by Robert Moss
“There’s a spy inside your circle,” Max announced. “Is it you?”
Johnny tried to see only his own reflection in Max’s eyes. “No.”
“You’ve been in contact with a Gestapo agent, a man called Hossbach.”
“Yes.” He felt slightly dizzy. It could hardly be coincidence that Max was asking about the man he had just left. “Why didn’t you report your meetings with this man?”
“Helene knew everything,” he defended himself. “What more do you want?”
“You should have written your own reports. How can you tell what Helene puts in hers?”
The angle of this attack was so bizarre that Johnny found it impossible to take it seriously. The pressure in his chest lifted; he wanted to laugh in Max’s face.
He couldn’t restrain himself. He was spluttering as he said, “Max, dear Max. Have you come here to accuse me of working for the Gestapo?”
“This isn’t a joking matter.”
“Very well, let’s talk about the Gestapo. I saw Hossbach tonight. It was a chance meeting—there’s room for chance in life sometimes, isn’t there? He thinks I’m a good little Nazi, so he asked for my help. They’re hunting one of ours.”
“Who?”
“I haven’t quite worked it out. Perhaps you’ll be able to. Hossbach described the target as a big Red and a kike.”
Max did not flinch at the coarse epithets. “Emil?” he suggested. “Olga?”
“I couldn’t know at the time,” Johnny said, “but it seems to me now that Hossbach was talking about you.”
“What are you saying?”
For the first time Johnny had the satisfaction of seeing Max on the defensive.
“Well, I don’t know if you’re Jewish,” Johnny went on, milking the situation for all the pleasure he could derive. “But you’re certainly a Belgian now, aren’t you?”
“Stop farting around and get to the point!”
“Kamarad Hossbach says the target started his travels in Antwerp. Also that he’s carrying diamonds.”
Max did not respond immediately, which was why Johnny was certain he had found his mark.
It was Johnny’s moment to attack, and he seized it. “I ask myself,” he said, “whether Hossbach is working for you — or you are working for him.”
“You bastard!” Max was on his feet, with his fist clenched.
“You try it,” Johnny said, not stirring from his place. “I’ve got a few years on you and a good few pounds as well, and I haven’t had a decent fight since Emil tried to get me killed in the north.”
Max’s fury slowly subsided.
“We need to work this out,” he declared, after Johnny had poured them both a stiff brandy.
It was a very long night, as long as any Johnny had spent with Heinz in the days when his world was merrily on fire.
Max ordered him to maintain contact with Hossbach and offered to increase his expenses so he could keep a safe house, an address to supply the Gestapo man when he — inevitably — would ask. Johnny agreed. At the start of the conversation, he had been convinced that Max had somehow contrived the whole episode with Hossbach in order to frame him. Max’s emotional response to his accusation had persuaded him he was wrong. There were coincidences in life, he told himself. The roulette ball sometimes landed on the same number twice.
When Max returned to the main purpose of his mission, he talked to Johnny as a trusted comrade, not a man under suspicion.
“There is a British spy in the organization,” Max announced. “Who would you nominate?”
I mustn’t jump into this, Johnny cautioned himself. It would be smarter to condemn by faint praise.
“What about Nilo?” Max prodded him. “He went to school at Eton, didn’t he?”
“I don’t think he was very popular at school. He doesn’t love the British.”
“He doesn’t love his mother,” Max observed. “But I am informed that he still takes an allowance from her. They call him the Millionaire, don’t they? He could be bought.”
“Only with girls.”
If he wants to waste his time watching Nilo, Johnny thought, that’s perfect. But let it be his own choice.
There was only one bad moment, when Max remarked, “In my experience the man who calls loudest for blood is usually the provocateur. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Sometimes.”
“So why have you been hurrying everything along? You sided with Emil over that idiotic manifesto that got the ANL banned, didn’t you?”
He’s already talked to Helene, Johnny realized. That was probably why she seemed to be staying out all night.
“I have my orders,” Johnny said. “They come from Manuilsky—” he paused “—and from Stalin. If you intend to question my judgment, you should take it up with them.”
Max stared at him for a long time before he permitted himself to smile.
“You’ve learned a few tricks, Johnny Lentz.”
“I’ve had the very best instructors.”
“I have one piece of advice for you. Don’t forget who your friends are.”
“I’ll never do that,” Johnny promised, thinking of the friend Max had murdered. “Speaking of friends,” he went on, “I want you to tell me about Sigrid.”
“I admire your restraint in waiting all this time to ask.”
“Is she safe?”
“Perfectly safe, except from mosquitoes.”
Johnny blinked at him. It was too much to hope for.
“I brought her to Rio,” Max confirmed. “I know she wants to see you. Johnny, I don’t know quite what you think of me. But I’ll promise you this. I won’t stand in your way.” He took a swallow of brandy and added, “Unless there are compelling professional reasons.”
