Fidelity (23 page)

53

T
OM OPENED
the door of a small side-street bar ­nosebleed-high up on the West Side, just about where million-dollar condos the size of shoe boxes gave way to the rapidly gentrifying grit of southern Harlem. It was dark and rather dismal. The bartender was making what Tom felt was a not particularly sincere effort to clean the bar with a dirty rag, or at least an effort that was not crowned with great success. A handful of patrons eyed him vaguely, went back to their own drinks, their own troubles, their own lives. All except one.

Pyotr had given him a picture, and Tom had spent a long time staring at it before holding it over the flame of his Bic lighter and scattering it into a sewer grate. Longer than he needed to, long enough to make sure. Wasted time, as it turned out, because Tom would have known Luis even without the picture, would have picked him out as soon as he walked into the bar. Not that he did anything particularly dramatic to give himself away—it was simply that, as many years as he had dedicated to his job, Tom had developed a nose for sin, or guilt, at least, and this last rolled off the man like a bum's stink on an August afternoon. No, he hadn't needed the picture: Pyotr could have told him, simply, to find a man who looked as if he had come to
the edge of a very high precipice, and was seriously considering continuing onward.

Tom sat down on the bench beside him, a whiff of expensive but not overpowering cologne reaching his broad nostrils.

“You're late,” Luis said.

“By a minute and a half,” Tom said. “And you should not have picked a booth by the window.”

“Shall we move?”

Tom shook his head, although Luis could barely see it, given their position. “It would draw more attention,” he said sternly. Pyotr had warned him that Luis would be unhappy to be meeting with him, might buck a bit, might make a little trouble. They did sometimes, Tom had found. Angry at what had brought them to this moment, although what had brought them to this moment was their own decisions, their own sin and foolishness. Impor­tant to shut that kind of thing down as quick as you could.

The waiter came over, smiling and overfriendly, as they were in this country, trying to earn a tip as always, false good humor a faint covering for the cold, naked capitalist machine. Tom kept up his end for a few sentences, in part because rudeness gets remembered, while faint gregariousness does not, but mostly because he could see it made Luis uncomfortable.

“Did you need to sit next to me?” the contact said unhappily. “People will think we're lovers.”

“This is Manhattan, my friend, in the twenty-first century. Two men sitting together will not get a second look. And this is the sort of business best discussed in hushed whispers. Or do you disagree?”

“No,” Luis admitted. “No, I don't.”

Tom waited for his drink to come, sipped at it, then began to speak. Outside, the summer light was fading, pedestrians walked home in the warm weather, cabs passed by with their signs shin
ing bright, a beat-up sedan sat aimlessly across the way. “The brother has taken the bait,” Tom said.

“Fine,” Luis said irritably. “Then why are you talking to me?”

“Because Christopher is not the problem. The problem is that Christopher is not of any interest to us at all, obviously. Is only of any use insofar as his sister's sympathy is attached to him.”

“It is.”

“So you say.”

“Pyotr was convinced,” Luis said.

“And Pyotr is a very wise man,” Tom said. “But it will not be Pyotr in the room with her, not Pyotr making the pitch.”

“Kay loves her brother.”

“No doubt she cares for him deeply. Does she care enough to endanger her career? Does she care enough to betray her principles? Would she put blood above country, above her own future?”

“She would.”

“You're sure of this?”

Luis did not say anything for a while. He stared out the window, at the night and the darkness and the city. He stared at his hands, withered and bent with age. “I'm sure,” he said.

“Why?”

“Family is . . . everything to Kay. After what happened to her parents . . .” Luis shrugged and fell silent. “She would not betray Christopher. She would not do anything which would endanger him. He is the chink in her armor,” Luis said unhappily. “He is all that she has left. She will do whatever it takes to save him.”

“That is very good,” Tom said, putting a finger of gin through a crooked smile. “That is excellent. That is the best thing for everyone, absolutely,” he said. “It should be easy for you to explain the situation to her, then.”

Luis tore his eyes from the evening, brought them back to Tom. “What are you talking about?”

