“That’s the way it is,” I ruled. “All I can do is give you a more detailed verbal briefing.” Yablonski snarled that he’d see about that and moved on. Rachel was keeping the notes. When the meeting ended the participants scattered, but she remained. She was interested to know more about Russia-behind-the-scenes.
I knew her slightly. A year earlier when she had just joined the Service she had been a trainee observer in another meeting. Heywood had chaired that one and there had been a terrific standoff then too, between him and me. It got so bad that he had asked me to leave. I hadn’t run into him since. Rachel’s friendliness now, her fascination with my work, her bright mind and convivial presence affected me. In the deserted meeting room my explanations flowed, but bit by bit the conversation moved beyond the hopelessness of Russia. We reached another level, unusual for me; Rachel and I began to talk as easily as backpackers out on the trail. Rachel was from Oak Lake. Wherever is that? It turned out to be a hamlet in southern Manitoba. It had a farm machinery dealership whose owner had three sons and one daughter, and the daughter decided when she was young that she would grow up to be a diplomat and live in the great capitals of the world.
That was the first time Rachel sent me her invitation to complicity, her fleeting smile, her deep comprehension of what I was thinking. It set my pulse racing. Some days that look is all that is in my brain.
Well, why not? was my reply to Rachel’s desire to live on a vast scale. She then said that when she was little she used to turn the Oak Lake house into a continent, each room was a different country, and she went from room to room giving speeches to local audiences about Canada’s greatness.
Once more that look of intimate alliance. It made her more beautiful still. I desired to say nothing, to study the fine proportions of her face for an hour, but all I dared was to send her a few furtive glances.
The conversation wandered. No, she didn’t think the Ottawa winter was that cold; relative to Oak Lake it was balmy. And Rachel liked the canal where she could be found on the weekends skating. And she loved cross-country skiing too, the colder the better. It wasn’t the talk of winter that warmed me; it was her openness to ideas and to doing things. As we parted – she going back to a bureaucratic cubicle to render service to Yablonski, and I, beguiled, to a world behind sliding doors devoid of passion – I felt light and buoyant.
Back at my desk I stared at the ceiling. What had I seen in Rachel? Quickness and eagerness. A readiness to know. An acceptance of others. A desire to experience. And beyond her sublime features and shining ash-blond hair, a beauty I found difficult to pin down. The more I pondered her, the more an idealisation set in. Sitting in my cell, I began to see her qualities before me as a work of art suspended in mid-air. It was so fine that my breathing turned irregular. I struggled to grasp the artwork, to seize and hold it, to turn the essence of the hour we spent chatting into an object I might press against me. The impossibility of it only gave me a deep ache which has been with me since.
Of course, I had seen an absence of innocence as well. Which is another way of saying I saw eroticism ready to break out. Already then, that winter day, having barely met her, I saw Rachel’s future in her eyes: the parade of lovers in Vienna, the affair in Geneva with the Berlin banker, and, once she had been named ambassador, the weekends of luxury on the Egyptian’s yacht. I became addicted to understanding, even pursuing, that absence of innocence. I fell under its spell, its compelling humanity, its determination to live life fully and its insistence not to repress inner forces. I became incapable of breaking out of that addiction. Then when the opportunity came along to know more about Rachel, to search out things I had no right to know, I gave in. I lacked the moral strength not to.
Rachel went to Moscow with Yablonski, and after she returned I saw her irregularly. It seemed always to be by chance, but she drew me out of my self-absorption each time and led me into her captivating world. I came to live for the unpredictable minutes of uncomplicated banter when we ran into each other in the hallways. Yet, I never found a way to tell Rachel something I thought she should know – that I was married. I never mentioned Carmel to her. Perhaps this was because the marriage had started to disintegrate long before. I believe that single women have an intuition about the availability of the men they meet and I wondered whether Rachel understood my circumstances. In that case, I asked myself – the puzzle deepening for me – would Rachel have concluded from my silence that I thought my wife was my burden? Or, did she see my marriage as a stain, an error, a lapse of judgement, a misdemeanour blotting my record, something I should get over? But perhaps all this was presumptuous. Perhaps the truth was less intricate. If she knew, Rachel might simply have been incurious about my private situation because her interest in me had its limits.
