A series of photos. Byron staring sombrely at the camera. Byron, aged seventeen, with her mum and dad in Newington, arranged in a triangle on the doorstep to their house, proud owners the day her mum paid the mortgage off. Byron was skinny as a rake, hair nearly down to her waist, knee-high leather boots, leather mini-skirt, incongruous woolly jumper and knitted beret set back loosely on her head, a look in her eye of pride, and defiance. Her home; her family; come take it if you dare.
Documents, redacted. Swathes of black ink across operational details.
Beirut, Tehran, Moscow, St Petersburg, Dallas, Washington, Paris, Berlin.
An agent runner. At first, in accordance with the time, she was used to run mainly female assets. A woman’s touch, wrote her director. So much more comforting for the ladies.
In time, male agents were added to her rota, and sometimes they were caught, and sometimes they died — a pilot hanged in Iraq, a weapons engineer who vanished into the Israeli Defence Forces and never re-emerged — but mostly they lived, and retired happy, their treason never known. One man’s treason is another man’s loyalty, after all.
Dates, more notes.
Considered for section head — passed over.
Considered for section head — passed over.
Considered for…
Will our male colleagues be able to accept a female head? wrote a director, considering her application for head of counter-intelligence. I personally do not think so.
These were those times, and so
… section head — passed over.
Later, when the photos changed to show a Byron with shorter hair, going grey at the roots, a face that was perfectly smooth across the forehead but beginning to crinkle tightly around the eyes and lips, a different concern was raised.
Ideological, it said. Ideologically determined.
Two words which, in another context, might have been grounds for instant elevation, but spies knew the dangers of having a view.
How quickly those words grew from merely a footnote to a problem.
Operational decisions compromised based on political views, wrote a disciplinary report. Orders refused.
And then, in Gauguin’s hand on the side: she let them die.
There was no explanation for these words, the text to which it referred gone, and perhaps Gauguin had never intended for anyone else to read these musings, but there it was, simple and true, at such a time in such a place, Byron had let someone die for a cause unknown, and in that word let was the problem — had she wished, she could have saved them all.
A quiet departure from government duties, an offer of a backroom job on an NGO, but no, thank you, she’ll take her modest severance package and be on her merry way, farewell and goodbye, Official Secrets Act signed, ID badge burned, adios high office and hello the road less travelled.
Sioban Maddox left the world of espionage aged forty-six, and three years later Matheus Pereyra-Conroy was dead, and Byron was born.
Glimpses of Byron.
A shot of a woman buying coffee at the Gare du Nord, Paris.
A flash of a passport as it entered US customs via New Orleans.
A blip on a credit card in Lagos, the card cancelled the very next day.
A ping off a mobile phone in Shanghai.
And Gauguin? He left the world of shady men one week after Matheus Pereyra-Conroy died, to track down the woman he thought had killed him. There was a time, he said, when I imagined she would marry me. But I never mustered the courage to ask, and I think she grew bored with waiting.
Eight days after I met Gauguin at the house beneath the cliffs, we were no closer to finding Byron.
I phoned ahead, and when no car came to pick me up, I called a taxi and rode up to the house to meet him.
Not in the kitchen this time; a study, complete with portrait of Matheus Pereyra above a fireplace, painted by a man paid to like his subject, but who couldn’t quite do it. A halfway image, where regal was tyrant, and smile was smirk, depending how you looked at it.
Gauguin, wearing thick rabbit-lined slippers and a green woollen cardigan, looked up as I walked in, took in my features for the very first time, said, “You must be Why. I didn’t realise you’d be coming by.”
“We spoke on the phone.”
“I didn’t write it down. My apologies.”
I shrugged, sat on a padded sofa against a wall of unread, unloved, expensively bound leather books. “I’ve been thinking about Byron.”
He put his pen aside, raised one hand to request patience, reached into a drawer, pulled out a notebook and a USB recorder, opened one, set the other running. I let him flick through his notes, gathering his thoughts, before he finally looked up and said, “You’ve read all the background material I have?”
“Yes.”
“Have we discussed it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah — good.”
He made another note, then pushed the book carefully to one side and turned all the way round on his chair, back to the desk, recorder in his lap. “You were saying?”
Calm — so calm. A calmness made of the thin white sheet over a frozen lake, perfectly smooth until pressure is applied. This is the first time Gauguin has ever met me, but he sees a note saying it is not and so here is he, talking like an old friend, and calm — very, very calm.
“I think we’re pursuing the wrong tack.”
“Are we?”
“I think we should go after Agustin Carrazza.”
“The MIT man?”
“Yep.”
“All right; why?”
“I think he’ll be easier to find. He’s not Byron — he’ll make mistakes.”
“There’s no reason to think he’s still connected to her.”
“And no reason to think therefore that we’d pursue him.”
“Have we had this conversation before?” asked Gauguin. “Is this an old suggestion?”
“No. We discounted him because his work is done, and he went underground months ago. I think we should put him back into the equation. He’s an academic, he’ll contact family, friends, use the same mobile phone, be caught by cameras, at customs—”
“But will he contact Byron?”
“I think he will if pushed to it.”
“A trap?”
“If you want to call it—”
The door opened. I stopped. Filipa stood in the gap, wearing a burgundy dressing gown and nothing on her feet. She blinked round the room, saw Gauguin, saw me, said, “Could you direct me towards the most convenient breakfast?”
Gauguin’s eyes flickered to me, then back to her as he said, “Downstairs there is muesli.”
Her upper lip curled. “Harsh on the digestion, I find. High in sugars too.” Then her eyes settled on me again, and for a moment she contemplated my existence, trying to place me in this room, and finding no answer treated me to a dazzling smile and said instead, “I’m so sorry, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced? I’m Filipa, and you…?”
“My name is Hope.”
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman! You’re not from round here; I can tell.”
“No, I’m from England.”
“England? Where in England?”
“Derby.”
“Ah — wonderful; never been there myself, but always meant to.”
I smiled, but could not out-smile her brightness. “Well,” she said, a second before the silence grew awkward, “Hope, it’s such a pleasure to meet you, I hope to see lots of you soon and we can talk all about England. But now I really must get some breakfast; I trust you don’t mind my disgraceful hours and appearance, last night was a bit of a trial.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You’re a darling — we’re going to be such good friends.”