Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  His wretchedness was only compounded by what had happened with Ronnie on his last night in Israel. As she had promised, she was no bunny boiler; far from it. In the emails and calls they had exchanged over the succeeding weeks, she had been caring and solicitous, making it clear that she neither demanded nor expected anything. Their night together had been a “lovely interlude,” she said, and if it led to nothing more, she would have no regrets.

  However, Adam did have regrets. He might feel betrayed, but he was also steeped in guilt. A little of it was for Ronnie; he had used her to wreak a feeble, unseen revenge. But despite the agony of having witnessed the trysts between Morgan and Abdel Nasser, his guilt was mainly for her.

  As he turned the key in the lock of his parents’ front door, he could hear the television. He was taking off his jacket when his father called him from the sitting room: “Adam! Here, come quickly! You need to see this.”

  He hurried into the sitting room, where his parents were watching the Channel 4 news. A view of Gaza City’s Unknown Soldier Square filled the screen, taken from a balcony close to Colin Reilly’s office. The open space was a rippling sea of people, many of them wielding green Hamas banners, their faces masks of euphoria. Adam had spent the past few weeks deliberately trying to block out news from the Middle East, but this was different. After three days of brutal conflict, the reporter was saying, Hamas had seized power. Fatah’s troops had barely put up a fight, although some had been killed by savage methods, such as throwing them from the tops of buildings.

  In the next scene, an earnest man in his thirties with a neat goatee and a suit was briefing reporters in fluent English. He said that documents and other evidence that Hamas had acquired earlier that day when its forces took control of the Gazan secret police headquarters proved that Fatah’s militias, notably their Force 17 guards, had been armed and trained at America’s behest. “Some of you have asked why we have carried out a coup d’etat,” the spokesman said. “We reject this label. It is now clear that Fatah, helped by its Israeli and American allies, had been planning a coup against us. We have simply thwarted that plan, and we have done so with the minimum of bloodshed. We have the support of the people, which is why there has been so little resistance. In the coming days we will work to establish a government which will restore order and the rule of law.” Almost next to the spokesman stood Khader, who looked rather sleeker than on the day Adam had saved him from the Fatah gunmen. He was wearing a pressed blue uniform. It looked new.

  The report shifted to a line of villas close to the seafront, which had apparently been owned by members of the ousted Fatah elite. They were being wrecked by a mob. The camera focused on a man smashing a window by hurling a lump of concrete, then cut to a short interview with him, the mob in the background. “This regime, this people, was corrupt,” he was saying. “Now we will have justice. They will pay for their crimes, and also their friends in America and Israel.”

  Finally, the anchor in London conducted a live discussion about the meaning of the Hamas putsch with the channel’s flak-jacketed reporter on a balcony above the square: visibly nervous, she expressed her hope that whatever the wider consequences, it might at least reduce the level of violence on Gaza’s streets. Then he turned to the Washington correspondent: “So, Matt, what has the administration been saying? Is it making any comment on these claims that Hamas has thwarted an attempted US-backed coup by Fatah?”

  “Well, Jon, that’s certainly one of the questions everybody’s asking. The truth is, no one really knows. But it has to be said that if Hamas’s allegations are true, and the US was running some kind of covert program, the new regime in Gaza isn’t going to be in any hurry to do America any favors. No doubt the picture will become clearer over the coming weeks.”

  With that, the broadcast turned to English politics. Gwen Cooper raised the remote and turned the television off, just as Charlie and Aimee burst into the room from the garden. She held out her arms and hugged them.

  “Hello darlings. I hope you’re hungry. Look, Daddy’s home.” She gave Adam a sharp look. “We can talk about what was on telly later, can’t we, dear. Let’s all go and sit in the kitchen. I’ve made a nice fish pie.”

  Next morning, when Adam returned from taking the children to school, Gwen cornered him at the foot of the stairs. “No arguments,” she said. “I’m working from home this morning, and then I’m taking you out to lunch.”

  He knew better than to demur. “Okay. Where are we going?”

  “It’s not a bad day. I think the Cherwell Boathouse. At least that means we can walk. Be back down here, ready to leave, at twelve thirty.”

  Rain had been forecast, but when lunchtime came, there was no sign of it. It was a typical English summer’s day, with ragged cloud and intermittent sunshine; not exactly flaming June, but comfortably warm nonetheless. Along Norham Gardens and past the Dragon School playing fields, the scents of early summer competed for attention, borne on a balmy breeze: the new-mown grass of the cricket fields, and, in the gardens of the older houses, honeysuckle and wisteria. They walked down the alley toward the river without speaking, then stood for a while on the platform by the water’s edge, watching the usual mix of capable and incompetent boat people as they tried to pole their flat-bottomed punts. A large party of raucous Americans in US college sweatshirts had rented two boats and were making them zigzag uncontrollably, their polers apparently certain to end their voyage by falling in. Beyond the melee, on the far side of the river, a languid youth in a white jacket and pedal-pusher shorts glided past from somewhere downstream. His companion, propped against the boat’s blue cushions in a pale, floaty dress, sipped from a champagne flute, trailing her fingers in the water.

