Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow, and Farewell (13 page)

'How much is the debt exactly?'

She lit the cigarette and I thought I saw her blush for a moment, or perhaps it was just the glow from the match, or a lurking embarrassment, as when in the office with no name, I would sense in her a brief gathering of energy before she came over to talk to me, that is, beyond greeting me or asking me some isolated question, as if she had to gather momentum or take a run-up, and that was what gave me the idea that she didn't rule me out, although probably without knowing that she didn't, nor having even considered the possibility. I thought: 'She's embarrassed to tell me how much. Either because it's so low, and then I'll know that she can't afford to pay even that, or because it's so high, and then I'll find out what an enormous sum it is, or how crazy her father is, and perhaps how crazy she is as well.'

'Nearly two hundred thousand pounds,' she said after a few seconds, and she raised her eyebrows in a gesture that was not, of course, English, as if she were adding: 'You see the fix I'm in.' Though what she did, in fact, say was not so very different. 'What do you think?'

I made a rapid calculation. It was nearly three hundred thousand euros or fifty million pesetas, I had still not quite reaccustomed myself to the pound and will perhaps never get used to the euro when it comes to the kind of large quantities one does not deal with every day.

'I think that, considering his defects, Incompara is very generous,' I replied. 'Or else that report is worth an awful lot to him.' And then I asked another question, perhaps the one I least expected to ask, although I don't know if she was quite as surprised as I was, that depended on how well she knew me, on how much more she knew of me than I did of myself, on how much and in what depth she had translated or interpreted me—to employ the terminology we sometimes used to describe our indefinable work—during those months of working together. It occurred to me as a joke really and I saw no reason to resist. Besides, it would force her to put something on the table, to put a value on my participation, to consider me and the risk I was taking, to consider the possible damage to me and the unlikely benefits. Asking a favor is easy, even comfortable, the difficult, disquieting thing is hearing the request and then having to decide whether to grant or deny it. A transaction involves more work and more care and calculation for both parties. With a favor, only one of the parties has to decide and calculate, the one who is or isn't going to agree to it, because no one is obliged to return a favor or even be grateful. You ask, wait and receive a 'Yes' or a 'No'; then, in either case, you can calmly leave, having offloaded a problem or created a conflict. No, favors granted are not binding, they carry with them no contract, no debt, or only moral ones, and that's nothing, mere air, nothing practical. So, to my surprise, what I said was: And what's in it for me?'

Pérez Nuix, however, had not fallen into my trap, into my improvised and semi-unintentional trap. She didn't immediately go on to offer me something, a reward, a sum of money, a percentage, a gift, not even the promise of her eternal gratitude. She doubtless knew that the latter has no tangible or even symbolic meaning. People say it far too much, 'I'll be eternally grateful' is one of the most vacuous statements ever uttered and yet one hears it often, always with that unvarying epithet, always that same irresponsible 'eternally,' another clue to its absolute lack of reality, or truth or meaning, and sometimes the person saying it will add: 'If there's ever anything I can do for you, now or later on, you only have to ask,' when the fact is that almost no one immediately asks a favor in return, that would seem exploitative—a case of
do ut des
—and if, in the future, one does ask for something, the empty words will have been long forgotten and, besides, no one resorts to that, rarely does anyone remind the other person: 'Some time ago, you said . . .'; and if they do, they're likely to meet with this response: 'Did I say that? How very odd. Did I really? I don't remember that,' or else 'No, ask anything but that, that's the one thing I can't grant you, the very worst thing, please, don't ask me' or else 'I'm so sorry, I'd love to help, but it's simply not in my power, if only you'd come to me a few years ago, but things have changed.' And so the person who was only seeking the return of an old favor ends up asking a new favor, as if nothing had happened before, and is reduced almost to begging ('Please, please, please'). She was intelligent enough not to promise me chimeras or outlandish rewards in kind, nothing graspable or ungraspable, present or future.

