Borderless Deceit

by Adrian de Hoog

  On day four we were on the fourth and final road leaving town, going northeast. Diego was explaining that the casa we sought had to be in that area because of where the road was leading – to Guayabo. A thousand years ago Guayabo was a large city from which, seemingly from one day to the next, the inhabitants disappeared. Politics and war? A volcanic eruption? Quickly enough the place was reclaimed by nature, became lost and turned into a legend. But now it was being unearthed by archaeologists. The link to Rachel, Diego pointed out, made sense. “Guayabo was lost, señor. Your freend too. We no arqueólogos. We detectives. But we find too.” He pointed at his head to confirm the truth of the conclusion. “Lógico.”

  Filled with optimism Diego headed towards the Guayabo monument, avoiding the shimmy by driving slowly. For me the stakes were high. Preoccupied with failure I scarcely noticed the kilometres passing. Some fifteen minutes into the drive we crossed the Guayabo River where the road took a broad turn. Just beyond the bridge a road of sorts led into a clump of trees on the edge of the stream. Diego, whistling happily, continued on.

  “Diego, stop. Stop right here. Go back. There was a turnoff there.”

  “Señor. Guayabo no far. I show you. Guayabo breeng luck.”

  “No. We crossed the Guayabo River. That was lucky and the turnoff was right there. We couldn’t be luckier.”

  Diego stopped. He thought. A finger paused on his lips on the way to pointing at his head. “Si. Lógico.”

  He wheeled around and soon we climbed a steep hill, wheels spinning in the mud, then slithered down an incline and from there bounced on a track. Away from the river, the countryside was one of stands of coffee and fields of sugar cane. We passed some brightly coloured houses lit up by a sun beaming down between the rainy season clouds. Someone out for a brisk walk would have gone faster than Diego’s vehicle and more minutes passed. Another stand of trees, then a long slow rise up to a plateau, and once on it, we saw a house a few hundred metres away. A fine looking, spacious casa, a kind of Tuscan villa, with a small tower rising from one corner. The garden all around, marked off by flowering shrubs, was large, maybe two, three hectares. The first impression was colour – house, flowers, trees, sky – colour, colour, colour, all of it perfect. We came up to the house from the back. Its view west towards Vulcán Turrialba, covered this moment by a fluffy white hat, was unobstructed.

  “Lógico.” Diego repeated. “I know we find. God, he smile in Costa Rica. Freends always found.”

  “It’s just a casa in the country, Diego. We don’t know if my friend is here.”

  “Señor!” Diego reprimanded me sharply. Life can be lived as optimist or pessimist and given the choice, Diego’s tone said, why foolishly go for the latter? “She here, señor. If she no here…” He pointed at the house. “She live in casa like it. But no casa like it. So she here. Lógico. We detectives excelentes.”

  “Wait, Diego.”

  “Tea,” Rachel blurted. “I’ll make tea. Then tell me why you’ve come. And how. Or coffee? There’s coffee too. I’m sorry. I look as if I’ve just got out of bed.”

  I explained a taxi was waiting down the road. I would send it away to return in an hour.

  “Tell him two hours. No, three. How long do you have?” I replied I was in no rush.

  I walked back to Diego and signalled him with a thumb up. He clapped. When I said tea was being served he danced, leaping and soaring with arms spread wide, like an eagle gliding. Twice he went around his car this way. I suggested he return later, but going back to town was out of the question for Diego. He would remain – until nightfall if necessary. Esperaré…Esperaré. I’ll wait, I’ll wait. He crossed himself, kissed his fingers, and extended his palms down to consecrate the ground on which he stood. It was his way of preparing a spot for a siesta.

  Rachel’s hair was now combed and the blouse done up. Hanging onto a porch pillar she studied me when I came back, her expression changing into a broad grin, causing me to do my own crooked imitation of cheerfulness. Rachel struck her brow and exclaimed, “It was Anne-Marie! What took me so long? I should have been expecting it.”

  “Her directions weren’t perfect…but I’m here.”

  “What directions?” Rachel laughed. “A house somewhere in Costa Rica?”

  “She said it was around thirty minutes out of Turrialba.”

