10
At the door to her mother’s building, Ethan took her hand (it was clammy, she was ashamed of herself, there was no reason to be nervous, it was her own mother).
“You know,” he said, glancing up at the tower of glass, “I think I need to swing by someplace and get a cup of coffee first. Can I bring you anything? It might be cold by the time I walk back, fair warning.”
Magnus had barely been able to talk the American cameras out of coming to take photos of the three of them having a family reunion; it was still definitively meant to be a visit for them both. Suyana had been given no time alone with her mother, officially.
He was hiding something—he was running his thumb absently across the side of her finger, he only did that when he was in the middle of a lie—but she couldn’t guess what it was, and she was too grateful to ask.
She turned into his chest and had wrapped her free arm around him before she could think better of it, and it must have been different from most of their embraces, because he hesitated a moment like she’d startled him before he hugged her back.
“Go on,” he said into her hair after a moment. “She’s been waiting a long time to see you.”
Fondness choked her, anger choked her, relief choked her. “Enjoy your coffee,” she said, sounding to her own ears like she was already miles away, and she watched him until he disappeared from sight.
She stood a moment longer, steeling herself, until she caught a glimpse of the woman—early thirties, sturdy-looking, careful red lipstick, clothes deliberately nondescript—who hovered between steps a moment before she moved to follow Ethan, turning slowly so as not to jostle the camera.
× × × × × × ×
Her mother answered the door with the smile she always wore for the UARC photographers on their annual visit to her apartment to record an evening-news Happy Birthday to her daughter—fixed, polite, beatific. Her graying hair was pulled back in a braid, and she wore some clothes that Magnus must have sent ahead new, because she was tugging on the hem of her blouse even as she started her greeting in English.
When she saw that Suyana was alone, her expression dropped into the smile Suyana remembered, smaller and closer to real.
“Daughter,” she said in Quechua, and Suyana was surprised she remembered the word; it fell through her, clattering against her ribs.
Suyana hugged her (she was as tall as her mother, when had that happened?), said, “I hope you’re well” in Spanish, and then, before her mother could answer her, “Do people visit you? Your friends?”
Are you lonely, she couldn’t ask. Are you sick? Do you miss me? Don’t say you miss me, it couldn’t be true. I’m not even the daughter you said good-bye to a decade ago. You’re my mother, can’t you tell?
Her mother nodded yes, stepped out of the hug like she was shy, and gestured vaguely into the living room. It was large and light, and Magnus must have continued to bribe whoever Hakan had originally bribed to get her this apartment, because the paint was fresh and the furniture was new. Her mother looked rested and healthy, and that was good. It made Suyana less guilty.
“Come sit,” her mother said after a silence awkwardly long. “I made lunch. I thought your boyfriend would be here—is this too much food? Is he not coming?”
She meant, Did I do something? Suyana’s throat was tight. “No, he’s coming. He’ll be here soon. Sit down and tell me everything.”
Her mother was well fed. Her mother had joined a church committee to organize a school for children in the slums outside town. Her mother had gone to the Heritage Festival during the summer. She was thinking of going to see Machu Picchu with three of the women from her church.
“I’ve always wanted to see it,” her mother said, and Suyana thought about the postcards in the town square when she was too young to understand anything at all, except the anger that sometimes pooled in her fingertips when she thought about her mother.
“It will be beautiful,” she said, made her smile wider than it needed to be. “I’ll get you a new camera to take with you.”
Her mother demurred—Suyana did enough, it was already too much—but her mouth turned up at one edge. Suyana nodded, falsely solemn, said that maybe she would just look, just to see if there was a camera on sale somewhere.
The bell rang.
“That’s Ethan,” Suyana said, standing as her mother stood, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder so firmly that she sat back down. From this angle, her mother’s eyes were as sharp as she remembered.
“Is he the reason you’re unhappy?”
Suyana couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers. Her spine was going to fall to pieces. She was ten years old, and all her skill at lying escaped her.
“No,” she said.
And it must have been true, or true enough, because after a moment her mother nodded, and went to open the door.
× × × × × × ×
Later, in bed, she said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Ethan said, in the lecherous drawl he only used when he was teasing, and she flicked him on the shoulder so hard he yelped through his laughter.
She’d tried to think of it as an operation, at the beginning. To go through the motions she’d seen in movies (and in the other sort of movies) and play at it all. It had been pure, clinically productive in its strangeness—she felt remote and sharp during sex, noting responses and trying to decide how to set a pattern that could sustain itself for however long this contract needed to go on.
But the day had come when he moved his hands somewhere and breathed something into her skin and it all felt better, felt more, and now the line between Necessary and her own weakness was a lot less clean.
It was still useful, she told herself often. Lying all the time means you have no room for error. If you both believe something enough, then your mark will start making excuses if they catch you in a mistake. (“Strange girl,” Ethan said sometimes, early on, when she’d broken the lovebird act with a direct question or a stony face. Then he’d shake his head fondly, lean in to kiss her temple, and go to bed beside her. He’d never had a troubled night’s sleep, not once in a year.)
