Tom was outside and halfway down the block when he realized he hadn’t gotten a key. Embarrassed at having to come back, he hesitated at the door, his finger in the air. The imposing figure of O. Chepstow appeared just as he pressed the buzzer or even perhaps an instant before. She held out an open hand, two keys in her massive palm, as if she were feeding a skittish horse. “I knew you’d come back,” she said.
“I couldn’t keep away,” he said, mirroring her grim smile.
When you thought of one thing leading to another, this was the other led to by the first. Tom had gone into a W.H. Smith’s with the idea of getting himself a notebook in which to keep a journal, an activity urged on him by his mother. When he left the store he had handguns in both jacket pockets, the second a toy that bore the real one a more than generic resemblance. Impressed with the toy’s verisimilitude, he had put it in his left hand pocket as counter ballast to the other. Since the toy gun was nothing he wanted, nothing he had planned to buy, nothing he had even conceived a use for, he walked out without acknowledging the acquisition. He edged away from the store with his head down, keeping an even pace, expecting someone to come running up behind him calling “Thief.” His expectation unfulfilled, he spoke the word to himself, became his own accuser. The moment he felt free of pursuit, his exhilaration died. He walked around London for the rest of the afternoon, picking up odds and ends, escaping retribution, until it was almost dark. Then, after a series of phone calls, he slipped into his father’s house, repossessed his suitcase, and moved, body and baggage, into his new home.
3
Lukas Terman was in his study, obsessing over a line of dialogue, when the phone provided a not altogether welcome interruption.
“I’m disturbed with something you’ve done,” Isabelle announced in a bristling voice.
He couldn’t imagine what it was, thought his recent behavior beyond reproach. “I’ve been growing old, Isabelle, waiting for you to return,” he said. He felt himself aging as he spoke the line.
“Not true, is it, that you accepted an invitation for us to go to Kent for the weekend? You don’t think you might have consulted me, Terman? Is there something about me, my line of work perhaps, that makes you think I’m incapable of making decisions for myself?”
Her exaggerated outrage seemed out of character and Terman assumed she was still angry at him for having asked her to leave. “If you don’t want to go, we won’t go,” he said. “I’ve always had the greatest respect for your decision-making capacity.”
“Max said you had committed us to this visit.”
“Max was making trouble,” he said. “It’s how he keeps his hand in when he’s not working on a film.” He found himself in the throes of a rage that subsided as abruptly and mystifyingly as it arose. “Sweetheart, why don’t we continue this fight in person?”
“Sweetheart yourself,” she said in a softer voice. “You know, Terman, it might be fun to have a weekend in the country, don’t you think? I’d rather like to go if you can manage it.”
“Let’s talk about it when you come over, Isabelle. We could all go out for a meal at Tethers or at that wine pub in Ladbroke Grove. Tom ought to be awake by then and if he’s not I’ll shake him out of bed. I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
“Terman,” she said, squeezing the name as if it were one long syllable, “just a bit ago I got a call from Tom. He told me he’s rented a Bed and Breakfast somewhere on the outskirts of Notting Hill Gate. Tom’s not in the house, is he?”
He went upstairs to look into Tom’s room, then returned to the phone to acknowledge his inexplicable mistake. He had somehow assumed when Tom hadn’t shown himself that the boy was asleep in his room. The illusion of Tom’s presence gone, the house felt emptier than before. Isabelle said that she would come over to talk — the word talk emphasized — if he felt in need of company but she wanted it clear that she wasn’t going to spend the night. Terman said even if he were unforgivable, he thought that she’d have the grace to forgive him. The issue of her staying was left unresolved.
“I have the feeling you’re angry with me,” she said.
In the scene he had been reworking, he had left Henry Berger in a phone booth, though as he came back to it he was unable to determine the occasion. It troubled him only a little, this failure of memory, as if something in his own life he wanted to shake off.
Berger was on the phone to Colonel Saracen, requesting a face to face interview (though that may have been a different time).
Saracen: It’s good to hear your voice, boyo. Rumor had it that you had permanently lost your way.
Berger: Could you meet me at the warehouse in Barking, Colonel, in, say twenty minutes. I have that information you’ve been after.
Saracen: Can’t possibly make it. Not possible. Where are you calling from, Henry?
Berger: Yes, well, I thought what I had might interest you.
Saracen: I hope you haven’t mentioned this to anyone else, boyo. I can meet you in an hour, if that’s the only way.
Berger: Thirty minutes, Colonel. (Berger hangs up, dials another number.) Is Major Lindstrom there?
Cut to Henry Berger entering the warehouse building he had been imprisoned in earler, Berger lookng behind htm as he steps inside.
We cut to a figure in an Austin Healey putting on purple gloves with fastidious preoccupation, his face obscured.
Two figures approach the warehouse from opposing directions, enter warily the almost pitch black building. Berger waits until they are both in the room, then turns on the overhead spotlights. The camera moves between triangulated shadows.
Berger: I have a fix on both of you.
Camera follows Saracen as he moves slowly out of the shadows, his hands out of sight.
Berger: You too, Major.
Saracen: So it’s you, old friend. Double agent, is it?
Lindstrom moves a step or so forward from his corner, only the front of him illuminated, his face still in shadow.
Berger: One more step, Major. I want to see your hands. If you don’t throw your gun on the floor in front of you and step into the light, I’m going to have to kill you.
Lindstrom: For God’s sake, Berger, use your head. Saracen set this charade up so that he might get both of us out of the way.
Berger: Is that the truth, Colonel?
Saracen: What do you want me to say, Henry? If you can’t trust me, who can you trust? I’ve suspected Lindstrom from day one.
Lindstrom: Ask Colonel Saracen about the Walmer Connection.
Berger moves the point of his gun from Lindstrom to Saracen, from Saracen to Lindstrom.
Shot of Lindstrom’s face through the sights of Berger’s pistol, the mouth the target of focus.
Saracen (shouting): He’s going for his gun. Put him away.
We see a purple-gloved hand reaching for a gun, followed by the sound of a shot. There are two further shots and the man in the purple gloves — we are still not clear who it is — falls.
Lindstrom: Had me a little worried there, Berger. Have to admit. How did you figure Saracen was the man?
Berger: (his ear to Saracen’s chest, turns suddenly to see Lindstrom, hand in pocket, watching him): It figured, didn’t it, that it was one of you.