‘Missed what?’
‘When I got to the Mandarin you asked a lot of questions, but you kept on about blowing the plane up,’ reminded Charlie. ‘And I already knew Harry hadn’t told you, because I asked him. And I hadn’t, either. Shit!’ Would Harry still be alive, if he’d been more alert? Maybe, like his wife would still be alive if he’d been more alert, all those years ago.
‘Does it matter?’
Charlie opened his mouth to reply but managed to halt the anger once more. Instead he said: ‘Go on. Tell me what Yuri said, when you spoke to him from Hong Kong?’
‘That the destruction of the plane showed how necessary it was, to maintain the arrangement … that it showed what the Americans were prepared to do …’
‘Moving!’ interrupted Charlie again. ‘You knew we were moving on because Harry had already told you. Did you tell Yuri?’
‘Of course,’ said Irena, grimacing as if it were another unnecessary question.
‘What did he say to that?’
‘That we had to go on being careful … that he would go on refusing to make any contact with the Americans until he knew I was safe …’ Irena stopped again and said, in head-lowered recollection: ‘And he called me darling.’
Was the earlier idea so stupid, wondered Charlie. Maybe, but then maybe not. It was still something difficult to believe. He said: ‘How was he going to know that: that you were safe?’
‘The same way.’
‘You were to keep telling him where you were?’
She nodded and then said: ‘The last time from the airport.’
‘So you called from the Hyatt?’
She gave another smile and said: ‘There it is, on the bill.’
Poor birch, thought Charlie: poor, stupid bitch, hearing what she wanted to hear, believing what she wanted to believe. He suddenly remembered the momentary brightness, just before they went out to eat, when she might have imagined she was to be left alone; and then the absurd modesty of getting into bed that night, which he didn’t think now had been modesty at all. He said: ‘What about from here! Have you called to tell him you’re here!’
‘I haven’t been able to, have I?’
Charlie covered the sigh of relief, convinced he was right but recognizing at the same time it was all surmise. Unless there were something more she still hadn’t told him. ‘How many calls?’
She blinked at the demand. ‘I don’t …’
‘From the time you met me, how many calls, to Yuri in Tokyo!’ insisted Charlie.
Irena hesitated, head bent again as she enumerated in her mind. ‘Osaka …’ she said, slowly. Then, gathering conviction: ‘The Mandarin …’ She looked up, satisfied. ‘And from Macao …’
‘Three!’ persisted Charlie. ‘Only three!’
‘Yes!’ she said, her demand matching his. ‘I’ve told you all there is! I want to go to sleep now: I’m tired.’
‘No!’ refused Charlie.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘You don’t believe it, do you, Irena? Not after what happened today?’
‘You’re not making sense.’
‘A lot hasn’t, until now,’ said Charlie. Bringing in the recall again – the recall upon which he’d always relied so heavily but which this time had failed, too often – Charlie quoted: ‘“It’s got to be the Americans, hasn’t it?”’
She looked steadily at him, pretending not to remember, refusing to speak.
Relentlessly Charlie went on: ‘Your words, Irena. Today. But it hasn’t got to be the Americans, has it? We know – both know – what the Americans want; you, alive. Not in the wreckage of an aircraft or dead against the wall of a church that no longer exists. That’s what doesn’t make sense – never has – their trying to kill you.’
‘You told me they blew up the plane!’ she fought back.
‘It seemed the only logical conclusion, then,’ admitted Charlie. ‘It doesn’t now, not any longer.’
‘Who then!’
‘You tell me,’ said Charlie. ‘Who else but the Americans?’
‘You’re talking nonsense!’
‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense?’ said Charlie.
She shook her head, eyes downcast again.
‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense, Irena?’
Still she refused to speak.
‘Today was a professional attempt,’ continued Charlie. ‘Special gun: we both know that. Like we both know that Harry wasn’t the real target: that you were. Who’s the professional trying to kill you, Irena?’
The woman came up, in furious anger. ‘Not Yuri!’ she screamed, and Charlie was glad it was the sort of hotel it was. ‘He loves me,’ Irena raged on. ‘I keep telling you that …’ Her mind snagged on another thought, one she snatched at. More quietly, reasoning with an unarguable point, she said: ‘And it couldn’t have been Yuri, could it? How could he be in Tokyo, talking to me, and be in Macao, as well?’
Charlie didn’t know but wished he did. He was sure he wasn’t wrong, not any longer. He said: ‘If it had been the Americans, they would have grabbed you, wouldn’t they!’
Refusing the logic of one question, Irena clung to the irrefutable logic of her own, a drowning person saved by a passing raft. ‘So would the Russians! Today wasn’t the Russians and it wasn’t Yuri!’
‘Who then?’ said Charlie. It was like a race on a fairground carousel, one bolted-down horse never able to catch up with the bolted-down horse in front: and now the music and the ride were slowing because he couldn’t think of any more questions to ask or any different ways of phrasing those he’d already put to her.
‘I don’t know,’ said Irena, impatiently. ‘How could I know?’
‘You’re not sure, though, are you: you weren’t when you asked about it being the Americans this afternoon?’ It was a bad, repetitive point and it was obvious, to Charlie as he asked it and to Irena, who disdained it.
‘I’m tired,’ she said again, the defensive anger gone. ‘You know about the calls now: what they were for. I want to go to sleep.’
She actually moved, to go back beneath the covers. Not wanting to lose the momentum, Charlie thrust into the shoulder-bag, snatching out the photographs of Yuri Kozlov that had been sent to him from London and throwing them to her, on top of the hotel bills. He said: ‘He’s set you up … you know he has …!’
The insistence was no better than the previous question because it was an accusation Charlie couldn’t support, but the effect was different this time and it wasn’t from anything Charlie said. Irena was staring down at the prints, her throat working, and then she whimpered, a mewing sound without any shape at first but then it formed into a word – ‘No!’ – moaned over and over again. She let the photographs drop and the covers, too, sitting in front of him brassiered but huge-breasted, tears abruptly starting and then coursing down her face. She didn’t try to wipe them or her nose, either, when that began to run. Charlie saw she had a yellow pimple, about to pop, on her left shoulder.
Charlie didn’t know what to do, to discover what had caused the collapse. He got up from where he was and tried to pull the covers up for her, but sitting as she was it wasn’t possible without her holding them and she didn’t try, so they fell down again. Instead he picked up the photographs, searching for what he’d missed and to what she’d reacted, seeing nothing.
Charlie felt out, to touch her shoulder, to comfort her, but then pulled back. He said: ‘Irena? What it is, Irena?’
Her voice was too choked for him to hear the word, at first, so he said again: ‘Irena. Tell me, Irena.’
Then he heard the word, although he didn’t immediately understand what it meant.
‘Her!’
He looked at the disordered photographs, but not at Kozlov, remembering something else, the first sight reflection about the woman in the background and then the later realization that it was not Irena.