“It has been decided that the initial approach would best come from someone whom Kay is comfortable with. Someone whom she trusts.” Tom made sure not to smile while enunciating this last word.

“I won't do it,” Luis said firmly, or with what he thought was firmness. It was always strange to Tom, the sudden decision a man makes, too late, far too late, to grow a backbone. “There was never any discussion of that. Pyotr . . . Pyotr assured me that I would be kept out of it. That no one would ever know of my involvement.”

“By ‘no one,' you mean your family, your wife and adopted children? Do you imagine that your betrayal is less significant because they are unaware of it?”

Luis began to curse then, halfhearted and miserable, bits of vileness dribbling from his mouth. Tom let him go at it for a little while; knew, from long experience, that they had come to the last bit of rebelliousness, the pointless anger, the final stage before complete submission. Outside, a pair of lovers passed, tourists, to tell by their bright smiles and fat cameras, holding hands and taking in the city. The sedan sat unmoving. A homeless man pushed an overloaded grocery cart down the sidewalk. Tom fancied he could smell the stink through the window.

Luis fell silent finally. Tom smiled and waved to the bartender for two more drinks.

“I will not argue with you, Luis, because this is not an argument. This is not a dialogue, not even a conversation. I am relaying orders to you, orders which were given to me by men that are more important than either of us. This is the way this works: you are a part of an organization, Luis, as am I. A cog,
nothing more. It is not up to a cog to dispute the workings of the whole. The end result is not his consideration. Do you understand, Luis? Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Luis said, after a long pause.

“Excellent. The meeting needs to happen soon, within the next couple of days.”

A long pause, Luis fighting through the liquor and his despair to try to focus on the plan. “I could set something up for the weekend. Sunday.”

“Sunday will be fine. Sunday will be perfect. Invite her to your house. Make her feel comfortable. Explain what has happened with Christopher, the trouble he has gotten himself in, how serious, how very serious, how terribly serious, that trouble is, and that there is only one option for saving him. If she loves her brother as much as you believe, then she should come to her own conclusions about how to help him.”

“I know how to make an approach,” Luis said, hollow-eyed, and Tom had to admit that he probably did, having been on the receiving end of one, delivered by a master of the form.

“Excellent. Once you have . . . made the situation clear to your niece, you will call me to deal with the particulars.”

“And then?”

“And then your part in this story ends. You may continue on to a happy retirement, sure that you have done nothing more than what you had to and your troubles all finished.”

“And Kay's just beginning,” Luis said quietly.

“Not your concern,” Tom reminded him. “And when you begin the approach, Luis, I want you to understand something. It is important that you understand something,” he repeated, holding one thick finger in the air. “You are doing her a favor. You are not her enemy, you are not her corrupter, you are not playing devil to her Christ. You are her friend. You are her friend
and you are the friend of her brother. You are doing her a favor, though she may not feel it as such at that moment. But that is only because of Kay's own peculiar perspective; that is not the truth of the matter. Because if she is not convinced . . . If she is not convinced,” Tom said, turning his sausage-length digit and butting the end against Luis's shoulder, “should she be unwilling to go along with the tide, the inevitable force of consequence, or should she, God forbid, decide to go to her people with what you have told her”—Tom shook his big head back and forth, sorrowfully, regretfully—“this would be a very bad thing, Luis. A very bad thing for your niece, a very bad thing for you and a terrible, terrible thing for your nephew.”

“You don't need to threaten me,” Luis said.

“Threaten?” Tom cocked his massive skull, as if this were a word with which he was uncertain or unfamiliar. “Who is threatening anything? I am simply clarifying the situation that you find yourself in. Either you will convince Kay to work for us, or you will be responsible for the loss of two generations of Malloys.”

Luis had not touched his drink, but he did so then, downing three stiff fingers of vodka in one fierce, desperate gulp. “I understand,” he said.

And Tom thought that he did.

“Is there anything else?” Luis said, a sliver of a man, made no larger by the liquor he had imbibed.

