John Davis - Unofficial and Deniable

‘Thank you. Well …’ She plonked the file down on the table. ‘Here it is.’ But she put her hand on it. ‘Please, don’t look at it now. I want you to give it your undivided attention at home. And,’ she grinned, ‘I’m nervous as hell.’ She sat.

Oh dear. ‘Don’t be, I know you write well.’ Harker sat down. And he decided that right now was the moment to start extricating himself. ‘And I’m not the only publisher in town. Indeed you’ll probably do better with a bigger house.’

Consternation crossed her lovely face. ‘But you will consider it? Are you saying you’re not interested any more?’

Oh Christ. ‘I’m just being realistic, for your sake.’ He smiled. ‘On the contrary, I’m the one who should be nervous that you’ll take it to somebody else.’

Josephine sat back and blew out her cheeks. ‘For a moment I thought you were trying to tell me something.’ Then she said anxiously, ‘You will be brutally honest with me, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Okay.’ She sat back, with a brilliant smile. ‘And now let’s stop talking about it – I’ve been burning the midnight oil all week.’

‘So what’ll you have to drink?’

‘A double martini for starters. Followed by a bucket of wine. And remember I’m paying.’

‘You are not.’ The fucking CCB was paying.

They had a good time again that day. They laughed a great deal, drank a lot, became very witty and wise. Harker got into a mood to celebrate too, but he was not sure what: he still felt a fraud. And, God, he just wanted to get this masquerade of being her potential publisher over so he could do what publishers should not do – make a pass at an author. Oh, to take her hand across the table, look into her blue eyes, tell her how beautiful she was, to feel her body against his, to go through the delightful process of courtship: but as long as he was defrauding her his conscience would not permit it, his head had to rule his loins. So the sooner he went through the motions of reading her typescript, grasped the nettle and told her that Harvest could not publish it, the better.

‘So tell me, Major Jack Harker,’ she said over the rim of her first glass of Irish coffee, ‘whatever happened to Mrs Harker?’

‘There hasn’t been one. There very nearly was, but she changed her mind. One of the casualties of war. She’s now Mrs Somebody Else.’

‘Oh. Well, all I can say is that she was either very, very stupid or Mr Somebody Else must be very, very nice. So tell me …’ she raised her glass to her wide full lips and looked at him, ‘is some lucky American gal filling her stilettos?’

‘Nobody special.’ He felt himself blushing. ‘And how about you?’

She grinned. ‘Nobody special. I’ve only just hit town after a long time away.’

Oh, Harker badly wanted to know about her past, how many of the legends about her were true. In particular he wanted to know about that dead Cuban lying on the floor of the building at Bassinga when she had tried to kill herself – but the time was not right for a confession that he had killed her lover, and doubtless never would be.

‘I’m sure you’ve been close to marrying?’ he said.

‘Several times. But, at the last minute, there was always something amiss.’ She flashed him a smile from underneath her dark eyebrows. ‘Like, not enough soulmateship.’ She added: ‘I’ve got the feeling you know what I’m talking about.’

‘Soulmates? Sure. Lovers who think and feel alike. Share the same interests.’

‘And passions. Interests and passions. Like…Justice. And Democracy. Freedom. A fair wage for a fair day’s labour. And poetry, and music. And … God.’ She looked at him seriously, then flashed him a smile. ‘All that good stuff.’

‘And have you ever found it?’

Josephine nodded sagely at her glass. ‘I thought so, several times. But each time it turned out to be a false alarm. Or something like that. Until the last time, I think. Maybe. But he was killed.’

Oh Christ. Harker waited, then said, ‘How?’

She said to her glass, ‘He was a soldier, like you.’ She smirked. ‘And he lost his life fighting you guys.’ She looked up. ‘The Battle of Bassinga? Mean anything to you?’

Harker feigned a sigh. What do you say? ‘It was a big do, I believe. I was in hospital at the time, wounded in an earlier action, the one that pensioned me out.’ He glanced at her. ‘So, what happened exactly?’

Josephine took a sip of Irish coffee. ‘I’d been living with him in his base camp for about a month. First met him up north in Luanda, then flew down with him to cover the southern front. We were asleep in his quarters when your guys struck, just before dawn. Helluva mess. Anyway, Paulo got shot at the beginning. So did I, but that was later on.’

So she wasn’t admitting attempted suicide. ‘You were shot in the cross-fire?’

‘When Paulo was shot I went berserk, I grabbed his AK47 and started firing out the window. There was a box of loaded magazines and I just kept firing, slapping in one magazine after another. Stupid, because journos aren’t supposed to become combatants if they don’t want to be treated as an enemy, but I was frantic about Paulo. Anyway, finally a bullet got me. Here.’ She tapped her left breast. ‘Missed my heart, fortunately. Next thing I knew I was being loaded into one of your helicopters and flown off to one of your bases, where they patched me up – which was nice of them, seeing as I’d been trying to shoot the hell out of them an hour earlier. Then they deported me.’

‘Oh, yes, I heard about this. So you’re the blonde bombshell who threatened to sue us. Wasn’t there a row about your photographs?’

She smiled. ‘Your guys developed my film to see what they could find out about the enemy’s hardware. I kicked up a fuss and they gave me my negatives back.’

‘Did they interrogate you?’

‘Sure, but I told them to go to hell.’ She added, ‘I must admit, grudgingly, that they were perfectly gentlemanly about it.’

Harker wondered what she would feel and say if he told her he knew the truth. ‘And this man Paulo – you were in love with him?’

She nodded. ‘Wildly. Or I thought so. I’d only known him for a little more than a month. Now with the wisdom of hindsight I realize that I was only infatuated, and confused by my admiration for him. He was a very admirable man. And swashbuckling.’ She smiled.

‘And handsome, no doubt.’

‘But that doesn’t cut much ice with me. It is what’s in here that counts.’ She tapped her heart. ‘And here.’ She tapped her head. ‘He was an entirely honest, dedicated social scientist, if that’s the word, dedicated to the well-being and betterment of his people – a true Christian, but for the fact that he was an atheist, of course, being a communist. Dedicated. His men loved him. Several medals for bravery. And ‘a great sense of humour. And a great reader, a very good conversationalist in both Spanish and English.’

Harker couldn’t stand the man. No doubt a fantastic Latin lover too. ‘Sounds good. But?’

‘But,’ Josie smiled, ‘I now realize it wouldn’t have worked. For one thing I’m not a communist. For another I espouse God. English is my mother tongue, and freedom of speech and of the press is my credo. And I’m a fully liberated Americano who regards herself as every inch her man’s equal, not as a Latino wife. Oh, he was macho, Paulo. Machissimo.’ She smiled wanly. ‘And there was something else wrong. I knew it at the time but wouldn’t admit it to myself – there was lots of lust, and lots of fun, but I knew deep down that it was just a rip-roaring affair, not love with a capital L.’

Harker was pleased to hear that: Señor Paulo sounded quite a tough act to follow. Before he could muster something appropriate Josephine asked with a smile, ‘And what about that extremely silly lady who nearly became Mrs Harker, then lost her marbles?’