by Alisa Smith
“You’re okay now,” I said to Lena. I felt for Hughes’ pulse, but I already knew what I would find. At least his body looked whole. I shivered at the thought of Lena in the dark water, dragging him, that dismal lizard trailing behind.
“He didn’t make it,” Lena said. She put her hands over her eyes and shuddered, which I took to be weeping, but was all the more dreadful for its soundlessness.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I started up the engine, and the night was obliterated by the roar as the boat cut through the wide, black river.
Bill was waiting in the darkened grounds of the palazzo. He must have been there all evening. It was cool now, but he still wore a short-sleeved shirt and British jungle shorts as he hurried past the hurricane lanterns that lined the pool to meet us. As I walked Lena up from the dock, she leaned against me—when we debarked her knees had buckled and she staggered once, until I caught her. Bill stopped short at the sight of us.
“You okay?” he asked, but Lena did not answer, so he looked to me.
“She needs rest.”
“Von Roth?”
Again she did not answer. I myself hadn’t had the nerve yet to ask about this, or anything else about the mission.
“Did you get von Roth?” Bill asked again.
“He’s dead,” Lena said.
She was shivering in her wet clothes, so I walked her past Bill on the sidewalk to get her inside and away from the night air. “There’s something in the boat that must be brought in,” I said. He nodded and went to see to it. This was the first time he’d ever done a thing I said.
* * *
TEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Lena sat in the library, looking subdued in a grey silk robe wrapped up to her neck. Her eyes were puffy. The shutters were closed to keep out the light, though it was already dim, threatening rain. The heat was unbearable. I felt oppressed by these heavy tropical storms, which held back and held back until they finally exploded. Back in Washington State, it was calm, because it was always raining. I missed the feeling of knowing what was going to happen because it was always the same.
Today was a complete mystery. Would Lena leave now that Hughes was dead?
“You knew he wouldn’t make it, didn’t you,” she said flatly. Her eyes would not meet Bill’s, but drifted across the dim gold book spines where they were trapped on crowded shelves in the order the previous owner had chosen.
Bill crossed his arms. “You damn well know there was no talking him out of it. And he got what he wanted. He fixed up his name. He’ll get buried with military honours. I’ll see to that.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? He’s dead.”
“How about this? You chased an assassin out of the palace. Miss Maggie will reward you for ruining Gaige’s operation. It proves that Nazis don’t work, so why take the extra risk? Gaige’s program will be cut, and the funding will go to Miss Maggie.”
I looked at Lena. She was tired and worried. I wished there was something I could do for her, but could not think of anything. There wasn’t even a pot of tea to pour.
Bill cleared his throat. “I heard from my lock-keeper. So I know you were the one that killed the Nazi. Not Link Hughes like you said.”
Lena remained silent.
Bill walked over to his bookshelf and paused in front of the antique black marble clock. If you believed that time was heavy, or unyielding, or cruel, this was the object to embody it. He pushed forward the hands to reset it, though now that I thought of it, I’d never heard it tick. His back still turned, he wound the clock for the first time since he owned it. “Miss Maggie will be pleased,” he said.
I stood there, wishing I could be anywhere else, while also hanging on every word. Bill walked over to sit in the chair across from hers, and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Lena, there’s no use regretting. That Nazi was evil. You got to be a wolf to survive.”
True enough, I thought. Bill was a wolf, and so was Lena, which explained why they could never quite get on. There was only one head of every pack. And I was just a lamb. Where was my flock? These wolves were it, I thought uneasily. I would have to be careful not to go the way of Link Hughes. But I had no plans to sacrifice myself. The name Byron Godfrey was nothing special, but it needed no redeeming either.
Bill walked over to where I stood at the window. “Why so glum, chum? You want a cigar, By God? You did good.” He clapped me on the back.
“Thanks.”
Bill took a cigar from a dark wood humidor and trimmed it with his silver scissors, just for me.