“I think we have about covered it,” Tom said with a smile. “No, no,” Tom said, holding up a hand as Luis reached for his wallet, “do not dream of it. The drinks are on me.” He leaned in closer. “I will expense it to our organization.”

Luis left quickly, stumbling as he got up from the chair and hurrying out, not looking back. Tom finished up his drink, not in any particular hurry. He chatted briefly with the server when he came back, about the weather and baseball, although only the
former was really of any interest to him. He left a few dollars more on the bill than he needed, but not enough to get remembered.

He walked outside with a happy buzz from the alcohol and from the sensation of a plan running smoothly.

54

L
UIS HAD
asked her to come to the apartment on Sunday morning for brunch, one of Aunt Justyna's special meals: eggs and bacon and a pitcher of mimosas big enough to take a bath in. Luis had told her ten thirty, and ten thirty was when she arrived, with a box of donuts from one of the boutique bakeries on her side of the river. Walking inside, however, she did not smell anything frying, or baking, or grilling, and all of the lights were off, and Luis was sitting quietly in a chair at the kitchen table, and Justyna was nowhere to be found.

Luis was dressed, as always, perfectly, in a charcoal-gray suit with the jacket unbuttoned, a pink handkerchief in his breast pocket the only dash of color. “Kay,” he said, “take a seat.”

Kay looked at him but didn't answer. There were a number of broad windows facing the street outside, and Kay went past each, opening the blinds one by one. When she was finished, sunlight illuminated the room, and she dropped down opposite Luis.

“Hello, Uncle,” Kay said. “Where's Aunt Justyna?”

“She's out with some friends, won't be back for a while. I'm afraid we're going to have to postpone brunch,” he said.

Kay reacted to this unexpected development with her usual steady equilibrium. “All right.”

“We need to have a talk, Kay,” Luis said, and it was in the
same tone of voice in which he had once informed her she would not be receiving a pony for her twelfth birthday. Serious but not unkind.

Kay gestured for him to continue.

“Your brother has gotten into some very serious trouble, Kay,” he said. “Very serious indeed.”

“That doesn't sound like my Christopher.”

“This isn't the time for levity,” Luis said, the slightest hint of disapproval in his voice.

“No, I suppose it isn't.”

“He's been selling narcotics.”

If Luis had been expecting Kay to react with surprise, or shock, or horror, he was disappointed. Kay nodded, almost absently, as if this were a matter of passing importance or, at most, casual interest, and then she gestured again for him to continue.

“Cocaine, from what I understand. First, behind the counter at that bar he works at, but he's recently moved on to more serious infractions.”

“Has he been arrested?” Kay asked, voice even and neutral. “Because there isn't very much I can do about that. That would be a matter for the NYPD, not the FBI, and I don't have any sort of pull there.”

“Unfortunately, Kay, right now Christopher has more to worry about than the police.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“Our Christopher . . .” Luis said, staring off suddenly at the open windows, squinting against the sunlight, then shaking his head and turning back to the conversation, “. . . is, as it turns out, no better a drug dealer than he was a college student, or a guitar player, or . . . or . . .” He waved his hands, as if at that wide panoply of activities that his errant nephew had attempted and failed.

Kay narrowed her eyes. “He's actually not a bad guitar player,” she said quietly. “But I suppose that's neither here nor there.”

“No, it isn't. The point is, in his efforts to become this generation's Al Capone, your brother has made an enemy of some very powerful people.”

“The mob?”

“Of a sort.”

“Then I suppose the police will have to be involved,” Kay said. “A terrible scandal for everyone, but better prison than a coffin.”

Luis's heart seized up at this, but he fought his nerves back down and continued. “That would be premature,” he said. “There are other aspects to be considered.”

“I don't understand,” Kay said. “Christopher came to you to talk about this? That doesn't sound very much like him at all. He must really be desperate. And why would he think you would be able to help him?”

“Christopher has not . . .” Here it was: the big moment, the reveal. Beneath the table Luis had clasped his hands tightly together, afraid if he let them go they would tremble uncontrollably. “Christopher did not reach out to me.”

