Harry. Even before that we knew things were going to be different after the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union disintegrated. The cold war was over. We knew we were living through the end of an era. Harry said the FIS was being forced to… you say, downsize. Even though we had been redirected”-she shrugged-“we saw how easily we could be thrown away when we were no longer useful in a certain way.
“Harry… well, all of us… the three of us made certain plans to, uh, ‘improve’ our retirement situation. It was late in the day for me,” she continued. “I was approaching middle age, had no money to speak of and no pension waiting for me. No husband and no prospects of getting one-that’s too high a price to pay for security. I decided to look after myself.”
Howard’s expression changed slightly, taking on the impassive rigidity one often saw in people who suddenly realized they were about to hear news that they expected would shock them. They reflexively prepared themselves with a kind of facial fortification.
“We developed a strategy to get away with some money, a scheme. It went on for exactly six months, until Harry closed it down nearly six months before he retired.”
Howard’s face fell. “Jesus… Christ… Wolf Schrade?”
She nodded. “Of course, everyone scattered after that. We never saw each other again. None of us.”
Howard had forgotten to smoke his cigarette. It smoldered between his fingers.
“But Claude and I decided we wanted to stay in touch with each other. We agreed on a secret way to communicate, a way to make sure that each of us knew the other was still alive. A warning system.”
“He’s missed his turn.”
“Exactly.” She smoked, her stomach aching from the tension.
Howard wasn’t interested so much in Claude Corsier’s disappearance. “How much did Schrade lose?” His voice betrayed a forced stoicism.
She hesitated. “Millions.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Quite a few.”
Howard didn’t react.
“The way it was set up,” Ariana went on, “he didn’t know. It was a very good operation. Very good. Extensive planning.” She paused. “I think he has finally puzzled out what happened. And who did it.”
“Shit.” Howard remembered his cigarette, which had burned down to the filter and was stinking. He put it in the ashtray.
“The point is,” she said, “I think this is going to get dirty. This is very complex.”
“God… damn.” Howard swallowed. “This was Harry’s idea, wasn’t it?”
Ariana looked at him. “We were all involved…”
“But it was Harry’s idea.”
“You’ve got to understand-”
Howard held up one hand to stop her. His face had grown red. He was furious. She knew the reality here. Bill Howard didn’t give a damn that Ariana was afraid, that she believed she was going to be killed, and that she was desperate for protection. What was coursing through his thoughts like a fever was that his twenty-three-year career in the Foreign Intelligence Service, a carefully shepherded career, was suddenly as unstable as the smoke wisping up from the end of her cigarette.
She smelled food cooking, a thick odor that she couldn’t identify. It lacked the tangy sharpness she would have smelled in Salonika or Athens, or even Rome. She turned away from Howard’s silence and moved back to the window. Below, a car purred by slowly in the street.
She wasn’t sure where she stood legally on this, but the game was intricate from the point of view of international law. It had all taken place in the gray areas of the spying game, and it was her guess that it would unravel in the same sphere. Behind her she heard the flick and scratch of Howard’s lighter. A pause while he inhaled.
“I can’t believe you people thought you’d get by with this,” he said, his voice husky with smoke. “Screw a guy like Schrade and just get slick away with it.”
She turned around. “It was a lot of money. Harry, well, you know, he inspired a lot of confidence. We thought we had a good chance. You know better than I do that people like Schrade steal from each other all the time.”
“And they get killed all the time. It’s a violent vocation.”
“Maybe, but then a lot of others get away with it, too, don’t they? It happens. We thought it could happen to us.”
She put out her cigarette in the ashtray she had left on the windowsill. Her heart was loping erratically. Below on the sidewalk a couple paused under the trees to talk in the fading light. She could see only the lower part of the woman’s skirt and her legs.
She turned around and came back toward the sofa. She avoided a heavy armchair with its loathsome upholstery worn bare in spots by the buttocks of spies and traitors and the women who slept with them. She pulled around a wooden dining chair and positioned it in front of him.
“Claude Corsier,” Howard mused, “that son of a bitch would’ve picked the devil’s pocket for spare change if he thought the extra pennies would help him buy another goddamned little scratchy drawing.”
“He took a lot of risks for you, too, Bill. And you didn’t pay him shit.”
“I haven’t forgotten that.” He dropped his eyes to the dead cigarette butts in the ashtray beside him. He was lost in thought. Then he closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. He looked up at her. “And what did your cut come to?”
“A lot.” She wasn’t going to get into that until she knew if they were going to help her.
Howard swore again. “Strand knows about this, that Claude’s disappeared?”
“I don’t know.” She knew he wasn’t going to believe this. None of them had ever really understood Harry Strand.
“Our agreement,” she said, “actually, it was Harry’s stipulation, was that we would never contact him after this was over. Never even try. Ever. And I haven’t.”
Howard was already shaking his head. “I don’t buy that, Ariana. You worked together too long, went through too much. You were like a family. He couldn’t do that.”
“Well, he did, Bill.” She was finding it difficult to stay calm. Both of them were barely handling the tension. “None of you ever really understood what you were dealing with in Harry Strand. The reason you find this idea so confounding is that you never could have made that kind of decision yourself. It’s too extreme, too radical. That’s why Harry was so successful for you for so many years. He never let reality get in the way of possibility. That is why he is what he is… and why you are what you are.”
Howard said nothing for a little while, and though she couldn’t read his face, she sensed his agitation.
“How is this going to work?” she asked. It was time for blunt questions.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He sounded tired. “Anyway, it’s not for me to decide, you know. It’s them.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No. Big difference. I’m out here. They’re back there. It’s not the same thing at all.”
Ariana felt a resurging nausea. “You tell them I want to talk,” she said. “I’ll tell them everything-but I want protection from Schrade. They need to know what happened.”
“What about Harry? This can’t be good for him.”
She fixed her eyes on him. She felt near tears, but she fought it. “You tell me about Harry,” she said coldly.
“What.”
“Is he alive, Bill?”
“How the hell do I know?” He started to say something else but stopped.
Neither of them trusted the other, but Ariana was at a distinct disadvantage. They both knew it.
“I need to know what I’m dealing with here, Ariana,” Howard said. “Give me some idea of where you’re going with this. I’ve got to know where this is headed before I can take it back to the guys who call the shots.”
She really had no choice.
