Restless (25 page)

'Maybe I will,' I said.

We chatted a bit more and I said I'd call him when I had my summary complete – I was still waiting for more information. I left him in the pub and wandered down the High Street to where I'd parked my car. Some students, wearing gowns and carrying champagne bottles, burst out of University College, singing a song with a nonsensical refrain. They capered off down the street, whooping and laughing. Exams over, I thought, term nearly finished and a hot summer of freedom ahead. Suddenly I felt ridiculously old, remembering my own post-exam euphoria and celebrations – an aeon ago, it seemed – and the thought depressed me for the usual reasons. When I took my final exams and celebrated their conclusion my father had been alive; he died three days before I had my results – and so he never learned that his daughter had got a first. As I made for my car, I found myself thinking about him in that last month of his life, that summer – six years ago, already. He had looked well, my unchanging Dad, he wasn't unwell, he wasn't old, but in those final weeks of his life he had started behaving oddly. One afternoon he dug up a whole row of new potatoes, five yards' worth, tens and tens of pounds. Why did you do that, Sean? I remember my mother asking. I just wanted to see if they were ready, he said. Then he cut down and burned on a bonfire a ten-foot lime sapling he'd planted the year before. Why, Dad? I just couldn't bear the thought of it growing, was his simple, baffling reply. Most strange, though, was a compulsion he developed in what was to be his last week on earth, for switching out electric lights in the house. He would patrol the rooms, upstairs and down, looking for a burning light bulb and extinguish it. I'd leave the library to make a cup of tea and come back to find it in darkness. I caught him waiting to slip into rooms we were about to vacate, poised to make sure the lights went off within seconds of their being no longer required. It began to drive me and my mother mad. I remember shouting at him once: what the hell's going on? And he replied with unusual meekness – it just seems a terrible waste, Ruth, an awful waste of precious electricity.

I now think he knew that he was soon going to die but the message had somehow become scrambled or unintelligible to him. We are animals, after all, and I believe our old animal instincts lurk deep inside us. Animals seem to be able to read the signals – perhaps our big, super-intelligent brains can't bear to decipher them. I'm sure now my father's body was somehow subtly alerting him to the impending shutdown, the final systems malfunction, but he was confused. Two days after I had shouted at him about the lights he collapsed and died in the garden after lunch. He was deadheading roses – nothing strenuous – and died immediately, we were informed, a fact that consoled me, but I still hated to dwell on his few, bewildered, frightened weeks of
timor mortis.

I unlocked my car and sat down behind the wheel, feeling blue, missing him badly all of a sudden, wondering what he would have made of my mother's, his wife's, astounding revelations. Of course, it would have all been different if he'd been alive – a pointless hypothesis, then – and so, to move my mind away from this depressing subject I tried to imagine Timothy Thoms without his hidalgo 's beard. 'Rodrigo' Thoms. I liked that better. Perhaps I would call him Rodrigo.

New Mexico . 1941

EVA DELECTORSKAYA STEPPED QUICKLY off the train at Albuquerque 's Santa Fe station. It was eight o'clock in the evening and she was arriving a day later than she had planned – but better to be sure and safe. She watched the passengers disembark – a dozen or so – and then waited until the train pulled out, heading for El Paso. There was no sign of the two crows she had lost in Denver. All the same, she walked a couple of blocks around the station, checking, and, being shadow-free, went into the first hotel she found – The Commercial – and paid six dollars in advance for a single room, three nights. Her room was small, could have been cleaner, had a fine view of an air shaft, but it would do. She left her suitcase there, walked back to the station and told a taxi driver to take her to the Hotel de Vargas, her original destination and where she was due to meet her first contact. The de Vargas proved to be ten minutes away in the business district but after the scare in Denver she needed a bolt-hole. One town: two hotels – standard Lyne training.