“Then how do you know all this?” Kay asked, confused, or seeming so.

“The people he's gotten involved with,” Luis said. “We have . . . friends in common. Friends who would be willing to keep his criminality a secret, to forgive his debts. To keep him out of danger.”

“Friends,” Kay repeated.

“Friends,” Luis said a second time.

“I'm surprised to hear that. I hadn't realized your social circle was so varied.”

“I've had a long career, Kay,” Luis said. “I've met a lot of
people in it. Thankfully, some of them might be in a position to help us.”

Kay narrowed her eyes. “You'll have to forgive me, Uncle, I must be a bit slow today, but I'm still having trouble following. Are you trying to tell me that you have some sort of . . . criminal contacts? That your time as an ambassador, a respectable career but one long ended, has put you in touch with the sort of people who would help my brother sell cocaine?”

“Not criminals,” Luis said after a while, but quietly, as if he weren't quite sure. “Not criminals.”

“Then what?”

“Professionals.”

“Professional what?” Kay asked.

“Members of . . . Members of a foreign intelligence service.”

Luis had turned his gaze towards the wall, and so did not see the sudden gleam come to Kay's eyes, then retreat again quickly. “I see,” Kay said finally. “And these professionals are friends with the people to whom Christopher is indebted?”

“Very seriously indebted,” Luis said. “Tens of thousands of dollars, the sort of loss which cannot be taken casually even by wealthy people.”

“And these friends of yours, they can get Christopher out of his trouble?”

“They can make it go away entirely. They can make your brother's problems disappear. As if they never existed,” he said.

“And what would they want in return, exactly?”

“That would be a matter best discussed with them, I think. One of my . . . friends . . . is waiting nearby. He can explain the matter more clearly to you. What they can offer, and what will be required.”

There: it was out, Luis was thinking, and it hadn't been as terrible as he thought it would be. It had been bad, certainly,
but it hadn't been terrible; it hadn't been nearly as bad as . . . as some of the other things he had done. He even felt a momentary sense of freedom, as if of a great burden being eased, and better perhaps to be damned than to have this weight hanging forever over his shoulders, although of course he had been damned long, long ago.

“That was very neatly done, Uncle Luis,” Kay said quietly, turning her cool green eyes back to face him. “That was almost professional.”

Luis cleared his throat and continued. “Kay, I'm doing my best to protect you here. But we don't have much time. There are certain things that you need to do. They may be difficult for you, but they are the only way out for your brother.”

“That's good, Luis, that's very good. You're my lifeline. You're the only thing standing between the cold hard hand of the SVR along Christopher's throat. Along mine. Very neatly done, as I said. But then again, this isn't your first time making this pitch, is it? Not even your first time making this pitch to a member of my family.”

Luis did not gasp, but his blue eyes went very wide, as if seeking to escape from his face.

“How did he react?” Kay asked.

“I . . . I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Paul Malloy. You remember Paul, right? Your best friend for twenty years? Husband of Anne, father of Christopher and Kay?”

“Kay, you must listen to me. We're on a clock, and—”

Kay checked her watch. “We've got a few minutes,” she said. “And it's a little late in the day for you to play coy, don't you think? You've already as much as told me you're a spy. What is there left to hide?”

“We all have things to hide,” he said almost inaudibly.

Kay gestured to the bright light streaming in through the windows. “Today is a day for revelations. Today is a day for throwing off masks. Where were you when you made the approach to my father?”

“Central Park,” Luis said softly. “Near the reservoir.”

“What was the angle?”

“I would . . .” Luis licked his lips. “I'd rather not say.”

Kay bit back a smile: to think, after everything, after all of it, he still wanted to protect the memory of Paul Malloy. “I'm afraid we're past the point of half truths. And there's nothing more you can do to hurt them.”

Luis flinched, looked off towards the wall. “His work required him to be away from you for weeks, sometimes months at a time. He had committed . . . indiscretions.”

Amidst the betrayals and perfidies that Kay had discovered over the course of the last weeks and months, that her father had once been unfaithful to her mother seemed rather insignificant. “Interesting,” she said.

