“I don’t know. Wait.”
“This is a helluva story in case I haven’t mentioned that.”
He did not look at her. He stared at a spot on the ceiling that was not like any other spot. He stared until he actually did not see the spot but was in a trance; he had the trick of travelers and spies to induce a trance to escape the constraints of time passing. It was also the trick of prisoners who survived.
“Is it?”
“When I first met you, Dev, you pretended to be a newspaperman. At least pretend now to see the possibility that someone named Michael Brent went in from British Intelligence to kill one of our agents who happened to be an Irishman named Crohan. You haven’t heard that story lately.”
“There’s no proof.”
“I’m not a lawyer, I’m a journalist. Besides, isn’t that old man proof sitting there in that room?”
“No.” The cold eyes did not see; the cold voice fell flatly between them. “The only thing he can prove is how to get us killed. He’s a loose cannon, Rita. The British must want him dead, the Russians certainly want him dead. For all I know, so do we.”
“Why did they let him out?”
“It was a trap from the beginning. I don’t have proof either, but there has to be some logic to this. The priest in Dublin; he must have been prodded into making contact with the old woman in Chicago. Maybe a letter or photograph or something dropped on him by the Opposition. She contacts a journalist and that is not coincidence either; she was a friend of the publisher of your magazine. You pursue the story and become intrigued when the old priest is killed. All of it was so subtle and yet so clumsy.”
“What are you talking about?”
He turned and looked at her. They were naked. Her body was lean and unmarked; his was lean and pale and marked with wounds. Her face was soft, he thought, though it was not; he merely saw the golden light falling on it. Her red hair framed the paleness of her face and he thought she seemed so young it was only that he felt himself so old. Her green eyes held his simply and without aversion. He touched her hair with a clumsy hand, unaccustomed to caresses. “Rita Macklin would write an investigative piece of journalism that would thumb its nose at the evil and corruption in the American espionage establishment. At the same time, the government would be embarrassed and would ask embarrassing questions of the British when it was discovered the old man was not Tomas Crohan. Perhaps they were going to kill him after he talked to you; perhaps the Russians were playing the British side at the same time, exciting their suspicions of an American plot to discredit them. Paranoia is the coin of the business; it could be spent both ways. What did they want with all this? To destroy Cheltenham, I suppose, to make it too difficult for the Americans and the English to work with each other in trust anymore. Maybe that’s why Sims was in Helsinki and maybe that is why the prostitute was killed. She didn’t know she was a danger to the Russians because she had slept with me and with Sims.”
Rita turned away from his touch. She stared at the wall opposite him.
“Why did you sleep with her?”
He stared at her back and smiled at her, with affection and yet with a sort of mocking look in his gray eyes. “Because I was tired. Because I wanted to make love.”
“That wasn’t love.”
“Rita, be still.”
“No. I love you. I told you. You never needed anyone else.”
He said nothing.
She turned suddenly and looked at him. Her green eyes were burning bright in the sunlight low in the sky. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Is this a test?” Gently, mocking.
“No, goddamn you, there isn’t any test. Fuck you.”
He said nothing.
“Damn you. What moves you? What makes you feel? What makes you cry or get mad or anything?”
“You.”
“What?”
The trance was broken, he realized. What he had said to Hanley would now come true. He did not feel any emotion but release, as though everything he felt had been dammed up by his silence.
“I love you, Rita,” Devereaux said for the first time and they both knew that was all they had waited for, that a few words had committed both of them to some uncertain future. He had meant it when he told Hanley he would quit this time and he had mentioned Rita as part of it only to protect her from the wrath of the Section; at least, that is what he thought at the time.
She reached for him then. She held his face in her soft hands and kissed him softly and they moved together, touching and holding each other. The light finally fell away beneath the buildings and the sky turned purple; clouds streaked across the horizon of the Baltic but they did not see them. In the dusk, they held each other. “I would do anything for you,” she said. He knew it was true and it frightened him.
What could he say to her now?
“I was afraid,” she said. “When that man followed me… when he tried to kill me. I was afraid for a moment that you had sent him. I have to tell you that.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I won’t tell you anything. I have secrets and you will never know them. I don’t want your secrets.”
“Don’t we have to understand each other?”
“No.” He kissed her to silence. “No. No words. No secrets. No betrayals. I didn’t want you, Rita. I didn’t want to see you again. Once I could send you away; I can’t send you away again.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get rid of this thing. I have a promise from Hanley. I’m quitting the Section.”
“I thought it was the only thing that kept you alive.”
“It was.”
“Will he do it? Will he let you quit?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you believe him?”
“Because the alternative isn’t acceptable, to him or to me.”
“How can you resolve this?”
“Do nothing,” he said. “You will tell the story of Tomas Crohan and it won’t be a secret anymore. There is one other matter.”
“What?”
“George.”
“The British agent?”
“Yes. That’s part of the story you can’t tell.”
“Why not?”
“Because then they could never let us alone,” Devereaux said. “Tell what you have with the old man and let the rest of it alone.”
“I’m a newspaperman,” she said. “I’m not a goddamn spook. I don’t start changing the way the story is told to suit myself.…” She paused in her outburst as suddenly as she had started speaking. My God, it isn’t true anymore, is it? This changes all the rules for me as well as him.
“You are what people think you are, Rita,” he said with gentleness. “George thinks you’re a spy, by now, I’m sure of it. Who else does? Antonio did.”
“I would do anything for you.”
He smiled. “Even betray all your journalism ethics.”
Her face was grave. “Would do anything. Lie or steal or even kill for you.”
“How fierce you are,” he said, again in a voice of peculiar gentleness. His tone was still flat, his words were without emphasis, and yet he spoke as a child speaks describing a wonderful thing and uncertain how to frame it in words. “I love you.” And they suddenly came together without any more words between them. She touched his body and let her fingers follow down his belly and when she bent to kiss him there and there, he touched her hair again and held her head in his hands and said her name again. He opened her legs and lay in her lap and they made love again as dusk turned into the cold night of Stockholm beyond their windows.
Rita slept next to him, on her belly, her head buried in pillows. She slept like a child, deeply and trustingly. She was naked and he could see the ribs of her back as her body rose and fell, rose and fell with heavy breaths. For a long time, in the glitter of moonlight pouring through the window, Devereaux sat in bed and watched her sleeping.