A hint of bafflement broke through Rachel’s stony stare. I explained my concern at the relentless digging into work patterns, including hers, that would have occurred, resulting in questions about her absences. Lines of disbelief around her mouth tightened when I described Benedictus’s substitute, Radu Corioanu, and her head tilted with yet more scepticism when I explained the plague’s report, Heywood’s turning to Jaime, she pin-pointing the truth which inflamed Heywood, who then began fashioning a case for me to be investigated, part of which was that he had concluded I was somehow in a partnership with Krause, but Jaime then tipping me off.
Rachel stirred. The wicker chair creaked with her movement forward. Her voice was bland. “So nice of this girl. Are you her type? Let’s go back a bit. Anne-Marie interprets my postcard in a particular way, you agree with it, and she confides where I am. If you came here because you wanted to be supportive, why bother me with all this intrigue? It’s grotesque. But I don’t see its relevance.”
“Because that’s not all.”
I described the methods I used over the years to piece together bits of information from nearly everywhere. I went back in time to when Rachel departed on her first posting and how an innocent test of a new database threw me into a habit. And in this way I came to Iain Bruce, Pekka, and Eduardo de Castro Santiago, congenial memories for her, but ghosts stalking me. When I explained I’d come to Turrialba to tell her how I betrayed her through the years, tears welled up in my eyes.
“Go,” she said then. “Please go.”
21 CHAPTER TWENTYONE
Diego located me next day on one of the avenues leading to the Turrialba River. “Why you hide, señor?”
“This is hiding?”
“You no at hotel. I look. Por todas partes, señor. Everywhere. You say you wait for freend. But you no wait. You no there.”
“There was no message today, Diego. Nor likely tomorrow. Maybe never.”
“Señor, you mistake. Beeg mistake. I have message. You come. Freend say you come.” He pointed at the taxi. “Pues. You come. Pronto.” He grabbed my arm, bundled me inside and drove off as if possessed. On the road to Guayabo he picked up speed, ignoring the shimmying. Above the racket of the rattling car I had to shout to make myself heard.
“What message, Diego?”
“Freend give me message and I give you message.”
“Where did she give you the message? Did she come to the hotel?”
“No señor. At casa. Por la mañana. This morning.”
“She called you?”
“No señor. I go see her.”
“Why?”
“To say: Señor, he make beeg mistake, sure. He no know mucha.
But if no make mistake, no learn. Now you learn. Now you okay.”
“And she said what?”
“She say…She say, I know only half story. I no know her half. I say I no comprendo. Then she say, find señor, tell him come. But you hide. I look long time.”
A second afternoon with Rachel. It is etched in my memory like a precious engraving.
She was waiting on the porch in a long sleeveless dress, light blue cotton, tailored at the waist. A piece of dark jewellery, an expressive African necklace, adorned the space between the halters. She waved away my attempt at an excuse, Diego’s excuse, for taking so long to get there. Sit down. She spoke as if I had arrived for an appointment. I have some questions.
Many questions.
Why, at the beginning, when she had just departed for Vienna and I wanted to test a new database, did I look in it for her? Why this focus on her and not someone else?
Because when she was gone I felt a gap. I wanted to sense she remained near.
A gap?
I missed our lunches and the impromptu hallway conversations. I was preoccupied with her.
Preoccupied? In what way?
I admired her ease with people and her ease with me. It wouldn’t let me go. I had become used to having long, imaginary conversations with her.
Why didn’t I let her know this?
Weren’t there already about a dozen others in the boat pursuing her? If I had jumped in I would have been just one of them. Number thirteen.
Rachel pondered this. With a slight head movement she showed that she recognized the point’s validity. She continued. How over the years did I acquire the information? Was she shadowed? Was her mail intercepted? Were there paid informants in the embassies, or the apartment buildings where she lived? Or was it done only electronically?
Purely the latter, I confirmed.
The interrogation turned technical. Of the techniques used, did any make use of listening devices?
