His "wife" had also died of cancer, he'd told her. He'd married late in life, the story went, after getting the family business back on track – all that time working, flying around to secure the business his father had spent his life founding – and then married his Maria only three years before. She'd become pregnant, but when she'd visited the doctor to confirm the joyous news, the routine tests… only six months. The baby hadn't had a chance, and Cortez had nothing left of Maria. Perhaps, he'd told his wineglass, it was God's punishment on him for marrying so young a girl, or for his many dalliances as a footloose playboy.
At that point Moira's hand had come across the table to touch his. Of course it wasn't his fault, the woman told him. And he looked up to see the sympathy in the eyes of someone who'd asked herself questions not so different from those he'd just ostensibly addressed to himself. People were so predictable. All you had to do was press the right buttons – and have the proper feelings. When her hand had come to his, the seduction was accomplished. There had been a flush of warmth from the touch, the feeling of simple humanity. But if he thought of her as a simple target, how could he return the emotions – and how could he accomplish the mission? He felt her pain, her loneliness. He would be good to her.
And so he was, now two days later. It would have been comical except for how touching it was, how she'd prepared herself like a teenage girl on a date – something she hadn't done for over twenty years; certainly her children had found it entertaining, but there had been enough time since the death of their father that they didn't resent their mother's needs and had smiled bemused encouragement at her as she walked out to her car. A quick, nervous dinner, then the short ride to his hotel. Some more wine to get over the nerves that were real for both of them, if more so for her. But it had certainly been worth the wait. She was out of practice, but her responses were far more genuine than those he got from his usual bedmates. Cortez was very good at sex. He was proud of his abilities and gave her an above-average performance: an hour's work, building her up slowly, then letting her back down as gently as he knew how.
Now they lay side by side, her head on his shoulder, tears dripping slowly from her eyes in the silence. A fine woman, this one. Even dying young, her husband had been a lucky man to have a woman who knew that silence could be the greatest passion of all. He watched the clock on the end table. Ten minutes of silence before he spoke.
"Thank you, Moira… I didn't know… it's been." He cleared his throat. "This is the first time since… since…" Actually it had been a week since the last one, which had cost him thirty thousand pesos. A young one, a skilled one. But–
The woman's strength surprised him. He was barely able to take his next breath, so powerful was her embrace. Part of what had once been his conscience told him that he ought to be ashamed, but the greater part reported that he'd given more than he'd taken. This was better than purchased sex. There were feelings, after all, that money couldn't buy; it was a thought both reassuring and annoying to Cortez, and one which amplified his sense of shame. Again he rationalized that there would be no shame without her powerful embrace, and the embrace would not have come unless he had pleased her greatly.
He reached behind himself to the other end table and got his cigarettes.
"You shouldn't smoke," Moira Wolfe told him.
He smiled. "I know. I must quit. But after what you have done to me," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "I must gather myself." Silence.
"Madre de Dios," he said after another minute.
"What's the matter?"
Another mischievous smile. "Here I have given myself to you, and I hardly know who you are!"
"What do you want to know?"
A chuckle. A shrug. "Nothing important – I mean, what could be more important than what you have already done?" A kiss. A caress. More silence. He stubbed out the cigarette at the halfway point to show that her opinion was important to him. "I am not good at this."
"Really?" It was her turn to chuckle, his turn to blush.
"It is different, Moira. I – when I was a young man, it was understood that when – it was understood that there was no importance, but… now I am grown, and I cannot be so…" Embarrassment. "If you permit it, I wish to know about you, Moira. I come to Washington frequently, and I wish… I am tired of the loneliness. I am tired of… I wish to know you," he said with conviction. Then, tentatively, haltingly, hopeful but afraid, "If you permit it."
She kissed his cheek gently. "I permit it."
Instead of his own powerful hug, Cortez let his body go slack with relief not wholly feigned. More silence before he spoke again.
"You should know about me. I am wealthy. My business is machine tools and auto parts. I have two factories, one in Costa Rica, the other in Venezuela. The business is complicated and – not dangerous, but… it is complicated dealing with the big assemblers. I have two younger brothers also in the business. So… what work do you do?"
"Well, I'm an executive secretary. I've been doing that kind of work for twenty years."
"Oh? I have one myself."
"And you must chase her around the office…"
"Consuela is old enough to be my mother. She worked for my father. Is that how it is in America? Does your boss chase you?" A hint of jealous outrage.
Another chuckle. "Not exactly. I work for Emil Jacobs. He's the Director of the FBI."
"I do not know the name." A lie. "The FBI, that is your federales, this I know. And you are the chief secretary for them all, then?"
"Not exactly. Mainly my job is to keep Mr. Jacobs organized. You wouldn't believe his schedule – all the meetings and conferences to keep straight. It's like being a juggler."
"Yes, it is that way with Consuela. Without her to watch over me…" Cortez laughed. "If I had to choose between her and one of my brothers, I would choose her. I can always hire a factory manager. What sort of man is this – Jacobs, you say? You know, when I was a boy, I wanted to be a policeman, to carry the gun and drive the car. To be the chief police officer, that must be a grand thing."
"Mainly his job is shuffling papers – I get to do a lot of the filing, and dictation. When you are the head, your job is mainly doing budgets and meetings."
"But surely he gets to know the– the good things, yes? The best part of being a policeman – it must be the best thing, to know the things that other people do not. To know who are the criminals, and to hunt them."
"And other things. It isn't just police work. They also do counterespionage. Chasing spies," she added.
"That is CIA, no?"
"No. I can't talk about it, of course, but, no, that is a Bureau function. It's all the same, really, and it's not like television at all. Mainly it's boring. I read the reports all the time."
"Amazing," Cortez observed comfortably. "All the talents of a woman, and also she educates me." He smiled encouragement so that she would elaborate. That idiot who'd put him onto her, he remembered, suggested that he'd have to use money. Cortez thought that his KGB training officers would have been proud of his technique. The KGB was ever parsimonious with funds.
"Does he make you work so hard?" Cortez asked a minute later.