Helen said, "Are you still seeing Alice Simpson?"
"How in the world do you know about Alice Simpson?"
"I know about all your women, Alfred. She's very pretty. I even like those wretched books she writes."
"She's slipped away. I told myself it was the war, my work. But the truth is, she wasn't you, Helen. So I let her slip away. Just like all the others."
"Oh, damn you, Alfred Vicary! Damn you for saying that."
"It's the truth. Besides, it's what you wanted to hear. That's why you sought me out in the first place."
"The truth is, I wanted to hear that you were happy," she said. Her eyes were damp. "I didn't want you to tell me I'd ruined your life."
"Don't flatter yourself, Helen. You haven't ruined my life. I'm not unhappy. I've just never found enough room in my heart for someone else. I don't trust people very much. I suppose I have you to thank for that."
"Truce," she said. "Please, let's call a truce. I didn't want this to turn into a continuation of our last conversation. I just wanted to spend some time with you. God, but I need a drink. Will you take me somewhere nice and pour a bottle of wine into me, darling?"
They walked to Duke's. It was quiet that time of the afternoon. They were shown to a corner table. Vicary kept expecting one of Helen and David's friends to come in and recognize them, but they were alone. Vicary excused himself to go to the telephone and tell Harry where he was. When he came back there was a ludicrously expensive bottle of champagne sitting in an ice bucket.
"Don't worry, darling," she said. "It's David's party."
He sat down and they drank half the wine very fast. They talked about Vicary's books, and they talked about Helen's children. They even talked about David some more. He never took his eyes from her face as she spoke. There was something about the remote sadness in her eyes--the vulnerability caused by her failed marriage--that made her even more attractive to him. She reached out her hand and laid it on Vicary's. He felt his heart beating inside his chest for the first time in twenty-five years.
"Do you ever think about it, Alfred?"
"Think about what?"
"That morning."
"Helen, what are you--"
"My God, Alfred, you can be so thick sometimes. The morning I came to your bed and ravaged your body for the first time."
Vicary swallowed the last of his wine and refilled their glasses. He said, "No--not really."
"My God, Alfred Vicary, but you
are
a terrible liar. How do you manage in your new line of work?"
"All right, yes. I
do
think about it." He thought: when was the last time? The morning in Kent, after composing a Double Cross message for his false agent code-named Partridge. "I catch myself thinking about it at the damnedest times."
"I lied to David, you know. I always told him he was the first. But I'm glad it was you." She fingered the base of her wineglass and looked out the window. "It was so fast--just a moment or two. But when I remember it now it lasts for hours."
"Yes. I know what you mean."
She looked back at him. "Do you still have your house in Chelsea?"
"I'm told it's still there. I haven't been there since 1940," Vicary added, jokingly.
She turned from the window and looked Vicary directly in the eyes. She leaned forward and whispered, "I wish you would take me there now and make love to me in your bed."
"I'd like that too, Helen. But you'd only break my heart again. And at my age, I don't think I could get over you a second time."
Helen's face lost all expression and her voice, when it finally came, was flat and toneless. "My God, Alfred, when did you become such a coldhearted bastard?"
Her words sounded familiar to him. Then he remembered that Boothby, taking him by the arm after the interrogation of Peter Jordan, had asked him the same thing.
A shadow fell between them. It passed over her face, darkened it, then moved on. She sat very quiet and very still. Her eyes dampened. She blinked away the tears and regained her composure. Vicary felt like an idiot. The whole thing had gone too far--spun out of control. He was a fool to see her. Nothing good could come of it. The silence was like grinding metal now. He absently beat his breast pockets for his half-moon glasses and tried to think of some excuse to get away. Helen sensed his uneasiness. Still facing the window, she said, "I've kept you too long. I know you should be getting back."
"Yes. I really should. I'm sorry."
Helen was still talking to the window. "Don't be seduced by them. When the war is over, get rid of those awful gray suits and go home to your books. I liked you better then." Vicary said nothing, just looked at her. He leaned down to kiss her cheek but she lifted her face to him and, holding his neck with her fingers, kissed him lightly on the mouth. She smiled and said, "I hope you change your mind--and soon."
"I may, actually."
"Good."
"Good-bye, Helen."
"Good-bye, Alfred."
She took his hand. "I have one more thing to say to you. Whatever you do, don't trust Basil Boothby, darling. He's poison. Never, ever, turn your back on him."
And then he remembered what she had said about her one adulterous lover:
He was David in different clothes.
No, Helen, he thought. He was Boothby.
He walked. If he could have run he would have. He walked without direction, without destination. He walked until the scar tissue in his knee burned like a brand. He walked until his smoker's cough sounded like consumption. The leafless trees of Green Park twisted with the wind. The rushing air sounded like white water. The wind lifted his unbuttoned mackintosh and nearly tore it from his body. He clutched it at the throat, and it flew from his shoulders like a cape. The blackout descended like a veil. In the darkness he bumped into a brassy American.
Hey, watch it, Mac!
Vicary muttered an apology--"So sorry, forgive me"--then regretted it.
Still our bloody country.
He felt as though he were being conveyed--as though his movements were no longer his own. He suddenly remembered the hospital in Sussex where he recovered from his wounds. The boy who'd been shot in the spine and could no longer move his arms and legs. The way he described to Vicary the floating numbness he felt when the doctors moved his dead limbs for him.
God, Helen! How could you? Boothby! God, Helen!
Vile images of their lovemaking shot through his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to squeeze them away.
Bloody hell! Bloody hell! Anyone but Basil Boothby!