Once, unexpectedly, I ended up standing beside her at the cafeteria check-out. “Lunch with us!” she said, smiling irresistibly. She meant herself and a freckled, red-haired friend – Anne-Marie – also a recent arrival in the Service. Anne-Marie was outgoing and kind. Huddling under the canopy of the cafeteria’s clatter, we were a happy threesome nibbling away at sandwiches with me running off to get the lemon tea. I felt fine because I wasn’t feeling dour. We agreed to have lunch again and each time we did my liking for Anne-Marie deepened, my infatuation with Rachel grew, and the deterioration of my marriage became less relevant.
And then it was all over. Carmel moved out so that our divorce proceedings could begin; Anne-Marie became engaged to a lawyer; and Rachel was posted to Vienna.
All over? Not entirely. I continued seeing Anne-Marie even after she married; she became my friend. We talked easily, usually about Rachel. Rachel sometimes called Anne-Marie from Vienna, or wrote funny postcards. My abject obsession – tracking Rachel’s movements – began about that time, and soon enough, what I heard from Anne-Marie I often already knew. I also knew that the news of Rachel she gave me was incomplete. As intimate friends she and Rachel would have shared the smallest details and I admired Anne-Marie’s editing to make Rachel’s existence look innocent, even pure.
In the following years Rachel’s career took off. Articulate, self-confident, polished – she was born for the work she had chosen. In Vienna she out-performed the city’s entire stuffy diplomatic corps. In the international meetings no one was more adept at confronting the sulking delegates and high-nosed ambassadors; she had a way of nudging them towards compromise. Anne-Marie said Rachel had friends everywhere; she was nearly a public persona. She appeared on the society pages. She was invited to fine restaurants, exclusive concerts, a VIP box to see Vienna’s famous white horses, and balls and elaborate garden parties. Yes…true. But I also knew what she was doing on the weekends spent privately.
During Rachel’s Vienna years I once had an opportunity to ask her about her personal life. I did it elliptically and it boomeranged.
Rachel was in town for consultations. One Saturday morning, a fine winter day, not excessively cold, with fresh snow, an azure sky, and cold, clean, diamond-hard air, I called her on impulse at the hotel and suggested cross-country skiing in the hills north of the city. She was immediately keen. We sorted out the details of getting her equipment and by early afternoon were in the rolling landscape, racing over tree shadows, following a trail taking us deep into the forest. Rachel was wearing improvised outdoor clothing and wasn’t the best dressed cross-country skier out that day, but her strides were smooth and forceful. Born for glittering ballrooms and global conference chambers, out on the trail she showed she was a child of nature too.
The destination that afternoon was Herridge Cabin. Nestled amongst birch, oak, spruce and pine, fashioned from rough wood with a steeply sloping roof, the cabin is straight out of a fairy tale. When we got there a fire was burning in the stove. Lean, flushed, friendly skiers came and went. We were steaming from our effort and finding the interior too warm, sat down outside on a bench against the cabin wall to share a bottle of water. Looking at the sinking February sun, we talked, tho
ugh not long. I can count on one hand the conversations I’ve had with Rachel after she left on her postings, and each one, each phrase she uttered, each nuance in her words has etched itself into my brain.
“This is beautiful,” she said, looking through the tree tops at the sky. “Thanks for bringing me here.”
“You’re a strong skier.”
“I’m glad I could keep up. I didn’t want to hold you back.”
“Do you have much chance to enjoy the winter in Vienna?”
“I get out. But this is different. The solitude and purity…it recharges. You’re lucky to have it, Carson.”
