“What he said…,” she sobbed barely able to catch her breath, “…about Cicero.”
She wiped her tears and took deep breaths. He released her and poured her a brandy.
“Drink this, Victoria. It will put you to rights.”
Inexplicably, it was the first time he broke his formality and used her first name. She sipped the brandy, noting that her hand shook. She felt the warmth suffuse her and took a deep breath, the compulsive emotional outburst waning. Her head was clearing. She knew the source of her sudden eruption.
“I have betrayed you,” she said, her voice reedy, her stomach tightening.
Thompson looked at her, his forehead showing lines of confusion.
“Betrayed?”
She started to speak, stopped before she could get out any words, then pulled herself together, and spoke finally.
“I have not kept your confidence, Mr. Thompson. The guilt is upsetting me terribly.”
A sob began deep inside her. To tamp it down, she took a deep swallow of the brandy.
“Perhaps I have fallen into deep waters. I feel as if… as if I’ve been drowning.”
“Easy now, Victoria. Speak calmly. You say you have betrayed us. How?”
“I’ve given a copy of Mr. Churchill’s speech to the first secretary, against your orders of confidentiality.”
Thompson shook his head. He was obviously confused.
“Knowing the confidential nature of your assignment, did he request it?”
“He did.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“He said that he wanted to be sure that the speech conformed to the current policies of Mr. Attlee. If it had not, he told me he and the ambassador would discuss it with Mr. Churchill — in general terms, sir. The first secretary promised he would not reveal what I had done.”
Thompson shook his head and looked at her sympathetically.
“Well, then,” he said in a soothing tone. “You reacted to an order from your immediate superior. I understand your dilemma, Victoria. Confronted with such a choice, I might have done the same myself.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Mr. Thompson,” she whispered. “Not you. I should have informed you of his request from the beginning. I didn’t. I deliberately betrayed you.”
Thompson grew thoughtful.
“I suppose Mr. Attlee and the opposition are by now completely aware of the text. I can assure you that neither the ambassador nor Mr. Maclean have discussed any matter of policy with Mr. Churchill.”
“There’s more,” Victoria said.
“Oh?”
Thompson looked at her sharply. She hesitated and swallowed.
“The Russians have it as well.”
Although he maintained a calm façade, she saw a pulsing tic suddenly begin in his jaw.
“How do you know?”
“I….”
She hesitated. This was the hardest revelation of all. She was having second thoughts, silently begging her lover for forgiveness. Perhaps it was all appropriate conduct for a high-level diplomat. Hadn’t he explained that diplomacy often took bizarre turns? She felt certain he was innocent of any wrongdoing and — she hoped — when all this was over, he would understand why she had to unburden herself.
She told Thompson she had inadvertently seen the first secretary hand the speech to a man whom she followed to the Russian embassy.
“It might have been perfectly appropriate,” she said. “I’m not sure.”
Then she remembered the words that had bitten deep into her psyche.
Must I? she asked herself then blurted the words.
“When he read the draft, I had given him, he said….” She emptied her brandy glass. “…He said that Mr. Churchill….” She could not continue.
“Yes?” he prodded.
“He said that Mr. Churchill had signed his death warrant.”
Thompson seemed stunned.
“Good God!”
“He blurted it out,” she explained. “He often does that when angry.”
When pleasured, too, she thought. He could be ardent and uninhibited at the supreme moment — she, as well. Unfortunately, the memory only added to her guilt, like a double-betrayal.
“Are you sure you heard correctly?”
She nodded.
“It frightened me, Mr. Thompson. I’m still frightened.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry I didn’t speak sooner. It was driving me mad.”
She watched as Thompson grew thoughtful, then he turned to her.
“It seems so… out of context. Perhaps he was reacting to something specific to the speech itself. Stalin, for example.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted, although it did not assuage her fear.
He rubbed his chin and frowned.
“Marshal Stalin is not my concern,” he said.
He seemed suddenly distant, obviously wrestling with the ramifications of what she had revealed.
“Will you tell Mr. Churchill?” she asked.
He grew more pensive, then turned and looked out the window into the darkness, seeing little but both their reflections in the glass. Then he turned to her, his eyes met hers, and she could feel the power of their penetration.
“I need your trust, your absolute unequivocal trust. Can I ask that of you?”
“Considering what I’ve told you, can you or Mr. Churchill have any faith in my reliability?”
He smiled and patted her arm.
“We are both believers in redemption, Victoria.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “And I’ll do anything to prove myself. As for trust, depend on it.”
“This, Victoria, is between you and me.”
She nodded vigorously, exhilarated by a strong sense of solidarity.
“For now, Mr. Churchill cannot be privy to this, not on the eve of this important event.”
“Of course, sir. I completely understand.”
“On the matter of this Russian connection, may I say, it might be perfectly innocent, some diplomatic folderol; nevertheless, it does deserve some attention. Are you with me on this as well, Victoria?”
He surveyed her face with intensity as if trying to read beyond her expression.
“It might clear your mind of any uncertainty about the first secretary. Or….” He paused, as if pondering her reaction, “…It might not.”
Inexplicably, the consequences of her affair with Donald Maclean and the betrayal it entailed crossed her mind. She was thinking of his wife, Melinda, an unwitting victim of their clandestine passion. What Thompson was asking now was for her to keep yet another secret. But this time, she felt no guilt, rather an enormous sense of her own personal value, something that she had never calculated before.
“I would welcome that, sir.”
“It may, at first, seem bizarre, perhaps unseemly to ask of you. But you must trust my judgment on this, Victoria, and follow my instructions to the letter. Am I clear?”
“I’m ready to cooperate, sir.”
She felt certain that her belief in her lover’s loyalty would be fully vindicated.
Chapter 21
“You say this reporter is a friend of the first secretary?” Thompson had asked.
She had been surprised that he had dredged up this tiny detail from an overheard remark by Benson at the station. The man doesn’t miss a trick, she thought. His assumption had been prescient.
He had apparently worked out a scenario in his mind as if it had been a contingency plan all along. She listened carefully, answering every question he had posed.
“One of his many press contacts, but I think much closer than most. The first secretary introduced me to him. They seemed to share camaraderie, he called often, and they lunched frequently. As I understand it, he is a special friend of Sarah Churchill.”
“How special?”