The de Vargas lived up to its pretentious name. It was over-decorated, had a hundred rooms and a cocktail lounge. She put a wedding ring on her finger before she checked in and explained to the receptionist that her luggage was lost in Chicago and the railway would be sending it on. No problem, Mrs Dalton, the receptionist said, we'll be sure to let you know the moment it arrives. Her room looked out over a small faux-Pueblo courtyard with a pattering fountain. She freshened up and went down to the cocktail lounge, dark and virtually empty, and ordered a Tom Collins from a plump waitress in a short orange dress. Eva wasn't happy, her brain was working too hard. She nibbled peanuts and drank her liquor and wondered what was the best thing to do.

She had left New York and travelled to Chicago, where she spent a night, deliberately not making her connecting train to Kansas City. She saw the trajectory of her journey across America as a thrown stone, heading westwards, slowly falling on New Mexico. The next day she travelled to Kansas City, missed another connection to Denver and waited three hours in the station for the next. She bought a newspaper and found some items on the war on page nine. The Germans were closing in on Moscow but winter was impeding their advance – as for what might be going on in England she could find nothing. On the next section of her journey, as the train was approaching Denver, she did a routine walk through the coaches. She spotted the crows in the observation platform. They were sitting together, a silly, slack mistake: if they'd been apart she might not have noticed them but she had seen those two charcoal-grey suits in Chicago as well as the two ties, one burnt-amber, one maroon. The maroon tie had a diamond-patterned weave to it that reminded her of a tie she had once given to Kolia as a Christmas present – he wore it with a pale blue shirt, she remembered. She had made him promise that it would be his 'favourite' tie and he had solemnly promised – the tie of ties, he had said, how can I ever thank you? trying to keep his face serious. That's how she had remembered the crows. There was a young man with an undershot lantern-jaw and an older man with greying hair and a moustache. She walked by them and sat down looking out at the prairies rolling by. In the window's reflection she saw them separate immediately: Lantern-Jaw went downstairs, Moustache pretended to read his newspaper.

From Denver she had planned to go straight on to Santa Fe and Albuquerque but clearly now she had shadows she had to lose them. Not for the first time she was grateful for what she had learned in Lyne: broken journeys always make it easier to spot the shadow. Nobody would ever travel as she had done – so coincidence was ruled out. It wouldn't be difficult to get rid of them, she thought – they were either inept or complacent, or both.

At Denver Station she bought a locker, left her suitcase in it, and then walked out into the city and went into the first multistorey department store she encountered. She looked around, browsing, moving up through the floors until she found what she wanted: an elevator close to a stairway on the third floor. She made her way slowly back to the first floor, buying a lipstick and compact on the way. At the elevator she dithered, letting others go by her as she scrutinised the store directory, then slipped in at the last minute. Moustache had been hovering but was too far away. 'Five, please,' she said to the operator but stepped out on three. She waited behind a rack of dresses by the doorway. Seconds later Moustache and Lantern-Jaw thundered up the stairs, quickly scanned the floor, and, not seeing her, and spotting that the lift was still going up, bolted out again. Eva was down the stairs and out on the street a minute later. She doubled back and jinked around but they were gone. She collected her suitcase and took a bus to Colorado Springs, four stops down the line to Santa Fe and spent a night there in a hotel opposite the station.

That evening she called in from a pay phone in the lobby. She let it ring three times, hung up, called again, hung up after the first ring and called once more. She suddenly wanted to hear Romer's voice.

'Transoceanic. How can I help you?' It was Morris Devereux. She checked her disappointment, angry with herself at being disappointed it wasn't Romer.

'You know the party I went to.'

'Yes.'

'There were two uninvited guests.'

'Unusual. Any idea who they were?'

'Local crows, I would say.'

'Even more unusual. Are you sure?'

'I'm sure. I've lost them anyway. Can I speak to the boss?'

'I'm afraid not. The boss has gone home.'

'Home?' This meant England. 'A bit sudden.'

'Yes.'

'I was wondering what I should do.'

'If you're happy, I would proceed as normal.'

'All right. Bye.'

She hung up. It was illogical but for some reason she felt more insecure knowing that Romer had been called away. Proceed as normal as long as you're happy. There was no reason not to, she supposed. Standard operating procedure. She wondered who the two men were – FBI? Romer had said the FBI were growing worried at the size and scale of the British presence. Perhaps this was the first sign of penetration… All the same, she changed trains twice more on the way to Albuquerque, making slow progress.

