“Oh, he’s fine, too.”
This is said with no feeling.
“Katharine, are you okay?”
“Sure,” she says, lifting herself. “Why?”
“You sound odd. Are you tired?”
“That must be it.”
I should end the conversation here. She knows something, she must do. But is that simply paranoia? How could the Americans have any idea of the truth?
“You should get an early night,” I tell her.
“I have to go out.”
“For dinner?”
With a low hum she confirms this.
“Who with?”
“Just some friends.”
Where is the detail, the shading-in? She is being stubbornly, deliberately obtuse.
“Anyone I know?” I ask.
“No.”
A longer pause now, so much so that I think she may be about to end the conversation. Finally she asks a question.
“So what’ve you been up to these last few days?”
“Not much,” I reply.
Then I recall lying to Saul about Mum before dinner, a conversation that the Americans may have tapped and alerted her to.
“There was one slight scare, but otherwise everything’s been fine.”
“What kind of scare?”
For the first time she sounds interested by something I have said.
“Mum thought she might have a skin cancer, but it turned out to be benign.”
“That’s a relief. And how’s Kate?”
Nothing prepares me for the shock of this, a carefully weighted jab exactly timed for maximum impact.
I manage to say, “What are you talking about?” although my voice cracks like an adolescent on the word talking.
“I asked after Kate.”
They have got to her. Kate has been burned.
“But you know I don’t see her anymore. I haven’t seen her in over two years.”
“That’s not what I heard. Fort says you two still sleep together, for old times’ sake.”
“Why would he have said that?”
“You mentioned it to him one night when the two of you were out drinking. Or don’t you remember?”
That was months ago, a slight lie in a pub just to fill the silence. Instinct tells me to deny all this.
“I don’t remember ever mentioning that to him.”
“Were you bragging, Alec?”
What does she want to hear? I do not know what Kate has told them. Then-a chink of light-it occurs to me that someone from their side simply saw me going into Kate’s house last week. They know no more than that.
“Was it male bravado?” Katharine is asking. “Was that what made you say it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“So you two still hook up from time to time? How come you never said anything to me?”
Her voice becomes significantly warmer with this question, more friendly and engaging. Is it possible that she is simply jealous?
“It was private. Kate wanted me to keep it a secret. She has a boyfriend. I’m sorry I told Fort and not you.”
“That’s okay,” she says calmly.
“You can understand why I didn’t say anything. Not even Saul knows that I still see her.”
“Of course,” she says, creating a brief lapse in which an instinct to get away from any talk of Kate fatally overrides my common sense. I ask, “How come Fortner is in the States?”
And there is silence. And nothing I can do to retract the question.
“Why do you ask that, Alec?”
I can say only, “What?”
“Why would you think Fortner is in the States?”
“Isn’t he? I just assumed he wasn’t home.”
“Why didn’t you ask if he was here?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”
“It’s very simple, Alec. How did you know my husband had gone to America?”
I am trapped now, with no way out of this but ineffectual bluffs.
“I just assumed. It sounded like he wasn’t around. Usually I would have talked to him by now.”
She’ll never buy that.
“You just assumed.”
I go on the offensive. It may be the only way to distract her.
“Kathy, what are you getting at? You’re being really odd tonight.”
Then it is as if every sound around me has suddenly ended, a tunnel of silence into which Katharine whispers, “My God, it is true. I could not believe it until I heard it from you directly. I would not believe them.”
“Believe who?”
Very slowly, she says, “You’re so dumb, Alec. How did you know Fortner was in the States? Isn’t that revealing a little too much of what you know?”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“You want me to tell you why he’s there?”
“Maybe we should talk another time, Kathy. I don’t know what’s got into you, but…”
“He’s there because of your fucking girlfriend.”
I have a sensation now of cold fear, like falling through space in a dream and the black ground rushing up to meet me.
“Kate’s apartment is bugged. It has been ever since you told Fortner you were still seeing her. Just like your home is bugged, your car, your telephones, Saul, your mother’s place. Everyone is being listened to.”
My body goes stiff with panic. It was nobody’s fault but my own. They heard everything I said to Kate.
“And you know what the irony is. We almost shut it down. You never visited Kate, and we figured you weren’t about to in the future. It was a sleeper, but Fort insisted we keep it on. He had some hunch you might go there someday, said he knew how you felt about her. I gotta hand it to your people: 5F371 was a smart plan. You guys worked us over. Nice little Alec hands over 3-D seismic imaging showing the strong possibility of oil in a field where none exists. Caccia has known all along that the crude was beaten out of it by the Soviets in the sixties and seventies, but Andromeda buys out Abnex’s validity of rights, drills an exploration well, spends-what?-about three hundred million dollars, and find nothing when we get there. Meantime, the Azerbaijani government loses confidence in Andromeda and, next time around, is more open to the idea of joint ventures with Abnex. Only you messed up, Alec. You couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut. You went soft on them.”
To hear her anger spat back, the triumph of it, sickens me almost to the point of retaliation.
“You gonna say something, Alec? You got anything you want to say to me?”
Only Hawkes’s voice in my head, like an invocation, prevents me from tripping into confession. When caught, he said, deny everything, if only for the sake of legal process. Never admit charges, never verify their accusations, however much information they may appear to have against you. The other side will always know less than you think they do. Resort to lies.
“I have nothing to say to you, Kathy. And frankly I’m disgusted that you think this about me.”
“Oh, get off it, Alec.” She is shouting now, making no attempt to control the flow of her rage. “Have you no self-respect? Is your vanity so great that you crave this kind of recognition, from men like David Caccia, from men
