The Talbot Odyssey (13 page)

Katherine put her street clothes neatly inside her suitcase. The beige guest room had a forlorn look, and for all its luxury there was something of the government facility about the entire apartment. She had a few minutes before she had to dress for dinner. She lay down, naked, on the bed, stretched, and yawned.

Peter Thorpe’s adoptive father, James Allerton, actually owned the apartment and the furnishings. Peter’s late adoptive mother, Betty, had decorated all the rooms sometime before the war, when it had been her home. Many of the pieces were antiques or had become so in the intervening years. There were original Turners on the walls, bought in the 1930s when Turner was out of fashion and the world was out of money. There were also sculptures by Rodin and a Gobelin tapestry. If one thought to put a price tag on the artwork here, it would exceed a million dollars. Yet, to the best of her knowledge, not so much as a towel had ever been missing despite the heavy flow of transients. This was one company from which one did not steal.

Katherine thought of the housekeeper, Eva, a Polish woman in her fifties. Katherine reflected that the housekeepers changed periodically as a direct consequence of the political or military situation’s going to pieces somewhere. For the last few years there had been Polish women. For a long time before that there had been Southeast Asian women. Before her time, she imagined, there had been Hungarians, Cubans, Czechs. They were, she thought, women who had made a political and moral decision to risk their lives for an ideal. They had betrayed their country and were therefore traitors, and were traditionally treated with ambivalence and suspicion by all intelligence agencies. But Eva and the rest of them were owed something by the Company, and the Company paid.

And what these women lacked in housekeeping ability, they made up for in dedication; in any case, a day maid did the real work, and the housekeepers mostly wrote their reports or memoirs and kept an eye on the guests. This was the looking glass through which Katherine had to pass every time she stepped out of the elevator.

Katherine went to the dressing table and absently arranged her makeup, then looked into the wall mirror. Her hair was in disarray, and there was a small scratch on her neck, a result of their lovemaking.

On an emotional level she knew this place was all wrong, but on an intellectual and professional level she accepted it. What went on when she wasn’t here fell into that very gray area of expedient morality, sanctioned by national security. What went on here was also none of her business. On the other hand, it might be. She thought about the third floor.

She rose and walked to the bathroom. She listened for the sound of the shower on the opposite side of the wall but heard nothing. She opened the medicine cabinet and saw a bottle of astringent, which she dabbed on her neck. “Damn.”

Katherine heard a hallway door shut and walked quickly into the bedroom. She peered through a fisheye peephole and saw Peter Thorpe, dressed in his evening clothes, rapidly descending the staircase. She opened the door and stepped out. She was about to call after him but decided against it.

She began to shut the door, then paused. A few doors down was the narrow staircase that led to the third floor of the triplex. She took a robe from her closet and stepped into the hall.

Katherine climbed the narrow, unlit staircase and stood at the top landing, facing a door made of some type of synthetic material. There were two Medeco cylinder locks on the door and probably an alarm device as well. She hesitated, then turned the knob and pushed. The heavy door swung inward, and she took a step into the room.

The long garretlike room was not fully illuminated, but there were eerie blue-white fluorescents hanging above ten or twelve different machines positioned around the room. Katherine identified a telex, a shortwave radio, a stock printer, several video screens, a computer terminal, and something that could have been a polygraph. In a far corner was a table on wheels, a hospital gurney with loose straps hanging from it. She did not like the looks of that.

The other machines, large and small, she could not identify. She stepped farther into the room and let the door close quietly.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the uneven light, and she noticed, almost directly in front of her, a large electronic console of some sort. Behind the console sat a figure. The figure rose and turned toward her.

Katherine caught her breath and stepped backward toward the door.

“Yes?”

Katherine let out a long breath. It was Eva. The tall, big-boned woman with stringy gray hair moved toward her.

Katherine partially regained her composure. “I’d like a look around.”

“Mr. Thorpe permits this?” Eva came closer.

“I never asked.”

“I think you have no business here.” She stood directly in front of Katherine.

Katherine had to look up to meet Eva’s eyes. She felt exposed, defenseless, with her arms wrapped around the robe to keep it from falling open. Katherine controlled her voice. “And you do?”

“I
work here. For Mr. Thorpe. Not the same way as you—”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Pardon me . . . my English . . . that maybe sounded—”

“Good evening.” Katherine summoned her courage and turned her back on the woman. She reached for the doorknob, half expecting to be restrained, but wasn’t. She opened the door and stepped onto the landing.

Eva followed. She took a key from the pocket of her housecoat and quickly double-locked the door, then caught up to Katherine on the stairs. “It was not wise to enter that room.”

Katherine didn’t answer. She descended at a normal, carefully measured pace.

“This is secret, this room. Government secret. Mr. Thorpe has not told you?”

Again Katherine didn’t answer. She reached the balcony and turned toward Eva. Eva stood a few feet away, towering a full head over her. With a barely discernible movement, Katherine assumed a guarded stance.

