Suddenly, Joe shuddered. His voice sank to a whisper.
Was there really a second body in the ruins?
Yes.
Liffy wore false teeth.
Yes.
And no service for Gulbenkian, I suppose.
He wasn't that kind of man, said Bletchley. Gulbenkian was in transit here, just passing through. No one knew him.
No.
And if no one knew him, there can't be anyone to provide him with a service.
No, murmured Joe, it would only look strange, suspicious. He was just passing through after all.
Joe turned away from Bletchley and wiped his eyes, his head sinking lower.
Well if that's it for Gulbenkian's remains, he whispered, could you tell me what happened to that man Liffingsford-Ivy who used to work around here? A movable prop, he called himself. The local illusionist.
Bletchley stared straight ahead.
He's been reported missing while on assignment in the desert, said Bletchley. We've lost a great many of our intelligence agents like that, it's absolute chaos out there. Whole battalions just disappear. Back here, for convenience, we call it a line, a front, but it's not like that at all. Everybody's mixed up with everybody else and it's shifting all the time, a unit here and stragglers there, ours and theirs, back and forth and God knows where. There aren't even any sides out there. Just thirsty exhausted men covered with burns from their own weapons, fighting in any direction they can with no idea where they are, just men fighting desperately and going nowhere. Or wounded and dying in the terrible sun, lying where a shell or a mine went off, one of our shells or one of theirs, one of our mines or one of theirs. . . . The sand blows all night and buries everything except the burning tanks by morning, and the twisted skeletons of the other vehicles. It even covers open eyes by morning, but the one thing it can never cover is the smell, the stench. Radios sit all alone crackling, speaking to no one. . . . This is Coventry, come in please. . . .
You can be in a place so desolate it might as well be the end of the earth and suddenly there's a whine shrieking across the sky and the ground shakes and the intolerable silence descends as you wait, as you count, one two three. . . You drive over a ridge and all at once there are hands reaching out of the sand, out of nothing, hands grasping and reaching . . . just hands. Rigid hands. The fingers fallen and broken, too weak, too frail, and it's horrible. . . . It's just horrible.
I knew him, whispered Joe, hunched over and sobbing as Bletchley stared straight ahead at the river.
***
The felucca in the distance came around into the wind. Bletchley stirred.
Shall I finish with the details?
Yes, said Joe, I guess you'd better. . . . I'm dead. What comes after that?
Once you leave here there won't be any stopovers, as I mentioned. You'll be traveling under a temporary cover that's only good for the trip. When you get to Canada you'll disappear, and then you'll have to begin working out a new identity for yourself. A new history and a new background, everything.
Yes.
I could help you but it wouldn't be as safe as doing it on your own. And anyway, I can't imagine you'd need my help with that.
No, I'll make do.
But understand, Joe, I mean a new real name and a new real history and background to go with it. The real Joseph O'Sullivan Beare, born in the Aran Islands on April 15, 1900, died in a fire in Cairo in June 1942.
Joe nodded.
And so he did . . . and so he did.
Our records will show that, continued Bletchley, and that's what the report to London will say, and the reports London will send to Washington and Ottawa. The Stern case is closed and everybody who was connected with it in any knowledgeable way has been accounted for. The case is closed and there are no surviving witnesses.
Yes, I can see that.
So this has to be an absolute agreement between the two of us, Joe. No one else inside will know the truth but me, and therefore I have to be able to count on you completely. . . .
Bletchley paused.
Completely, he repeated.
Joe looked at him.
How can I assure you of that?
By telling me, said Bletchley. If you know you can do it, you'll tell me so. If you have any doubts, you'll tell me that.
Joe shook his head.
No, no doubts. I can do it and you can count on me.
All right, I will count on you then.
Joe nodded. He waited but Bletchley seemed to have finished. Let it go, thought Joe, for God's sake let it be. He's going way out of his way and doing an enormous amount to make this possible, so just let it be and don't push him. . . . But Joe couldn't let it be. He moved his legs and let his feet swing, gazing down at the water.
You said there would be . . . there are, no surviving witnesses to the Stern case. What about the Sisters?
The Sisters weren't connected to the Stern case, said Bletchley. The two of them are half as old as time and they live on the Nile and maybe they are the Nile, and for all I know they haven't spoken to anyone but the Sphinx in decades. And for all anybody knows they'll outlive your grandchildren and Stern's grandchildren and they'll still be around when the Sphinx is turning to dust. They knew Stern over the years, I imagine, but over the years they've known just about everybody on every side of any war, so that doesn't connect them specifically to the Stern case. Their concerns aren't the same as mine, or as yours and Stern's used to be.
Yes, whispered Joe. I can see that.
Joe hesitated. Damn, he thought. Why can't we ever let good enough alone? Why do we have this incurable need for answers?
Again Joe swung his feet, gazing down at the water.
You said no one else inside would know the truth. Does that include Maud? I wasn't sure whether you consider her inside or not.
I don't, said Bletchley. Not really, but I was going to mention that. I intend to speak to Maud privately, after you leave. I feel she has to know the truth, that you're not dead, I mean. I don't think it could work otherwise. But even so, you mustn't try to contact her or anyone else you know out here, after you get back. It has to be all or nothing, Joe, and that still holds no matter what identity you adopt for yourself and no matter how plausible it might be for the man in that new identity to get in touch with Maud in one way or another, or with anyone else. There are people who might be interested and I don't want them to have the least justification for being interested. Private suspicions and private conjectures are one thing.
But a cause for suspicion is something else.
Yes.
I'm thinking now of people who are on the inside and have access to files. People who became involved in this and shouldn't have been, or people who simply might be curious for their own reasons. I'm referring to the Major from the Waterboys whom you met, and to his superior the Colonel, and I'm also referring to Whatley. They're all professionals, and good ones, but they should be allowed to forget these incidents so they can move on to other things.
Yes, I can see that.
And I'm not being sentimental when I say Maud has to know you're alive or it wouldn't work. I feel she has to know for security reasons. Because if she didn't, I don't see how she could keep from trying to find it out somehow, and that could cause trouble. Not because of where she is in her job exactly, but because of connections she has.
Yes. I know how close she and the Major are, by the way. She told me.
I wasn't going to mention that, said Bletchley. There didn't seem to be any reason to.
There wasn't, not for you. I only mentioned it so you'd know I really do understand what it means in terms of security, and the agreement between you and me.