Alix only had to look at the picture to remember the afternoon when she had first seen it. She’d been wearing one of his old T-shirts and had curled up in an armchair as cozily as a sleepy cat, watching Carver as he walked through the dusty beams of afternoon light that angled in through the windows of his top-floor flat. He’d walked with an easy, animal grace, then leaned across her chair. She’d felt his eyes skimming over her before he handed over one of the cups of coffee he’d been holding. He’d seen her looking at the picture.
“It’s Lulworth Cove,” he said, “on the Dorset coast, west of my old base.”
“It’s very beautiful. What was this base?”
Carver had laughed. “I can’t tell you that. You might be a dangerous Russian spy.”
She’d smiled and said, “Oh, no, I’m not a spy. Not anymore.” She was telling the truth. That afternoon in Carver’s flat, for once in her life, she’d been a normal woman, surrendering to the blissful indulgence of falling in love.
That dream had been torn away from her. There was no point in clinging to some pathetic, girlish illusion of romance. In the real world there was no such thing, just an endless fight for survival, a fight that had no concern for scruples or principles. When everything else was stripped away, there were only two issues to consider: how badly she wanted to survive, and what she was prepared to do in pursuit of that survival.
11
Kurt Vermulen’s cell phone started buzzing right in the middle of dinner. He flipped it open and took a look at the name on the screen. Then he turned to the three other people sharing the table at an Italian restaurant in the Georgetown district of Washington, D.C., a rueful half-smile on his face, and said, “I’m really sorry-got to take this one.”
Yet, as he said, “Hang on,” into the phone and got up from his place, making his way to the door, the truth was he felt relieved.
Bob and Terri had meant well, setting him up at a dinner for four with Megan, a single, thirty-nine-year-old lawyer. She was a hot date: attractive, smart, and happy to leave her litigator’s aggression in the court-room. He was pretty sure she liked him, too. That was the problem.
Eighteen months had passed since Amy died, and he still couldn’t get his head around the whole dating game. They’d met the summer before they went to college, 1964; two kids who’d bumped into each other in a Pittsburgh music store, both trying to buy the last copy of A Hard Day’s Night. And that was that-the start of thirty-two years together, their one regret that they hadn’t had children, till Amy got breast cancer and suddenly, the one thing he’d never expected, he was the one left alive and alone.
All that time, her presence in his life had been one of the things that defined him, as much a part of his identity as his blue eyes or his sandy hair. Now that she was gone, he felt incomplete. But even worse than that, he couldn’t figure out how to make himself whole again. With Amy, everything had been natural. So much was understood, unspoken. But now it all had to be explained from scratch, and he wasn’t sure he was up to that just yet. Sure, he’d been with a couple of women. He wasn’t a monk. But someone like Megan deserved better than a casual fling. And Kurt Vermulen didn’t know that he could give it.
Not when he had the fate of the world on his mind.
He was outside the restaurant now, stepping onto Wisconsin Avenue, feeling the quick chill of a January night. “Okay, Frank, I can talk now-what’s the news?”
“Not good, Kurt. I raised your concerns with the Secretary of State, but the feeling, right around the department, is that they just flat-out disagree with your assessment. Don’t get me wrong-everyone really respects what you’ve accomplished, but they just don’t see the situation the way you do.”
“What? Don’t they believe what I’m saying?”
“Not really. But even if they did, no one wants to know. I mean, we’ve made our position clear, as an administration. We’ve picked the horse we’re going to ride and it’s too late to change it now.”
“Well, you picked the wrong one.”
“Maybe, Kurt, but everyone’s happy with the decision-State, the Pentagon, Langley-you’re the odd one out on this. Look… we all know you’ve had a rough time the past couple of years, so why beat your head against the wall on this one issue? No one sees it as a priority going forward. Don’t throw away a reputation you’ve spent decades building up over a bunch of crazies. Trust me, man, they’re not worth it.”
“Thanks for the advice, Frank,” said Vermulen. “Give my regards to Martha.”
He snapped the phone shut, as if that physical act of closure could contain the frustration burning inside him. All his career he’d been an insider, a man whose analysis was respected, whose judgment was trusted. Now he was out in the cold, saying things that no one wanted to hear. Sometimes he felt like one of those movie characters who get shut away in an asylum, even though they’re sane. The more he shouted he wasn’t crazy, the more everyone thought he was. Was this how Winston Churchill had felt, telling his people that the Nazis were a deadly menace when all anyone wanted was peace at any cost?
He shook his head at his own presumption. Comparing himself to Churchilclass="underline" Maybe he was going nuts. Meanwhile, there was a good-looking lawyer waiting inside the restaurant, expecting him to make some kind of sophisticated, grown-up pass at her. Screw global security-that was the first problem he had to solve.
Vermulen was about to step back inside when a man caught his eye across the far side of the road. He was medium height, skinny build, wearing a brown leather jacket, the gray hoodie underneath it hiding his face. There was nothing unusual about that, not in January. Nothing unreasonable about him walking fast, either, keeping the blood circulating. There was just something about the way he was doing it, pushing past people on the sidewalk. He didn’t look like he had anything good on his mind.
Vermulen saw the glint of steel in the streetlight as the man pulled a knife from his pants. He saw the woman looking at some shoes in a store-window display. He knew at once, with absolute certainty, that she was the reason the man had drawn his knife.
And then he was running across the road, dodging the traffic, praying he could get there in time.
The man had come up to the woman and grabbed her arm and was snarling threats and obscenities in her ear. Vermulen saw the shock take hold, leaving her wide-eyed and paralyzed, unable to obey the mugger’s instructions, her mouth open but no sound emerging.
He shouted out, “Hey!” Just a noise to distract the guy.
The cowled head turned and Vermulen felt the raw, drug-fueled rage in the man’s eyes, then the jittery panic that filled them as the mugger realized he was under threat.
The man slashed with his knife, slicing through the strap of the woman’s handbag and the sleeve of her coat. He grabbed the bag and started running.
There were people all around. They were looking at what was happening, shying away, not wanting to get involved, some scattering as Vermulen burst through them, carried on past the woman, and pursued the man up the street.
He took maybe twenty quick strides down the sidewalk, then pulled up. It would make him feel good to catch the dirtbag and teach him a lesson. But there was a woman standing frightened, alone, and quite possibly wounded. She was the priority now.
He turned back to her, walking slowly, trying not to add to her fear and distress.
“Are you okay? Here, let me look at your arm,” he said, when he reached her.
And that’s when she burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said between sobs, as though it were she who had done something wrong.