He marveled at the absurd way in which one part of his life had folded over and touched another. Helen and Boothby--absurd. Too absurd to contemplate. But it was true, he knew it.
Where was he now? He smelled the river and made for it. Victoria Embankment. Tugs hauling barges up the river, running lights doused, the far-off call of a foghorn. He heard a man moaning with pleasure and thought it was only his imagination again. He looked to his left and, in the darkness, could make out a tart with her hands inside a soldier's fly.
Oh, good Lord! Excuse me.
He was walking again. He had an urge to walk up to Boothby's office and punch him in the face. He remembered Boothby's physical size and the rumors about his prowess with the martial arts and decided it would be tantamount to a suicide attempt. He had an urge to walk back to Duke's, find Helen, take her home with him, and to hell with the consequences. Then the images of the case began bursting through his mind, just like they always did. Vogel's empty file. Karl Becker in his soggy cell--
I told Boothby.
Rose Morely's exploded face. Grace Clarendon's tearful flight from Boothby's lair. The Pelican. The Hawke, Boothby's Oxford boy spy. He had the uncomfortable feeling he was being run. He thought, Am I a Hawke too?
Where was he now? Northumberland Avenue. He walked more slowly, listening to the pleasant growl of the late-afternoon traffic. He looked up and saw an attractive young woman staring impatiently at the passing cars. It was Grace Clarendon, there was no mistaking her shock of white-blond hair and her bloodred lips. A large black Humber pulled to the curb. Boothby's. The door opened and Grace climbed inside. The car slid into the traffic. Vicary turned his head and looked away as the car swept past him.
Vicary rode to West Halkin Street. Night had fallen, and with it had come a drenching downpour like a springtime thunderstorm. Vicary rubbed a hole in the condensation on his window and looked out. Crowds of Londoners moved along the pavements like refugees fleeing an advancing army--huddled beneath raincoats and umbrellas, some turned inside out by the wind, blackout torches peering weakly into the wet gloom. Vicary thought of the strange twist of fate that had placed him in the back of a government car and not out there with the rest of them. He thought suddenly of Helen and wondered where she was--somewhere safe and dry, he hoped. He thought of Grace Clarendon, climbing into the back of Boothby's car, and wondered what the hell she was doing there. Was it a very simple answer? Was she sleeping with Boothby and Harry at the same time? Or was it something more sinister? He remembered the words shouted in anger at Boothby behind the closed doors of his office:
You can't do this to me! Bastard! Bloody bastard!
Vicary thought, Tell me what he made you do, Grace, because for the life of me I can't figure it out on my own.
The car stopped outside the house. Vicary climbed out and, holding his briefcase as a shield against the rain, hurried inside. It felt like a West End theater preparing for an uncertain opening night. He had come to enjoy the atmosphere of the place--the noisy chatter of the watchers as they dressed in their foul-weather gear for a night on the streets, the technician checking to make sure he was receiving a good signal from the microphones inside Jordan's house, the smell of cooking drifting from the kitchen.
Something about Vicary's appearance must have radiated tension, because no one spoke to him as he picked his way through the clutter of the situation room and climbed the stairs to the library. He removed his mackintosh and hung it on the hook behind the door. He placed his briefcase on the desk. Then he walked across the hall and found Peter Jordan standing in front of a mirror, dressing in his naval uniform.
He thought, If the watchers are my stagehands, Jordan is my star and the uniform his costume.
Vicary watched him carefully. He seemed uncomfortable pulling on the uniform--the way Vicary felt when he dug out his black tie once a decade and tried to remember what went where and how. Vicary cleared his throat gently to announce his presence. Jordan turned his head, stared at Vicary for an instant, then returned his attention to his own image in the glass.
Jordan said, "When is it going to end?"
It had become part of their evening ritual. Each night, before Vicary sent Jordan off to meet Catherine Blake with a new load of Kettledrum material in his briefcase, Jordan asked the same question. Vicary always deflected it. But now he said, "Actually, it may be over very soon."
Jordan looked up sharply, then looked at an empty chair and said, "Sit down. You look like hell. When's the last time you slept?"
"I believe it was a night in May 1940," Vicary said, and lowered himself into the chair.
"I don't suppose you can tell me why this is all about to end soon, can you?"
Vicary shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid I can't."
"I didn't think so."
"Does it make a difference to you?"
"Not really, I suppose."
Jordan finished dressing. He lit a cigarette and sat down opposite Vicary. "Am I allowed to ask you any questions?"
"That depends entirely on the question."
Jordan smiled pleasantly. "It's obvious to me you're not a career intelligence officer. What did you do before the war?"
"I was a professor of European history at University College London." It sounded odd to Vicary just saying it, as though he were reading from someone else's resume. It seemed like a lifetime ago--two lifetimes ago.
"How did you end up working for MI-Five?"
Vicary hesitated, decided he was violating no security edict by answering, and told him the story.
"Do you enjoy your work?"
"Sometimes. And then there are times when I detest it and can't wait to get back behind the walls of academia and bar the door."
"Like when?"
"Like now," Vicary said flatly.
Jordan had no reaction. It was as if he understood no intelligence officer, no matter how callused, could actually enjoy an operation like this.
"Married?"
"No."
"Ever been?"
"Never."
"Why not?"
Vicary thought that sometimes God's coincidences were too vulgar to contemplate. Three hours earlier he had answered the same question in front of the woman who knew the answer. And now his agent was asking him the same bloody thing. He smiled weakly and said, "I suppose I never found the right woman."