Lithuania…
Michael woke with a start. He shook his head slowly. He felt bad and did not know why. He had been dreaming of Rena of the black hair and skin like alabaster.
Michael opened the paper and saw the photograph in which the American secretary and the Soviet foreign minister shook hands and smiled for the cameras of the world. Michael made a face. Frauds. They were all frauds. What had his principal client in Rome warned him?
Cardinal Ludovico had been a father to him these past few years. They had sat in the great brocaded room in the tomb of a building on Borgo Santo Spirito and ordered cappuccino and ate the little, dry cookie-breads and talked of Malmö. Of the conference. Of being aware of secret agendas by great powers. “You are God’s spy.” The cardinal had smiled at him, and it embarrassed Michael because his Catholicism, which lingered in guilt, had long ago fallen away from the skin of his soul.
“Watch, Michael,” the cardinal had said, resting a bony finger on his wrist. “Try to see those things at the conference that are left unsaid. Hear their silences, Michael, and judge them for me.”
He was not a spy, but he would not protest to the old man. The old man was kind, not like the fools who had tried to run him into the CIA from Army Intelligence.
Michael stared at the photographs. Secret agendas.
Yes. Rena had said that night in bed, after love, after the city was asleep and they were awake… something.…
“Michael, would you love me if I had secrets?”
“Do you have secrets?”
“Would you love me if I must keep secrets from you?”
“Do you, Rena?”
“But answer.”
“I love you.…”
Secrets. He hated the thought of them.
Michael closed the paper in disgust. He stared out the window at the dusk. There was nothing to do and ninety minutes to Stockholm Central. And then he thought of it.
He took out the sixth tape.
Stupid thing. One tape too many. But perhaps it was merely a copy of the other tapes.
He put the cassette in the black Sony machine and closed the opening.
He connected the earphones and slipped them in place. He pressed Play.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence, and then he heard the clear and careful voices.
The train rushed through a dark forest as Michael listened.
6
By the time Rena Taurus left Malmö, it was nearly six in the evening. She took the hovercraft ferry across the gray, choppy Kattegat to Copenhagen and then transferred to a cab for the ride to the airport. She need not have hurried. Kastrup International, outside Copenhagen, was filled with travelers delayed by the bad weather that had blown across the North Sea from Scotland. It was a terrible time of day, and Rena felt miserable. She thought of Michael and felt a pang of guilt. She should have clung to him, given him another day together; she should be with him now beneath the sheets.… It was his fault as much as hers. She did what she had to do, just as Michael served his principal client, and Michael’s client knew very well what this was all about, didn’t he?
She smoked two cigarettes and drank a very spicy Bloody Mary while she waited in the lounge.
Sabena Air’s flight back to Brussels finally took off an hour late. The 727 bucked in the headwinds on takeoff and then gyrated dangerously side to side as it struggled above the clouds. The pilot spoke in French, Dutch, and English and tried not to sound frustrated. They all wanted to go home and be safe on earth again.
The plane was full of the clammy humidity of tired people jammed together in plastic and vinyl seats. Every seat was taken. The flight attendants seemed cross as they dished out food and drink. Rena Taurus had the ability in such situations to withdraw from her surroundings and wrap her thoughts in a tight, dark cocoon that would not let mere discomfort interfere.
She did this now. The blue eyes closed for a moment and then focused inward so that she really did not see the interior of the cabin around her. She thought of a song she had sung when she was young, a song of infinite sadnesses that always moved her to tears. Her mother had taught her the song one afternoon. It was from the old country and her mother had learned it as a girl living in one of the flats in the old part of Vilnius. The song linked her to her dead mother, to the dead country she knew so little about, to the idea that her blood was Lithuanian and that the beauty of her skin, her eyes, the perfection of her mouth were all due to the beauty passed through her mother and her mother’s mother and so on, back through ages when Lithuania had kings and warriors.… She smiled, eyes closed, seeing the connection that pleased her almost sensually. It comforted her. Had she used Michael? Yes. But she had not harmed him. She could never harm him. She was smiling but didn’t realize it.
The man across the aisle was watching her, and she didn’t realize that either.
A woman sat next to the man across the aisle, annoyed with him for watching Rena.
The authorities had discovered the mistake in Malmö at four in the afternoon. There had been a security alert, and the Russians and the Americans blamed each other for the missing tape. Both sides had rushed to put their agents in place. Everyone was suspect, and the interrogations had begun in the Malmö city hall. The great honor given Malmö to host the meeting of the superpowers had turned into an annoying fiasco. What was on the one tape that was so important anyway? Ah, at that question, neither side answered the confused Swedes. It was just important to put an agent on anyone who might have it, for KGB and R Section to work to solve this mystery. The man across the aisle from Rena Taurus was such an agent.
The possibilities were narrow. The mistake involved either theft or carelessness. The results were the same. There had been ten secret tapes of the secret meetings, five for each side. Each tape consisted of the actual words of the participants, as well as the simultaneous translations of the interpreters for each side.
Now there were nine tapes. The missing tape was one of two that contained the secret agreement. It was typical of the Americans and Russians to distrust each other so much that even their secret accords had to have a trail of evidence.
By design — or again, by carelessness, it didn’t matter which — one of the Russians’ tapes had “disappeared” from the safe room and “floated” (in the agency slang) into the possession of an unauthorized person.
The “floater” was identified as Rolf Gustafson. That was at 4:31 P.M. He seemed to want to cooperate freely with the security forces. He explained how he had made a little extra money packing all the equipment of the translators at the conference, as well as the state television’s technical crew.
Were there tape recordings?
Of course.
Who got tape recordings?
The list was short. One of the names was Rena Taurus. Another name was Michael Hampton. There were no more than six other names.
The man across the aisle in the crowded jet had gray eyes framed by a pale face. There was a touch of winter in his look.
Rena opened her eyes and saw him looking at her. It wasn’t so unusual. Men looked at her all the time; let them look. She gazed at him openly, as though he were naked and she wore too many clothes, too much silk, as though pleasure were stretched like satin across her belly. Everything in the universe of her gaze was created for her pleasure. Naked man, said the azure eyes. A smile of pleasure formed on her lips. It was the pleasure derived from seeing interesting or beautiful things, especially when least expected. Men interested her. She studied them the way some men study women. She was fascinated by his look and glanced at him again. He was nothing like Michael, who was generous and young and very, touchingly innocent. He was not those things. There were secrets in his eyes. Her smile faded; she was puzzled by those November eyes.