Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766)

by Caplan, Thomas

  Ty’s thoughts hung suspended in the shaft of spring sunlight that lit his mother’s kitchen.

  “Ty, can I give you some advice?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Find someone to hold on to,” she said. Then, when enough time had passed and he’d responded only with a familiar expression that suggested he was far away and lost in contemplation, she adopted a lighter tone and added, “So you still haven’t told me anything about Camp David. Was the President nice?”

  “Very nice,” Ty told her, snapping back.

  “And Daphne?”

  “Sweet, and not in any way affected. Neither were her friends.”

  “How many were there?”

  “I didn’t count. Half a dozen, maybe.”

  “And that was all?”

  “That was all,” Ty confirmed. “It’s actually a very simple place—nice cabins, fantastic trails, a refuge. We had dinner. They screened Greg’s film. Everyone seemed to like it. We bowled a few games. Then the kids went their way. The President and Mrs. White went theirs. And I went mine. What’s the matter?”

  “To be honest, I was hoping for more . . . glamour.”

  Ty wondered if his mother sensed his evasions. “Sorry,” he said, “but that was the extent of it.”

  “Well, never mind. Did you happen to notice those beautiful plates you sent me from Florence last year?” she went on, glancing toward the glass doors of her Early American hutch. “I think they look just so nice in there, don’t you?”

  On his flight to L.A. that evening, after two extra-dry martinis, Ty struggled to put the weekend into perspective. Adjusting the angle of his seat and footrest, he watched the G550’s lengthened shadow skirt the cloudscape. It was hypnotic, especially as viewed through the plane’s huge windows, and in no time, as he invariably did aloft, he began to see his life, both his past and recent events, with distance.

  He had not thought as an intelligence officer for a long time, he realized, and yet he’d become an intelligence officer precisely because the way of thinking it required came naturally to him.

  At Fort Huachuca—or Thunder Mountain, as he’d learned to call it during those months in Arizona—he had trained in detection and interrogation rather than code breaking. He had requested a branch transfer after four months of advanced infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and been granted it, he believed, on the basis of his unusually precise and capacious memory (the same knack that helped him learn lines so easily), his instinctive ability to ingratiate himself and, most of all, his father—particularly his father’s insistence that he be tutored in foreign languages, beginning with Mandarin as a child. The college-bound son of the local laundry owner had taught him for the first six years of his life. In adolescence Ty had let the language lapse, but in college, when he’d needed to raise his grade-point average, it had come back to him with surprising ease. The laundryman’s son, it turned out, had given him perfect vowel sounds, a second tongue. The President was correct. Ty had soon discovered that on the telephone he could pass himself off as Chinese.

  Through middle school he had taken lessons in tae kwon do, then judo and jujitsu. His father had called these sports “the final means of communication.” At the time Ty had resented Will Hunter’s iron insistence upon their worth. Now, though, he had black belts in three martial arts as well as an inculcated fearlessness in the face of danger.

  Suddenly he wondered if he might have use for those skills and that fearlessness again. In his army days, he had played his cards as they lay, done the best he could at each job, hoping that somehow effort and excellence would yield success and satisfaction. He did not have any specific future in mind, but the nearness of death had concentrated his energies and given him a determination to fulfill his dreams long before they’d become explicit.

  After his armored personnel carrier had flipped over and caught fire, he’d come to feel that he had survived by chance and was alive on borrowed time, without any real right to be.

  It had happened at night somewhere out in the middle of Texas, not too far from Fort Hood, where they were based. He’d been along for the ride. At the University of Virginia, he’d been a ROTC cadet, and that had been the deal for which he’d signed up: four years of his life for four years of college and a bachelor of science, which still didn’t strike him as half bad when he thought about it. If people wanted to know more—because there was no one to whom he could even allude to the truth and because he’d been ordered to flush certain memories from his mind—he would ramble. “Say the word ‘infantry’ and you think of boots on the ground,” he would tell them, “men marching and all that. But these days it’s all mechanized. Oh, we marched, but not nearly as much as we drove around in APCs. Just to give you some idea, the Third Army now has a hundred and fifty more tanks than did the old First Armored.”

  His whole time in the hospital and rehab, almost eighteen months when he added it up, he’d kept telling himself, You’re being tested, Ty. The notion had taken root and fortified his spirit through some pretty dark days. Prior to that he’d been just another guy, not a cover boy. He’d been looking for the right woman, not a thousand of the wrong ones. He might have become any one of a hundred traveling salesmen or lawyers or midlevel executives flying in an economy section rather than privately. Or was his memory fooling him? He’d gotten knocked around plenty. He’d fallen for girls and been pushed away more often than he cared to remember. “Oh, I’m so flattered, but . . .” they’d say. Yet he was far from the only one. The same thing had happened to 99 percent of the guys he’d hung out with. What choice had they had but to make a habit of unrequited love?