No, never, I answered, except one planted once in a computer in Morsi’s office on the yacht. A small transmitter linked to the device was in a life-vest bin on the lower deck, though it soon stopped functioning, perhaps because Morsi had the yacht swept for bugs. But it was done to listen to Morsi, not her, and anyway, no conversation involving Rachel was ever picked up.
She nodded. It had to be that way. I never set foot in that office. So, no listening devices, no camcorder footage, no hired paparazzi snapping photos with zillion millimetre cameras? I answered, no. Bugged phone lines? No, I said, not hers, but Morsi and Nikko were observed. Their phone calls were monitored.
How then did the information arise?
From electronic transactions mostly captured in standard business databases and sometimes from the closed-circuit cameras in public places.
“So you generally accessed information on what people do, where they go, where they stay, what they buy, who they are with, but you have nothing on what they think or feel, unless something’s been said into a cell phone, or if they’ve revealed their inner selves in e-mails. Correct?”
“In your case, that is correct.”
Rachel contemplated what she had heard, then got up, went into the house and returned minutes later with a tray. On it were the tea pot, two cups, and a plate of cookies. She sat again and, waiting for the tea to steep, studied me, as if I was an object whose hidden workings she wished to fathom. After she had poured, she remarked: “What you’ve been saying is that for many years you knew certain things about the people I was involved with, things I might not have known, because I never saw their credit card statements. On the other hand, what you learned about me I would have told you if you’d asked. I didn’t broadcast my relationships, but I didn’t consider them a secret either. After thinking it over, I have to say it doesn’t really bother me that you found out about them. But I do have complaints, Carson. Two in fact.”
The pensive way she took her cup – I leaned forward for mine – she could have been settling in for a pleasant hour of Sunday-afternoon, heart-to-heart banter.
“The first. Why didn’t you signal years ago how you felt towards me? I was never sure what you were thinking. Remember the time you took me skiing, when we paused at a cabin in the woods? You asked about my work. Endless questions, which I appreciated. But, I wondered, is what I do his only interest? You finally asked if I had time for a private life. An encouraging remark. I think I made light of it, because I needed to determine if you were being merely polite. And sure enough, you followed up with something very neutral, something terribly dull. I can’t recall what it was, but it sounded like you were mimicking some kind of manual. I drew my conclusions. Why were you so reserved? Were you worried I would ridicule you? If only…” Rachel’s voice was tinged with rue, but she shrugged it off, as if that page had been turned long ago. Gloomily she added: “So you consulted databases instead. What a substitute for a conversation. The way I see it, Carson, is that you suffered from some form of monomania and the tragedy is that you allowed it to waste precious years.”
This assertion by Rachel, that I had turned a whole decade into a wasteland, had been forming in my mind too, since the day I set out to find her. Her phrasing of it was so simple that it caused me to behold a related truth: my conviction that Rachel was unreachable had al
so bred self-commiseration, a lens if ever there was one for viewing the world with contempt. My expression turned grim when I saw the connection. Rachel interpreted my dark look as implying that I wasn’t in agreement with her. “You wish to rebut?” she asked.
Humbled by her fairness I shook my head. “Two complaints, Rachel?” I asked weakly. “The second one?”
She took her time, looking first at the porcelain cup between her hands, then absent-mindedly into the garden. When she spoke there was a tremor. “It’s that you knew about the business Nikko and Morsi were in, yet did nothing to warn me.” She put the cup down, clenched her hands and brought them to her chin. “I lived a lie with them, the opposite of what I always wanted. My years were wasted too.” She faltered, the lower lip quivered. “Excuse me,” she whispered, rising and leaving the porch. From inside the house came the sound of water running from a tap.
I waited and half the afternoon seemed to pass, so long was the parade of failure which now circled me. I was sure a taunt rose over it, serving to confirm that I had prevented Rachel from living her life as a masterpiece. When this struck me – that I was the one who reduced Rachel’s grand existence to a kind of pustule – my soul cramped up with the pain of a cascading spasm.
