Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  “Good.” He leaned into her briefly, then flicked some water at her, a smile finally breaking through the over-cast and lighting up his face.

  “Hey!” Carrie jumped back. “Now, would you get out of that tub before you shrivel up like a big old prune? This water is free-eezing!”

  He grinned. “Remember when I was little and I thought I was going to go down the drain when you pulled the plug?”

  She cackled and waved her hand over the stopper chain, chanting, “Oh, my goodness, oh, my soul! There goes Jonah down the hole…”

  He shrieked with laughter and beat her to pulling the chain.

  Carrie took Jonah downstairs after his bath, scrubbed, combed and wearing flannel pj’s to ward off the chill on a fall night that had suddenly turned wintry. They found Huxley in the kitchen, just finishing his dinner. He looked up when they came in and put down his fork, swiveling on the chair to face Jonah.

  “Hey, there, Jonah. You look very smart.”

  “I had a bath.”

  “Mmm. Look, mate, I’m really sorry I was so late getting back. I know we were supposed to kick the ball out back, but—”

  “It’s okay. It was kind of too cold, anyway, and I wanted to play on the computer.”

  “Right. I guess soccer season’s pretty much over, anyway.”

  “Yeah.” Jonah climbed up onto a chair while Carrie poured him a glass of milk and set out a couple of oatmeal cookies for his bedtime snack. “Hey, Mark?” Jonah said.

  “What?”

  “You want to hear me read a book before I go to bed? I can read, you know.”

  “No kidding. That would be great—if it’s all right with your mum,” he added, looking up at Carrie.

  She shrugged. “I suppose, just this once.”

  “And then you can read me one,” Jonah added to Huxley.

  “That sounds fair.”

  “And then my mom can read one,” Jonah said.

  “Three books? Don’t push your luck, buddy,” she said. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”

  “You know,” Huxley said, “while I was cleaning out back this morning, I noticed a woodpile back there and I brought some in. Your friend Tracy said the fireplaces are working and cleaned. How about if we make a fire in the front room? Would that be all right?”

  “Yeah, a fire!” Jonah said. “That would be cool, hey, Mom? We can read by the fire.”

  “I suppose,” she said reluctantly. “But you have half an hour till bedtime, and not a minute more.”

  Jonah was asleep on the couch by halfway through the second book.

  “So much for the readers’ marathon,” Carrie murmured.

  “I do believe he finds my reading boring,” Huxley said, rising off his chair. “Do you want me to carry him upstairs?”

  “No,” Carrie said, jumping up. “I’ll do it. Thanks, though,” she added as an afterthought.

  “He’s not too heavy?”

  “I’ve done it lots of times. I’m used to taking care of him on my own, and I can do it just fine now, thank you very much.”

  He sat back down as Carrie lifted Jonah in her arms and took him up to his bed, settling him in as sleety rain sounded a soft tattoo in the window. He rolled over onto his side, pulling his knees up into his chest. Carrie tucked the covers around him and leaned down to kiss his cheek, a lump forming in her throat as she inhaled his clean, baby soap scent.

  When she came back downstairs, Huxley was crouched on the rug in front of the hearth, rearranging the logs with a poker. She stood in the doorway for a moment, watching his back, debating saying good-night herself and then going upstairs to take that long bubble bath she’d been promising herself all evening. But when he suddenly seemed to sense her presence and turned around to look at her, Huxley’s expression was worried, his gray eyes sad in the light of the flickering flames.

  She sighed and moved into the room, settling into an armchair near the hearth and tucking her blue-jeaned legs up under her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “For what?”

  “For snapping at you. And for sounding so insufferably self-pitying.”

  “You don’t sound self-pitying. You sound angry. You have a right to be.”

  “But not with you. This isn’t your fault. So, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “No problem.” He cocked his thumb at the ceiling. “All tucked in?”

  “Gonzo. He was tired. We had a long day.”

  “I’m glad I got a chance to see him before…” He hesitated. “Before he went to bed.”

  She watched him. “You’re surprisingly good with kids.”

  “Surprisingly?”

  “For someone in your business. Drum wasn’t. He loved Jonah, but he really didn’t understand kids all that well or relate. Anyway…” She stared at the flames for a few minutes.

  “Big family,” Huxley said.

  She frowned. “Pardon.”

  “I come from a big family. Huge, as English families generally go. I’ve got eight nieces and nephews. Cousins by the dozens, too.”

  Carrie nodded. “Lucky. I had one sister and my parents. And that was about it. There were a couple of uncles, some cousins in the wings somewhere, but we didn’t see them all that often even before my family died, and afterward…” She shrugged.

  Huxley settled more comfortably on the floor and they sat saying nothing for a while, just watching the flames and the occasional shower of sparks as air pockets exploded in the wood.

  And then, out of the blue, Huxley said, “I was married. My wife was killed two years ago.”

  Carrie watched his lined face in the glow of the embers.

