William Boyd - Restless

She was walking homewards along Central Park South, looking out at the trees in the park, already yellow and orange with the advancing fall, when she became aware of a set of footsteps maintaining the exact same cadence as hers. This was one of the tricks she had learned at Lyne – it was almost as effective as someone tapping you on the shoulder. She stopped to adjust the strap on her shoe and, looking casually round, saw Romer three or four paces behind her, staring intently into the window of a jeweller's shop. He turned on his heel and, after a brief pause, she followed him back along Sixth Avenue, where she saw him go into a large delicatessen. She joined the queue at the counter further down from him and watched him order a sandwich and a beer and go to sit in a busy corner. She bought a coffee and walked over to him.

'Hello,' she said. 'May I join you?'

She sat down.

'All very clandestine,' she said.

'We all have to take more precautions,' he said. 'Double-check, triple-check. To tell the truth, we're a little worried that some of our American friends have become too intrigued by what we're up to. I think we've grown too large – impossible to ignore the scale of the thing, anymore. So: extra effort, more snares, watch for shadows, friendly crows, strange noises on the telephone. Just a hunch – but we've all been getting a bit complacent.'

'Right,' she said, watching him bite into his vast sandwich. Nothing that size had ever been seen in the British Isles, she thought. He chewed and swallowed for a while before speaking.

'I wanted to tell you that everyone's very pleased about Washington. I've been taking all the compliments but I wanted to say that you did well, Eva. Very well. Don't think that I take it for granted. Don't think that we take it for granted.'

'Thank you.' She didn't exactly feel a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

'"Gold" is going to be our golden boy.'

'Good,' she said, then thought. 'Is he already-'

'He was activated yesterday.'

'Oh.' Eva thought about Mason: she had an image of somebody spreading photos on a table before his appalled face. She could see him weeping, even. I wonder what he thinks about me now? She thought, uncomfortably. 'What if he calls me?' she asked.

'He won't call you.' Romer paused. 'We've never been so close to the chief before. Thanks to you.'

'Maybe we won't need him for long,' she suggested vaguely, as if to assuage her mounting guilt, to keep the tarnish to a minimum for a while.

'Why do you say that?'

'The Rueben Jones going down.'

'It doesn't seem to have made any material difference to public opinion,' Romer said, with some sarcasm. 'People seem more interested in the result of the Army – Notre Dame match.'

She couldn't understand this. 'Why? There's a hundred dead young sailors, for God's sake.'

'U-boats sinking US ships got them into the last war,' he said, putting two-thirds of his sandwich down, admitting defeat. 'They've got long memories.' He smiled at her unpleasantly. His mood was odd that evening, she thought, almost angry in some way. 'They don't want to be in this war, Eva, whatever their president or Harry Hopkins or Gale Winant thinks.' He gestured at the crowded deli: the men and women, the working day over, the children, laughing, chatting, buying their enormous sandwiches and their fizzy drinks. 'Life's good here. They're happy. Why mess it up going to war 3,000 miles away? Would you?'

She had no ready, convincing answer.

'Yes, but what about this map?' she said, sensing herself losing the argument. 'Doesn't that change things?' She thought further, as if she were trying to persuade herself. 'And Roosevelt's speech. They can't deny it's getting closer. Panama – it's their back yard.'

Romer, she saw, allowed himself a slight smile at her earnest ardour.

'Yes, well, I have to admit we're quite pleased with that,' he said. 'We never expected it to work so efficiently or so quickly.'

She waited a second before asking her question, trying to seem as unconcerned as possible.

'It's ours, you mean? The map is ours – is that what you're saying?'

Romer looked at her with mild rebuke in his eyes, as if she were being too slow, lagging behind the class. 'Of course. Here's the story: German courier crashed his car in Rio de Janiero. Careless fellow. He was taken to hospital. In his briefcase was this fascinating map. Rather too convenient, don't you think? I was very reluctant to go down that road but our friends seem to have bought it wholesale.' He paused. 'By the way, I want you to get all this out on Transoceanic tomorrow. Everywhere – date-line US government, Washington DC. Have you pen and paper?'

Eva rummaged in her handbag for notebook and pencil and took down in shorthand everything that Romer listed: five new countries in the South American continent as displayed on Roosevelt's secret map. 'Argentina' now included Uruguay and Paraguay and half of Bolivia; 'Chile' took in the other half of Bolivia and the whole of Peru. 'New Spain' was composed of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador and, crucially, the Panama Canal. Only 'Brazil' remained substantially as it was.

'I must say it was a rather beautiful document: "Argentinien, Brasilien, Neu Spanien" – all criss-crossed by proposed Lufthansa routes.' He chuckled to himself.

Eva put her notebook away and used the excuse to sit quiet for a while, taking this in and realising that her gullibility, her susceptibility was still an issue – was she too easy to deceive, perhaps? Never believe anything, Romer said, never, never. Always look for the other explanations, the other options, the other side.

When she raised her eyes she found he was looking at her differently. Fondly, she would have said, with an undercurrent of carnal interest.

'I miss you, Eva.'

'I miss you, too, Lucas. But what can we do about it?'

'I'm going to send you on a course to Canada. You know, care of documents, filing, that sort of thing.'

She knew this meant Station M – a BSC forging laboratory run under cover of the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Station M produced all their fake documentation – she assumed the map had come from them, also.

'For how long?'

'A few days – but you can have a bit of leave before you go, as reward for all your good work. I suggest Long Island.'

'Long Island? Oh, yes?'

'Yes. I can recommend the Narragansett Inn in St James. A Mr and Mrs Washington have a room booked there this weekend.'

She felt an instinctive sexual quickening within her. A slackening, then a tightening of her bowels.

'Sounds nice,' she said, her eyes steady on his. 'Lucky Mr and Mrs Washington.' She stood up. 'I'd better go. Sylvia and I are going out on the town.'

'Well, be careful, be watchful,' he said, seriously, suddenly like an anxious parent. 'Triple-check.'

At that moment Eva wondered if she was in love with Lucas Romer. She wanted to kiss him, more than anything, wanted to touch his face.

'Right,' she said. 'Will do.'

He stood up, and left some coins on the table as a tip. 'Have you got your safe place?'

'Yes,' she said. Her safe house in New York was a one-room cold-water apartment in Brooklyn. 'I've got somewhere out of town.' It was almost true.

'Good.' He smiled. 'Enjoy your leave.'

On Friday evening Eva caught a train to Long Island. At Farmingdale she stepped off and caught another immediately back to Brooklyn. She left the station and wandered around for ten minutes before catching another train on the branch line that ended at Port Jefferson. There, she took a taxi to the bus station at St James. As they motored away from Port Jefferson she watched the cars that were behind them. There was one that seemed to be keeping its distance but when she asked the taxi driver to slow down it swiftly overtook. From the bus station she walked to the Narragansett Inn – she had no shadow as far as she could tell – she was rigorously obeying Romer's instructions. She was pleased to see that the inn was a large, comfortable, cream clapboard house set in a well-kept garden on the outskirts of town, with a distant view of the dunes. She felt a cold wind blowing off the Sound and was glad of her coat. Romer was waiting for her in the residents' sitting-room, where there was a snapping driftwood fire burning in the grate. Mr and Mrs Washington went straight upstairs to their room and didn't emerge until the next morning.