Brian Freemantle - Betrayals

“Bullshit!” yelled Janet. “And you know it’s bullshit. How can you be safe in a place where there’s no law, no government! Beirut is a bunch of rival gangs, everyone fighting everyone else and stealing and kidnapping and killing. It’s not religion any more: hasn’t been for a long time. It’s gang warfare: I’ve taught little else, for years, and I know!” She had to stop, breathless, but then blurted off again, extending her fingers and then collapsing them as she counted. “William Buckley, American, murdered. Peter Kilburn, American, murdered. Alec Collet, Briton, murdered.”

“I know…” he tried to stop her but she wouldn’t stop.

“… Seven slaughtered, in all,” she said. “Four Russsians, too. At least seventeen still held. Nothing’s been heard of Terry Anderson, the AP bureau chief, since 1985. Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy, has been missing almost two years.”

“I’ve got to go,” he said, simply.

“No way of refusing!” she pleaded.

“None.”

“When?” she said, dully.

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

“Everything is being done in panic.”

“That’s not fair… not enough time…”

“It gives me an edge, to get back.”

“Why, when everything was so good!” Janet demanded, allowing herself the briefly forgotten self-pity.

“It’ll be all right,” Sheridan said. “Everything will be all right.”

They changed their vacation dates so they could spend the final week completely together, which they did at the Rosslyn apartment. They stored what furniture and effects he wanted to retain from the Columbus Circle flat and sold the rest and Sheridan assigned Janet power of attorney to act on his behalf to dispose of the property. They drove again out into Virginia and Maryland, house-hunting but it was impossible in the circumstances so they abandoned the pretence. They made love every night but anxiously, as if it might be the last time, and when he suggested a farewell dinner at their Virginia inn Janet said no, because that was a place to celebrate good times, not bad.

“There’s something we haven’t done,” Sheridan announced, the night before he was due to leave.

“What?”

“I haven’t bought you a ring,” he said.

Janet looked down at the hand where she still wore what Hank had bought her. “No,” she agreed. “It isn’t right to go on like this, is it?” As she spoke Janet realized that to remove the rings would be the final cutting off, the final parting from one to another.

They only had time to get to two shops but in the second Janet saw a sapphire surrounded by diamonds and said it was beautiful, then tried to pull back when she learned the price. Sheridan insisted on buying it and she sat for their final lunch with her hand before them, proudly displaying it.

“I love you,” said Sheridan.

“I love you, too.”

“You mustn’t worry. Everything is going to be fine,” he said. “Trust me.”

“I do,” said Janet.

J anet had forgotten the aching loneliness and when it immediately returned, that positive physical feeling she’d never wanted to know, ever again, she was surprised-and vaguely embarrassed-how easy it had been to put from her mind. The first echoing night she came close to embarking on one of her private conversations but quickly and determinedly stopped herself. That indulgence-that need-was over, she thought, gazing down at the new engagement ring. It was John now, not Hank; wrong then to talk about one to the other, even secretly when no one else would ever know. Everything was different now: like the loss was different. With Hank, when she’d eventually confronted reality, it had been absolute. Final. Finish. But not this time. This time it was only a separation-an unwanted, intrusive, resented, irritating separation-but no more than that. A separation. John could come back: would come back. A lot of women temporarily lost their men in situations like this, although perhaps not in places as dangerous as Beirut. She had to be logical about it: logical and sensible. She had to stop behaving like a spoiled child.

Janet tried hard. Work was still the obvious blanket and she wrapped herself in it beyond her customary dedication. And studied beyond that dedication, reading everything and watching everything and listening to everything connected with the Lebanon as a whole and Beirut in particular. Her assessment was that it was as lawless and as ungoverned and dangerous as she’d declared it to be, the night of Sheridan’s announcement that he was going there, but Janet consciously opposed the depression. Separation, nothing more.

Before he’d left Sheridan had explained the correspondence procedure, providing her with the specific State Department address in Washington through which their letters could be channeled in the embassy’s diplomatic bag, which resulted always in an unusually quick and reassuring exchange, better than any normal mail service. His letters touched upon the destruction of the city and the difficulty of civil control but never in detail, an attempt not to avoid the obvious but not to worry her, either. Janet out-wrote Sheridan, sometimes despatching as many as three letters a week. She related a great deal from what she was studying with increased interest about the Lebanon and she recounted the gossip of Washington and she gave practically an hour-by-hour account of what she did and how she felt, every day. Always, repeatedly, she told Sheridan how much she loved him. There was never a letter from Sheridan without the same assurance.

Apart from her Sunday brunches with Harriet, househunting occupied much of her weekends and provided more material for the letters. After two months Janet was shown a brick colonial she instantly adored, just over the D.C. border into Maryland, with a Chevy Chase address. It had only been on the agent’s books for three days and Janet was frightened of losing it so she took a chance and on the spot handed over a nonreturnable deposit. That night she sent Sheridan all the photographs and the brochure together with her own excited plea that it was the best house she had ever seen in her entire life and could they have it, please. Because of the diplomatic routing, his reply came within the week. Sheridan thought the agent’s house looked great and was sure that if she liked it he would too and said he wanted her to go ahead and secure the property, contingent on the sale of his apartment, and included an authorization notarized by an embassy lawyer giving her similar attorney power to take to his bank, for the mortgage to be arranged.

Janet at once secured the contract. The sellers were a charming, Pentagon-retiring colonel and his wife, fleeing the East Coast winters to California, who said she could come in any time, irrespective of the legal exchanges, to measure and to plan her own fittings. Two couples were interested in Sheridan’s apartment; she asked the agent to put pressure on them to act.

Janet made two visits to the Chevy Chase house, on each of which Harriet accompanied her. Janet did not intend any major structural alterations, not even in the kitchen, so there was no need for any extensive measuring, but at Harriet’s urging Janet decided upon color changes in practically every room, which meant some tape measure work where she decided to recarpet and again at the windows where she was going to hang new drapes. The activity occupied Janet-an inner lining to the work blanket-and her late shopping evenings and weekends were filled with visits to furnishing departments and making comparisons between the best deals that each offered. Although it was never demanded-never hinted at-by Sheridan, Janet determined to get the best for the least, to prove to him that she was not profligate, despite her reaction to the too-expensive sapphire and diamond ring.