“It’s easy to take for granted.” I couldn’t prevent myself from scrutinising her closely.
“What?” she asked when I had stared too long.
“You’ve got colour in your face. It becomes you.”
She removed her woollen hat and shook her hair loose. “Nothing wrong with burning off some calories.”
The talk continued like this, easy as always. Why did this happen with Rachel? Why with no one else? “When are you going back?” I asked.
“I’m leaving Tuesday for a quick visit out west to see my family and from there straight back to Vienna. A short stay really. A conference here last Thursday, three meetings yesterday, today off, consultations to be squeezed in tomorrow and a seminar with academics on Monday. Too hectic, especially at this time of year. I miss real winter. I wish I could have taken more time off.”
“And what happens when you get back?”
Surrounded by the light smell of burning hardwood from the cabin chimney and snapping off a piece of frozen candy bar, Rachel told me about the international committees she attended and the working groups she led. Principles were being developed that would lead to a new multilateral treaty restricting mercenary soldiers. She was also leading the drafting of a communique advocating rules against incendiary bombs. Talking about this was not a chore for Rachel; she was deliberate and precise, sometimes looking into the low sun and sometimes glancing in my direction. The words came with conviction. She believed her work was important. This was Rachel talking shop.
People are usually boring when they talk about their work. But Rachel wasn’t. She described it with humour, laughing heartily when she described the standard international negotiator – a pedant outpedanting other pedants. This wasn’t a dreadful harangue from a true believer. All the same, I found it distracting. The professional Rachel – the one pushing things forward in international committees with intellect and charm – lived in a too-distant world for me. I preferred the Rachel that talked about the spirit of the hushed forest, the soul in the sky, and the majesty of frozen lakes covered by fresh snow. Mostly though, I would have liked to have been her confidant, to have listened to her describing her lovers (she was on her third by then), to have learned of her true feelings for them. I would have liked to have expressed curiosity why she had one after another. What made them appealing? How did their characters vary? What were the mechanics of entering such relationships? More intriguing, what were the ways of ending them without apparent grief? What emotions were at play? Or were her affairs merely friendships so casual that having sex was akin to drinking tea? Try as I might, I was unable to construct a hypothetical world where such things became explicable. But how could all that be brought into the open?
In later years I would have liked to have posed still further questions. When Rachel was next posted to Geneva, she ended her string of casual lovers, limiting herself then to just one, the Berlin banker. Somewhere in Germany he had a house, a wife and three children. How did she see that relationship? What did it give her? All through the years I desired to engage her in this kind of disentangling. How strange it was then that it took the computer bug – Heywood’s plague and Jaime From-Up-North’s Zadokite Port – to trigger off events which in the end allowed all this to be thoroughly talked through.
But on the cabin bench with the February air biting and the temperature sinking all such questions were stillborn. Instead, I carefully asked, “When you’re not doing all that committee work, is there time for a private life?”
“The two are one,” she replied lightly. “I don’t look upon what I do as work. It’s a lifestyle.”
“I can understand that,” I replied, too quickly to be convincing.
“Can you?”
Why did Rachel bless me that moment with her warm, conspiratorial smile? As always, it arrested me. Finally I said, “Do you remember you once told me about growing up and how you went from room to room making speeches in different countries? Is it working out like that?”
Rachel laughed from the heart. “Yes, in a way, but it’s more complicated.”
“I suppose it is.” I imagined that was true of her private life too. Thinking about this, I absent-mindedly mouthed what must have sounded like a platitude. “There’s something to be said for simplifying existence, for avoiding complexity.”
“Can you do that, Carson?” Rachel asked pleasantly. “Is that your problem, denying yourself complicating situations? Is that why you’re so self-contained? Is that why you put on the air of wallflower? We should talk about it sometime.”
Her words confused me. In a strange way I felt chastised. I had wanted her to reveal a few details of her private life, but she turned the tables and I lost my tongue.