  After the crash, of course, things changed. Right away it had been apparent that a lot of reconstruction would have to be done if he were ever going to do anything as basic as chew or smile. So, naturally, when the option had presented itself, he’d thought why not let them improve a few things, correct nature’s flaws while they were at it?

  As he sipped his gin and the juniper berry freed him from his inhibitions, he wondered once more what it was that, despite his astounding good fortune, still unnerved him. Ever since his recovery, he’d worn his face as a mask. He couldn’t help it. It was this new face that had brought him into focus for Greg Logan and that had eventually brought him fame, then fortune. But was his public in love with someone who only appeared to be Ty Hunter? Would anyone—or could he even enable anyone to—see past the cut-out-and-keep boy from his original Abercrombie & Fitch ad, see beyond the man the world had come to know to the one only he did?

  In a sense it no longer mattered. His life had taken yet another unexpected turn. Who knew where it would lead? He inhaled a deep breath, endeavoring to still the sudden conflict between his old training and fresh emotions. He was neither paranoid nor lacking a skeptical turn of mind. The imagination, which could be so useful to an actor finding his way into a character, could never be controlled completely, and as he contemplated the assignment the President had asked him to complete, he began to embroider one scenario after another, each more alarming than the one it replaced. The more he thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed. How could it ever have been otherwise? Despite the inordinate randomness and improbability of his own life, human nature remained what it was and always had been. This world remained this world. Simply because Ty Hunter had stepped aside from it for a delightful, carefree moment did not mean that the age-old tournament of good versus evil had ceased. For seconds, as he drifted off, stanzas of his father’s favorite hymn moved yet again upon his lips:

  Once to every man and nation

  Comes the moment to decide,

  In the strife of truth with falsehood,

  For the good or evil side.

  A man’s past is part and parcel of his future, he reminded himself as he reawakened. The context of his or any life was inescapable.

 
; It was dark by the time his plane put down at LAX. The driver from the car service, yet another once-hopeful actor fending off middle age, was waiting for him at baggage claim. They chatted until their abrupt amiability came to feel forced, then grew quiet again.

  It was Saturday. The young were out in the warm and fragrant night. The soft tops of their convertibles had been retracted; their music pulsed and receded along the freeway, inducing Ty to put down his own window so that he could savor it more fully. The air, in which scents of the warming Pacific and lushly overgrown foothills collided, was ripe with the possibility of utter if temporary happiness that for a century had been the city’s siren song.

  They took the Sunset Boulevard exit from the 405, banked and wound round its curves for several miles until they turned left into a canyon past Bel Air, ascended Pinnacle Drive, and entered the gates of La Casa Encantada, which was now, improbably, Ty’s home. La Encantada, as he had quickly come to call it, had been built in the twenties by one of the great stars of the silent screen who had failed in his attempt to transition to talkies. Far from the forbidding mansion Ty had expected when he’d first heard it was for sale, it was a cheerful, sprawling place, lamplit now but filled with sunlight from dawn through dusk. Its rooms were decorated without regard to its Spanish-Moorish exterior in a jolly pastiche of English and French styles of the last three centuries. He had bought the house with its furnishings, which had included low coffee tables and swiveling ottomans, three-legged chairs, lacquered Chinese commodes and other eccentric but socially practical pieces that had been designed by the well-known actor-decorator Billy Haines in the thirties and now gave the place a distinctly Old Hollywood air, the illusory depth of a high gloss.

  He tipped the driver, turned off the alarms, left his cases in the front hall to be dealt with the next morning, and made his way immediately through the sitting room on the west side of the house and onto a terrace of hand-glazed tiles.

  A step down beyond a hedgerow, pandered to by royal palms, a swimming pool of pink alabaster had been built into a ledge of the lush hillside, its privacy ensured by stands of spruce and eucalyptus.

  Ty shed his clothes and dove naked into the cool, dark water. After ten laps he paused and looked up at the partially illuminated mansion, its intricate silhouette eerie against the night sky. He knew that, like much of the town and many of its inhabitants, his house was an illusion, a magnificent façade upon which years of superficial surgery had forestalled any intimation of the decades of structural decay beneath.

  Irritated, even if intrigued that his long-anticipated chance to concentrate on renovating his home was to be disrupted by the President’s unexpected request, he put his face back into the water and began the first of another round of ninety freestyle laps, turning at each end with the urgency and concentration of a natural competitor, propelling himself with a commando’s power.

  After drying off, Ty went immediately to his bedroom. His housekeeper had prepared it that afternoon, and he felt comfortable, if momentarily lonely, in the enormous bed. He fell asleep quickly, without setting an alarm for the first time in months.