* * *
LENA STUCK AROUND after the von Roth job, drifting through the palazzo and avoiding Bill when he happened to be around, which wasn’t often. She couldn’t leave because Miss Maggie had ordered her to stay and “await developments.” Lena was in a rage about it, but she was under Miss Maggie’s thumb as much as Bill. I was curious what my place was in all this, so I’d asked Bill about it. Was I a crab in a trap, who walked in of his own innocence and then, when he turns around, can’t figure the way out?
“I brung you here without Miss Maggie knowing,” he had assured me. “One of my rebellions against her. I wanted you in my business. I trust you.”
I felt happy when he said that. I had to admit, being a spy who only pretended to be a crook was more soothing to my conscience—what I had left of it anyhow, after all I’d done with Bill. Of course our “pretending” was pretty convincing, since Bill actually ran an opium ring.
Practising my new profession, I snuck around the palazzo and tried to overhear when Lena spoke to Bill, which seemed to be almost never. But one time I paused by the library door when I felt a silence heavier than silence, and knew somehow that both of them were there. I put my eye to the crack, and saw Bill kneeling on the floor and gripping her hand.
“I won’t ever give up,” he said finally. “I’ll love you till I’m dead.”
“You ruined everything a long time ago.”
“You only have a love like this once in a life. That goes for you too, Lena. I’m it and you know it.”
She tore her hand from his, and I ran ignobly into a hall closet because I could see she was going to flee. She did so, and her steps echoed on the tile floor, receding from me.
Bill went to Burma shortly after that, and stayed away for a month to tend to his opium business. And his wounds, I supposed. It would not help his case that Lena knew about the wife he had there. Well, he’d made his own bed. Maybe he’d figure out how divorce worked in that tribe.
I asked Lena if she wanted to go for a drink at the Oriental Hotel, and she said yes. I put on a tie.
I will always remember that day, June 10, because on that day we sat in the bar together, drinking a Scotch cocktail called Blood and Sand. There are not many things that mix well with Scotch, since it’s usually best sipped alone. But I was not alone, and I did not want my liquor to face that fate either. So it is shaken with orange juice, cherry brandy, and sweet vermouth, and it was very nice, I thought. Lena seemed to enjoy it also.
But our repose was disturbed. Word rippled through the bar that King Ananda had died yesterday in the Royal Palace. The Siamese police proclaimed it an accidental death, but the foreign news reported that the bullet went through the centre of his forehead. By whose hand was such an “accident”? Lena and I looked at each other with wide eyes. The only certainty was that the constitution was in danger, and democracy in Siam was probably over. The Communists would be outlawed in the new regime. Many people in the bar were predicting that, and were happy about that part. Amidst the hubbub, Lena traced her finger slowly around the rim of her glass. I wondered what she was thinking but did not ask.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a man lurking at the entrance to the bar. It was Smile, and I knew instantly that Bill was home from Burma. Goddamn it, it was hard to keep one’s affairs private around here. I guessed he knew where we were from the boat driver, who had dropped us off at the Oriental Pier. I downed the last of my drink and help
ed Lena with her chair. I didn’t remember about my umbrella until we stepped outside and a heavy rain was falling, so I went back to retrieve it from the holder, which was shaped like an elephant’s leg. A scruffy man at the bar was watching me with interest, and I left feeling his eyes on my back. How many people are in this spy business, I wondered.
Outside, I gave the umbrella a shake before raising it to cover myself and Lena. Smile, who had so rudely interrupted our cocktail hour, could figure out his own shelter. In any case he seemed oblivious to the rain. It poured down his shaved head in streams and he did not try to wipe it back. It was kind of eerie, like he was more machine than man.
I was tempted to cut across the manicured lawn, but deep puddles were forming already, and I did not want Lena to ruin her shoes. We stayed to the sidewalk, hanging back a few feet from Smile as he led us to the pier. Lena sat down on the wooden bench underneath the roof of the longtail, quickly shifting to the box in the middle to retreat further from the driving rain. She squeezed water from the ends of her blond hair, and I watched her with a sense of nostalgia. The death of King Ananda signalled the end of something, I thought. Both the old Siam and the future he had promised. History did not always mean progress. Chief Phao had been building his army of police, and now was his chance to come forward. He had no love of democracy. Despite his perfumed pomade, he was just a thug. Meanwhile, we had risked our necks trying to save the king, who had not in the end been saved.