“I mean it,” she said. “It was good to see my mother. Thank you.”
He blinked over at her, trying to smother a yawn. “Did she like me?”
“Everyone likes you, Ethan. Go to sleep.”
He snorted. “So she hated me.”
Suyana rested her hand across Ethan’s eyes. He laughed quietly, just his shoulders shaking against the mattress for a second, before he closed his eyes. His eyelashes brushed the palm of her hand.
Her mother actually hadn’t said a word about Ethan, who had been careful to go downstairs early and call the car too, to give them a few more minutes together. Her mother had just taken her by the shoulders and looked at her a long time. She didn’t say she was saving up, but it had been five years, and might be five more, so far as her mother knew.
Suyana had let her mother look; she knew more about her chances of coming home again.
× × × × × × ×
At the outdoor folk music concert someone arranged for their last night in Lima, Suyana and Ethan stood at the front of the crowd like it was a pleasant festival they’d just stumbled upon and they were enjoying it too much to even see the cameras.
It was a night full of acting. The two men behind them pretended not to be UARC police, and the crowd pretended Suyana and Ethan were just like them, that no one had been searched on their way in to make sure they weren’t carrying any political paraphernalia.
The Americans rented a conference suite in the nearest hotel as a staging area. Oona had made sure to take up as much space on the table as Ethan’s team, even though she’d only brought two outfits. When Magnus raised an eyebrow at the light packing, Oona had said, “Well, some people are able to make a decision early and know what will look good,” and then had pointedly finished slapping Suyana’s belt buckle shut. It was as big as Suya
na’s hand, and it locked in place with a sound like a prison door.
Magnus had watched Suyana in the mirror, glancing past her every so often to where Ethan’s team was sweeping his face with powder, carefully smudging black pencil at the edges of his eyes.
(Whenever his team did that, Ethan scraped his knuckles there before following her to bed, like he hoped she’d think he was a different person in bed than he was when he smiled for the cameras. If she was sure there was a difference between the two, she might have found it revealing. If she cared about him, she might have found it affecting. She liked him better with it on.)
She caught Ethan’s gaze in the mirror and smiled when he smiled. But it was the flat one he gave when he wanted to end a conversation, and when Ethan couldn’t see her any more, she’d looked Magnus in the eye until he looked away.
Then Suyana had lifted Oona’s pass card from the back of the chair and tucked it inside the belt, and on the way out of the hotel and through the handful of autograph-seekers, she had passed it to the woman wearing a Dolphin Watch sweatshirt who handed her the map she’d autographed for Sotalia and said, “Sign it for Maria, please.”
Suyana waited nearly two hours, swaying in time with the crowd, not really hearing any of the music (trying especially hard not to hear the one or two songs that reminded her of home). When everyone seemed lulled but not yet bored, she ducked out of the festivities, waving Ethan and Oona to stay.
Even then, a bodyguard followed her straight through the lobby and down the hall until she cleared her throat and asked if he’d particularly mind standing outside the conference suite while she handled her personal affairs. As soon as he guessed her meaning, he hemmed and stammered in that way men often did when women talked about bodily functions, and took up a very studious position in front of the outer door.
Sotalia was waiting in the conference room bathroom, well out of sight of the main door, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs idly. She wore a maid’s uniform, and there was a cleaning trolley beside her.
“Just in case,” she said when Suyana looked her over, and turned on the water in the sink. Sotalia was young. Suyana didn’t quite know what to make of someone so young being the contact for an operation as dangerous as this, but Columbina had seemed sure of her. Her dark hair was shot through with red in the sickly light from the bathroom, like the plumage of a bird.
(The last contact Suyana had met on home soil had vanished—prison or dead, Zenaida never told her. He had been expendable; contacts always were. Suyana was the constant they risked it for. If she came back again, and there was more work that needed doing, it wouldn’t be Sotalia. Sotalia would be long gone.)
“I couldn’t get much,” Suyana said, and rolled out the length of paper towel, sketching the rise of the hills in concentric circles.
After a few marks for the trees, Sotalia said, “Is it really that close to the forest? They must be serious about pretending they care.”
“It looks that way,” Suyana said, her stomach pulling tight, suddenly, from doubt. “The mud flat faces the entrance approach, but they keep most of the seeds right above the entry pod.”
Sotalia looked at her, skeptical. “So what? We should be careful not to set the charges there when we burn the building down?”
Suyana took a breath, straightened up. Not that she had much full height to draw up to, but she was taller than Sotalia. “You shouldn’t set charges anywhere yet. I talked with one of the administrators, and I think we should wait until they’ve gotten the first planting in, to hold back the erosion. The erosion is a bigger threat than the red tape right now. I want this to be a reconnaissance mission.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“They’re getting sponsors to buy enough plants to slow down the erosion. If they mean it, then the planting needs to happen first. And if they do it in good faith, then maybe they’re serious about conservation. I think you need to wait and see.”
Sotalia folded her arms. “Yes, of course, I had forgotten the meeting where we decided to believe everything we were told by the people in charge.”
