Flashback

TWENTY-THREE

“How did you find me?” I asked.

It was too cold to stay on deck, and our presence seemed to be making the Spanish captain nervous, so we’d climbed down into the hold with the rest of the passengers. The cramped space reeked, of seawater and sweat born of fear, but it was warm and dry. A small propane lamp hung in one corner, shining on the tired faces of our shipmates.

“I figured you’d be trying to get out of the country, so I did some asking around. The Café Becerra was my second stop. Believe it or not, there aren’t too many European women looking for illegal rides across the strait. I hadn’t counted on you being alone, though.”

I swallowed hard, thinking of Helen.

“Who was she?” Brian asked.

“NSA,” I said, lowering my voice. We were the only ones speaking, and even at a whisper we seemed profanely loud.

“What happened?”

“Werner’s men,” I told him.

“She’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get a chance to look at the pen drive?”

I nodded. “Whoever hired you lied to you, Brian. It’s not what you think.”

I told him everything, about Helen, the old videotape, the warehouse in Peshawar, and the empty crates. I told him about the woman, my mother, and the photograph in Werner’s office, about the five missing years and why I’d come back, why I thought Pat had helped me at the Casbah, how I was taking the pen drive to Paris.

“Do you know who he is?” I asked when I had finished. “Whoever it is you’re working for?”

Brian shook his head.

“There must be someone who contacts you,” I insisted.

“Everything is arranged on-line,” he said. “There’s a chat room I go to. The times are agreed on in advance.”

“How do they pay you?”

“I’ve got an account, through a bank in Geneva; the money goes there.”

“When are you supposed to make your next contact?”

“Last night,” Brian said. “They’ll know by now something’s gone wrong.”

I wrapped my arms around my damp shins and set my head on my knees.

“Eve?” Brian asked.

“Yes.”

“You said Helen thought there was a leak in the agency, someone passing information.”

I nodded. “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, “but if I had to guess, I’d say this was more than one person.”

“How many?”

Brian shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s money here.” He hesitated a moment, letting his words gather weight. “Lots of it.”

The little boat took a wave across the port side and pitched uncomfortably. A collective shudder ran through the hold; then the craft found its equilibrium once more, bobbing upright like a cork.

I was suddenly exhausted, too tired to reason through the implications of what Brian had just said. “Helen’s contact in Paris,” I told him. “He’ll know what to do.”

Brian leaned back against the hold and closed his eyes. “I hope so,” he said.

Once, on a cold spring morning, I happened upon a freshly hatched swarm of baby spiders in the back of the abbey’s henhouse. At first all I could see was a single dark stain and the ruptured puff of white gauze at its core. When I looked closer, each tiny creature resolved itself, legs scrambling purposefully across the rough wood boards, black arachnid body glistening in the coop’s filtered light.

I stood there for some time, shivering in my thin sweater, and watched the swarm disintegrate, till each hatchling was gone and only the wispy shell of their abandoned home remained. Their disappearance seemed the greatest of miracles to me, the purpose with which they entered the world, their determination toward some unknown point. What a boon, I’d thought, watching the last body scuttle through a crack in the wall. What a thing to know, without thinking, the direction of your life.

When our boat weighed anchor off the wind-scarred Spanish coast and my fellow passengers leaped into the surf, I was immediately reminded of that spring morning in the henhouse. It was early, the dark sky broken only by a bloody smear of daylight on the eastern horizon. Brian and I stood together on the deck and watched the men start across the black gulf between us and the shore.

It was hard to imagine toward what they were headed, bad jobs and poor pay, a season of lettuce picking in southern France, a roach-infested apartment, a bed shared with two other men, each missing his wife. And yet each of these possibilities offered something better than what they had left behind.

“Let’s go,” Brian said, as the last of the men slipped into the water.

He put his hand on my arm, and I nodded, raising the leather bag above my head. Brian did the same with the pack he carried. We’d both taken our boots off and hung them over our shoulders.

The water was frigid, the bottom rockier than I’d imagined, and I had to struggle to keep my balance. It wasn’t far to the shore, twenty meters at most. Already some of our shipmates had reached land and were scrambling across the beach, disappearing into the dark scrub and up the rocky bluffs on the other side of the sand.

“You okay?” Brian asked, looking over at me.

“Fine.” I shivered, my chest half-submerged.

“Don’t think about the cold,” he said. “You’re almost there.”

I nodded and closed my eyes briefly, my bare toes fumbling blindly ahead. But in truth I wasn’t thinking about the cold. For the first time that I could remember, I was thinking about my past, about my mother, her face in the darkness above my bed at night, her pale, aqueous body suspended in the blue of an ocean, her arms and legs treading water. I was thinking about Paris as well, about the distance between us and the tearoom near St.-Julien-le-Pauvre, about what we would find when we got there. For the first time that I could remember, my own purpose seemed certain as the day to come.

