say it aloud; the idea of her father as a spy was just too absurd. “Why would he work for the United States rather than the English?”
“Like many British nationals living abroad, your father admired everything about his fellow tribesmen save their country itself. As proof,” he said in a slightly louder voice, “I offer the simple fact that he sent you here when the fighting broke out, when it would have been just as easy to send you to England.”
Naz was silent a moment. Then, almost against her will: “Have you … do you know what happened to him? Or to my …” Her voice broke off.
She felt a wave of compassion from the boy, but it was detached, almost intellectual: he kept his hands in his pockets rather than putting one on her shoulder.
“I was still in prep school when the counterrevolution occurred.”
“So was I.”
The boy winced. “I know that your time in this country hasn’t been easy, Miss Haverman. Your adolescence was plagued by emotional problems. Depression, anger, and, ah, sexual precocity.”
A fresh wave of emotions washed over Naz, but they were all her own. Sadness, self-loathing, utter horror, not just at what she had done, but that it was known by others. By this boy, and his intrusive employer, which was famous for rooting out the shameful secrets in people’s lives and holding them over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Which beggared the question: what did he want with her?
When she could speak again, she said, “It’s a little rich having my adolescence referred to by someone who looks like he only started shaving a few years ago. Okay, then. You’ve established your bona fides. Isn’t that how they put it? So tell me, Agent …”
The boy had to reach for a last name just as she had in the bar.
“Morganthau.”
“Tell me, Agent
The boy paused a moment, jaws slightly parted, eyes wide. Naz was reminded of a phrase her father had often used, always citing Henry James when he did so: hang fire. Technically speaking, it meant simply a pause, but it had originated as a munitions term, referred specifically to a delay between the moment you pulled the trigger and the time it took the powder to spark the bullet and propel it from the barrel. Whenever her father said someone hung fire, Naz always had an image of that person holding a gun to her father’s head. But now it was pressed against hers. The trigger had been pulled; she was merely waiting for the bullet to strike home.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said finally. “Have you ever heard of LSD?”
He took her to a small restaurant just off Newbury Street. Roses in the wallpaper, crisp white tablecloths free of stains or cigarette holes, golden sconces with beveled glass refracting soft light over the patrons. A far cry from the Firelight, to say the least—although the pairings were still the same, Naz noted. Older men, younger women, the latter leaning slightly forward to show off their cleavage. Services paid for in kind, of course: jewelry, furs, second homes in Newport or Miami. Give her the cleanness of cash any day.
Morganthau held out her chair for her, then sat down opposite, his frat-boy grin bookended by a pair of impishly proud dimples.
“Well, this is a little nicer than that other place, isn’t it?”
Naz stared at him flatly. “This isn’t a date, Agent Morganthau. Settle down.”
A waiter set menus in front of them. “A cocktail before dinner, perhaps?”
“I think we’re fi- …”
“Hendrick’s and tonic,” Naz said over Morganthau. “Make it a double. And bring me an ashtray, please.”
“I wasn’t aware you smoked,” Morganthau said after the waiter had left the table.
“Well, that’s one thing you don’t know about me.”
Morganthau blushed. “Yes, well. I
“Didn’t you read it all in Dr. Calloway’s files? God knows I told him enough times. I ‘overempathize.’ I’m ‘unable to mediate’ my or others’ feelings. As a consequence, I form undue attachments or aversions as soon as I meet someone. Humiliating crushes or inexplicable disgust, both of which have the effect of leaving me isolated in a fantasy world where—how did Calloway like to put it? Oh yes: ‘where fact is washed away in a tidal wave of feeling.’ He thinks it’s because I lost both my parents and my country when I was so young. Everyone I encounter is a potential savior or murderer.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m going to kill you.”
“Well, I certainly don’t think you’re going to save me. So,” Naz spoke over his protest, “to flesh out your skeletal tale of my life: my first suicide attempt came at ten. Pills; something Mrs. Cox, my guardian’s wife, took to get her through the long days when he was at work. I lost my virginity at eleven. Mr. Cox; something he did to get through the long nights when Mrs. Cox was too numb from pills to notice him. I also seduced two of my teachers when I was twelve—one of whom was female, I might add—and I tried to kill myself for the second time the same year when we were caught by the school secretary. Running car this time, closed garage door; alas, the gardener needed a pair of pruning shears for Mrs. Cox’s damask roses. I changed schools six times over the course of the next three years, had sexual relations with nine different partners ranging in age from twelve to forty-seven, and sliced my wrists with Mr. Cox’s razor when I was sixteen. The following fifteen months on Thorazine were by far the most peaceful of my life. Alas, I turned eighteen, and Mrs. Cox, seeing her husband’s legal obligation discharged and unwilling to spend $25,000 a year to maintain the daughter of a long-dead ‘business acquaintance’—apparently she was as blind to her family’s relationship to the CIA as I was—I was summarily discharged. I was given an allowance of $5,000 a year, the proceeds of a small trust my father had set up for me before he … before he …”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She had never said it, but now Morganthau said it for her.
“He died.”
Naz was silent a moment. She reached for the fizzy highball the waiter had just set in front of her. “Yes. Well. My preferred medication is rather more expensive than that, so I supplement my income with the generosity of men
