A Spy's Life (9 page)

The boy looked confused. ‘I thought you would recognise this woman.’

‘I am sorry. I haven’t the first idea who she is.’

‘You must do! You must remember her! This is the woman that you knew as Eva Houresh! Her real name is Irina Rath and her married name was Kochalyin.’

Harland shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I think you must have got the wrong man.’

‘But you are Robert Harland, are you not? I saw a photograph of you in the newspapers after the accident and I knew it was you. I knew you were the Robert Harland I wanted to find.’

Harland was watching him closely. He was obviously bright and he spoke excellent English, but he was no professional. There was too much raw emotion playing in his face. No one but a very talented actor could fake the oscillation of hope and embarrassment in his eyes. Still, Harland wasn’t willing to take him on faith yet – not by any means.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken if you think I know this woman. I wish I could be of some help to you. But there it is, I can’t.’

He nodded to Boris who opened the door and went in. Then he turned towards the door himself.

‘I don’t need help,’ said the boy indignantly. ‘I came because I believe you are the man that this woman loved.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Harland said with a finality that would deter most. ‘You’ve got the wrong person.’

The boy continued, ‘If you are that man, I need to tell you something very important.’

Harland kept walking because he knew he didn’t want to hear any more. There were things in the boy’s manner which had made him feel uneasy, and when a certain look had flared in his eyes, a very troubling doubt crept into his consciousness.

‘Mr Harland, please,’ he said more urgently. He came forward a few steps and caught him at the door. ‘I think you are lying when you say that you didn’t recognise her. I tell you this – she is my mother. If you are the person that loved her when she was a young woman …’ He looked down and then up into Harland’s face with urgency. ‘If you are that person it is very possible that you are my father. In fact, I believe it is certain.’

Harland was speechless.

‘I know where you met, you see. I know you went to a town called Orvieto in Italy and that you had to keep your affair secret because she was Czech and you were working for British Intelligence. I know about Cleopatra’s Needle.’ He suddenly seemed to lose momentum and stammered, ‘I – I did not want to tell you in this way.’

Only Eva knew about Cleopatra’s Needle – the place where they had arranged to meet in London but hadn’t, for what reason Harland never knew because that was the last he had heard of Eva Kouresh. Still, the point remained that nobody else could know about it. It was conceivable that Eva had been traced by Vigo and had told him how she had failed to turn up – and about everything else, no doubt. But why would Vigo bother with this nearly thirty years later? What would be the point? He struggled to fit it into the conversation he had had with Vigo and tried to work out his motives. Nothing came to him.

‘What do you mean by coming here with this tale?’ he demanded. ‘Maybe you should seek some kind of medical help because I can tell you that this idea you have is a dangerous fantasy.’ He stopped. ‘Is there something else you want. You want money?’

The young man shrugged and looked down at his feet again. ‘I want nothing from you. Nothing at all.’ He emitted a short ironic laugh. ‘That’s the odd thing. Now that I have told you, I don’t want anything from you.’ He paused as if remembering something then put his hand out with a disarming smile. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Rath – I am Tomas Rath.’

‘You may find this amusing. I don’t. Now, please would you leave.’

Harland knew he was playing for time. There was no reason why Tomas couldn’t be Eva Houresh’s son, that much he was prepared to concede. In fact, it had occurred to him the moment he saw the first identity card which showed Eva exactly as she was when he met her in Rome. The boy looked like her. His colouring was right, particularly the lightness of his eyes and the fine dark hair. And though he hated to admit it, he had much of Eva’s manner. The photographs had stirred his memory and moments that he had not recalled for decades were flashing into his mind. He saw Eva, turning from some frescos in Orvieto to argue about their meaning. He could be Eva’s child, certainly, but it didn’t follow that he was his son. There was nothing of himself in the boy. Nothing whatsoever: not a cell, not a look, not a hair, not a gesture. This was not his son.

6

THE BOY’S STORY

‘Who put you up to this?’ Harland asked. ‘Is this some kind of stunt? Is Walter Vigo responsible for you coming here?’