I shook my head—what times we lived in, when crooks were more moral than cops.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WHEN KINGS DIE
I STARED RESENTFULLY at the back of Smile’s head while Byron and I followed him down the hallway of the palazzo, the rubber soles of Byron’s shoes squeaking from the soaking they’d got in the rain. My soles were leather, which meant they were quiet but probably ruined. Why couldn’t that goon have let us be, happily drinking in the Oriental Hotel, instead of dragging us through a monsoon? I still regarded Smile more as a captor than an associate, since he had kept watch over me at the Sawasdee Hotel. He escorted us to the library, where we found Bill settled in his velvet chair like a king on his throne.
“I heard from Miss Maggie,” he said.
Just the sound of her name brought my senses to a pitch of alarm. I sat down in the chair opposite Bill, clutching my pale blue purse. I did not want to speak to him, but this was something I couldn’t let pass.
“Is she angry?” I asked.
“Do you think so?”
“King Ananda is dead. We were supposed to protect him.”
“We were supposed to kill von Roth. We did that and we derailed Gaige’s mission. Miss Maggie was happy. How she felt about saving the king is something else. She is a sphinx.” He shook his head, stood up and started pacing. “But do you think she liked a king who was going to allow free elections that included Communists? Maybe they’d form the government. Prime Minister Pridi was getting too popular, and now the rumour mill says he planned the murder.”
“Pridi?” Byron asked the window screen, his back still turned. “Don’t you support him?”
Byron’s behaviour was strange. He was like a statue. Did he hear someone outside? Of course, I was equally paralyzed sitting here in this chair. Bill always wanted to be the one in control, the puppet master. I wouldn’t react to his revelations, because I knew it pleased him too well.
“I spread my dollars around,” Bill said. “I ain’t tarred by him. Anyhow, it will be a while before the local cops go after Pridi. They’re waiting to be sure the Americans back them. The police say the king was playing with a gun in his bed. As if!” He stopped his pacing. “You two look wet. Need a towel or something?”
“No thanks,” Byron said. I did not deign to answer. All I really wanted to know was what Miss Maggie was thinking or going to do.
“I insist. You’re dripping on my floor. Smile!” he yelled. “Can we get some towels in here?”
He stood silently until Smile appeared, two perfectly folded white towels perched in the crook of his arm, this brute somehow playing the butler. Bill plucked a towel off and threw it at Byron, who moved too slowly to catch it, and had to pick it up from the floor. Meanwhile Bill was carrying the other towel to me and held it out, but I refused to take it. After an awkward moment he dropped it in my lap and sat down again.
“I find it interesting that a new director was appointed to the secret service today,” Bill said. “Today of all days. General Vandenberg. And they’re changing the name again. Now it’s the Central Intelligence Group.”
Goddamn it, I thought, how did Bill know all this? Did Miss Maggie confide in him to such a degree?
“You think it’s connected to the king’s murder?” Byron asked.
“Who knows? But we got to be careful until we know what it means for Miss Maggie. Is she on the way up, or down?”
Bill was astute if nothing else. I could not decide if she had hated the idea of using Nazis, or only hated Gaige. Which horse had she backed at the top? But knowing Miss Maggie, she had picked this General Vandenberg. She would frame her own manoeuvres to curry favour with him, even if they ran completely at odds to his agenda. She was capable of that.
“Is it possible Miss Maggie was behind this murder, now that she discredited Gaige?” Byron asked, patting his arms with the towel. “Does she have other agents?”
“By God, I admire your suspicions,” Bill said. “But the answer, I do not know.”
The idea Byron proposed was disturbing. I knew damn well she had other agents, but outside of a few key cryptologists, I had no idea what they did. However, her ambitions clearly extended beyond gathering intelligence and into covert action. And in that realm, I now believed anything was possible.
