at her, and she saw in his eyes that despite his formal stilted speech he truly meant it. What a reserved self- possessed little old man he is, she thought. What terrible events and nightmares have made him like this?
'I have never played soccer,' Isabella told him. 'Will you teach me?' 'You're a girl.' Nicholas looked doubtful.
'Still, I'd like to try.' 'All right.' He stood up with the ball under one arm. 'But you'll have to take your shoes off.' Within minutes all the child's reserves evaporated. He shrieked with excitement as he dribbled and darted after the ball. He was nimble as a field-mouse, and Isabella raced after him, laughing with him, obeying his instructions and allowing him to score five goals between the legs of the bench.
When at last they both collapsed on the lawn, Nicholas informed her between gasps: 'You are quite good - for a girl., They changed into swimming- costumes, and Nicholas gave her an exhibition of his prowess. First he swam a length dogpaddle, and her praises were so fulsome that he declared: 'I can do a width underwater. Watch me.' He almost made it across, and surfaced just short of the bar, blowing and huffing and red-faced.
Sitting waist-deep on the shallow-end steps, Isabella felt a moment of physical revulsion as she remembered the last time she had seen her son immersed, but she managed to smile and sound enthusiastic.
'Oh, well done, Nicholas.' He came to her, still puffing for breath, and without warning climbed into her lap.
'You are pretty,' he said. 'I like you.' Carefully, as though he might shatter like a precious crystal, she wrapped her arms around him and held him. Through the cool water his body was warm and slippery and she could feel her heart twist and tear within her.
'Nicholas,' she mumbled. 'Oh, my baby. How I love you. How I miss you.' The afternoon passed like a flash of sheet-lightning in a summer sky and then Adra came to fetch him. 'It is time for Nicholas's dinner. Do you wish to eat with him, sefiorita?' They ate alfresco, at a table that Adra set for them in the courtyard. They shared a baked besugo, a sea-bream from the Atlantic, and salads. There was a glass of fresh orange juice for Nicholas and a sherry for her. Isabella shredded the flesh of the brearn to remove any bones, but Nicholas fed himself As Nicholas was finishing his ice-cream, Isabella's vision began to swim.
She heard a rushing in her ears and Nicholas's face seemed to expand and blur.
Adra caught her before she slipped from the chair, and Ramsey stepped into the courtyard from the doorway behind her. The two KGB women followed him.
'You have been a good boy, Nicholas,' Ramsey said. 'Now, go off to bed with Adra.' 'What is wrong with the nice lady?' 'There is nothing wrong,' Ramsey told him. 'She is just very sleepy. You are sleepy, too, Nicholas.'
'Yes, Padre.' At the suggestion he yawned and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his fists. Adra led him away, and Ramsey nodded at the waiting women.
'Take her to the room.' While they lifted Isabella out of the chair, Ramsey picked up the empty sherry-glass from the dinner-table and wiped out the last traces of the drug with his handkerchief.
Isabella woke in a strange bedroom. She felt rested and at peace. The early sun streamed in through the slats of the shuttered window. She blinked drowsily and pulled the single sheet up around her naked shoulders. She wondered without any real urgency where she was, but her memory was fuzzy.
She was suddenly aware that she was totally nude under the sheet. She lifted her head. Her clothing was neatly folded on the chair beside the open bathroom door. Her suitcase was on the luggage-rack.
Then out of the comer of her eye she caught a movement and she stiffened and came fully awake. There was a man in the bedroom with her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he signalled her urgently to silence.
'Ram-' she started to say his name, but with two rapid paces he reached the bedside and laid his open hand on her Ups to keep her from speaking.
She stared at him, stunned and completely bemused. Ramsey! joy rose in her like a spring tide.
He left her and crossed quickly to the nearest wall of the bedroom. On it hung a dark oil painting in the style of Goya. Ramsey swivelled the painting to one side to reveal a hidden microphone the size of a silver dollar attached to the wall.
Once again, he made a gesture to silence her and came back. He lifted the shade off the lamp on the bedside table, and showed her the second microphone taped to the stand below the bulb.
Then he leant so close to her that his warm breath fanned her cheek.
'Come.' He touched her bare shoulder through the sheet. It had been so long that despite her happiness she felt strange and shy in his presence.