'Nothing,' she said. 'For the moment, nothing, Jaime. It's simply a favor I'm asking and you can say "No" if you want to, you're not going to get anything out of it, you'll get nothing in return, although I really don't think it will be all that hard for you or that you'll be running any risk. If things don't work out, if he doesn't take the bait, you can always tell Bertie you made a mistake, it happens to us all, even to him, he knows perfectly well that no one's infallible. His hero Rylands wasn't, nor was Wheeler, something Wheeler, later on, had great cause to regret, apparently. Vivian wasn't either, nor were Cowgill, Sinclair or Menzies, people from another age, some of the best and most renowned, both in our field and beyond.' She knew how to pronounce that last name like a good Englishwoman or like a good spy, she too said 'Mingiss.' 'Nor were the big names of more recent times, Dearlove, Scarlett, Manningham-Buller and Remington, they all blundered at some point, in some way. Even Montagu wasn't infallible, nor were Duff Cooper or Churchill. That's why I said earlier that while this was a big favor for me, it wasn't such a big deal for you. That bothered you at the time, but it's true nonetheless. No, I don't think you'll get anything in return or profit in any way. But you won't suffer any misfortunes or any losses either. Anyway, Jaime, it's entirely up to you whether you say "Yes" or "No." You're under no obligation. And I can't think of any way I could tempt you.'

'"Dearlove" did you say? Who? Richard Dearlove?' I recalled that this was one of the unlikely and to me unfamiliar names I'd stumbled across while rifling through some old restricted files one day at the office. It had struck me as a name more suited to some idol of the masses than to a high-ranking official or civil servant, which is why I used it for the singer-celebrity whom here I call Dick Dearlove to protect his real identity, a vain endeavor. My immediate curiosity proved too much for me and so I put off giving my answer a little longer. And there was something else I was curious about, a curiosity that demanded satisfaction, less immediately perhaps but more insistently.

'Yes,' she said. 'Sir Richard Dearlove. For several years, until not long ago in fact, he was our invisible leader, didn't you know? The head of MI6,"C" or "Mr. C" She pronounced this initial English-fashion, 'Mr. Si,' we Spaniards would say. 'No one has published a recent photograph of him, it's forbidden, no one has seen him or knows what he looks like; not even now, when he's no longer in that post. And so none of us could identify him; no one would recognize him if he walked by in the street. That's a great advantage, don't you think? I wish I had the same advantage.'

'And have we never done a report on him? I mean a video interview, although I can't imagine he would have been taken up to Tupra's office so that we could spy on him from our hiding-place in the train carriage, from our cabin.' I realized at once that I had said 'we' and 'our' as if I already considered myself part of the group and had since even before my arrival. I was developing a strange and entirely involuntary sense of belonging. But I preferred not to think about that just then.

'I don't know,' she said half-heartedly. 'Ask Bertie. As I said, he has videos of everyone.' I had the feeling she was growing impatient with my delay, or with my waffling around, I still hadn't heard that order, or was it a kind of motto, 'Don't linger or delay' not that I've ever taken any notice of it, either before or since. She must simply have wanted to know where she stood and then she could leave. Certainly if my final answer was 'No,' she would leave there and then and not waste any more of the night on me, but set off with her gentle dog, doubtless feeling rather ridiculous and perhaps filled as well with a sense of instant rancor or even lasting grievance. If the answer was 'Yes,' on the other hand, perhaps she would stay longer, to celebrate her relief or to issue new instructions, now that what she had come for was in the bag. She must have found it irritating that I should bother her now with questions about Sir Richard Dearlove, the real Dearlove this time, or about any other person or subject. That I should, at this point, open a parenthesis or invent tangents. She would just have to put up with it, I was still the one guiding the conversation and determining its course, and she could not afford to upset me—yet. That, when you think about it, is the only calculation anyone asking a favor must make really, once they've taken the first step and made their request (before that, it's different, they have to be more cautious, estimating whether it's worthwhile or even advisable for them to reveal their deficiencies and inabilities): they have to be pleasant and patient and even unctuous, to keep to the tempo being set for them, to consider their steps and their words and the degree to which they can insist, until they get what they've asked for. Unless, that is, they're someone so important that doing them a favor is in itself an honor for the person granting it, a privilege. This was not the case here, and so she added in another tone of voice: 'No, I don't think so, but anything's possible. I suppose photos of him must exist, nowadays you can track down pictures of anyone; and if only very few have access to his photos, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Bertie was one of them.'