  “She was a nurse. She was working in the Middle East for Doctors Without Borders. We met in Lebanon. She was Irish, from Dublin. She had blue eyes and flaming red hair and freckles. Not as many as Tengwall, mind you, but a fair lot, just the same.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Nineteen months and twelve days. She died in a helicopter crash over northern Israel. They were flying medical supplies to Gaza.” He poked the fire once more. “Somebody put a bomb on board. The Palestinians blamed the Israelis and the Israelis blamed the Palestinians. Tel Aviv didn’t like the fact that medical supplies were going in to the camps, but there were some radical Islamic groups who thought the medical charities were a cover for western spies. They never quite worked out who got access to the cargo. There were various theories, but in that kind of situation, everybody’s got an agenda. It’s a liar’s market.”

  “A pox on all their houses,” Carrie said quietly, angrily. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too. She was a great girl. We’d just found out she was pregnant,” he added quietly.

  “Oh, God. Mark…”

  He exhaled heavily. “Life’s a bitch, and then you die.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  The fire crackled and outside, thunder rolled ominously.

  “Mark,” she ventured. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something happened this afternoon, didn’t it? Tucker said you were called to your embassy. And now, you seem…I don’t know…worried. What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Or nothing you can talk about?”

  “Both. Neither.”

  “Is it Drum? Has he been spotted?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Carrie sighed. “Fine, don’t tell me. Christ, I am so tired of riddles and bloody spy games.”

  He looked up at her. “I’m not playing games, Carrie. I just don’t know where your husband is.”

  “Well, nothing new in that. I didn’t know where he was most of the time we were married, either.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “There’s nothing else you can tell me about what’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Please? This situation is driving me crazy. You must know by now that I didn’t play any part in whatever Drum was
into. This suspicion in the air, though—I’m living in suspended animation here. It’s like one of those bad dreams when you feel like you’re running through syrup and you just can’t get anywhere. You can’t give me any idea how to get out from under?”

  He studied her for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “Carrie, I’d like to help. I really mean that, but I can’t tell you a thing.” He put a finger to his lips and glanced around the room.

  She stared at him for a moment, and then it dawned on her. She slipped off the chair and onto the floor, took the poker out of his hand and started prodding at the logs. She could feel him watching her, wanting her to understand…what?

  “They’re calling you back to London, aren’t they?” she said quietly.

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “Right away.”

  She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

  He took a deep breath, then reached out and laid his hand on hers. “But I don’t want to go,” he said quietly.

  His fingers were warm. His body, close to hers, was warm. They both sat very still, watching the flames dance. Then, almost imperceptibly, she leaned in toward him and their shoulders touched. With his free hand, he took the poker out of her other hand and set it aside. He studied her soberly for a moment.

  “Mark—”

  He put a finger to her lips again and got to his feet, walking over to the stereo sitting on a table on the other side of the room. A moment later, Ella Fitzgerald’s smoky voice drifted over the room to a warm jazz beat.

  Huxley came back and settled beside her on the rug once more and took her chin in one hand. She thought he was going to kiss her and found, surprisingly, that she really wanted that to happen. And he did, but lightly, on the cheek and not on the lips, and then she heard him murmur in her ear.

  “Things are going well on this case. I can’t give you details, Carrie, but my office wants to cut our operational losses. They’re pulling me out now to go back to help do damage assessment.”

  She nodded, closing her eyes.

  “But I don’t want to leave you,” he added quietly.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she whispered back.

  He’d been holding his breath, she realized, but when she said that, he sighed and wrapped his arms around her.

  It was stupid and pointless, she knew, but suddenly, she really didn’t want him to leave, even though there was nothing in the world she could do to stop it—anymore than she’d been able to change anything else. She felt like a bit of flotsam on a vast, roiling sea. She wanted to scream and kick and fight against the unfairness of it all. And she would, dammit. She would fight, for herself and her son. On her own, by her own effort. She’d take care of Jonah, and she’d get a job, and they would get through this somehow. She didn’t need to be taken care of by anyone.

  But right now, a pair of surprisingly gentle arms was around her. Tomorrow he’d be gone, and she’d continue picking up the pieces of her life, moving on without him, without anyone but her son.

  But that was tomorrow. For tonight, there was this man beside her who wanted her, and whom she wanted, too. It had been so long….

  So, just for tonight…

  “I give up,” she said.

  He pulled back and peered at her. “What?”

  “I’m tired of trying to figure it all out. I’m tired, period. Just for a little while, do you think you could hold me, and let me hold you? Could we just forget about the rest of the messy world for one blessed night?”

  He nodded. “I’d like that.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her on one cheek, then the other, then, softly, on the lips.

  “We have to be quiet,” she murmured, running her fingers over his chest.

  He nodded and lay her back gently on the rug. “I know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Washington, D.C. (Georgetown)

  October 31, 2002—7:15 p.m.

  Hollywood had a lot to answer for—encouraging America’s love affair with guns and violence. Lowering the level of civility in public discourse. Turning staid old Georgetown into a lunatic asylum every Halloween.

  Of course, students didn’t need much excuse to cut loose, Carrie conceded, and parties probably got wild in every college town at Halloween. But ever since Georgetown University and the surrounding neighborhood had been tapped as the location for the filming of The Exorcist, students there had felt a special obligation to turn October 31 into a particularly insane spree.