The qualification did not diminish what Johnny felt: a soaring sense of elation, of flying without wings. Here, in this magical country that shattered every prejudice and preconception of the Old World, she would at last be his. Whatever Max had done to her, whatever he had tried to make of her, would not matter a damn in Brazil.
3
A violet-blue sail flapped across the windshield, so close, so vivid that Sigrid raised her palm to protect her face.
“It’s a butterfly,” she said in wonder, as it dipped, caught an updraft and glided off into the highest canopy of the rain forest. “I’ve never seen one so big.”
“That’s how it is here,” Johnny said, slowing the car to negotiate a hairpin bend. “The country knows no limits.”
Guavas grew wild along the road. The forest blazed with flamboyants and mimosas, the yellows and purples of the ipe blossoms, the hot, rowdy pinks of the impatiens that sprang up everywhere. Johnny stopped the car at a bend that hung over the green gorge like a balcony. When he turned off the engine, the silence seemed complete, until Sigrid began to listen properly. Then she heard bird song, the whir of insects, the bubble of water in secret springs, the scuffle of unseen monkeys or squirrels among the foliage.
“I saved this place for you,” he said. He took her hand and led her along a low stone parapet to a clearing that opened out like a piazza. In the middle was a stone table with narrow stone benches on either side.
He drew her with him to the very edge of the cliff.
“Look.”
She followed his pointing hand. The sensation was giddying. The ground fell away at her feet. She felt she was leaning over the neck of a horse as it hurled itself down the mountainside, charging at the sea miles below. She shut her eyes and clutched at Johnny’s arm, and felt his hand close over hers.
When she looked again, the sensation was different. A curious sense of calm and completion began to steal over her. What opened out below her appeared as a vast natural amphitheatre. There, at the very centre, was the circling bay of Botafogo, turned to mother-of-pearl by the distance and the harbour mists. The peaks around it were islands in the haze. There were no sharp edges. Everything was rounded and opaque. The forest enclosed the whole panorama like a
pair of broad, cupped hands.
“It’s perfect,” Sigrid whispered. “It’s the landscape of dreams.”
He led her back to the stone table. “It’s called the Emperor’s Table.”
“Why?”
“The last emperor of Brazil — Dom Pedro — picked the most breath-taking view in Rio and set his picnic table to command it. Now it belongs to us.”
Her face was shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her dress was foamy white and reached to midcalf. She was even more beautiful than his dreams, her body fuller, her movements more confident. But when he looked directly into her eyes, a shutter seemed to fall.
“You’re different,” he said to her.
“Did you think it would be the same?”
“I don’t know. But I waited for you, all the same.”
“You shouldn’t have waited.”
“What are you saying?” Johnny wanted to shake her. But there was a stronger longing. He took her by the waist and tried to kiss her. She kept her mouth closed and slipped away from him.
“Is it Max?” He couldn’t contain himself. He rushed on, “Are you in love with Max?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
“You haven’t learned very much, Johnny.”
She said it with such weariness, such resignation, that he fell silent.
“Max didn’t take me to Copenhagen to sleep with me,” she went on. “You know him. You know that’s true. He came to me once, just once. He didn’t force me.”
“Then why?”
“He had been ordered to kill a man.”
“He’s used to that.”
“Yes. But he talked about how much harder it is to kill when you have time to take a good look at your victim, to notice the little, ordinary things that make him human — the way he lies in his sleep, the hairs on the back of his hands, the sound of his breathing. It wasn’t an easy assignment. I think Max was scared. He certainly had reason to be. There was a very good chance he would not return alive.”
“And you made love to him because of that?”
“Because it was my duty.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You should know. That’s what you taught me, isn’t it? That we’re all soldiers under orders?”
He turned his head, to look out over the glorious view of Rio with sightless eyes.
“Were there others?” he pursued.
“What makes you think you have the right to ask me these things?” she erupted. “Did you take monastic orders? Are you telling me you never went with another woman?”
“No more than was necessary.”
“Hah! And you think you’re entitled to ask me what I did in bed!”
“Sigrid, I waited for you. In every way that counts, I waited for you.”
“What about Helene? Did you sleep with her too?”
“No.”
She stared at him, ungiving.
“Have you seen Helene?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, of course.”
“What did she say?” He was suddenly terrified that Helene had invented something to try to turn Sigrid against him.
“Nothing that matters. But I think she’s still in love with you.
“You’re wrong. We’re not together by choice. The situation doesn’t amuse her any more than it does me.”
“Yet you made a choice in Shanghai.”
“She told you about that?”
“She told me you saved her life.”
“I would have done it for any comrade. It doesn’t change anything. If you want to know, I think Helene hates me.”
“Love and hate are closely related.”
“Like sisters?”
“Like sisters,” she agreed, and pursed her lips.
He tried to touch her again, but she twisted away. Why did she keep this distance between them? Surely she wasn’t jealous of Helene?
He felt slighted, and because of that, he chose words that would wound her.
“They told me you were going to have a baby.”
“What business is it of theirs?” she rounded on him.
“Whoever ‘they’ are?”
“It was ours, wasn’t it?”
