William Boyd - Restless

'Cheer up, Eve. By the way – the lord above wants to see you. Eldorado diner in fifteen minutes.'

Eva waited in the diner for an hour before Romer turned up. She found these professional encounters very strange: she wanted to kiss him, touch his face, hold his hands, but they had to observe the most formal of courtesies.

'Sorry I'm late,' he said, sitting down opposite. 'You know – it's the first time in New York, but I think I had a shadow. Maybe two. I had to go into the park to be sure I'd lost them.'

'Who would put shadows on you?' She stretched her leg out under the table and rubbed his calf with the toe of her shoe.

'FBI.' Romer smiled at her. 'I think Hoover's getting worried about how large we've grown. You've seen BSC. Frankenstein's monster. You'd better stop that, by the way, you'll get me excited.'

He ordered a coffee; Eva had another Pepsi-Cola.

'I've got a job for you,' he said.

She covered her mouth with her fingers and said softly, 'Lucas… I want to see you.'

Romer looked fixedly at her; she sat up straight. 'I want you to go to Washington,' he said. 'I want you to get to know a man there called Mason Harding. He works in Harry Hopkins's press office.'

She knew who Harry Hopkins was – Roosevelt's right-hand man. Secretary of Commerce, notionally, but, in reality, FDR's adviser, envoy, fixer, eyes and ears. Quite probably the second most important man in America – as far as the British were concerned.

'So I have to get to know this Mason Harding. Why?'

'Approach the press office – say you want to interview Hopkins for Transoceanic. They'll probably say no – but, who knows? You might meet Hopkins. But the key thing is to get to know Harding.'

'What then?'

'I'll tell you.'

She felt that little flutter of pleasurable anticipation; it was the same as when Romer had sent her into Prenslo. The strange thought came to her: maybe I was always destined to be a spy?

'When do I go?'

'Tomorrow. Make your appointments today.' He passed her a scrap of paper with a Washington telephone number on it. 'That's Harding's personal line. Find a nice hotel. Maybe I'll pop down and visit. Washington's an interesting town.'

Mention of the name reminded her of Morris's questions.

'Do you know anything about this Nekich killing?'

There was the briefest pause. 'Who told you about that?'

'It was written up in the Washington Post. Morris was asking me about it – if my Tass friends had anything to say.'

'What's it got to do with Morris?'

'I don't know.'

She could practically hear his brain working. His mind had spotted some link, some connection, some congruence that seemed odd to him. His face changed: his lips pouted then made a kind of grimace.

'Why should Morris Devereux be interested in an NKVD assassination?'

'So it was an assassination – not a suicide.' She shrugged. 'He said he was due to meet this man – Nekich.'

'Are you sure?' She could see that Romer found this unusual. 'I was meant to meet him.'

'Maybe you both were. That's what he told me.'

'I'll give him a call. Look, I'd better go.' He leant forward. 'Call me once you've made contact with Harding.' He raised his coffee-cup to his lips and spoke over the rim and mouthed something at her, an endearment, she hoped but she couldn't make it out. Always cover your mouth when you have something important to convey – another Romer rule – against lip-readers. 'We'll call it Operation Eldorado,' he said. 'Harding is "Gold".' He put his cup down and went to pay the bill.

I WAS RATHER HOPING that Hamid would cancel his tutorial – perhaps even put in a request for a change of tutor – but there was no call from OEP so I worked my way, somewhat distractedly, through Hugues's lessons, trying to keep my mind off the advancing hour when Hamid and I would meet again. Hugues seemed to notice nothing of my vague agitation and spent a large part of his tutorial telling me, in French, about some vast abattoir in Normandy he had visited once and how it was staffed almost exclusively by fat women.

I walked him to the landing outside the kitchen door and we stood in the sun, looking down on the garden below. My new furniture – white plastic table, four plastic chairs and an unopened cerise and pistachio umbrella – was set out at the end under the big sycamore. Mr Scott was doing his jumping exercises around the flowerbeds, like a Rumplestiltskin in a white coat trying to stamp through the surface of the earth to the seething magma beneath. He flapped his arms and leapt up and down, moved sideways and repeated the exercise.

'Who is that madman?' Hugues asked.

'My landlord and my dentist.'

'You let that lunatic fix your teeth?'

'He's the sanest man I've ever met.'

Hugues said goodbye and clanged down the stairs. I rested my rump against the balustrade, watching Mr Scott move into his deep-breathing routine (touch the knees, throw back arms and inflate lungs), and heard Hugues bump into Hamid in the alleyway that ran along the side of the house. Some trick of the acoustics – the tone of their voices and the proximity of the brickwork – carried their words up to me on the landing.

'Bonjour, Hamid. Ça va?'

'Ça va.'

'She's in a strange mood today.'

'Ruth?'

'Yeah. She's sort of not connecting.'

'Oh.'

Pause. I heard Hugues light a cigarette.

'You like her?' Hugues asked.

'Sure.'

'I think she's sexy. In an English way – you know.'

'I like her very much.'

'Good figure, man. Super-jolie nana .'

'Figure?' Hamid was not concentrating.

'You know.' At this point Hugues must have gestured. I assumed he would be delineating the size of my breasts.

Hamid laughed nervously. 'I never really notice.'

They parted and I waited for Hamid to climb the stairs. Head down, he might have been mounting a scaffold.

'Hamid,' I said. 'Morning.'

He looked up.

'Ruth, I come to apologise and then I am going to OEP to request a new tutor.'

I calmed him down, took him into the study and reassured him that I wasn't offended, that these complications happened between mature students and teachers, especially in one-on-one tutorials, also given the long relationships that the OEP teaching programme necessitated. One of those things, no hard feelings, let's carry on as if nothing has happened. He listened to me patiently and then said,

'No, Ruth, please. I am sincere. I am in love with you.'

'What's the point? You're going to Indonesia in two weeks. We'll never see each other again. Let's forget it – we're friends. We'll always be friends.'

'No, I have to be honest with you, Ruth. This is my feeling. This is what I feel in my heart. I know you don't feel the same for me but I am obliged to tell you what my feelings was.'

'Were.'

'Were.'

We sat in silence for a while, Hamid never taking his eyes off me.

'What're you going to do?' I said, finally. 'Do you want to carry on with the lessons?'

'If you don't mind.'

'Let's see how we get on, anyway. Do you want a cup of tea? I could murder a cup of tea.'

On uncanny cue, there was a knock on the door.

Ilse pushed it open and said, 'Sorry, Ruth. Where is tea? I am looking but Ludger is sleeping still.'

We went into the kitchen and I made a pot of tea for Hamid, Ilse, myself and, in due course, a sleepy Ludger.

Bobbie York feigned huge astonishment – hand on forehead, staggering backward a few feet – when I called round to see him, unannounced.

'What have I done to deserve this?' he said as he poured me one of his 'tiny' whiskies. 'Twice in one week. I feel I should – I don't know – dance a jig, run naked through the quad, slaughter a cow, or something.'