  Within that ambiguous radius in the course of four days, guided by a resourceful driver, I had come to know every track, every casa and hacienda, every hill and gully between Rio Reventazón and Rio Guayabo, and as I gesticulated towards the directions taken and rattled off names of villages I had sauntered through, an amazed Rachel sat down and looked at me as if I was a troubadour bringing her much longed for entertainment. “I’ve come to know the Central Valley like the back of my hand,” I said. “You can’t imagine the dead ends we got to. I don’t know what would have happened if this had been one too.” I looked up and down the porch. “Is it yours?”

  “The house? Sort of.” She patted a low wicker chair next to the one she was on and I sat down.

  “You look well, Rachel.”

  “You think? I’m not sure. I think I’ve put on weight.”

  The tea had steeped. After she had poured it into two mugs, Rachel asked what really brought me here. She had regained the playful swaying of her head, the lazy way of smiling, that irresistible inquisitiveness, the signalling that she knew secrets existed – so why not unveil them? If fear had driven her, she wasn’t showing it. As she questioned me, as she led me closer to the moment when I would have to admit or deny truth, a heaviness settled in my gut. I was wondering how many hours I would have with Rachel, for in a way I’d arrived on this porch as an executioner, waiting for the right moment to kill her pleasure in my being here. But for the time being, as always, she was mesmerizing me.

  “Shall I tell you what you look like this minute?” she teased. “I ask why you’re here and you enter into some kind of trance, a lovely expression, slightly abstracted. Did your driver feed you mescalin?”

  I refocused. “Daydreaming, Rachel. Sorry. It is lovely to see you. Can’t believe it. So much to catch up on. Where do we start? Not with me, Rachel. Save the worst for last.”

  “Save the worst for last?” Rachel laughed. She was settling far back in her low chair, sipping from her mug, legs crossed, one foot peeking out from underneath her long red skirt. It pointed in the direction of the garden and the hedge and beyond that to the volcano. It moved too, slowly up and down, and back and forth, languidly keeping time, c like a conductor’s baton. Rachel’s eyes shone with mischief. “If we save the worst for last, it’s settled,” she said. “You first. Why are you here?”

  In this way our forward inching began.

  Diego’s siesta was long finished. The heat of the day had passed; no further showers in sight; the light in the valley was softening. With his back against a tree, he was glorifying the scene. “Señor!” He jumped up and scampered to open the car door. He studied my face. “No happy?”

  When the taxi was juddering back along the track I took refuge in my thoughts. A whole afternoon with Rachel, the hours uncounted. Would I see her again? Tomorrow? The day after? Next week? Ever?

  Please go. I have to think.

  Her face was impassive then. Our fun-filled repartee had drained away when I quavered out things she hadn’t expected. Now and then she repeated a phrase, questioningly, as if to say, Am I hearing this right? I stammered on, confirming it all, throwing out words, then more words, anything to avoid my time with her ending. I had rehearsed this moment, first with Jaime, then in my head, but still my sweat poured and my knuckles turned white gripping the armrests of the chair.

  Throughout, Rachel remained impossible to read. Indignation? Perhaps. Dismay? Some hints of that. Outrage? None. If she recoiled from my story, she masked it. On what ungodly self-control could Rachel draw? What allowed her to maintain such composure? She studied me, looked through me, cast her eyes towards the distance… and lis
tened! Slowly she became resigned. All this? the pale mask seemed to sigh. So much treachery? Again?

  At times I faltered. Occasionally I doubled back over ground already covered to lay out more facts. Sometimes I halted to spur a reaction, an agonising cry perhaps, or a demonstration of sudden hatred, but there was nothing. Finally, my head collapsed into my hands. The story was all out and, having asked for pardon, shaking, I waited. The silence was interminable.

  Please go. The voice had no expression.

  I hauled myself up and stepped off the porch on my way off the property. Then came an afterthought.

  I have to think. I need time. Where are you staying?

  In Diego’s taxi I sat dazed. “Freend no more?” Diego asked. “Pelea?” A quarrel? I shook my head. “Freend give bad news?” My body rocked in the car which heaved with the track. Again I shook no.