  She had vivid memories from her own college days of the traditional screening of the movie at Healy Hall, during which the costumed audience hooted and cheered at every recognizable landmark. Then, once the devil-possessed priest had been fatally dispatched down the spooky “Exorcist staircase” (which actually stood beside a renovated Georgetown streetcar barn and nowhere near the house used in the film shoot), the entire campus population would spread out onto the surrounding streets, thousands of pixilated ghouls creating total gridlock until the wee hours of the morning.

  So, when Jonah and his buddy Sam started making excited plans for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, Carrie was skeptical. Sam’s mom, who’d been living next door since before her son was born, assured her the boys would be fine.

  “As long as they go out early, there’s no problem,” she said. “The college kids don’t really hit the streets in force until nine or ten at night. I don’t know about Jonah, but Sam’s fast asleep in bed by then—even if I have to scrape the little sugar-devil off the ceiling to get him there.”

  “Come on, Mom,” Jonah pleaded. “I’ve never been trick-or-treating in my whole, entire life.”

  “You went to Halloween parties when we lived in London,” she said.

  He’d been not quite three the summer Drum was posted to the British capital, too young to have trick-or-treated before that. The embassy community traditionally hosted indoor Halloween celebrations for the diplobrats.

  “It’s not the same,” he said. “We didn’t go around to houses. The kids at school think it’s really weird I’ve never gone out before.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet they didn’t get to go to the Tower of London on Halloween like your class did last year,” Carrie said. “Hey, Sam? Doesn’t that sound cool?”

  Sam furrowed his brow. “What’s the Tower of London?”

  Jonah threw up his hands. “See, Mom? Nobody goes to the dorky old Tower of London. You gotta go trick-or-treating.”

  She sighed. “I suppose we could go out for a while. But here’s the deal—we have to be home by eight and you still have to be in bed by eight-thirty. It’s a school night.”

  His tousled head bounced up and down. “I promise,” he said, “cross my heart.”

  She smiled. “All right then.”

  The two six-year-olds went shrieking up the stairs. “Yay!”

  Sam’s mother was a lawyer with the Justice Department. His father, Carrie guessed from the few clues she’d picked up, was an anonymous sperm donor. His mom employed a full-time live-in nanny who, at sixty, was sweet, kind and loving, but she wasn’t up to Carrie’s standards when it came to bodyguard duty to protect Jonah from drunken students on Georgetown streets—much less from the machinations of his duplicitous father. She volunteered herself to accompany the two of them out on their Halloween rounds. And where Carrie went, Tengwall was right behind.

  Although, the young security officer told her as the two of them followed the boys that night, there was little chance Drum would show up after all this time. “My bosses think he’s long gone,” Tengwall said. “MI-6 thinks so, too. That’s why they pulled Huxley back to London.”

  Carrie nodded and said nothing, although she could feel Tengwall studying her out of the corner of her eye, waiting for her to add something on the subject of Huxley. Maybe she knew—probably she did. Well, so what if she did? Carrie thought. By now, her life was an open book, no chapter too personal that some stranger didn’t feel justified in peering at it. She was
getting used to standing naked in front of the world, all her faults and stupid acts laid bare. So maybe Tengwall did know she’d slept with Huxley, but even if she did, what was the point of discussing it?

  She and Huxley had one night, coming together out of mutual need and frustration—and attraction, admittedly. It had been a long time since anyone had made her feel so wanted, Carrie thought, or held her so close. But they both knew there was no future in it. By the time Tucker and Tengwall had shown up the next morning, she and Huxley had been awake for hours, saying their regretful farewells. He’d spent extra time with Jonah before he left that morning, gently explaining that he had to go back to London for his work, but promising to write via snail-mail and e-mail, hoping he would get back to D.C. soon for a visit. Jonah had been disappointed, but had taken it bravely. It wasn’t right, Carrie told herself angrily, that at such a young age, her little boy already knew so much about abandonment.

  And it wasn’t just his father and Huxley, she realized suddenly, as her wandering mind focused back on what Tengwall was saying to her.

  “…ordered to report back to work at Langley on Monday morning myself.”

  She looked over at the young woman. “They’re pulling you off surveillance here?”

  Tengwall nodded. “I think they’re shutting down this part of the investigation altogether. It’s just not producing anything useful, and resources are tight.”

  “What about the FBI? Have they pulled back, too?”

  Tengwall shrugged, as two pairs of superhero feet came flying toward them.

  “Hey, Mom! We got Mars bars!” Jonah cried, showing her his pillowcase haul. He was dressed in a red-and-blue spandex Spider-Man costume. Sam was the Hulk, tricked out in green latex foam that bulked up his skinny six-year-old arms and legs. Both of them had chocolate-smeared lips from sampling the wares of their increasingly heavy load.

  “Whoa!” Carrie said, peering into his bag. “What a haul. We’d better give some of this stuff a taste test, make sure it’s not poison. You think, Bree?”

  Tengwall nodded and looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, I think so. Better let me test one of those Snickers bars. They look pretty dicey to me.”