanatical, superstitious, obstinate."
"Brave, unconventional, individual," corrected Laura, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear and laughing. "And she inspired him. Of course, she could never be a companion to him – but he became a better poet because of her. He excelled in his chosen vocation. Without suffering, there is no art. Nothing else matters."
"And I suppose you're going to say that if they had understood each other, he would have been a lousy poet."
"Oh, probably. You know me too well. My arguments need changing. I am becoming boring," Laura drawled, sounding unconcerned.
"What nonsense! You could never be boring."
Emily had been right about that. She never told him whether she eventually also appreciated the irony, and it was now too late to find out. But Irina Derevko could never be boring, not even when she hid herself inside Laura, the sensible wife, mother and academic; otherwise, Sydney might have had a mother.
He only fell in love once. It happened early in the morning of the fifth of November, 1981, when the Company men came to his door and told him that she was dead and that she was a traitor and a murderer. They named the people she'd killed or set up to die, a list that went on and on as he sat and listened and waited for the punch-line: Vaughn, identified from his dental records; Murphy, shot in the back while extracting a sleeper; Rutkowski, killed in his sleep... finally, he knew his wife.
The wind from the northern steppes feels balmy on his skin, like the breeze in a Californian rose garden. The thermometer tells him it is below freezing. Not the most promising sign. He doubts he has much useful time left – ten minutes, perhaps less. The steps back down to the stone chamber pass beneath him like a benevolent dream, gentle and sure of their destination.
She is out of his reach. He can't be unhappy about that. It seems to him that what he told her once was a kind of promise: "No one can hold onto Irina Derevko for long". So, he won't try. But he is sorry – so deeply sorry – that it is Sydney who must face her once more. At least his first great miscalculation – his first great sin - is something he can begin to atone for. His daughter deserves a better family than the one he gave her.
"I owe you an apology, Arvin…"