  “Freend no give bad news,” Diego concluded, fighting the bucking car. He raised one finger up and down and used it to tick off the possible causes for my lack of joy. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “you give bad news to freend. She no like.”

  When there was no denial, Diego clucked his tongue. A hand drifted off the steering wheel and a finger pointed up to indicate that what followed was fundamental. “Bad news,” Diego said, “I no give. Not to whoamen. Nunca. Nunca jamás.” Never. Never ever. He had learnt this painful lesson long ago.

  “I told my friend the truth, Diego.”

  He winced. “Eh?” Between working the bumps and avoiding dark puddles of mud he sent me accusing glances. “You take long time for truth,” he eventually observed. “Long truth no good, señor. Long truth bad. Siempre. Always bad. Short truth better. Short truth okay. But too much truth. No.” He shook a melancholy head. It seemed that truth for Diego was a substance to be handled like a spice: when sparingly applied it works wonders, but heaps of it will spoil things. And the shaking head said he blamed himself – for not sharing his proven recipe with me earlier.

  Yet in my own way I had debated how much truth to reveal, whether to heap it on, or go slow with a light sprinkling. When Rachel asked why was I in Turrialba, what brought me here, I could have done the latter. I could have said: On vacation, Rachel. Thought I’d surprise you. But I said nothing. I was struck dumb because her eyes teased and dared and were shining.

  “Don’t tell me you popped two mescalin tablets,” she jested.

  “I…I don’t know where to start.”

  “Try the beginning.”

  The very beginning? When our paths crossed in the Service hallways and we innocently fell into our verbal frolicking?

  Or with Berlin? Where we picnicked in the forest and she talked as if she had popped some mescalin?

  Or with the plague? When my interventionism turned rampant and I began to make mistakes.

  No, none of these. I began more simply. I described the scene to Rachel when Anne-Marie showed me the postcard, because it was the most recent and seemed the least unsafe.

  As I recounted how Anne-Marie had interpreted the message on the postcard, Rachel seemed bemused. She nodded. But it was an elusive nodding, neither confirming nor denying that Anne-Marie had been right, that she had departed Bucharest in fear.

  Next, I explained that a worried Anne-Marie extracted from me a promise to travel to Turrialba to provide help.

  Rachel’s amusement now broke into open. “You gallant man,” she mocked. “All the way here because of two lines on a postcard?”

  “Not just any old two lines, Rachel,” I said defensively. “If you received a message like that from your friend, what would you do?” Rachel’s conducting foot stopped moving. A light frown set in. She lowered the tea mug to her lap and gazed into the garden. “Wouldn’t you be concerned?” I pressed.

  But for Rachel something wasn’t adding up. “If you were concerned,” she said, “if you left because of that, then you’ve been on the go for weeks. Did you decide to jog down?”

  Was this a reproach? Or a glimmer of suspicion? “I didn’t want my travels picked up,” I blurted. “I took a roundabout route. To be sure no one would trace me to you.”

  Her frown deepened. “What do you mean by that?”

  I resolved to pass the point of no return. “What made you leave Romania so suddenly?” I asked. “It alarmed Anne-Marie. I wracked my brains out too. Were you fearful that if you departed more conventionally someone could have found out where you went?”

  Rachel looked at me but through me. An unwelcome image was forming in her mind. “What does that have to do with you coming here?”

  “I have a notion,” I replied calmly. “Tell me if it’s wrong. Bucharest was mostly tedium for you. Nothing at all like the excitement of the UN. But it wasn’t unbearable either. You wouldn’t have fled from the monotony. Yet, from one day to the next you’re gone. No warning. Not even to your number two. He thinks you’re off for some impromptu R and R in Vienna. No leads anywhere on where you went. That is a major achievement. There’s only the postcard to Anne-Marie which says your future won’t be like your past. Was it Morsi Abou-Ghazi? Was it from him that you ran?”

  Rachel turned white. “Carson,” she whispered, “what is this?”

  Diego wouldn’t let go.

  It was understandable that someone lacking his skill at life would make mistakes, and delivering unwelcome truths is a whopper. But why mope around once it’s been done? Why did I sit there all gloomy? All right, I hadn’t handled the truth as he would have. I had administered it as medication, as a strong dose, instead of applying it in little pinches. Still, despite having bungled, why didn’t I move on?