“How could anyone tell?” she struck back at him.
“Was it ours?” he shouted. He shook her so violently that her hat tumbled off and rolled away into the forest.
“You’re hurting me.”
He relaxed his grip. The tears welled up in her eyes. She tried to turn her face away, so he would not see, but he forced her to look at him.
“Sigrid—”
“Of course it was ours.”
The wind blew threads of red-gold hair across her face.
He smoothed them gently back into place.
“Why?”
“I heard nothing from you.”
“But I wrote to you every week!” Even as he said that, he knew what had happened. The secret police had intercepted the letters. How had Max put it? There was no such thing as a personal conversation.
“How could I keep a child in Russia?” she went on. “By working in a factory? I don’t even speak Russian.”
“Our people would have looked after you. General Berzin promised me.”
“Oh, yes?” she said bitterly. “How? By taking the baby and putting it in a communal crèche?”
“Who told you that? Max?”
“He ought to know.”
“That bastard.”
“Don’t blame Max. He’s the only one who helped me. He even found the doctor, a man from the Kremlin clinic, not one of your backyard butchers. The doctor says I might still be able to have children. It’s the Russian way, isn’t it? The average woman in Russia has six point five abortions in her lifetime.” She tried to make herself sound like a statistical yearbook, but her voice was breaking.
“Fuck the average woman in Russia!”
“I imagine you did.”
With the tears running down her cheeks, she started laughing. He felt giddy. Suddenly he was laughing and crying, too. He caught her in his arms and pressed her tight against his body, and this time she did not pull away. Their lips met. He tasted salt and wild honey. He struggled with the hooks of her dress.
“Wait.” She pushed her palm against his chest. “We have to find my hat.”
They held hands and walked into the rain forest. The air was heavy with the scent of bougainvillea. They came to a little clearing where orchids grew wild among the undergrowth. He picked one for her. She smelled it and tucked it behind her ear, smiling and frowning, at the same time.
“I can never remember which ear is the right one.”
“They’re both perfect.”
She made him wait while she took off the lacy white dress and hung it from a bough. She flirted with each button as she stripped him of his clothes. The light filtered through the branches dappled her skin. He spread his shirt over a bed of dry leaves. Then he swept her up into his arms and laid her tenderly on it, as if he were taking her for the first time. A shaft of light plunged down from above his head.
She looked up at him and said, “You’re wearing the sun in your hair.”
Above him she saw a pair of pássaros de sangue, the blood-red birds of the jungle, flash past.
He touched her breasts, her thighs, and each time she started giggling. He ran his fingers along the inside of her leg, and she was convulsed. He grazed her neck, and she reared away, panting with laughter. Her skin was a mass of nerve endings.
He lay still, propped up on his elbows, smiling but puzzled.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to stifle a new fit of giggles. “I’m ticklish everywhere.”
She took him by the upper arms and drew him down on to her.
“Come to me.”
She shivered as he entered her. His face under the sunburst was that of a dark lord.
They lay silent for a long time afterwards, holding each other and listening to birdcalls like bells and wind chimes.
He said, “I was wrong. It is the same. Each of us may be different, but we are the same.” He sat up and looked at her. “I won’t let anything take you away from me again.”
“You can’t say that.”
His words had broken the magic circle. She started picking up her clothes.
“You’re the only thing real I’ve had to hold on to,” he persisted. “I won’t give you up now that I’ve found you again.”
“Isn’t there a character in Dostoyevsky whose only hold on reality is a toothache?” she countered, trying to make light of it.
“I’m serious.”
“Not now, Johnny. Let’s not be serious now.”
On the drive back to the city he asked about Copenhagen.
“What was it like there, working with Max?”
“It wasn’t an easy time. You know Max was ordered to kill Trotsky?”
“I didn’t know,” Johnny lied. “But I guessed as much when I heard you were both in Norway. Evidently he didn’t succeed.”
“Tiotsky is well protected. He has a whole private army. Max asked me to help find a way past the guards.”
“And you agreed?”
“Naturally,” she said briskly. “Trotsky is a traitor, a British agent.”
Johnny glanced at her sidelong. She spoke with no sense of irony. She believed it.
“What was the plan?”
“Max showed me a place where some of Trotsky’s people met. He told me to cultivate one of them — Trotsky’s private secretary — and show him my pictures. I was to offer to paint Trotsky’s portrait.”
“Did you?”
She shook her head. “The secretary didn’t trust me. I think he preferred boys. In the end Max shot him.”
“And if they’d let you into the house? What would have happened then?”
“Max had a poison. I was supposed to smuggle it in with my paints. Max said the death would look completely natural, like a heart attack.”
“You were prepared to go that far?” Johnny was horrified.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said thoughtfully. “In the abstract, perhaps. But I didn’t see Trotsky’s face. I could only know if I saw his face, as close to me as yours.”
They rode together in silence for a few minutes. He realized that, despite their enchanted hour in the forest, he would have to be more careful of her than of any of the others.