She sighed and ordered another cocktail from the waitress. A man came up to her and asked if he could join her but he didn't use the passwords, just wanting to pick her up. She said she was on her honeymoon, waiting for her husband and he wandered away looking for more promising material. She finished her drink and went to bed where, try as she might to calm herself, she slept badly.

The next day she wandered around the old town, went into a church on the plaza and took a stroll through Rio Grande Park under the tall Cottonwood trees and looked out at the broad turbid river and the hazy mauve mountains to the west and, as she frequently did, marvelled that she should find herself here, at this stage of her life, in this town, at this time. She lunched at the de Vargas and, as she passed through the lobby afterwards, the desk clerk suggested she might appreciate a tour of the university, telling her that the library was 'magnificent'. She said she'd save it for another day. Instead she took a taxi to her other hotel and lay on her hard bed, reading a novel –
The Hollow Mountain
by Sam M. Goodforth – with dogged concentration throughout the rest of the afternoon.

She was back in a booth in the cocktail lounge at six, enjoying a dry Martini, when a man slipped into the seat opposite.

'Hi, glad to see you looking so well.' He had a plump, pasty face and his tie had grease stains on it. He had a local newspaper in his hand and was wearing a frayed straw trilby that he didn't remove.

'I just had a two-week vacation,' she said.

'Go to the mountains?'

'I prefer the seaside.'

So far so good, she thought. Then said, 'Have you anything for me?'

He pointedly placed the newspaper on the seat beside him. Very BSC, she thought, we love newspaper drops – anyone can carry a newspaper. Keep it simple.

'Go to Las Cruces. A man called Raul will contact you. The Alamogordo Inn.'

'How long am I meant to stay there?'

'Until Raul shows up. Nice talking to you.' He slipped out of the booth and was gone. She reached over and picked up the newspaper. Inside was a brown envelope sealed with sticky tape. She went up to her room and sat and looked at it for ten minutes then she tore it open to find a map of Mexico with the printed title: LUFTVERKEHRSNETZ VON MEXIKO. HAUPTLINEN.

She called Transoceanic.

'Sage, hello.' It was Angus Woolf – she was surprised to hear his voice.

'Hello. Moonlighting?'

'Sort of,' he said. 'How's the party going?'

'Interesting. I've made contact but my gift is particularly intriguing. Inferior material, I would say.'

'I'd better call the manager.'

Devereux came on the line. 'Inferior?'

'Not that you'd spot it immediately but it wouldn't take you long.'

The map looked professional and official and was printed in black and white and two colours, blue and red. Mexico was divided up into four districts – Gau 1, Gau 2, Gau 3 and 4 – and blue lines between red cities indicated air routes; Mexico City to Monterrey and Torreón; Guadalauara to Chihuahua and so on. Most unusual were lines extending beyond Mexico 's boundaries: one south 'für Panama ', and two north 'für San Antonio, Texas ' and another, 'für Miami, Florida '. The implication, Eva thought at once, was too clear – where was the subtlety? But more worrying too were the errors; HAUPTLINEN should have been HAUPTLINIEN, and 'für' in the sense of 'to' was not correct either – it should have been 'nach' – 'nach Miami, Florida '. To her eyes the positive first impression was quickly undermined and subverted by these factors. The spelling mistakes might just be explained by a compositor who didn't speak German (perhaps the map had been printed in Mexico) but the mistakes plus the territorial ambitions enshrined in the air routes seemed too much to her – trying too hard to get the message across.

'Are you sure this is our product?' she asked Devereux.

'Yes, as far as I know.'

'Will you tell the boss what I think and I'll call back later.'

'Are you going to proceed?' he asked.

'With due caution.'

'Where are you going?'

'A place called Las Cruces,' she said instantly, then thinking: why am I being so honest? Too late now.

She hung up, went to the front desk and asked where she could hire a car.