In reality Rachel was away for only minutes, for when she returned the tea has scarcely cooled. Her eyes were red. I half rose to try to help in some way. “Sorry,” she apologised, “I’m not often weepy, but no one is strong all the time.” When I mumbled once more how deeply ashamed I was she shook her head. “Yours is only half the story, Carson. My part is no more brilliant.”
On the porch the focus shifted. With my secrets laid bare, Rachel followed suit. Now she did the talking and I the listening. Step by step she led me into the inner recesses of her being, that long-sought-for place of mystery for me. She even began with some saintly reasoning.
Had you warned me about Nikko and Morsi, everything would have been different. But if you hadn’t tracked my travelling, you wouldn’t have known about them. In that case you couldn’t have warned me. So that what happened would anyway have happened.
In this way, with this one determined stroke of charity, she absolved me. I protested, but she waved it away. She had, she countered, only herself to blame for being taken in by Nikko and Morsi.
I should have seen there was something that wasn’t ringing true. But when I questioned the Foundation, a reasonable answer always came along. At the Board meetings we sat through convincing presentations by experts. The atmosphere was unfailingly altruistic. Everyone wanted to do good. Everyone wanted to advance the cause of the world’s disadvantaged children. I was hooked on it from the start. With hindsight I can see that I should have been more critical. Well, I blinded myself. And willfully not recognising a truth is as good a reason for shame as withholding it, don’t you agree?
Once more I tried to protest, and again Rachel stopped me with a raised hand. The early years with Nikko and the Foundation were just a warm-up. Her real season of shame, she claimed pensively, got going in earnest because of what didn’t happen when we met up in Berlin. She reached over to touch the back of my hand, a gesture to indicate how we had both failed each other then. Berlin was a team effort in blundering.
I want you to understand the dynamic there, how a fuse was lit. Nikko and I had split up not long before. I had no regrets, but hadn’t fully put the affair behind me either. Then, at the very start he was there. The banker in the café, remember? I had planned to tell you about him, though not just then, not at the start of the few days of vacation for which I had high hopes. But as the days slipped by I couldn’t bring myself to own up to having had that affair. Why was that? Why did he cast a shadow?
I began to think, to give her possible reasons, but the question wasn’t directed at me, for Rachel continued with a steady listing of more imponderables.
Was it because I had nothing to show for the years with Nikko? Not just those years, but the ones before too? Were all the years, despite the career bravura, not adding up to much? Long ago I began to worry that I lacked a gift, I mean of the special kind which Anne-Marie possesses so brilliantly.
These questions were on my mind in Berlin, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about them. Three relaxing days, yet I couldn’t steer the conversation to a point where examining this with you would be natural. You were avoiding such topics too and I wondered if you were in the same boat, you know, the sailing seemingly clear, except there’s no sense of where to. Suppose one of us had broken through this. Suppose one of us had decided to be less dreadfully correct.
After Berlin this bothered me and my aimlessness worsened. Then Irving Heywood called to say I had been named ambassador. I don’t think he was ever more pleased. I ought to have felt honoured – everyone was excited – but to me it confirmed I was now truly stuck on a track which gives the appearance of leading somewhere, but actually only leads back to itself.
Rachel explained she coped with the sham of a career seemingly going forward by looking back. When her diplomatic appointment was made public, she contacted Iain. Amongst all her men he’d been the most sympathetic. Ostensibly the call to him was to share the news. Iain was surprised, then excited, and, yes, he’d love to meet. And so Rachel set off for Vienna where they huddled in a café for hours – beginning with coffee and moving to cognac – quickly agreeing to revitalize a friendship. As afternoon turned into evening, with several carafes of Veltliner having emptied, Rachel aired every mundane and transmundane life-course preoccupation she’d ever had. Iain, avuncular and kind, nodded unendingly. When all the large issues had been ventilated – and put back into storage – they turned to smaller, more durable topics, such as books read and films seen and places visited since parting a half dozen years before. They found they had Costa Rica in common and were both taken by it. In fact, Iain stated, he was planning to buy a house there in the country, one with a view. “Retirement, it creeps up on you.” The idea of a country house in Costa Rica stirred Rachel. Could they share it? “But, yes. Oh, yes. Why ever not?”
