Brian Freemantle - Betrayals

Janet and Baxeter had arranged to meet at the Tembelodendron and as she entered the restaurant Janet wished they had chosen somewhere else because it was where she and Baxeter had lunched the first day they met, and she was unhappy at it becoming a romantic shrine the way the Virginia inn had become the place for her and John. Why? she demanded of herself. Didn’t Baxeter (when would she think of him in given name terms!) deserve some sort of special romantic place, as well? Janet became impatient with the constant internal argument. It was arrogant-conceited even-this perpetual effort to maintain a balancing act. And what a balancing act! She could think rationally and behave rationally and make all sorts of sensible, rational decisions-for Christ’s sake she was an aloof academic, wasn’t she!-but the bottom line came down to choice and she knew she couldn’t choose: wasn’t able to choose.

Baxeter rose to meet her. He held out his hand and she took it. He said: “Guess how much I missed you?” and she said: “I don’t need to be told because I missed you that much, too.”

“If I read this in a book or saw it in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it!” he said. “You know what I feel when I don’t know where you are: what you’re doing? I feel lost: lost like one of those poor bastards will be in space one day when the survival cord linking them to their spacecraft snaps and they float away into the blackness.”

Janet sat down and said: “Have you been drinking?”

“Yes,” Baxeter admitted. “But it doesn’t affect-doesn’t minimize-what I’ve just said. That’s how I feel.”

“That’s funny,” said Janet. “No, not funny. Wrong word.”

“What’s the right word?”

“Yours,” Janet said. “Lost. You wouldn’t believe how long I’ve felt lost: been lost.”

A waiter intruded into their impenetrably private world, and they ordered without thought or consideration, wanting only to get rid of the man. As the waiter left Baxeter said: “It wasn’t meant to be like this.”

“I don’t understand,” said Janet.

“No,” agreed Baxeter, obtusely.

“You have been drinking!”

“I told you that already.”

“But why!”

“Lost,” he said. “Lost and lonely, like you.”

“I don’t want any wine,” Janet announced, positively. “Nothing to drink.”

“Is that how it would be?”

“I don’t understand that, either.”

“If we were married, would you nag me like this: decide when and when not I should drink?”

“Stop it!” said Janet, irritated.

“Just asking.”

“You’re ratfaced!” she accused. “Pissed out of your mind!”

The transformation was startling. Baxeter seemed to expand and grow in front of her very eyes, like a balloon being filled for flight. He straightened in his chair, adding to the impression, and jaggedly but no longer with any slur in his voice said: “Relaxing, just for a moment. Thinking. Sorry. So what happened?”

The question coincided with the arrival of their lamb and the waiter asked about drinks and looking directly at Janet, Baxeter said: “Nothing, thank you.”

“Was that refusal difficult?” demanded Janet.

“Yes,” said Baxeter. “Very.”

“Why?”

“I asked what happened,” reminded Baxeter, ignoring her question.

“Answer me first!”

“Tell me what happened!”

It was belligerence-persistence-but not drink-inspired, Janet decided. She remained off-balanced, inexplicably and uncomfortably feeling herself to be with a man whom she no longer knew. Which was disorienting. And nonsensical. She sloughed away the impression and tried to clear her mind by recounting in as much detail as possible the encounter with the Cyprus CIA officer-in-charge.

Throughout Baxeter listened, utterly intent, hardly bothering with the delivered meal. When she finished he said: “Hostile?”

“Just short of.”

“So?”

“They’ll take everything for nothing,” said Janet.

“Getting John out won’t be for nothing,” halted Baxeter.

Janet dipped her head, accepting the correction. “Any promised cooperation will be minimal,” she qualified. “They’ll use me.”

Baxeter did not react, stabbing at his food without eating it. “Yes,” he said, detached.

“Hart said something odd,” Janet announced.

“What?”

“He asked me if I trusted my source,” Janet said. “Reminded me of the cooperation that the Americans had had from friendly countries, friendly agencies, and remarked how surprising it was that an amateur could do better. Told me to be careful.”

She spoke looking fully at him and Baxeter looked directly back. He said: “I told you how it happened.”

“I know word for word what you told me,” said Janet. She stopped and then said: “You’re not using me, are you? Not using me like all the rest?”

“Did any of the rest produce the evidence of John being alive?” came back Baxeter.

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“You know the answer to your own question,” said Baxeter, loudly. “I am using you. I am using you ultimately to get an exclusive story that no one else has a chance of getting…” Baxeter paused, raising his hands between them. “Which is quite different-quite separate and apart-from what else has happened between us. I’m not using you that way, certainly. My love-our love-is boxed: compartmented from anything else. Uninvolved.”

Janet felt a glow at the assurance, somewhat convoluted though it was. “I wasn’t really doubting you,” she said.

“Then why did you question me!” persisted the man. “What else could I be than what I am!”

Janet wished the insistence were not quite so fervent She said: “We’re arguing: we’re arguing about nothing.”

Baxeter appeared to deflate, the balloon going down. Much more quietly he said: “Do you think Hart will stay with his promise to keep you in touch?”

“Definitely, at this stage,” Janet said at once. “They want an address, don’t they?” She allowed the time for him to speak and when he didn’t she demanded: “So what are the chances of getting that address?”

There was an uncertain shoulder movement. “Maybe there isn’t any possibility.”

Janet realized, abruptly, that so completely had she begun to rely upon Baxeter that she’d never doubted he would come up with a location: the idea that he might not be able to shocked her in further disorientation. “But you said…?”

“Just a promise,” stopped Baxeter.

“Would it mean your going back to Beirut?”

“Yes.”

“Oh shit!”

“How else could I get it?”

“I don’t know… I hadn’t thought.” Everything was becoming frayed again: fragmented. It was like a smoke cloud, a mass with an apparent shape and form that was impossible to reach out and touch. Pushing herself on, Janet said: “So how do you know when to go back?”

“You want me to go back?”

“Yes. No.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes every sense.”

“He said-the Shia-that he knew the man who took the picture: that from him he could learn the location of the house,” said Baxeter. “All he had to do was to find him and ask.”

“That sounds simple: a conversation of minutes.”

“Yes,” agreed the man. “That’s how it sounds: I don’t think it’s quite as easy as that.”

“ Will you go back?”

There was a long silence between them. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll go back.” There was another, shorter silence. Then Baxeter said: “Does that mean I’ve lost out?”

“It’s too soon for a question like that!”

“Why?”

“Because it is,” replied Janet, in childlike repartee.