“Your father was a good man,” Luis said suddenly, adamantly, as if it were very important to him that Kay believed it. “He was the best man I ever knew. But no one is perfect, Kay. We all . . . We all do things that are beneath us. We all find ourselves in situations sometimes that we would rather not be in, where our only escape is via a sewer.”

“What a neat turn of phrase, Uncle. Tell me, would you include his murder in this category of lamentable misbehavior?”

Luis closed his eyes for a long time, pursed his lips as if undergoing some pain. “I didn't have anything to do with that.”

“No?” Kay raised her eyebrows. “Nothing? Hands are clean and unmarked?”

Luis did not answer.

“I'll speak for you, then. My father was many things, as we
all are, and perhaps some of those things weren't perfect. But he wasn't a spy, and he refused to become one. And you began to get very nervous that he would tell someone that you couldn't say the same, didn't you? Perhaps the SVR heard that he had contacted the FBI; perhaps they simply decided that they couldn't afford to lose such an important and influential contact. And happily, conveniently, he was always sprinting out of the country on some mission of do-goodery. It would have been an easy thing to ensure an accident befell him. My mother, I can only assume, was a mistake. But then, these things happen sometimes, don't they? Collateral damage in this great game between two mighty nations: a few lives snuffed out, no worse than the loss of a pawn.”

“I knew nothing of it,” Luis said again. “I swear. It is true that I made the approach, and it is true that your father reacted . . . angrily. But I had nothing to do with what happened to him afterward. If they did it . . .”

“If?
If?
”

But Luis continued over her, his voice rising with intensity. “If they did it, they did not tell me,” Luis said, again, growing animated. “I swear to you, I knew nothing of it. I swear on . . . on—”

But he did not finish. Kay cut him off, for the first time in the long conversation a spurt of rage coiling itself behind her eyes. “What would be left for you to swear on, Uncle? Country? Family? God? What haven't you betrayed?”

“On your aunt,” he said finally.

The sudden flash of anger, uncharacteristic, eased off of Kay's face, and what was left might have been regret or sorrow or nothing at all. “She was the start of it, wasn't she? All those years ago in Poland. It wasn't money or prestige. You did it for her, didn't you?”

Luis nodded, swallowed hard.

“That was how she got free of the secret police?”

Luis did not answer for a while, and on his face Kay could see the scars left from a day long past in a country far distant. “We had a date,” he said. “We were to meet for coffee at one of the small cafés in the city center. She was late. At first I did not worry: your aunt was always making me late. She would get caught up in a conversation, or something would catch her fancy, and she would forget all about her duties and pursue it wholeheartedly. But after an hour I began to worry, and after two I was terrified and certain. That was the way they did it, you see: there was no warning; you would leave your office or your home and a man would come up to you on the street and walk you into a car and then you would never be seen again, swallowed up in the bowels of some concrete government building or settled into an unmarked grave.”

“What did you do?”

“Everything I could,” he said, the memory making him miserable. “Which, in the end, was nothing. I rang every contact that I knew, I made the loudest ruckus that I could, called in every favor I had accumulated in years as a diplomat. To no end. They could do nothing, none of them. I found out she was taken, but that was as much as I could learn.”

“And then?” Kay said, after her uncle had been long silent.

But he did not answer at first, not for a long time. “Two weeks she was gone,” he said. “The most terrible time of my life. Nothing to match it, and I have had some bad days, Kay, you had best believe I have had some bad days. But nothing like that: I was going mad. Mad, truly. I was sure she was dead, and I was thinking—I had come to think very seriously—about joining her. A razor, a drop from a tall height, and then we would be together, or at least I would no longer be alone.” Kay could read the memory of that despair on his face, even all these years later. “And then a man sat down next to me at a bar that I frequented,
clean, neat-looking, very serious. And he told me that there was still time to save the woman that I loved. That her crimes had been very terrible, but that there was still a chance for her to be forgiven. That she could be released, that she could be set free. That arrangements could even be made for her to leave the country, to return with me to the U.S., if that was what we wished.”