  At 7:43 A.M., however, the insistent ringtone of his BlackBerry startled him from a dream in which both he and the world had been much younger. Fragments of it lingered in his consciousness as he groped for the device on his nightstand. He had been a frat boy in Charlottesville, en route somewhere with his friends, but where exactly? All save the setting of his dream dissolved the instant he palmed his phone. The message he received was from NetJets, confirming his booking of an overnight flight from L.A. to London in three days. As he read it, his temper rose. He had made no such reservation, but had no difficulty imagining who had. He saved the message, then turned back onto his side in a vain attempt to recapture sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  From the terrace of his hotel suite, Philip Frost studied the medieval façades and rooflines of Prague. He had arrived at the Four Seasons after midnight, so this was his first glimpse of the city in daylight, and almost immediately his gaze was caught by a small wooden skiff bearing an oarsman and his girl along the Vltava. High on the opposite riverbank, the morning sun dappled the crenellations of Prague Castle.

  At twenty minutes to eight, dressed for the business day, he proceeded to breakfast in the Allegro Restaurant, just off the lobby. He was the third customer. The maître d’hôtel led him across the polished marble floor to a table for two, where he assumed the seat facing the door.

  “Will anyone be joining you?” the maître d’ inquired.

  “Yes, one gentleman for certain,” Philip replied. “And perhaps there might be another coming along a bit later.”

  The maître d’ nodded. “Coffee?” he asked, handing Philip a menu.

  “Please, black,” Philip said. “Then I will wait for my first guest before deciding.”

  The wait was short. No sooner had the maître d’ departed than Sven Lorentz appeared. Tall and balding, he had the aspect of an aging footballer.

  Lorentz took his seat and appeared immediately comfortable in it. “My, my.” He sighed but smiled at Philip. “So it’s come to this, has it? I have to admit it’s sooner than I would have predicted.”

  “Really?” Philip asked. “I would have said just the opposite. Three years, after all, is a long time for a man to be doing the kind of work I’ve been doing.”

  “It’s very important work,” Sven replied, perusing the menu.

  “None more,” Philip said, “but arduous, and even the best intentions have half-lives.”

  “Are you getting stale?”

  “Tired maybe, but not stale. Of course, the thoroughness involved is exhausting in its way. But that is not my dilemma. Think back a few years, Sven. There comes a time, doesn’t there?”

  “Could it be that all you need is to refresh your perspective?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There is more involved in deterring nuclear threats than disarming and decommissioning weapons, as crucial as those protocols are. For instance, one might concentrate on the emerging science of nuclear forensics. You have the necessary background, and you could do a world of good there.”

  “I don’t see myself in a laboratory somehow.”

  “Logic suggests that the only sure way to dissuade a nation with nukes from selling them, or even giving them away to a sympathetic proxy, is to leave no doubt in its leaders’ minds that whatever mask or masks they’ve contrived will be pierced, expeditiously, even from debris, and that once their identities are known, they will be subject to what President Kennedy, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so colorfully termed ‘a full retaliatory response.’”

  Philip nodded. “We both know there are better candidates for that sort of work than me. And besides, it doesn’t pay well.”

  “It pays enough.”

  “I’m not a rich man, Sven. I might have been by now had I stayed on in the City. Mind you, money hasn’t been my priority up to this point, but a man’s life changes. How can I settle down and take on responsibilities without enough of it?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Isabella,” Philip answered.

  “Still?” Sven did his best to sound surprised. “The same woman for quite some time now. It’s almost out of character.”

  “You’ve met her.”

  “Only in passing.”

  “Nevertheless, you’re not blind.”

  “No, but love is. Is that what you expect me to say?”

  “I’d expect you to say that in this case it obviously isn’t. Let me be candid. I have enjoyed working with you and our group immensely. It has been the greatest privilege of my life, as well, at times, as one of the great pleasures. In all modesty I think I’ve excelled at the work, too. To use a cliché, I do feel I’ve ‘made a difference,’ which is satisfying.”
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  “You have. You’re my top performer, numero uno, but you already know that. To say I’m reluctant to lose you is to understate things woefully, but I do understand.”

  “And I am reluctant to go, but at the end of the day a married man, perhaps a family man one day, has to think of more than himself.”

  Sven shook his head. “As usual you win the argument,” he said. “I concede. Anyway, congratulations are in order. When did you decide?”

  “I’ve been in the process for quite some time.”

  “What I meant was, when did you make it official?” Sven said, tucking into the first of his eggs.

  Philip smiled ruefully. “We haven’t yet,” he admitted.

  “But she has accepted your offer?”

  “She will.”

  “You seem very confident, even for you, Philip.”

  “It’s my nature,” Philip said.

  Sven swallowed. “Well, I suppose you’ve every right to be,” he continued. “It is the age of preconsummated marriage, after all.”

  “Exactly,” Philip told him.

  “Your replacement—No, I don’t like that word; it doesn’t fit. Your successor will be Rhys Llewellyn.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “He wanted to join us, but his flight from Brussels arrives a few minutes after my train back to Vienna departs.”

  Philip nodded. “I’m grateful to you for taking the time to let me tell you in person what I couldn’t put in my letter.”

  “You’re welcome,” Sven Lorentz assured him.

  “I will bring Llewellyn entirely up to speed,” Philip said. “I won’t leave you in the lurch. Don’t worry about that.”