When we finally staggered up onto the beach, Brian set his pack down and pulled what looked like a cell phone from the front pocket.

“GPS,” he explained. He hit a button, and the small screen phosphoresced. “The captain said there’d be a village not far from here, but I want to make sure.”

The last of the men from the boat crossed the sand in front of us and disappeared, fading into the darkness and scrub as if he had never existed. I brushed the sand from my feet and started to put on my boots.

“It looks like about five kilometers to Bolonia,” he said. “We can get a room and get cleaned up.”

I nodded, clamping my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.

We climbed the bluff, then bushwacked for a kilometer or so. When we finally emerged onto the washed-out dirt road Brian’s GPS map had promised, dawn was spreading upward fast, a stain of cool blue, seeping into the dark sky like bright ink into water. By the time we’d crested the last hill and started down into Bolonia, wan daylight illuminated the tiny village, revealing a cluster of whitewashed houses huddled around an alabaster beach. Beyond the town sat the wind-worn remnants of an ancient Roman seaport, crumbling columns and stone archways stark against the blue bay.

The little beach town was mostly closed for the winter, the first two hotels we came across shuttered against December’s punishing wind. Finally, a bleary-eyed old man in slippers and a bathrobe opened the door to us at the Hostel Bellavista, his eyes narrowing as he surveyed our damp clothes, dirty faces, and scant luggage. It took a wad of euros, and Brian’s confident Spanish, to salve his suspicions. Just two crazy Americans, Brian had said, laughing, shaking the man’s hand, pulling bills from his pack. And two rooms, please, you know how the ladies can be. The man had glanced over at me, smiling at Brian as if to say, yes, I know. Then he tucked the money into the pocket of his bathrobe and led us upstairs.

My room was drafty, the radiator cold to the touch, but the shower was mercifully hot. I stripped myself of my clammy clothes and stood under the steaming water for a good half an hour, letting the feeling come back into my feet. I had just gotten out of the shower and climbed into bed when there was a tentative knock at the door.

“Eve?” It was Brian. “You up?” he whispered.

Swinging my feet to the floor, I wrapped the bedcover around myself and padded across the room.

“I hope you weren’t asleep,” he said apologetically when I’d opened the door. He glanced down at the bedcover, and I thought I detected a hint of color rising to his cheeks.

“No,” I told him. “Not yet.”

“Sorry,” he offered sheepishly, nodding to indicate the breakfast tray he held in his hands. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Starving,” I conceded, surveying the food. The tray held a plate of chocolate-dipped churros, two large pieces of bread with butter and marmalade, several slices of ham, and a pot of coffee and two cups.

“How did you manage that?” I asked, stepping aside to let him into the room.

He set the tray on the bedside table. “Our host can be quite accommodating when provided with enough incentive.” He smiled, producing a stack of folded clothes he’d tucked under his right arm. “His daughter’s. I don’t know how well they’ll fit, but they’re clean and dry.”

“You don’t like this look?” I asked, pulling the bedcover tight around me.

“Cute, but I’m not sure it’s practical.”

“Thank you,” I said. I took the clothes and set them aside.

Brian smiled. “Do you mind if I take a look at what’s on that pen drive? Just to see if I recognize anyone. I’ve got my laptop.”

“Sure,” I told him, starting for my bag.

Brian went out into the hall, and I heard the door to his room open, then close. He reappeared with his laptop.

I handed him the pen drive and sat down on the bed. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not watch it again.”

“Of course,” Brian said, moving to the far side of the room.

I drank my coffee and ate while Brian watched the video in silence. When he was finished, he closed the laptop and came over and poured himself a cup of coffee.

“Anyone look familiar?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry.” He flexed his hands awkwardly at his sides and rocked almost imperceptibly on the balls of his feet, as if waiting for something, as if trying to decide how to navigate some great impediment between us.

“At the Continental,” he said, then hesitated. “You know I couldn’t have… I didn’t know.”

“You knew what you wanted to know,” I told him.

He turned away slightly, as if from a blow.

I shook my head, regretting what I’d said. He was here now, and that was all that should have mattered. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I told him. “I know you wouldn’t have hurt me.” But the truth was that neither of us knew.

I lifted my hand to his and pulled him toward me, letting the bedcover slip away. I felt almost giddy, drunk on exhaustion, and I didn’t want to think about the Continental.

Brian got down on his knees and rested his head against my bare stomach. He’d showered, too, and his hair was still wet, cool and damp on my skin.

“It’s okay,” I said again.

I lifted his face to mine and bent down and kissed him. No, I thought, we would never know. He might have killed me that night in Tangier, but for now I would choose to believe otherwise.

Moving carefully, I eased my hand under his sweater and lifted it over his head. His skin was hot, like a fire kindled from within. Outside, the wind kicked up, needling the windowpanes with fine sand, singing through the cracks in the old stone building. Brian put his hand on the side of my breast, and I shivered. Yes, I told myself, for now I would choose to believe him.