Rachel suddenly stood up and checked her watch. “What time will the sun be down?”
I said not to worry; we’d be out of the park and back at the car before dark. “Free for dinner?” I asked casually as we slipped our boots into the bindings and strapped the poles around our wrists. Rachel wasn’t. A deeper exploration of her complex existence and my bland way of living would have to wait. As it turned out, it took years. The next chance to come along was in Berlin with a jilted banker looking on.
The Czar was finishing his monologue. In a dramatic finale, jowls trembling, tufts of white hair quaking, he seemed to take hold of a mythical sword, holding it high and brandishing it before us. It wasn’t just any sword. It must have been huge, almost out of his league, because the effort turned him crimson. We’ll slay the barbarians! The watchers were taken aback, trying to decipher the bluster. Had Heywood assumed a new self-image, that of an epic figure, a hilltop commander jabbing the sky with a weapon and sending mighty armies into bloody battle? He froze in this pose. For several seconds his face was tense, inner eye focussed on the impending clash. Then he relaxed. “It’s a metaphor,” an altered voice said. “You get the point.”
Now came a further mutation. The Czar turned fatherly. Solemnly, generously, he desired to hear his family’s anguish, and at this invitation the watchers peppered him.
What was to be their exact role versus that of Jaime? Because what he proposed – that their work be vetted by someone unknown – was unusual and, in truth, unworkable.
The Czar clasped his hands under his chin before lifting his eyes to the ceiling. Not for vetting! he declared. Good heavens. No, no, no! Please listen again. Information-sharing, co-operation, working as a team.
More rapid-fire questions. Had the Manual on Security Procedures been thrown out the window? Nothing personal about the girl beside him, but to what level of security had she been cleared? And if one computer genius could be injected into the heart of Service intelligence, then why not boatloads more?
The Czar, smoothed and soothed and oozed, confronting the anxiety until, with a good assist from Francis Merrick, the focus changed. Someone began asking practical questions.
No, it wasn’t known yet how the bug scaled the network firewall. Patience please! Jaime, we were told, had excellent insight and numerous inventive ideas.
Yes, new hardware had been ordered; delivery in a day, maybe two.
True, the back-up tapes were not easily decipherable and, yes, a rumour had started that they might never be. But – please note! – that rumour had no substance. Jaime was already identifying a route through the encryption-decryption problem. The missing
records would soon reappear. A land we know, one flowing with milk and honey, lies before us!
Would we be requesting assistance from the Americans?
At this the Czar lost his calm. He shook with indignance. No! No! Never! A tirade followed, all about self-sufficiency and national pride.
My ears pricked up. No support from below the forty-ninth parallel? Self-sufficiency? Who had been briefing Heywood? How out of touch was he? I knew our friends to the south had been monitoring our problem from the start. Almost forty-eight hours had passed since the plague struck, and for more than twenty-four I had known something Heywood still had no inkling of: the entry point of the virus into the Service network was the server which we the watchers used for linking into American databases. Admittedly, it was not official information. I had it in confidence from a fellow traveller in the American government, someone I’d never met face to face, but with whom I was in constant contact: Hugh-Stephen Amireault, or, as he preferred, simply Hugh-S.
Over the years we had developed a regular, close relationship. We began collaborating in the mid-eighties when the Cold War still raged. Under a new bilateral information-sharing arrangement we were designated as the respective contact points. It was soon obvious that Hugh-S was prepared to operate beyond the confines of the agreement. He had a soft spot for Canadians, he said, because once upon a time that’s what his family was. Cajun. For generations his family had raised its young on a Louisiana bayou, but Hugh-S was proud of his Acadian forebears who’d come down from far to the north. “Cahsun,” the voice on the telephone in its folksy accent once told me, “you know, my wife jokes about my name – Hugh-S.A., she says and laughs – but deep down I think Canuck like you.” A sense of kinship propelled our relationship.
Borderless Deceit Page 5
