Brian Freemantle: Betrayals

“Yes,” agreed Janet, feeling the pressure of his dependence. “We can go back home.”

“Come and see me every day!” Sheridan pressed further. “I want to know you’re around.”

“I’m around,” said Janet. “And of course I’ll come every day.”

Robards was waiting where he’d promised to be, in the desk area. He smiled as Janet emerged and said: “Well?”

Janet was unsure how to answer. She said: “He’s very thin.”

“A couple of weeks from now, with the proper care and diet, he’ll be a different man,” guaranteed the psychologist, buoyantly. “How did he seem apart from that?”

“Nervous,” said Janet.

“But not unstable?”

“No,” she agreed. “He certainly didn’t seem unstable. He said it didn’t hurt to talk about it.”

“That’s the most important thing,” seized Robards. “We’ve got to get it all out: I don’t want anything left unsaid which is going to stay inside his head and fester.”

“Will two or three days be sufficient for you to achieve that?” What was she trying to delay? Janet asked herself.

“Here certainly,” assured Robards. “We’ll carry on, of course, when we get back to Washington.”

“Of course,” accepted Janet. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Willsher’s here,” announced the psychologist. “He wants to see you.”

The CIA official rose politely as Janet entered the visitors’ room and waited until she sat down. The man didn’t smile.

“He seems OK,” said Janet.

“Yes,” said Willsher. “We’re very relieved.”

“So am I,” said Janet. It had been automatic to say it; the words came without thought. “Hart said there’d been congratulations from the President?”

“The outcry is what we predicted it would be, but Washington is regarding it as an unqualified success,” said Willsher. “Which is what I want to talk to you about.”

“Me?”

“Robards won’t let us make John available to the media for a couple of days, but there’s a clamor for access,” said Willsher. “We want you to hold the first press conference by yourself.”

“By myself!” Inconceivably, her mind blocked by other things, Janet had forgotten the media interest she had been largely instrumental in cultivating.

“You’ve done pretty well in the past,” reminded Willsher, pointedly.

“What more is there to say?” she asked, wearily.

“Which is what I want to talk to you about most of all,” said Willsher. “The discovery of John’s whereabouts… planning of the incursion… everything like that, has got to remain entirely a CIA operation. You weren’t involved. Understood!”

Janet blinked at the demand. “If you like,” she said, badly.

“We do like,” said Willsher, forcefully. “Who you humped to get what you wanted remains unsaid as far as we’re concerned.”

“Who I what!”

“Lady!” said Willsher, weary himself now. “You surely don’t think that we haven’t known what’s been going on, do you? We’ve had you and Baxeter under wraps from the first time you jumped into the sack together: we’ve had a wire in your hotel bedroom for weeks. Heard every sigh and groan. Like I said, that’s your business. It worked.”

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Janet, coming forward with her head in her hands.

“It remains unsaid,” repeated Willsher. “John will never know.”

“But why didn’t you…?” groped Janet, through her hands.

“Didn’t we what? Confront Baxeter and demand cooperation? Because we wouldn’t have got it, would we?” said Willsher, as if he were explaining a simple lesson to a dull child. “Baxeter was conning you and had to imagine he was conning us, too. He’d have backed off if we’d confronted him. And we’d have lost the opportunity to get John. We just didn’t see the curve until it was almost too late but we managed to minimize it: everyone got their share.”

Janet didn’t understand the last remark. What share had she got, out of any of it? She straightened, with difficulty, and said: “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Oh yes you can,” said Willsher, coming forward himself so that their heads were quite close. “We’ve got a success, like I told you. And it’s going to end up a success, all the way down the line.”

“Or else?” anticipated Janet.

“I’m not in the business of threats,” said Willsher. “For the moment I’m in the business of writing happy-ever-after love stories. You go before the press by yourself and you go before the press with John, before you fly back to America, and it’s going to be violin music and roses and everyone back home is going to get a lump in their throats and know an international violation was justified and think what a great and free country ours is. Whatever you personally decide is going to happen between the two of you once you get there and the press isn’t looking is entirely a matter for you. For the moment what happens is entirely a matter for us.”

“Just like that?” said Janet, trying successfully to match the cynicism.

“No, not just like that,” offered Willsher. “The court case is still outstanding and you stand a chance of being trashed if the prosecution can’t come up with that Arab engineer or get the cafe people to remember what happened.”

“Yes,” agreed Janet, doubtfully.

“We know where Haseeb is,” disclosed Willsher. “We’re going to make sure that Zarpas does, too. And the cafe owner is going to recover his memory.”

“By being threatened?”

“Whatever it takes: nothing is going to tarnish this.”

“Not a detail overlooked!” said Janet.

“Not a one,” said Willsher, confidently.

“Satisfied!” demanded Janet, her control wavering. “Are you satisfied with what you’ve done!”

Willsher was quite unmoved by Janet’s outrage. “Of course, I’m satisfied,” he said. “It all worked out, didn’t it? You wouldn’t believe how unusual it is for everything to turn out as completely as it has this time.”

“But what about me!”

“Your problem, Ms. Stone. Your problem,” said the man. “You made it one, after all.”

L ater, when Janet watched a recording of the solitary press conference, it was difficult for her to believe that she was the person smiling the smiles and saying the words, a self-effacing, modest woman refusing to accord herself any special attributes (what special attributes did she have, for Cod’s sake!) or make any particular claims. She took hardly any recollection at all from the conference room itself, a smoky, jostled, yelling chamber where she confronted more journalists and television cameras than ever before and subjected herself to an inquisition that went on for more than two hours: at the end her voice croaked with overuse and her eyes watered from the tobacco sting.

She talked of her ecstatic delight at John being freed. His apparent fortitude was staggering: he was suffering some deprivation but there were no indications of permanent physical or mental harm: yes, he had been tortured but not seriously: yes, she had always known that one day he would be freed; no, she’d never despaired: yes, she looked eagerly forward to their time together now: no, they had not yet fixed a date for the delayed wedding: yes, of course it was something they would have to arrange but ensuring John was fully recovered was the first priority: no, she did not know the details which had enabled the incursion force to go into Lebanon and get him out: yes, she knew of the international furor: yes, she thought the invasion was justified because the country itself appeared willing to allow gangsterism and terrorism to continue unchecked: yes, she worried desperately about other hostages still detained whose predicament might be worsened by what had happened, but hoped it would act as a warning to the gangs and groups holding these remaining hostages that they were vulnerable, and lead to other early releases: yes, she welcomed the decision and strength of America, which she sincerely thanked, in taking the decision to mount the rescue: no, she did not regret what she had attempted, nor the difficulties she had personally experienced, in coming here and doing what she’d done: yes (a pause here because she could not help it), she had occasionally behaved stupidly and had been lucky to escape unscathed: but yes, she would do it all again, if the outcome were the same as it was today.