Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“When we weren’t really here,” Hannah said. “Keep Hoover guessing.”

“Well, he knows we’re here now,” Frank said.

“They would never allow Perry—” Marzena said, then stopped. “What kind of pictures?” She touched her hair, an absentminded primping.

“Oh, the usual, I guess. Me at the typewriter, banging out the magnum opus. Having coffee with Jo. Maybe out for a walk. Red Square probably, wouldn’t you think?” This to Simon.

“Probably.” Not the vodka bottles, Boris in the next room, the cage lined with books.

“You should wear your gray suit,” Marzena said. “You look so handsome in that.” A wife’s comment. Simon glanced up. Maybe what Jo had heard, her antennae picking things out of the air.

“I thought the professional look. Cardigan and pipe. Something like that. Well, we’ll let Look decide.”

“They’ll put you in a trench coat,” Saul said. “Hat down over your eyes.”

“How is an agent supposed to look these days?” Frank said, playing with it.

“Like everybody else,” Hannah said. “So nobody notices.” She smiled a little, as if she were offering herself up as an example. A woman who asked an MP to hold her hat while she rummaged through her purse.

“Ian,” Marzena said, seeing him come out. “Nobody told me. Let me help you with that. Ouf, so heavy.” She helped him set the tureen on the table, an unnecessary gesture. “But how nice. I was going to write you. Your letter—after Perry. I was so grateful.” Looking at him, using grief.

Joanna had followed with a large tray, a spread of small dishes to go with the borscht, the usual lawn party finger sandwiches and strawberries replaced with whitefish and pickled mushrooms.

“You know who wrote me?” Marzena said to Ian. “His sister. She wants him to be buried there. His ashes. In America. What do I say to her? I thought, maybe he would like this. Not here. What do you think?”

“I don’t think he cares one way or the other,” Ian said. “He’s dead.”

Another awkward silence.

“I suppose there’ll be a funeral,” Hannah said, making polite conversation.

“There was a funeral,” Marzena said.

“No, I meant for Gareth.”

“Gareth?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard. I’m sorry.” She put a hand on Marzena’s. “He was killed.”

“Killed? Like Perry?”

“No, not like Perry,” Hannah said, comforting. “I don’t know the details. Do you?” she said to Frank.

“No. They’re investigating,” Frank said, his voice even, glancing at Boris.

“Killed. Murdered,” Marzena said, folding her arms across her chest now, a sudden chill. “Now another one.”

“I don’t see how the one has anything to do with the other,” Ian said, blunt again.

“Nobody said they did,” Hannah said, moving Marzena toward a seat. “Here, have a drink, dear. It’s a shock, isn’t it? I know. So young too.”

“Well, you have to admit,” Saul said. “Two. One right after the other.”

“Saul.”

“It’s not connected,” Boris said.

Everyone looked up at this, waiting for more, but Boris said nothing, an end to it.

“This looks delicious,” Hannah said to Joanna. “So much trouble.”

“No, all easy. Ian, why don’t you pass these?” Putting him to work.

“Shall we have a toast?” Saul said. “To Gareth. I have to say, I always wondered what he was like as an agent. I’m glad I didn’t have to run him. But I guess he never meant any harm. Anyway, nobody deserves this.”

Simon raised his glass, staring at his hand, hearing Gareth’s voice in the church. Sneering, ready to inform. No proof. He looked over at Frank, his hand also raised in the toast, and saw the blur again as it smashed down.

There was sour cream to swirl in the borscht and heavy, dark bread and a tub of ice to keep the wine and vodka chilled, and they fell on the lunch with a kind of relief, wanting to move on and yet helplessly drawn back, as if not talking about the dead was a form of disrespect.

“I wonder who’ll speak. At the funeral,” Hannah said.

“Guy, I should think,” Ian said. “He knew him better than anyone.”

“Is there family? Do you think they’ll come over?” As simple as getting the 6:04 from Waterloo.

“Maybe they’ll ask you,” Marzena said to Frank, then turned to Simon. “He was so good at Perry’s, so—I don’t know the word. Something that comes from the soul.”

“Marzena.”

“Yes, it’s true. The soul.”

“He was my friend,” Frank said. He talked. I made notes.

Joanna, who’d been watching this, said, “So modest. You are a good speaker. I never knew about the Shakespeare. That his name was really Prospero. How did you? Know, I mean.”

“He told me.”

Simon looked up, seeing him turn the pages of a file.

“Not me,” Marzena said, almost pouting.

“They might ask you,” Joanna said. “To speak. Who else is there? God knows Gareth would love it. He was always after you, to be friends. Talk about the last laugh.”

“I doubt it.”

“They might,” Saul said. “They don’t like to see the rest of us in public. But you—you’re in magazines. God. What would you say?”

“What I’d say about any of us. That he gave his life to the Service.”

Simon looked over, appalled, but Frank met his eye without blinking and Simon saw that he could do it, use the same hands that had been on Gareth’s throat to hold the lectern, that it was how he lived, safe in a lie, another underneath. But didn’t they all? He took off his glasses, rubbing them with his napkin, and looked at the indistinct faces around him. All spies, Marzena had said. Ordinary. Like anyone else. Would you mind holding my hat, please? Not just white lies, little lubricants to make the wheels turn. Treason. Lies that betrayed everyone. All of them, all these ordinary people, sipping wine and eating soup. Hannah, everybody’s aunt, delivering the bomb. Frank delivering a eulogy. Simon listening to it all, one of them now, making plans to betray them. Just a few days.

“Do you want a hat?” Joanna said to him. “It’s hot in the sun. You look all funny.”

“No, no. Probably just the wine. At lunch.”

“I thought that’s what publishing was,” Frank said. “Boozy lunches.”

“Sometimes.”

“God, like State. Try getting an answer to anything after three. Remember?”

Simon didn’t answer, still wiping his glasses. What if he put them on and suddenly could see everybody clearly, who they really were, some magical power? But then he couldn’t hide behind them either, everybody exposed.

“I don’t think we have to go,” Saul was saying. “To the funeral. I mean, we scarcely knew him. If I met him twice in my life—”

“It must be so nice for you,” Hannah said to Simon, taking them somewhere else. “Seeing each other again. All these years. Who’s older? You, Frank?”

Frank dipped his head. “But Simon’s the smart one. That’s what our mother used to say anyway.”

“She never said that.”

“She didn’t have to. You were the smart one.” He turned to Hannah. “I was the bad influence.”

“I can believe that,” Hannah said.

“They packed him off to another school to get him away from me.”

“That’s not—”

“And the next thing you know, he’s valedictorian. The smart one,” he said, nodding, case closed.

“And I always thought that was you,” Joanna said drily.

Frank raised his glass to her. “Once in a while. Lucky mostly, though. But weren’t we all?” he said, including the Rubins. “Nobody suspected anything in those days. You could waltz out of the Agency at lunch with a bunch of papers and nobody thought twice. Quick copy and back in the file the same afternoon. Imagine trying that now.”