  “I think we can risk a table outside,” Gwen said. They entered the restaurant and she greeted the maître d’ with a kiss on each cheek. In moments, they were ensconced on the waterside decking, beneath a white umbrella.

  “Plus ça change,” Adam said, picking up the menu. “I see they’re still doing that organic salmon in sorrel sauce.”

  “I do wish that were true,” said Gwen. “If only.”

  “What do you mean? Look, it’s right here.”

  “Darling, as I’ve told you before, don’t be deliberately dense. I meant, as you know perfectly well, that I wish it were true that things hadn’t changed, starting, alas, with you. But first let’s order. I’m going to have the hake.”

  “I’d better have the salmon. To satisfy your yearning for continuity.”

  She beckoned a waiter. “I think we’re going to need some wine. We’ll take a bottle of the Meursault. That one.” She pointed. “The 2002. A very good year indeed.”

  Gwen buttered a warm bread roll. “Darling, forgive the cliché, but when you’ve had a sip or two of your Burgundy, we need to talk. I don’t think you’re telling me everything that happened on your trip. Apart from when you’re with kids, I’ve never seen you so miserable. So, not to put you on the spot or anything, I want to know what you’ve been leaving out.”

  Adam colored. The waiter brought the wine, poured a little for Gwen to try, then gave them both a glass, leaving the bottle in an ice bucket on a stand. Throughout the ritual, Adam stayed silent. Finally he opened his mouth.

  “I don’t know what makes you think I’m hiding something. Obviously I’m unhappy. My wife’s been kidnapped, for Christ’s sake. I went to try to rescue her, got shot at, and achieved precisely nothing. What do you expect?”

  “But you seem to be making plans to stay in Britain indefinitely. Well, selfishly, I’d love that. I never imagined until they came to stay how absolutely lovely it is to have the children living with us. But Adam, your life, and Morgan’s life, are in America. Do you really think she’d give it all up to become an Oxford housewife or something?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And are you really ready to waste all that training in the American legal system, and all those nights you spent in lonely motels while you hunted for mi
ssing witnesses in the South? We can’t be certain she will get out of the hell she’s in alive. But we’ve got to believe it’s going to happen, we’ve got to keep trying to do what we can, and thinking too about how things will be when she’s back. She’s going to need a lot of support. The way you’re acting, it’s as if you’ve decided that even if she’s freed, you’re going to walk away from her. What have you discovered that can possibly justify that?”

  Adam drank his wine quickly. Ever vigilant, the waiter refilled his glass.

  Finally Gwen seemed to sense he had had enough to feel relaxed. “All right. I’ll go first,” she said. “Of course your father told me about your talk with him that night just after you arrived. I think you actually used the phrase ‘marital difficulties,’ and it’s been apparent to me for ages that things between you and Morgan have not been good. It was all so much easier in our day.”

  “I dare say it was,” Adam said.

  “I suppose you’ve had to deal with the same boring issues that seem to divide every young professional couple nowadays—all that endless, tedious nonsense about careers and children; the rows over who’s going to have to make sacrifices, who’s not pulling their weight.”

  “It’s not nonsense. It’s the way life is unless you’re rich enough to pay people to do all that stuff for you. It’s the price for the progress we’ve made toward gender equality.”

  “Yes, darling. I know it is. But in your case, it’s not the only thing dividing you, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not just that her work sometimes makes your own life more difficult. It’s not hard to see that you fundamentally disapprove of what she does.”

  “Not entirely,” said Adam. “Every nation needs to defend itself against threats to its national security. But since the news broke that the CIA was running secret prisons and torturing people, the divide between me and Morgan has seemed rather big.”

  “Well, my darling, you need to listen to me now, and listen bloody carefully. Because I think you might’ve been doing her a bit of an injustice.”

  “Mum, I appreciate your standing up for her. But how the hell would you know?”

  “Because I’ve heard something. Not all the details, but a bit. From one of my old political science students, a Rhodes scholar. We’ve always kept in touch. She went into the same line of work as Morgan, and she knows she’s been kidnapped. Not that she’s directly involved or anything, but it seems that, as you might expect, around Langley it’s fairly common knowledge. Well, she was in town yesterday, and we had a bit of a catch-up. I’m afraid I rather pumped her for information. I hope I didn’t embarrass the poor girl. Anyhow, she did know something that might just be significant.”

  The waiter appeared with their food. Having put down their plates of fish, he started to serve the vegetables, but Adam touched his wrist impatiently. “It’s okay, just leave it here. We’ll sort it out ourselves.”

  “Adam!” Gwen said. “Let the poor man do his job.”

  Adam motioned with his hands for the waiter to continue.

  Gwen leaned forward, adopting a confidential tone. “How much do you know about the people Morgan works with? Or, for that matter, what they do?”

  “To be honest, very little. She doesn’t tell, and I learned a long time ago that if she wasn’t volunteering, it was better not to ask.”

  “Well, so far as I can make it out, she’s attached to some kind of free-floating specialist team that’s supposed to be ‘taking the war on terror to the enemy’—or at least, that’s how my former student put it. Anyhow, it seems that your wife had a bit of a falling out with her bosses.”