'Why did you say that Wheeler regretted not being infallible? What happened? What happened to him? What did you mean?' That was the deeper, more insistent curiosity demanding satisfaction.

Again I noticed her annoyance, her frayed nerves, her mutable state of exhaustion, which came and went. I was probably annoying her or driving her mad. But she once more suppressed her feelings or pulled herself together, she had still not lost heart.

'I don't know what happened to him, Jaime, it was a long time ago, during or after World War II, and I don't know him personally. People say that he made an interpretative error that cost him dearly. He failed to foresee something and that left him feeling dreadfully guilty, useless, destroyed, I don't know exactly. I've heard it mentioned in passing as an example of great misfortune, but I've never asked or no one's ever given me an answer, most of our work is still secret even after sixty or more years, it may remain so forever, at least officially Any leaks usually come from outside and are often pure speculation, not to be trusted. Or they come from people with an axe to grind, who either resigned or were sacked, and who distort the facts. It's difficult to know anything very precise about our past, especially about us insiders, who tend to be the most discreet and the least curious, it's as if we had no history. We're the most keenly aware of what should not be told, because we live with that all the time. So, I'm sorry, but I can't help. You'll have to ask Wheeler himself. You know him well, he was your champion, your sponsor, the one who introduced you to the group.'

She, I noticed, used 'we' and 'our' without even thinking, naturally and frequently—she had been part of the group for much longer than me and felt herself to be an heir to the original group, the one that had been created by Menzies or Ve-Ve Vivian or Cowgill or Hollis or even Philby or Churchill himself to fight the Nazis, Wheeler thought Churchill had been the one who sparked the idea, being the brightest and boldest of the lot, and the least afraid of ridicule.

'Who have you heard mention it? Tupra? Can you remember if what happened involved Wheeler's wife? Her name was Valerie. Does that ring any bells?'

'I don't know who I heard it from, Jaime. It could have been Bertie, it probably was, or Rendel, or Mulryan, or perhaps some other person in some other place, I don't recall now. But that's all I know, nothing more—that something bad happened, that he failed in some way, or at least he thought so, and I believe he came close to withdrawing from the group altogether, to giving it up. It was all a very long time ago.'

I didn't know if she was telling me the truth or if she didn't feel authorized to tell me the story or if she simply wanted to get away from my endless questions and not—at this late hour of the night—get into some obscure, possibly long tale about someone else, which she would, at best, know only at second hand and which bore no relation to her current problems, the problems that had brought her to my house after much thought and much trudging through the rain: her father and that man Vanni Incompara and the banker Vickers and that leap-frogging debt of two hundred thousand pounds, I'm amazed at some people's ability to accumulate sums of money they don't have, and in a way I envy them—it's quite a talent, if not a gift; it requires a cheerful mindset—although any envy I might feel is purely theoretical or fictional, literary and cinematographic, Pérez Nuix's vicarious position at that point was not in the least enviable. For the first time, I felt sorry for her (pity always intervenes), perhaps because tiredness made her seem more childlike, or perhaps it was the suppressed anxiety that surfaced now and then in her bright darting eyes and at the corners of her mouth, which kept trying to form brief, fearful smiles, to please me. I decided that it was time to put her out of her misery: she had expended a lot of effort, she had followed me for a long time through that half-deserted city, getting drenched in the process, she had pondered what to do, she had put her case and she had expended on me, first, her indecision and her time and then her resolve and still more time.

'All right, Patricia,' I said, bringing to an end my session of interrogations and postponements. 'I'll try, although I still think Tupra will see whatever there is to see, and more than me. But I'll do what I can, I'll try my best.'