María Dueñas - The Time in Between

He arrived, looking impeccable in his dinner jacket, his shirt front starched and his body hardened by a thousand unmentionable adventures. Or at least, unmentionable until now. I went to open the door for him myself the moment I heard the bell. We greeted each other, struggling to hide our affection, standing so close, almost intimate at last.

“I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

Taking his arm, I led him to the living room.

“Marcus, this is Gonzalo Alvarado. I’ve brought you to his house because I want you to know who he is. And I also want him to know who you are. For him to be quite clear who we both are.”

They greeted each other politely, Gonzalo poured us a drink, and the three of us chatted about banalities for a few minutes, until the maid—in a very timely fashion—came to the door to summon the host to take a telephone call.

We were left alone, looking like the perfect couple. To see something that was closer to the truth, however, you just needed to hear the hoarse words that Marcus murmured in my ears, barely moving his lips.

“Can we speak in private a moment?”

“Of course. Come with me.”

I led him to the library. The grand portrait of Doña Carlota still presided from the wall behind the desk, with her diamond tiara that once was mine, and later no longer mine.

“Who’s the man you just introduced me to, why do you want him to know about me? What is this ambush all about, Sira?” he asked roughly when we were separated from the rest of the house.

“It’s one I’ve prepared specially for you,” I said, sitting down in one of the chairs. I crossed my legs and stretched my right arm out over the backrest. Comfortable, mistress of the situation, as though I’d spent my whole life setting up traps like this. “I need to know whether it is convenient for me that you should remain in my life, or if it’s better that we don’t see each other again.”

He didn’t find my words the least bit funny.

“This doesn’t make any sense; maybe it would be best for me togo… ”

“You’re giving up so easily? Only three days ago it seemed as though you were prepared to fight for me. You promised you would at any cost: you told me you’d lost me once and you weren’t going to let it happen again. Have your feelings cooled that quickly? Or were you lying to me, perhaps?”

He looked at me without saying a word, still standing, tense and cold, distant.

“What do you want from me, Sira?” he said at last.

“I want you to be honest with me about your past. In exchange you’ll know everything you need to know about my present. And on top of that you’ll get a reward, too.”

“What is it about my past that you want to know?”

“I want you to tell me what you went to Morocco for. Do you want to know what your reward will be?”

He didn’t reply.

“Your reward will be me. If I’m satisfied with your answer, you get to keep me. If I’m not convinced, you lose me forever. You choose.”

He was silent again. Then he walked slowly toward me.

“Why on earth should you care now why I went to Morocco?”

“Once, years ago, I opened my heart to a man who didn’t show me his true face, and it took infinite efforts on my part to close up the wounds he made in my soul. I don’t want the same thing to happen with you. I don’t want any more lies, any more shadows. I don’t want men simply availing themselves of me to suit their whims, coming closer and moving away again without any warning, even though it might be to save my life. That’s why I need to see your whole hand now, Marcus. I’ve seen some of your cards already: I know who you work for and I know that you aren’t really in the business world, I know you weren’t really in journalism back then, either. But there are other gaps in your story that I still need to fill.”

Finally he settled on the arm of a sofa. He kept one foot on the floor and crossed the other over it. His back straight, his glass still in his hand, his face set in determination.

“Very well,” he agreed after a few seconds. “I’m prepared to talk. In exchange for your being honest with me. About everything.”

“Afterward, I promise.”

“Tell me what you know about me, then.”

“That you’re a member of the British military secret service. The SIS, MI6, whatever you prefer to call it.”

The surprise didn’t show on his face: he’d probably been trained not to reveal his emotions. Not like me. I hadn’t been trained to do anything, I hadn’t been prepared, I hadn’t been protected: I’d just been thrown naked out into a world of ravenous wolves. But I’d learned, on my own, struggling, stumbling, falling, and getting back up; setting off again—one foot, then the other. My head held high, eyes fixed straight ahead of me.

“I don’t know how you got hold of that information,” was his only reply. “In any case, it doesn’t matter: I suppose your sources are reliable and there wouldn’t be any point in my denying what’s obvious.”

“But there are a few other things I still don’t know.”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“You could start from the moment we met, for example. Start with the real reason you came to Morocco.”

“Very well. The main reason was that in London they knew very little about what was going on within the Protectorate, and they were hearing from a number of sources that the Germans were infiltrating it freely with the acquiescence of the Spanish authorities. Our intelligence service hardly had any information on High Commissioner Beigbeder: he wasn’t one of the better-known military men, we didn’t know how he behaved, or what plans or opinions he had, and above all we didn’t know what his position was on the Germans, who were apparently so free to do whatever they wanted in the territory he controlled.”

“And what did you learn?”

“That as expected the Germans were operating in whatever way took their fancy, sometimes with his consent and sometimes without it. You helped me get part of that information yourself.”

I ignored that comment.

“And about Beigbeder?”

“I found out the same things about him that you know, too. That he was—and I imagine still is—an intelligent man, distinguished and rather unusual.”

“And why did they send you to Morocco, given the dreadful state you were in?”

“We got word of the existence of Rosalinda Fox, a compatriot of ours who was in a relationship with the high commissioner: a precious jewel to us, the best possible opportunity. But approaching her directly was too risky: she was so valuable to us that we couldn’t risk losing her with an operation that had been clumsily planned. We had to wait for just the right moment. So when we learned that she was looking for someone to help evacuate the mother of a friend of hers, the machinery was set in motion. And it was decided that I was just the right person because while I was in Madrid I’d had contact with someone who handled those evacuations to the Mediterranean. I’d kept London informed about Lance’s movements myself, so they thought I’d have the perfect alibi to show up in Tetouan and approach Beigbeder with the excuse that I was carrying out a service for his lover. There was a small problem, however: at the time I was half dead in the Royal London Hospital, flat on my back in bed with my body all bashed up, semiconscious and pumped full of morphine.”

“But you risked it, you fooled us all and got what you wanted…”

“Much more than we’d ever expected,” he said. I could see the trace of a smile on his lips, the first I’d seen since we’d shut ourselves in the library. I felt the pinch of a confused emotion: the Marcus I’d so yearned for, the Marcus I wanted to keep by my side, had finally returned. “They were very special times,” he went on. “After more than a year living in the turmoil of war-stricken Spain, Morocco was the best thing that could have happened to me. I recovered, and I carried out my mission with exceptional results. And I met you. I couldn’t have asked for more than that.”