Daniel Silva - The Unlikely Spy

Vicary said, "How's David, by the way?"

Helen exhaled heavily. "David is David, " she said, as if no other explanation was necessary. "He's banished me to the countryside, and he stays here in London. He managed a commission and does something for the Admiralty. I come to see him once every few weeks. He likes it when I'm away. It gives him the freedom to pursue his other interests."

Vicary, uncomfortable with Helen's honesty, looked away. David Lindsay, along with being incredibly rich and handsome, was a notorious womanizer. Vicary thought, No wonder he and Boothby are such good friends.

Helen said, "You don't need to feign ignorance, Alfred. I am aware that everyone knows about David and his favorite pastime. I've grown used to it. David likes women, and they like him. It's a rather neat fit."

"Why don't you leave him?"

"Oh, Alfred," she said, and dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her gloved hand.

"Is there anyone else in your life?"

"Do you mean other men?"

Vicary nodded.

"I tried once, but he was the wrong man. He was David in different clothes. Besides, I made a promise in a country church twenty-five years ago, and I seem incapable of breaking it."

"I wish you had felt that way about the promise you made to me," Vicary said, and immediately regretted the note of bitterness that crept into his voice. But Helen just looked at him, blinked rapidly, and said, "Sometimes I wish that too. There, I've said it. My God, how thoroughly un-English of me. Please forgive me. I suppose it's all these bloody Americans in town."

Vicary felt his face flush.

Helen said, "Are you still seeing Alice Simpson?"

"How in the world do you know about Alice Simpson?"

"I know about all your women, Alfred. She's very pretty. I even like those wretched books she writes."

"She's slipped away. I told myself it was the war, my work. But the truth is, she wasn't you, Helen. So I let her slip away. Just like all the others."

"Oh, damn you, Alfred Vicary! Damn you for saying that."

"It's the truth. Besides, it's what you wanted to hear. That's why you sought me out in the first place."

"The truth is, I wanted to hear that you were happy," she said. Her eyes were damp. "I didn't want you to tell me I'd ruined your life."

"Don't flatter yourself, Helen. You haven't ruined my life. I'm not unhappy. I've just never found enough room in my heart for someone else. I don't trust people very much. I suppose I have you to thank for that."

"Truce," she said. "Please, let's call a truce. I didn't want this to turn into a continuation of our last conversation. I just wanted to spend some time with you. God, but I need a drink. Will you take me somewhere nice and pour a bottle of wine into me, darling?"

They walked to Duke's. It was quiet that time of the afternoon. They were shown to a corner table. Vicary kept expecting one of Helen and David's friends to come in and recognize them, but they were alone. Vicary excused himself to go to the telephone and tell Harry where he was. When he came back there was a ludicrously expensive bottle of champagne sitting in an ice bucket.

"Don't worry, darling," she said. "It's David's party."

He sat down and they drank half the wine very fast. They talked about Vicary's books, and they talked about Helen's children. They even talked about David some more. He never took his eyes from her face as she spoke. There was something about the remote sadness in her eyes-the vulnerability caused by her failed marriage-that made her even more attractive to him. She reached out her hand and laid it on Vicary's. He felt his heart beating inside his chest for the first time in twenty-five years.

"Do you ever think about it, Alfred?"

"Think about what?"

"That morning."

"Helen, what are you-"

"My God, Alfred, you can be so thick sometimes. The morning I came to your bed and ravaged your body for the first time."

Vicary swallowed the last of his wine and refilled their glasses. He said, "No-not really."

"My God, Alfred Vicary, but you are a terrible liar. How do you manage in your new line of work?"

"All right, yes. I do think about it." He thought: when was the last time? The morning in Kent, after composing a Double Cross message for his false agent code-named Partridge. "I catch myself thinking about it at the damnedest times."

"I lied to David, you know. I always told him he was the first. But I'm glad it was you." She fingered the base of her wineglass and looked out the window. "It was so fast-just a moment or two. But when I remember it now it lasts for hours."

"Yes. I know what you mean."

She looked back at him. "Do you still have your house in Chelsea?"

"I'm told it's still there. I haven't been there since 1940," Vicary added, jokingly.

She turned from the window and looked Vicary directly in the eyes. She leaned forward and whispered, "I wish you would take me there now and make love to me in your bed."

"I'd like that too, Helen. But you'd only break my heart again. And at my age, I don't think I could get over you a second time."

Helen's face lost all expression and her voice, when it finally came, was flat and toneless. "My God, Alfred, when did you become such a coldhearted bastard?"

Her words sounded familiar to him. Then he remembered that Boothby, taking him by the arm after the interrogation of Peter Jordan, had asked him the same thing.

A shadow fell between them. It passed over her face, darkened it, then moved on. She sat very quiet and very still. Her eyes dampened. She blinked away the tears and regained her composure. Vicary felt like an idiot. The whole thing had gone too far-spun out of control. He was a fool to see her. Nothing good could come of it. The silence was like grinding metal now. He absently beat his breast pockets for his half-moon glasses and tried to think of some excuse to get away. Helen sensed his uneasiness. Still facing the window, she said, "I've kept you too long. I know you should be getting back."

"Yes. I really should. I'm sorry."

Helen was still talking to the window. "Don't be seduced by them. When the war is over, get rid of those awful gray suits and go home to your books. I liked you better then." Vicary said nothing, just looked at her. He leaned down to kiss her cheek but she lifted her face to him and, holding his neck with her fingers, kissed him lightly on the mouth. She smiled and said, "I hope you change your mind-and soon."

"I may, actually."

"Good."

"Good-bye, Helen."

"Good-bye, Alfred."

She took his hand. "I have one more thing to say to you. Whatever you do, don't trust Basil Boothby, darling. He's poison. Never, ever, turn your back on him."

And then he remembered what she had said about her one adulterous lover: He was David in different clothes.

No, Helen, he thought. He was Boothby.

He walked. If he could have run he would have. He walked without direction, without destination. He walked until the scar tissue in his knee burned like a brand. He walked until his smoker's cough sounded like consumption. The leafless trees of Green Park twisted with the wind. The rushing air sounded like white water. The wind lifted his unbuttoned mackintosh and nearly tore it from his body. He clutched it at the throat, and it flew from his shoulders like a cape. The blackout descended like a veil. In the darkness he bumped into a brassy American. Hey, watch it, Mac! Vicary muttered an apology-"So sorry, forgive me"-then regretted it. Still our bloody country.

He felt as though he were being conveyed-as though his movements were no longer his own. He suddenly remembered the hospital in Sussex where he recovered from his wounds. The boy who'd been shot in the spine and could no longer move his arms and legs. The way he described to Vicary the floating numbness he felt when the doctors moved his dead limbs for him. God, Helen! How could you? Boothby! God, Helen! Vile images of their lovemaking shot through his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to squeeze them away. Bloody hell! Bloody hell! Anyone but Basil Boothby! He marveled at the absurd way in which one part of his life had folded over and touched another. Helen and Boothby-absurd. Too absurd to contemplate. But it was true, he knew it.