She called home, went through the niceties, heard the conversation fade into its customary silences.
“What do you really want, Emily?” her mother said after a while.
“I want to bury Dad,” she answered immediately. “I don’t feel I’ve done that yet. Do you?”
There was a pause on the line. “We were divorced, honey. It wasn’t pretty. By the time he died, he wasn’t a part of my life anymore. It’s different for you, I know. That’s only to be expected.”
“But you loved him!”
“ ”Loved.“ ”
Her mother could be tough. Emily knew that. Maybe it was all part of being married to her dad.
“And you hated him? After?”
“No…” Yet there was no emotion in her voice. In a way, Dan Deacon had vacated both their lives long before his last breath in a temple in Beijing. “I can’t have this discussion over the phone. Let it wait till you get home.”
“I can’t wait. I’m in Rome. I’ve got memories. I’ve got things happening here…”
She had to hang on so long for an answer she wondered if the line had gone dead. “Things?” her mother asked.
“Maybe they’re not connected. I don’t know. It’s just…”
Connected or not, there was a larger point.
“Until I know what really happened,” she continued, “until I really know who he was, what he did, why it ended this way… I don’t think he’s quite dead. Not in my head.”
“He got killed by a lunatic, Emily!” her mother yelled. “What more is there to know?”
“Who he was. What he did.”
That pause again. And then the cruellest thing. An act she’d never have expected, not in the harshest, most difficult of times during the divorce.
“I’m not in the mood for this,” her mother snapped. Then the line really did go dead and Emily Deacon understood. She was the only one keeping Dan Deacon’s memory from the grave.
THORNTON FIELDING WAS one of the embassy good guys, a long-serving member of the embassy staff who’d gone native over the two decades he’d spent in Rome. Emily Deacon could remember Fielding from her childhood. He was now fifty-five or so, still as slim, as elegant, as ever, today in a dark, fine-wool suit, perfectly ironed white shirt and red silk tie. He’d lost only the big, bushy head of dark hair, a feature which, she recalled, even back then seemed a little outré for the job. Now he was back to a conservative, short, scholarly clip, turning salt-and-pepper grey. This unvarnished admission of age somehow made his intelligent, constantly beaming face even more likeable.
As a kid she’d had a crush on Fielding, even though she understood he was, in some way she couldn’t quite work out, different. Then, when she finally came back to the Via Veneto under Leapman’s wing, she’d understood. Thornton Fielding stayed in Rome for two reasons. He loved the place so much it was now home. Just as important, Rome didn’t judge him. His sexuality wasn’t an issue here. Professionally, it clouded his career, kept him out of the constant circle of foreign postings that meant promotion in the diplomatic world. Privately-and Fielding was a very private man, she now understood-this city let him breathe, let him be what he was. He’d never have got that in most places, and certainly not at home, amid all the backroom fighting and bitching of Washington.
Leapman always referred to him as “the faggot,” sometimes within his hearing. Maybe that was because Leapman realized she knew and liked him anyway. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid. Either way, the two men kept out of each other’s company as much as possible. It was for the best, though Fielding’s remit covered the maintenance of security systems. As far as she understood, Fielding was the Bureau’s point man within the embassy, the one they came to when things needed fixing or they had to liaise on relations with other agencies. It was inconceivable they’d be able to avoid each other all the time.
She had typed the two names she had-“Henry Anderton” and “Bill Kaspar”-into the network and got nothing. She needed more clearance so, after thinking this through and realizing there were so few options, she walked to Thornton Fielding’s office, waited for one of the assistants to finish talking to him and then went in, taking care to close the door behind her.
Fielding was a smart man. He watched her push the glass shut, then said, “I’m just guessing here, but if you’re about to complain about your boss, Emily, let me save you some time. First, I don’t handle human resources issues for the FBI. Second, even if I did, there’s nothing I or anyone here can do to help you. Leapman is his own man. We just provide you guys with floor space, heating and free coffee. What you do with them is your business.”
It was amusing, almost. Fielding automatically assumed she couldn’t cope with a prick like Leapman. He couldn’t yet separate her from the kid he’d known more than a decade before.
“Why should I want to complain about him?”
“Are you joking? If I had to work with that pig I’d be complaining. Mightily.”
Which wasn’t true at all. Fielding had too much of the diplomat in his blood for that. He’d have found some way around the problem. “He’s not employed for his manners, Thornton. He’s there because he’s good at his job. He is, isn’t he?”
Fielding’s eyes immediately went to the glass door. There was no one there. He held his long, slender arms out wide in a gesture of bafflement. “I guess so. Do you know what that job is exactly?”
The question fascinated her. She’d never met Leapman before this assignment. He came out of nowhere, throwing so many demands and orders in her direction that she’d never thought about his background.
Fielding answered his own question. “You don’t, do you? Well, let me tell you one thing, Emily. I recognize that kind of guy. If you could pull out his FBI records-and that’s a big if, I doubt even I have clearance to get that far-I’d put good money on the fact he started life elsewhere. Military maybe. I don’t know. Don’t care either. I can live with the FBI, most of the time. You’re just a bunch of people with a job to do. Leapman. He’s something else. Something private’s eating that bastard alive. Don’t know what it is. Don’t care. But if it’s not him burning you up, tell me what is.”
She pulled up a chair and sat next to his desk. “I’m here to ask a favour. I want you to tell me about my father.”
“Right now?” Fielding asked. “This sounds like social. I like social. Just not on company time. Couldn’t we have dinner sometime? After the holiday?”
“Yes, we could. But I’d like to start the ball rolling. Being here… it brings back memories.”
“I don’t understand the urgency.” He looked baffled, reluctant to go along with this.
“Let’s say I have a sudden curiosity. I wondered what you felt about my father. I was wondering what he did while he was in Rome. I was so young. And he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about things.”
Dan Deacon had been a military attaché. Strictly speaking, that meant his role was to liaise with his counterparts in the country where he was stationed. But it could be one of those catch-all jobs too. She’d learned enough about that from scanning the newspaper files after he died. There was nothing specific about him. But there were stories everywhere, in reputable journals around the world, which made it plain the job could be a cover for something else.
“I didn’t work alongside Dan,” Fielding replied cautiously. “We just knew one another. He spent a lot of time with the military people here. Really, Emily, I’m the wrong guy. Ask your mom.”
“They divorced ten years ago. Not long after we left Rome. It all got… difficult around then. He was kind of cranky a lot of the time. Didn’t you know?”
“I’d heard,” he said shiftily. “All the same, you should ask her.”
“I have. Either she doesn’t know or she doesn’t want to say.”
Fielding’s good-natured expression dropped for a moment and, for the first time, Emily felt the distance in years between them. Thornton Fielding had always had something boyish about him. Now it was an effort to keep up the act. “Maybe she’s got her reasons.”