'I will explain - come.' His eyes were so full of pain and suffering that she felt her joy waver.
He took her hand that held the sheet to her chin and drew her, suddenly unresisting, from the bed. Still holding her hand, he led her, stark naked, to the bathroom. She was unaware of her nudity, and she staggered a little from the after-effects of the drug.
In the bathroom Ramsey flushed the toilet, opened the taps in the handbasin and in the bath, and switched on the shower in the glass-walled cabinet.
Then he came back to her. She drew away from him, afraid to touch him. Her naked back was pressed to the cold tiles.
'What is happening to us? Are you one of them, Ramsey? I am so confused.
Please tell me what is happening.' His marvelous features contorted with agony. 'I am like you. I have to co-operate, for Nicky's sake. I can't explain now - forces greater than we are. We have been caught up, all three of us. Oh, my darling, how I have wanted to hold you and explain it all to you, but I have so little time.' 'Ramsey, tell me you still love me,'she whispered timidly.
'Yes, my darling. More than I ever did. I know what hell you must have lived through. I have shared it with you, every moment of it. I know what you must have thought of me. One day you will understand that everything I have done has been for Nicky and for you.' She wanted to believe him, desperately, wildly she wanted it to be true.
'Soon,'he whispered, taking her face between his cupped hands. 'Soon we'll be together, just the three of us - you and Nicky and me. You must trust me.' 'Ramsey!' It came out as a choking sob, and she wound both arms around his neck and clung to him with all her strength. Against all reason or logic she believed him completely.
'We have only a few minutes together. We dare not risk more. It is so dangerous. You can never know what terrible danger Nicky is in.' 'And you also,' her voice quavered.
'My life does not matter. It's Nicky.
'Both of you,' she denied it. 'You are both so precious.' 'Promise me that you will do nothing to harm Nicky.' He kissed her mouth.
'Please do whatever they say. It will not be for much longer. I will get us free of this thing, if you will help me. But you must trust me.' 'Oh, my love. Oh, my darling. I knew deep down. I knew there must be a reason. Of course, I trust you, my heart.' 'Be strong for all of us.' 'I swear it to you,' she nodded violently, her face smeared with tears. 'Oh God, how I love you. I have suppressed it so long.' 'I know, my darling. I know.' -'Please, please, make love to me, Ramsey. I've been without you for so long. I have been withering away. Make love to me before you have to go.' He took her quickly, and yet it crashed over her like the winds of a hurricane and left her shattered.
When he was gone, breaking away with a last long lingering kiss, her legs could no longer support her. She sank slowly down the tiled wall, and sat on the floor with her legs sprawled jointlessly under her. The taps roared and billows of steam filled the room. She didn't understand it ill. She didn't have to and she didn't care any more. All that mattered was Nicky and Ramsey.
'Oh, thank God,' she whispered. 'It wasn't true. None of the horrors was true. Ramsey loves me still. We will be all right, the three of us. We'll come through this together. Somehow. Sometime.' She dragged herself to her feet. 'Now I must pull myself together. They mustn't suspect. She staggered to the shower.
She was still in bra and panties when, without a knock, the door opened and the large heavy-featured woman who had escorted her from the airport and had conducted that dreadful body-search entered the room. She looked at Isabella's body in a way that made Isabella's flesh crawl and she stepped hurriedly into the skirt of her grey suit.
'What do you want?' 'You leave in twenty minutes to airport.' 'Where is Nicky? Where is my son?' 'Child has gone.' 'I want to see him, please.' 'Is not possible. Child has gone.' Isabella felt the ebullient mood of hope, which her brief interlude with Ramsey had raised, begin to evaporate.
The nightmare begins again, she thought, and tried to steel herself against the creeping sense of despair.
must trust Ramsey. I must be strong.' The woman sat beside Isabella in the back seat of the Cortina on the drive back to the airport. It was a hot morning, and the car was not air-conditioned. The woman's body odour was rank as a man's. Isabella felt she was going to be ill, and she opened the side-window and let the wind blow in her face.
The driver of the Cortina stopped outside the international departures terminal and, while he went to unlock the boot and lift out Isabella's suitcase, the woman spoke for the first time since leaving the hacienda.
'Is for you,' she