  Adam had turned very pale. He felt his heart rate increase. “A falling out?”

  “Yes. A spat. Rather a bad one. I don’t have to tell you of all people that over the past few years, ever since that Abu Ghraib scandal, such things as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and what the Agency likes to call ‘extraordinary rendition’ have become controversial. After all, that’s how we started this conversation. On Capitol Hill, the intelligence committees and their investigators have been crawling all over this stuff. According to my student, there are more than a few CIA personnel who are simply terrified that if a Democrat wins the next presidential election, they’re all going to be prosecuted.

  “So in the midst of all that, this boss of Morgan’s hatched a little scheme. I don’t know all the details, but I believe it involved abducting a radical Muslim cleric. Apparently he keeps a mistress in Amsterdam or somewhere. Well, the plan was that the CIA was going to have him secretly filmed in flagrante with the girl, then ship him off to a place where the authorities maintain a rather laxer attitude to the treatment of prisoners than the Senate and House Intelligence Committees like to see displayed by Americans. Morgan was supposed to help arrange this operation, and, if he didn’t talk, leak the pornographic videos to the press.”

  “I thought you said I’d been doing her an injustice,” said Adam. “That doesn’t sound like doing the right thing at all.”

  “Don’t be so impatient. I haven’t finished. According to my student, Morgan made no secret of her belief that this whole thing was a really terrible idea, which was almost certain to blow up in the Agency’s face. But her boss wouldn’t listen, and so she blew the whistle. Discreetly, you understand. She didn’t do anything dramatic, such as squealing to the media—nor, indeed, to you. But she wrote a report to the CIA Inspector General. He went right to the top of the Agency and put a stop to it. Naturally, he promised her that her identity would remain strictly secret. But my hunch is that if I’ve been able to find out about it so easily, her boss probably has too. Who knows, maybe that’s why he sent her to Gaza—some twisted idea of revenge. After all, it’s not a pleasant place, especially for a woman.”

  Adam was struggling to get his words out. “Are you saying that this boss, whoever he is, might deliberately have put her somewhere where her safety was at risk?”

  “I don’t know. I have no evidence. I don’t want to jump to conclusions. But I wanted you to know that she didn’t betray the values you always thought you shared. She stood up for them.”

  Adam could feel the tears welling, and dabbed his eyes with his napkin. “My God. I’ve made quite some misjudgment, haven’t I?” He shook his head. “How could I have got her so wrong?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But it means you mustn’t give up—not in your efforts to find her, and not, if you do find her, on your marriage. I’ve no idea if things between you will work out. But you can’t just let it go.”

  The lump in his throat was physical, a hard bolus of misery. “Mum. You were right. There is something else.”

  “What?”

  It took him some time to be able to speak. “She was having an affair out there. The CIA knows about it. And when I found out, I sort of had one—well, more a one-night fling—too.”

  “Ah. Excuse me if I say I told you so. So are these new relationships of yours, how shall I put it, serious?”

  “Hers? How can I possibly know? I had no idea that anything was going on until the day before I left the Middle East five weeks ago. Sure, she’d grown distant, cold sometimes, but I never dreamed she was seeing someone else. If I never suspected my wife was having an affair, how can I say what it meant to her? I don’t know when it started, and I don’t, to put it crudely, know how many times they slept together, though my hunch is it only ever happened in Gaza, so their opportunities were somewhat limited.”

  “So what about you? Do you have strong feelings for this other person with whom you say you had a one-night fling?”

  “I like her immensely. And to be honest, she’s gorgeous. She’s a widow, almost a neighbor, and she happened to be in Israel when I was. She’d already made it clear she was attracted to me. So when I found out about Morgan, I kind of went for it. But almost immediately afterward, I felt terrible that I had, and as you’ve obviously guessed, I still do.”

  Gw
en picked up the bottle from the ice bucket and topped up Adam’s glass. “Have another drink. You need it. And from this moment on, you’re to stop punishing yourself. These things will happen in the best-regulated families. Maybe it really is all over between you and Morgan, but equally, maybe it’s not. The point is, you’re not going to know, one way or the other, unless and until she’s back. And unfortunately, her old colleagues seem to have made a bit of a mess of things in the Gaza Strip lately, if the news reports are true.”

  They had some coffee, and Gwen paid the bill. Neither then, nor as they walked home and the sky went dark and produced the first of the long-delayed rain, could Adam bring himself to tell her anything more. After all, when it came to the DVD, to use the spy’s stock cliché, she had no need to know. But his mother’s words had struck home, and as he walked, he gazed in silence at the pavement. Gwen’s disclosure that the operation which Morgan had thwarted had included a plan to film its target having sex left him stunned and bewildered. That the very same thing could have happened to Morgan felt like more than coincidence.

  As for himself, he was awash with remorse. How he regretted the lack of trust between them which had stopped her from telling him about going to the Inspector General. And for the past few weeks, he had simply been fooling himself. The notion that he could somehow move on and make a new start in England leaving everything unresolved was delusional.

  Not long after they walked in, Adam’s new cell phone—a replacement for the one that had been destroyed in Gaza—rang. The caller was CIA Mike.