On the spot we agreed on the practicalities of buying one. Knowing there would be a place, a house that was half-mine, it struck me as a first, essential step towards making other, more drastic decisions. A few months later, about the time I got to Bucharest, Iain had signed a deal. I was planning to go see it, when circumstances changed.
A letter arrived from Morsi, hand-delivered to the embassy, in which he set out his concern for the Foundation. The implications for the Foundation of my split with Nikko had never been addressed and I was interested to hear that Nikko had resigned from the Board. Since I was the third member, Morsi wanted to discuss with me what should happen next. Could I fit that in? He said the messenger would pick up a reply next day.
I took Morsi’s letter at face value. It brought back memories of interesting times. I also felt I still had some responsibilities and wrote back consenting to meet. Communicating through a private courier struck me as excessively formal, but I believed it was Morsi’s way and thought nothing of it.
A few weeks later Morsi’s reply suggested a meeting in Alexandria. Air tickets were enclosed; a suite had been reserved in a hotel. The meeting took place in a conference room. Only us two. We talked for an hour about the Foundation. Should it be dissolved? We agreed, ideally no. Was it viable without Nikko? We agreed, yes, if a new top-notch financial mind could be brought in. Following that it could be transformed. Into what? I presented my ideas.
It felt good to be reshaping and re-energizing the Foundation and we worked out a plan. Pointing then through the window at his yacht a few hundred yards off shore, Morsi invited me for dinner. On board he was a gracious host. When I left to be taxied back to shore he took my hand and said, “We will create a magnificent new Foundation, Rachel.”
It inspired me. The Foundation coming out of slumber, more money available than before, my influence on it increased, and my situation in Bucharest such that I would have time for it. Tra
velling back to Bucharest I had a new sense of purpose. Some weeks later I went to Alexandria again.
The second visit was much the same. Morsi had commissioned detailed studies for a new Foundation structure. There was a list of candidates for the new financial position. We reviewed all this. We agreed on a new management structure and processes for determining priority regions and high pay-back activities. Afterwards, another dinner on the yacht. This time when I left Morsi kissed me on the cheek.
The third visit. More good progress with the Foundation, while on the yacht the dinner atmosphere turns intimate.
I want to describe Morsi to you, Carson. Perhaps you will understand why we became lovers.
Hear his voice. Deep and slow. R’s roll off his tongue. Soft guttural Arabic tones break through into his English. A lovely accent. The voice is relaxing.
Listen to his words. They focus on beauty. Beautiful thoughts. Beautiful minds. Beautiful objects. The words are rich in allegory. He quotes poets. He translates Arabic sayings into enchanting English. “Beauty, intellect, vitality, all that is good, Rachel, has converged in you.”
See his eyes. See them take you in, sense them entering your thoughts, watch them transform. They turn soft with wonder, as if in you a whole universe can be seen. They glisten and beseech, and when you say something they fill with joy. His eyes bless you for the company you confer.
Watch him move. Observe hesitancy and assertion mixed. Each action begins as an exploration, but ends with strong determination. He lifts a glass this way, or points at features in an artwork. Or opens a door. At the end of that third dinner, taking my hand with just such an interplay – ambiguity and precision – he leads me through that door, deeper into his private chambers.
Rachel paused to see how I was taking this. From within a trance I nodded, a signal I was with her, unseen on Morsi’s yacht, having no qualms about passing through that door with her. “I can imagine how it was,” I murmured. “It was fated to be that way.” Again Rachel reached over and with a fingertip brushed my hand.
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