“I’m not saying trust them. I’m saying wait. It’s at least structured for conservation—it’s messy and we have to be careful before we let them get away with patents or anything permanent, but—”
“And I remember how the mining outpost was supposed to create jobs that would make it worth all the trees they were tearing down.”
“They aren’t some American mining company,” Suyana hissed.
“It’s outsiders trying to make money off the forest! There’s no difference between one outpost and another!”
Too young for this, Suyana thought. Reckless. Her hands were beginning to shake. She pressed them harder against the counter. “Maybe no one’s told you my connection to the last group of outsiders.”
“Oh,” said Sotalia, with weight. Her dark eyes glittered. “No, don’t worry, Lachesis. I know who you are.”
Acid rose in her throat. The last man who did what you’re doing is gone, she wanted to say. The last time I did this, I was sure it needed to be done (I’m still sure, surer than I am of this, surer than I am of anything now). The last time this happened, I lost the only man I trusted in the world. Don’t ever say my name like you don’t think I earned it.
What she said was, “Then you can be damn sure I know the difference.”
Without looking away, she slid the paper under her hand sideways, right under the water. It ran over her fingers, ice cold, and it would take care of the ink.
“I have specifics,” she said. “I have the names of the plants they’re hoping to patent—that has to be stopped, and I would think that’s something Chordata would be interested in. I know the facility layout, and their timeline, and their potential. And you won’t be getting any of it until I can be sure you know the difference, too.”
On her way out, she scooped her tablet off the table, just in case Sotalia got any ideas about procuring information the hard way.
Tell me I’m not a coward, she thought to Hakan as she met her bodyguard and walked through the lobby with a marble floor that cost more than some towns made in a year. Tell me I’m not doing this just to spare my mother; tell me I’m right to believe that letting someone pay to assuage their guilt in exchange for good press isn’t just some lesser devil. Tell me there’s still a believer left somewhere, and not just a shell that looks like me.
The singer onstage was finishing a lesser Yma Sumac song when she got back. Suyana slid back into place, nudged tight alongside Ethan by the crowd, and caught the final key-change chorus in time to applaud the soprano. The soprano’s nerves looked like they had returned the instant the singing stopped, and she nearly tripped trying to bow and smile at the same time.
“Poor thing,” said Suyana. “Why would she be so nervous when she can sing like that?”
“Because she knew what was coming,” said Ethan, his voice falling out of hearing just at the last, and Suyana didn’t understand why until she’d processed that he was kneeling, that he was holding a ring, that the singer was still onstage behind the mic and waiting to say something. To sing something. Everyone was waiting.
Ethan was looking at her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, but amid the hundred flashbulbs that had gone off, she could see the crow’s feet that tensed around his eyes when he was nervous and thought he was in the wrong.
He’d gone for coffee, he said when she was alone with her mother. He’d been strange since they got back from the research facility. She’d known Margot must have called him, and had assumed the worst.
Turned out Margot could still outdo her.
“Suyana Sapaki, will you marry me?” he asked, and the crowd went wild (her answer didn’t matter, she didn’t have an answer, she had a given), and she looked over at Magnus’s ghostly face and out at the sea of people behind them and down at Ethan, whose hand was beginning to tremble. She looked at the smooth column of his neck and thought, That’s where the kn
ife would go, if I carried one—I could use my knife and run for it, and you wouldn’t know any different.
She said, “Of course I will.”
11
Daniel spent three days shadowing Martine through New York.
“We’re still deciding who to assign as her new regular,” Li Zhao had told him, and he thought of Hannah, taking pictures of Martine filing her nails in Assembly sessions and heading out clubbing for years, removed as soon as things got interesting.
Not that Martine was interesting. That was the point.
None of the Big Nine had much public personality—when you were Big Nine, you didn’t need one—but Martine’s was the only one that felt cultivated. There had always been a sense of deliberation in how inert she was, even back when he was first doing research for Hae Soo-jin’s press pit. Not that he blamed her. The IA was unstable. Martine was trying to be a block of marble amid electric wires.
But Daniel watched her wrap her huge scarf around her neck—she vanished above it, glossy lips and a pretty face and nothing else—and thought about Suyana telling him she had to go home but had no way to get there. Then she’d gone out with Grace and Martine for a single night, and suddenly the path had opened.
Martine got coffee, and went to museums and absorbed culture like she was supposed to, and spent most of her time alone. Ansfrida hardly ever went with her. It took him two days to realize that was the normal run of things, and not some strange negligence on Ansfrida’s part. His first guess was that Martine had someone on the side, but Martine never used the solitude to contact anyone. She’d had one lunch with Kipa, but only New Zealand’s cameras were there—they were the ones getting the favor—and it was just tacos from a truck a few blocks south of the IA offices.
After that, Martine took Kipa to a matinee (some action movie where Martine spoke to Kipa every time the shooting started and Daniel couldn’t catch a word) and then dropped Kipa back at the offices like dry cleaning. Martine didn’t so much as step onto the sidewalk in front of the IA, and she spent the rest of the day walking up Madison and down Fifth, pretending to shop and not buying a thing.
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