Bill picked up an envelope lying on the table. “Read this,” he said, holding it out to me.
The envelope, I noted, had been opened—Bill, no doubt. Inside was a letter, encrypted. The last two code groups looked familiar, somehow.
“Pencil?” I asked.
I could tell, from the impatience in his face, that Bill had not been able to read the message. Despite this, he made a production of opening a drawer, pulling out a pencil, and examining it with maddening care. Then he pulled out a knife to sharpen it, the shavings falling to the floor, as I seethed. Finally, he handed it to me, the point sharp as a dagger, and for a moment I wished I could stab it right into his neck.
I fell to work on the transliteration.
It took me a moment to realize, but then I almost laughed. Miss Maggie had used the same key as the last message from her that I had decrypted on Shemya. I couldn’t remember it perfectly, but it was enough. She evidently knew Bill would try to break the code and would fail, that he would watch me do it and be impressed by my swiftness. I had to be grateful for small pleasures, I supposed.
I laid down the pencil, nudging it a couple times to make sure it was parallel to the envelope. Link’s family had been sent a Burma Star and a Burma Gallantry Medal in his name, I said to Byron. He would have a full military burial, with a flag draped over the casket and a bugler playing “Taps.” I supposed Miss Maggie was doing that for me, since the dead have no further use for honour. Or at least, she wanted me to believe our mission had redeemed Link. To lessen my guilt. To ensure my cooperation going forward.
My breath caught in my throat, ragged. There was nothing more I could have done, was there? No one could have stopped him from going after von Roth. Link had died brave. He’d deserved those medals. By rights von Roth was dead because of him. Link led the hunt. I found the strength to kill because I was trying to save Link. I wiped at my eye. He died without forgiving me. How could I expect it, when he couldn’t forgive himself, either? There was nothing worse than unfinished business, and sins that could not be undone, but there was no going back. I would just have to be stronger now. Harder. I composed myself.
I returned to the message, and read aloud that Miss Maggie’s budget for Far East operation
s had been approved.
I paused over the last lines.
“What is it?” Byron asked.
“I’m not with the Shemya radio unit anymore. I’m a field agent. Assigned to Detachment 302.”
“In case it ain’t clear,” Bill said, “that’s headquartered in this room. We’re a team, Lena. Just like old times.”
Old times, Bill said. What were old times? Cruelty, blackmail, and lies? I’d told Bill there was nothing left of my love. He was just clutching at the past and wanted to forget all the parts in between. To carry on with his old life as though he hadn’t ruined it by his own actions. He’d never once apologized. We were over. I didn’t want to be a team with him again, yet Miss Maggie was making it so.
I had to admit that part of me felt proud: I was a field agent. I had redeemed myself after Camp X, or maybe I had not failed there at all—maybe Miss Maggie had been waiting for the right time to use me. Maybe Bill hadn’t abandoned us on the von Roth job as I’d thought. Siam had been my proving ground.
I was also a murderer now. That was something that could never be erased. Miss Maggie had me over a barrel, not only because of my past as a criminal, but because I’d killed an American agent, even if he was a Nazi. These were dark days. I almost longed for the simplicity of war. Everyone had agreed who the enemy was.
There was only silence. I realized that even the antique clock was not ticking. It was dead. Time had stopped.
“What about me?” Byron asked.
“You’re in it too, of course,” Bill said.
“That’s good. I was worried for a minute.” His eyes darted toward the window. “Did you know that the brainfever bird says different things, depending on the language of the listener? It makes sense, since everything’s a matter of perspective.”
I didn’t know what the hell Byron was going on about—I hadn’t heard any bird at all—but I couldn’t be bothered to ask.
Bill went over to the ornate French sideboard and poured amber liquid from a crystal decanter into three glasses, which he put on a tray. “A toast,” he said, proffering the tray to each of us. Reluctantly I took a glass, and Bill stared into my eyes so that I couldn’t look away. “Now that we’re spies,” he said, “we’ll get rich while we rip the secrets out of everyone.” He turned to Byron and clinked his glass. “And you, By God, will count them up.”
