Keith Thomson - Once a spy

“Alone,” she added.

He yes, ma’amed again and departed. Or gave the appearance of having departed; Charlie had a prickly feeling that the guard was hiding somewhere, finger on a trigger.

Drummond wandered across the terrace. He fidgeted with a loose rock in the balustrade, seemingly disturbed by the way it spoiled the symmetry. The far tennis court caught his attention and riveted him.

Nobody was playing.

Watching him, Isadora shook her head. To Charlie, she said, “After you showed up at the main gate, the good folks in the office did a little digging. I was shocked to hear about his condition. It’s awful-I don’t know what else to say. We also learned about the trumped-up FBI charges. If you can bring me up to speed on a few things, we ought to be able at least to solve that.” She waved him toward the nearest of several sets of cast iron chairs.

“I wouldn’t complain,” Charlie said, mustering delight. His reserve lingered. Sure, she was like the long-lost mother of fairy tales, and it seemed safe here, but…

“But first you probably want to know why I’m not in a box underneath six feet of dirt?”

He took a chair. “It did cross my mind.”

She rolled up opposite him. “I hadn’t expected it would be today, but I always knew that someday we would meet again, and that you would want to know why-” She looked away, fighting tears.

He found it heartening. “It’s okay. This is already a way better explanation than It was just business, nothing personal.” Which was how the conversation had played out in his imagination.

She smiled. “Most of what you already know is true. My parents-your grandparents-spent their entire lives in Billings. I was their only child. I used to be a swimmer and would have been an Olympic swimmer if I’d been three hundredths of a second faster. Other than my occupation, I kept nothing from you, until-” The tears got the better of her.

She didn’t move to stem them, not even when they cut into her blush. She rummaged through her purse, producing a cigarette case and a gold lighter. Charlie knew the lighter’s signature flask shape; vintage Zippos occasionally made it into Broadway Phil’s, the pawnshop he visited more often than he cared to. She snapped open the lid, spun a flame from the spark wheel, sucked it into her cigarette, then took a long drag. Her eyes dried and her composure matched the cloudless sky.

Either she had extraordinary resilience, Charlie thought, or he needed to find out her brand of smokes.

“I always imagined that when this day came, I would be much older, or at least more mature, and prepared,” she said. “Also, I would have had my hair done.”

He smiled. “Your hair looks nice now.”

“You’re sweet. So tell me then: How much do you know about the spy game?”

“Bond movies,” he said sheepishly.

“Actually, that’s a fine place to start. You see, in reality, James Bond wouldn’t last a week on the job. An egomaniac with weaknesses for cars, girls, and booze? An enemy could exploit any of those to get him to give up the crown jewels. That said, I enjoy Bond movies. If only covert operations took place at the Casino de Monte Carlo. In reality, the job is mostly paperwork. The action, what there is of it, rarely gets more glamorous than bad coffee with a frightened local in a place with lousy ventilation-and that’s if you’re lucky enough that your man remembers the appointment. But the brief moments when we do learn something-‘product’ that actually advances our position-make it worth it.” She nodded at Drummond, who remained fixated on the tennis court. “You might be interested to know that he likened the job to playing long shots at the track.”

Self-consciousness shrank Charlie. “I’d imagine the men and women in the clandestine service have slightly loftier motives than us guys at the track.”

“It’s about patriotism less often than people think,” she said, putting him at ease. “I do care about our country, but my reason for getting into the game was the thrill, or perceived thrill. As a girl, I’d read too many of the Bond books. Once on the job, I had my share of bad coffee and some successful operations. You need to know about two of them. The first commenced August 27, 1977: I met your father at a lunch in conference room Seven C at Langley. One week later, we were in Peshawar, Pakistan, as honeymooners.”

“Pakistan in August? Was Death Valley booked up?”

She grinned. “By ‘honeymooners,’ I mean husband-and-wife cover. He posed as a mortuary supplies salesman-if ever you’re trying to keep a low profile and a chatty neighbor asks your line of work, that one’s a great conversation ender. I was Suzy Homemaker, utterly obsessed with American soap operas-again, to ward off neighbors. Really we went to Peshawar for bridge.”

“And by ‘bridge’ you mean…?”

“The card game.” She laughed. “Our prime asset was a Pakistani tea magnate. His home in Peshawar was the top floor of the charmingly old-world Dean’s Hotel. He and one of his mistresses hosted couples’ bridge nights there. Pakistan’s nuclear program was then in full swing, and among the bridge players were many of the swingers.”

“So you and Dad were never married? It was only your cover?”

“The agency is known as ‘the world’s most expensive matrimonial service’ because of all the men and women who work so closely together in deep cover and then wind up that way in real life. Your father and I always had maintained a professional relationship, but near the end of our tour, something happened-”

“ I happened?”

“Please know, dear, that once the shock wore off, we were delighted. And by the third trimester, we could hardly contain ourselves.”

Charlie was almost touched. He decided it best to keep his sentiments in check until the part where she faked her own flattening by bus.

“We came around to the idea of getting married for real,” she said. “We wed in Las Vegas, at a chapel called Uncle Sam’s, fittingly. Then we went back east and gave settling down a go-bought the house on Prospect Place, a six-piece living room set, even chose a china pattern.”

“But?”

“Yes, the ‘but’…” She took another long pull at her cigarette and glanced at Drummond. He continued to watch the tennis, or lack thereof. “Your father and I had the difficulties in adjustment most new couples do. Also, a legitimate domestic situation is a quantum leap from the life to which we were accustomed. Embassy soirees notwithstanding, spying is a state of war. What made your father a good spy-and he’s a natural-is what made him a poor husband. He had what the Buddhists call ‘right mindfulness,’ an eternal and unflagging attentiveness to what’s going on. The problem with that was, to him, outside work, nothing goes on. So what I got at home was the dullest guy on the block, who viewed being the dullest guy on the block as fantastic cover. I’d complain, and he’d quote from scientific studies that showed that people are conditioned to ignore their environment, that if something is mundane, they tune it out. So, he maintained, it would be in our interest to be even more mundane.”

“Well, he mastered it,” Charlie said.

His mother laughed, and he couldn’t help joining her.

“And, though I can’t think of any,” she said, “I may have had a failing or two of my own. Surely he wasn’t entirely to blame for our discord. In any case, I’d decided that you and I would leave, but I hadn’t worked out the precise escape route. Then Moscow Station called with what sounded like a good initial phase…”

She was forced to halt as a distant whine turned into raucous thumps. Over the treetops appeared a helicopter, its fuselage emblazoned with NEWS RADIO.