Tomas shook his head, confusion clouding his face. ‘I have never heard of this Vigo. No one knows I’m here. I came from London when I saw your picture. I didn’t tell anybody that I was planning to do this. It was an impulse when I saw your photograph.’

‘How did you know where to find me? I’m not listed in the telephone book.’

The boy told him how he had got the address from the UN. When Harland questioned him closely about whom he had spoken to, he produced the name of the Assistant Secretary-General. It sounded unlikely that he’d be able to bluff the address out of them. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible that one of the people on his floor had taken the caller on trust.

He opened the door and gestured Tomas inside.

‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a coat. Then we’re going somewhere to talk and you will tell me what the hell is behind all this.’

It would have been much easier to take Tomas up to his apartment but Harland wanted to have the conversation in a public place. There was something about him that was desperate and uneasy. Besides, there seemed every possibility that his apartment had been fitted with eavesdropping devices by the people who had broken in. As he collected his coat he made a mental note to search the place later on.

When he returned Tomas had put his hat on and was sitting quietly on the polished bench near the door under Boris’s suspicious gaze. Harland thought he looked like any of the thousands of young men on New York’s streets.

They walked a few blocks to a restaurant where there was a bar at the front. It was late on a cold Saturday night and the place was pretty full, but they found a good table by the window at the rear of the bar area. Harland ordered a couple of beers from the waiter and told Tomas to sit down.

‘Right,’ he said abruptly, ‘tell me your date of birth.’

Tomas was not going to be hurried. He unwound his scarf then took his jacket off to reveal a charcoal grey and navy plaid shirt. He folded the scarf deliberately and put it on the chair next to Harland, together with his gloves and hat. He looked around, wiped the condensation from the window with a serviette and peered into the street.

‘Are you quite ready?’ Harland said.

‘I was born on the fifteenth of November 1975,’ said Tomas evenly. The colour was returning to his cheeks.

‘Where?’

‘In Prague.’

‘What age was your mother when you were born?’

‘She was was twenty-two on the twelfth of October that year.’

The dates were just about right, thought Harland.

‘And where does your mother live now?’

‘Outside Prague, but we moved around a lot when I was kid.’

‘Your mother is married?’

‘She married a Russian citizen, but they are divorced now.’

‘And she lives in the Czech Republic?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you? Where do you live?’

‘I was living in Stockholm where I worked. Now I live in London for a while. Maybe I will move soon.’

There was a good deal that was unconvincing about the boy: while he had become more confident in his attitude to Harland, there was also an edginess in his manner. His eyes kept darting to a mirror behind Harland.

‘I can tell you about my mother if you want,’ he said. ‘Ask me some questions.’

Harland thought for something else to ask him. ‘Does she have any distinguishing marks?’

‘Yes, on the nape of her neck, below the hairline – a patch of dark brown skin.’

He remembered the moment when he’d made the discovery of her oval-shaped birthmark in bed. They had fled, for that was what it seemed to both of them, to Orvieto in the dead of winter. It was early in 1975, when they had known each other just five months. They needed time together, both being too young for the pressure of their professions. They had stayed there for four nights in an ancient hotel’s best suite. The town was empty, standing still and cold about them as though it had been struck by the plague, without a soul, it seemed, to hear the ceaseless tolling of the bell towers. It was quite simple: for those four days they had merged into each other. He was closer to her than he had ever been to another human being in his life. But it was just a few weeks before he had had to return to London to complete his training. By then there were no secrets between them. He knew what she really was – an agent working for the StB, the Czech Security Service. Her language skills and considerable beauty had been deployed in Rome, initially against the Czech dissidents who were running a propaganda operation there, and then with a view to compromising diplomats at the American and British embassies. She told Harland that he had been singled out as an inexperienced SIS officer who would be susceptible to her charms. She told him everything, but she never gave him her real name because she was too frightened. They had got something on her. He never knew what it was. Then they had parted on Rome station one morning. Harland thought back to the scene. At the time it had felt like an amputation.