Eva seemed to notice, and a smile passed over her thin lips. She spoke in a tone that a teacher would use in lecturing a child. “In
my
country you would be shot for spying.”

“We are not in
your
country. We are in
my
country.”

Eva seemed slightly annoyed, then resumed an impassive attitude. “True. But I must make the report.”

“Do what the hell you want.” Katherine walked quickly past the woman and went to her bedroom. She closed the door, then looked out through the peephole and saw Eva’s face very close, staring at the door. Katherine hesitated over the bolt, then angrily threw it shut. At the sound of the bolt, Eva smiled and turned away.

Katherine sat on the edge of the bed. She was upset, humiliated, furious. Never again would she make love in this apartment. In fact, she thought, she would never set foot in the place again. Her eyes rested on a bottle of chilled Principessa Gavi left on the night table. She pulled out the cork and poured the wine into a long-stem glass, then drank it.

Katherine settled herself back in a chaise longue and closed her eyes. She steadied herself and tried to clear her mind. No, she thought, it would be wrong not to come back. She owed Peter at least that degree of trust, she told herself. Also, she was curious. More than that, Patrick O’Brien had suggested in a very oblique way that he found Peter, and Peter’s operation, a bit odd.

She felt herself drifting off, and her mind became confused. . . . There was a key somewhere; she’d always felt that. A key such as Eva possessed, and which Arnold possessed, and it was a master key to many locks, many doors and closets and chests. And inside were secrets and ciphers, skeletons and scandals. Everyone else seemed to know this—O’Brien, Peter, James Allerton, her sister, Ann, her sister’s fiancé, Nicholas West. . . . Her father had known it too, and Colonel Carbury knew it. It was like a great family secret that the children sensed but did not know, that the adults lived with but never mentioned.

Tonight, she thought, they would hold a family council. Tonight little Kate would be told.

Peter Thorpe walked into the second-floor cocktail lounge of the University Club and sidled up to the bar. “Good evening, Donald.”

The bartender smiled. “Evening, Mr. Thorpe.”

“Sorry about the other night.”

“Hey, no problem.”

“I remember looking into the bar mirror there. . . . I saw myself leaning into a force-ten gale wind that no one else in the room seemed to feel.”

The bartender laughed. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Just a wimp water, please.”

The bartender laughed again and poured a Perrier.

Thorpe pulled a copy of the
Times
toward him and flipped through it. “I can’t believe the number of murders committed in this town. Crazy.”

“Yeah, but most murders involve people who know each other. Did you know that? And not our kind of people, either. Banjos and bongos.”

“Banjos and bongos?”

Donald smiled as he polished a glass. “Yeah, you know.” He looked at a Hispanic busboy near the tables and lowered his voice. “Blacks and Ricans. Banjos and bongos.” He winked.

Thorpe smiled back. “You have an excellent command of the modern vernacular, Donald, and a good ear for idioms and jokes. I loved the definition of a woman. Have any more?”

“Yeah. What do you get when you cross a black with a Frenchman?”

“What?”

“Jacques Custodian.” He slapped his rag against the bar and laughed.

Thorpe raised his glass of mineral water. “I salute you.” He drank. “By the way, do you have any chits on a man named Carbury? Supposed to be registered here, but—”

Donald flipped through a stack of cards. “Nope.”

“Englishman. Older man, tall, thin, maybe a mustache.”

“Oh, Edwards. Comes in here a lot.”

“He’s been here since maybe Wednesday?”

“Right, Edwards.” He flipped through his chits again. “Room 403. Came in maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago. Had one and left.”

“Did he have a monkey suit on?”

Donald scratched his head. “No . . . no, he had tweeds.” Donald seemed to notice Thorpe’s evening clothes for the first time. “Hey, heading for a big shindig, Mr. Thorpe?”

Thorpe refolded the newspaper. “Ever hear of the OSS?”

The young bartender shook his head.

“World War Two,” prompted Thorpe.

“Oh, yeah. Used to entertain the troops.”

Thorpe laughed. “No, Donald, that’s the USO. How about the KGB? M16?”

“The KGB . . . sure—Russian spies. M16 . . . sounds familiar
. .
.”

“How about the SS?”

“Sure. Nazis.”

Thorpe smiled. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“About what?”

“Oh, about life. About heroes and villains. About things like good and evil, about faded glory, about sacrifice, duty, honor, country . . . about remembering—memories. A good memory is not necessarily a good thing, Donald.”

Donald didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. “Yeah—”

“The OSS Veterans dinner. Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the CIA.” He pointed to the front page of the
Times
. “That’s where I’m going. They get together to remember. They remember too damned much. That’s dangerous.”

“Hey, you’re going to hear the President speak?”

“Right.” Thorpe pushed a sealed envelope across the bar. “Do me a favor, Donald. Call around the club—billiards room, library, and all—see if you can locate Edwards. Get this to him.”