“No.”
“Because of Tommy and what he was. I loved him, he was the best person I ever knew. Dad loved him, Dad warned him because Dad knew all the dirty tricks. He knew that they would try to use someone like Tommy, especially since his father had been… a civil servant.” The last words were spoken bitterly.
“Some people were moved by patriotism. Even priests,” Devereaux said.
“But it would have been a betrayal for Tommy. Don’t you understand? Some people don’t care that much if their wife or husband cheats on them. Even if they find out. They might be hurt but they get over it. And some other people — they can’t stand it, they never can get over it. It mattered that much to me and to Tommy, I know it did. And it mattered to Dad. It didn’t mean anything to me that Tunney was a priest and he was a spy. I didn’t feel good or bad about him. But for Tommy—”
“Why would you have thought Tommy was a spy at all?”
“Don’t you know that now?”
And he did, in that moment, staring at her and at the tears.
“Because your brother died,” Devereaux said.
“Yes. They said he had a fever. He was very strong, but we got a letter that said he must have been sick for a long time and no one knew it and one morning he died. No one even knew where his grave was. They looked for it for a while and then the villagers said they had buried him in the jungle. The villagers said he had just died of fever.”
“And you never knew if that was true,” Devereaux said.
“Yes. I never knew. I could accept that he was dead but I had to know the truth about him. I even contacted the Bishop years after but no one could tell me anything. Or they didn’t want to tell me anything. I couldn’t prove a negative, that Tommy was not a spy. And then Father Tunney. He had been in Laos at the same time—”
“And that’s what was more important than the story.”
“Yes.”
“What you couldn’t tell Kaiser.”
“Yes.”
There was nothing he could do. She cried now, openly, turning her face to the water, away from the strollers and joggers, away from him. He touched her and held her but let her cry and did not speak. He understood tears.
Finally, when she could speak again, she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “He knew him.”
“Tunney told you that.”
“Yes. I asked him. I told him about Tommy. He said he knew him. He said that Tommy was not in the CIA.”
A comforting lie, Devereaux thought. He would not have believed it.
“How did he know? For sure?” Rita had not believed it either. “He said that after he was captured by the Pathet Lao, after he confessed, he was given a list of agents. His name was on the list. The names of others he knew were agents. But Tommy’s name was not on the list.”
“Was it enough?”
The question was hard, harder than it had to be. She did not look at him but felt his arm around her, holding her, comforting her.
“Yes,” she said. “It was enough for me. My father always worried about it, he made his own inquiries, but he died before he was ever sure. I’m sure. It’s over for me, that part of it. I know now. I mean, I came here for this story and I’ll get it. But I had to know about my brother and how he died.”
Devereaux did not speak. He felt no pangs of family loyalty, had never felt them. He accepted her anguish but did not understand it. He only felt pity for her.
“I could tell you, you see,” she said, turning to him, letting him still hold her in his arms. “I could trust you.”
Yes, he thought. Trust me.
“Do you understand it?” she said.
“Yes,” he lied.
“God, there’s so much I have to tell you sometime,” she said and kissed him then.
He felt her yield herself to him; felt the softness of her body, smelled her breath like a baby’s breath; he kissed her even as he thought he was betraying her.
“Rita,” he said, then paused. There was nothing more to say because nothing seemed to matter.
She held him suddenly so tightly that he knew his guise was complete, that she would trust him with her secrets and her life. Hanley would be pleased, he thought bitterly.
He took her back to her hotel room where the bed had been made and her clothes were all hung neatly in the closet. On her dresser was a box of crackers and a knife and a jar of peanut butter. He thought the room looked as lonely as his own.
He lost himself in the smell of her, holding her behind the closed door, falling with her to the newly made bed, caressing the long, gentle curve of her back beneath the blouse.
In that moment, he thought he was not betraying her; he refused to let himself think of it, what would have to come at last.
He did not say he loved her.
He kissed her. She let him open her blouse. She let him touch her. She let him cover her with his naked body. She held him, she reached for him with her lips. They did not speak because all the words had been spoken.
They made love for a long time, lingering in the stillness of morning, letting all the secrets that she had opened to him be enclosed in silent caresses.
He told her no secrets.
And, because he did not speak except to make love to her with the eloquence of his body, he did not lie to her.
21
The message light on the white telephone in his room was flashing when Devereaux returned to the hotel. He had left Rita sleeping in her bed. For a long time after they had finished lovemaking, long after Rita fell into a soft, childlike sleep, he had lain awake and watched her and traced the soft lines of her face and body with his eyes.
A message to call Hanley, sent in the usual code.
He took his time: He took a long, hot shower and changed his shirt and underclothes and went down to the lobby and dialed the number in Washington from the pay telephone.
Hanley began in his usual abrupt way, without greeting: “There was a meeting this morning.”
Devereaux tried to block the image of Rita from his mind and to concentrate on the flat Midwestern voice. He pictured Hanley sitting in the cold, bare room in the depths of the massive Department of Agriculture building, holding a black telephone in his hand, connected to a double-scrambler box.
“Not an official meeting,” Hanley continued carefully, picking through the words as though they were mines in a poppy field. “Just me. And the A.D. from the Agency. We sat and talked for a while out of earshot on a bench in Lafayette Park.” Devereaux winced at the slang; “out of earshot” was current jargon for being in a place safe from bugging.
“I’m glad,” Devereaux said. “Were you planning the next espionage ball?”
“Sarcasm,” Hanley said. “The matter concerned you.”
“Am I being traded to the Competition?”
He realized he was angry, with himself and the control officer at the other end of the secured line. It was all Rita’s fault, he thought, and then realized it was his own. He had permitted the intimacy because he had wanted her that moment on the beach, as she stood vulnerable and naked in her need, and now guilt was overwhelming him like a hangover. This is your world, Devereaux now told himself, this gray, these shadows, a world of lies without pain or sorrow or tears, nothing to be proud of and nothing to feel shame about. Only the voice of this dull man on a phone line, telling you secrets.
“No. It didn’t concern you specifically,” Hanley said, annoyance twanging the Nebraska accent.
Devereaux waited; he couldn’t trust his voice. He closed his eyes to the morning light streaming through the lobby and tried to concentrate only on the voice and the words he was receiving.