  Then it dawned on Diego. Maybe, the problem wasn’t one of delivering too much truthfulness, or of bringing bad news. Maybe I was the bad news.

  This was more serious. He stopped the car, cut the engine, and got out. “Señor,” he said, swinging my door open and pointing at the track before us. “Camina.” Walk. He tapped his head. “Good for lógica.”

  The spot was pretty and the late afternoon mood becalming. No one was about. Mechanically I lifted myself out. We went perhaps a hundred yards, Diego using the time to allow his logic to warm up.

  “You muy bad news?” he asked when he felt ready. “You have niño with other woman?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ah, you sleep with best freend of freend?”

  “Not that,” I said quietly.

  “You make love to her young seester?”

  “No, Diego.”

  More such scenes were unveiled – me always in a starring role – lusty images from Diego’s personal decameron: Saturday seductions of virgins, orgies with friends on Sundays, cousins coupling during the vacations, aunts and uncles not above a little occasional swapping. When the venal inventory was exhausted, none of it sticking, he was deeply puzzled. “Señor, what you do?”

  “I spied on her, Diego. That’s what I told her.”

  He halted on the spot. His mouth dropped open. When this sank in, there was a laugh, a full, hard laugh from deep inside his belly. He bent over. “Señor,” he cried. “No bad news! Good news. Buena!” Water filled his eyes and dribbled down his cheeks. “Whoamen always like if freends spy. Say, No like. But always like. I know.”

  I continued along the track. He scrambled to catch up. “Whoamen spy on men also, señor. Mucho más. But men no see. Men blind.”

  “It wasn’t that simple, Diego.”

  The track was leading into a coffee grove. Well into it he tugged at my shirt and tapped his head. The berry-laden bushes pressed in, witnesses to a fresh round of lógica. “Comprendo,” he said slowly. The space was secretive and cosy, good for a final insight. “You see what she no want you see.”

  In Diego’s world the rules of life are richly speckled, and stealing a peek is no misdemeanour, but even he accepted that privacy theft is bad. “Comprendo. Freend no happy. She disgustá. Naturalmente. Si. Comprendo.”

  Truly, Rachel was not happy. But what’s the opposite of happiness? What wa
s her reaction when I mentioned Morsi Abou-Ghazi? Nothing showed. All she radiated was a deep weariness.

  “How do you know about Morsi?”

  “My line of work,” I mumbled. “Wish to God I never had it.”

  And so I started at the end and worked my way back to the beginning. Rachel’s visits to Alexandria. Morsi’s conversations on the yacht with business associates picked up by a microphone concealed in a computer in his office. Him suspecting he was being listened to and, for all I know, throwing the PC overboard. Morsi’s gun deals and drug running. Morsi’s Foundation. Morsi and Nikko, two buccaneers sharing a captaincy.

  I rattled off details of one larcenous project after another, Rachel’s posture remaining still. No flicker of reaction. Had she in her own way also been rehearsing?

  When she interrupted it was for clarification. “Are you here officially, Carson? Are you about to ask me to cooperate?”

  “Rachel. No!”

  “Your line of work. Keeping track of Morsi. That’s what you said.”

  “That’s my excuse.”

  “Excuse? For what?”

  “For knowing.”

  Rachel absorbed this. “For knowing? Not sure I get that. What else do you know? And who else knows?”

  Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. Hers had hardened with distrust.

  “Only two. One of them acquired information using procedures like mine and she went to Irving Heywood.”

  “Heywood?” Rachel’s head tilted with new alarm.

  “Except he refuses to believe it. He thinks I’m slinging mud at you to get at him. It sounds bizarre, I know. He’s paranoid.”

  “Paranoid?” Rachel said grimly. “Who isn’t? What’s Heywood’s reason?”

  “The computer virus that killed off his network. Remember it?”

  “That silly perturbation?”

  “He thought it was directed at him, to make him look incompetent. Then information came to light which made him suspect I had a hand in the disaster, maybe even created it…to get him.” I described how I found Benedictus Athenasiu in Transylvania and the steps I took to hide that, to prevent an investigation into operations at the embassy in Bucharest.