‘So how did your mother meet the man that you think is me?’

‘It was in a bar. You were introduced by an American diplomat my mother knew. You were his regular tennis partner, she said. You went out with a big crowd of people that same evening. You talked about the books you had been reading. It was a great evening for her – very exciting, being in Rome with Westerners and drinking and laughing. A big change from the life she had known in Czechoslovakia. Even though she was working for the State Security Service, she said it was one of the most carefree evenings of her life. She said that afterwards you strolled through the city for most of the night. It was late summer – the month of August or September – and you walked until you found a café at dawn in a market near the French embassy. You had to catch a taxi and go straight to work. See, Mr Harland, I do know about it.’

Harland ordered another beer for himself, the boy not yet having touched his, and asked the waitress if she could find him a cigarette. She delved under her apron and shook a Marlboro from a crush pack. Tomas lit it from a matchbook on the table and sat back with a smile.

‘I did not imagine you as smoker,’ he said.

Harland ignored the remark. ‘Who gave you the idea of approaching me?’

‘Nobody,’ said Tomas earnestly. He leaned forward to place his elbows on the table. ‘You think I make all this up. How can you believe that?’

‘You tell me. I mean, you walk up to me in the street like some kind of professional stalker, announce that you are my son and expect me to greet you with open arms. So what am I supposed to do now? Change my will? Put the family silver in your name – eh? You can’t seriously expect me to believe all this?’

‘I know about Cleopatra’s Needle,’ he said. ‘That will prove I’m speaking the truth. No one but you and my mother knew about that.’

‘You mentioned it before,’ said Harland indifferently. ‘So why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘My mother said you had a joke that she was Cleopatra because you believed that your love for her would destroy you. There was some dark humour there, she said. A few weeks after you left Rome she rang you and said that she was in London. You arranged to meet that evening at Cleopatra’s Needle by the River Thames because you did not want to risk being seen with her. She understood this. It was very difficult for you – she knew that. She said she remembered it very well. It was a beautiful day in spring. She found the rendezvous place and then she walked by the river and did some thinking. She had a big problem which she was planning to tell you about but then she decided that she could not tell you. That is right, isn’t it? She did not come and you never saw her again. You never learned why she had come to London.’

He waited but Harland didn’t say anything.

‘So here my story becomes less romantic, although you are not to blame because she believes that you really did love her. When she talked to you on the phone she did not explain that she was going to have an abortion? No, of course not. She would not do that.’

The word dropped to the pit of Harland’s stomach.

‘As you will appreciate,’ continued Tomas, ‘that kind of thing was then an impossibility in Rome. She made some excuse to leave Rome because she was desperate to tell you her news. I think some part of her believed that you could make everything right. Yet she knew that she was caught in a trap. She had two choices – get rid of the child or have the child back home in Czechoslovakia. If she did the first she might be able to see you a few more times, but you were in London and she was in Rome and it wasn’t easy. Some time during that day in London she made the decision to have the child and that was why she did not come to you. She could not bear to tell you that her decision meant she had to go back to Prague and that would mean she would never see you again. The choice she made is why I am here. I am that child, Mr Harland, and, incredible though it may seem to you, I am your son.’ He picked up his beer and drained it in one, evidently relieved at having unburdened himself.

Even if he had wanted to, Harland could not react. He had no idea what he should feel or how he should deal with this boy. The only emotion he was aware of was annoyance. These were his secrets, his history that this boy was spilling out, telling him more than he had ever known about his own life. He was angry and appalled. The fact was that it had never occurred to him that Eva might have been pregnant. He’d thought of everything else, but not that. When she didn’t appear he had been in despair, and so caught up in his own sense of loss that he didn’t think it through at all. For weeks afterwards he called her number in Rome. He phoned people who might know where she had gone, but no one had any idea. Then he flew to Rome one weekend and searched for her in their old haunts. Eva Houresh had simply vanished and left Harland feeling jilted and exposed.