The Spy (13 page)

Valerie opened her eyes.

Some person she should have recognized was bending over her; he looked the fatherly type. So, what was she doing in France? Better yet, where was this? Faces of the
Inhabitants
were pressed into the other side of the wallpaper, come, not to play with her, but to insure that she was having a good time. Eyes looked down, they were in somebody else's head; and a silly grin swept across her face.

“Got cha!” Blumensteel said.

Valerie drifted on the bridge of dreams, collapsing beneath her, and that tore from her hands the lover sought in a thousand anguished nights of being alone. Wracked by alternating waves of conscious hope and carnal pleasures, she had closed her eyes and her mind had swept away on rungs of trapezed wings as vast as darkened London, sweeping south now to the summer-sweet fields of Lyon, where circus wagons rolled at dawn, their brightly painted wheels bouncing along the ruts of the mistral land, lead wagon silhouetted against the ferris wheel of the sun.

The girl perched on top.

Suddenly the dream exploded, streams of machine-gun bullets shattered on the wagons from a barricade of smoke, cutting down the families of this circus owned by Jews, their horses screaming with the acrobats who fell that day, wagons tipping and falling on their sides; and there, beneath the stacks of corpses piled in the dust, a child's arm was clawing out from underneath the tarp, green-laced costume blotched with blood, flying skirt hooked with splinters. Bullets burst upon her back, one saw her fall, but could the Gestapo be sure? Orders had come, insisting on death certificates. Was the body found, dead and decimated, the same another thought had gained the woods? Valerie could hear someone running, shadows moving through the trees...

The click of a lighter.

France faded, submerged in smoke, and Devon waxed green in April. She had hurried back along the road of years to a place where she had once known peace. The black murk of war had receded into steep slopes of grass where the child-woman sat all alone, widowed and wild with baby, searching the summer cloud banks for the promised face of God.

“Just me 'n you now, baby!” Blumensteel purred.

Her husband was gone, devoured in the depths of the sea. Valerie was still dreaming, was it his voice that she heard? In the midst of this, she floated. Throughout the night, like beacons to a blacked-out ship, beams of light sliced through the fog. She tried to remember her observations of Sergeant Blumensteel, who had produced a Parker pen and who seemed to be using it to write something on her leg. She smelled cigarettes, and she heard them being lit, but she didn't know who was doing it or where she was. Weren't they on the shore? Poppies blew through valleys of midnight where Brittany bled into the sea. Swimmer against rip-tides, she struggled for air, trying to break free to the surface. Someone heavy, who hadn't shaved, was on top of her. The ashtray rattled, and the lamp went out. Starlight shot through a crack in the curtains.

She drifted.

Blumensteel had switched to a slow, straight rhythm, and he was riding her like a green-broke bull, wild and demented and thundering through the landscapes of the night. Thick-barrelled and snorting, it bucked! The bed rose up to meet him! Slick with sweat, he had fallen off.

Bull without a rider.

“Hey hey! Sock it to me!” What the fuck? He looked. She had folded again. Blumensteel shrugged, and went back to work. Creaking of brass, he was listening...

Was she saying something?

Keep that crazy cobra underneath the sheets. He was trying to put her hand on it! The mongoose was snapping at it, but the cobra would prove the master.

“Ride 'em, cowboy!” the Sergeant yelled.

Her mouth was watering, she was gulping hard. The cobra was searching, trying to find the basket.

She was laying on it.

Valerie was up for grabs, and it was in her dreams. There were no more laws in the world. Anyone could have anybody; all one had to do was
wish
. Just say the sacred word, or touch them walking by. Oh, yes...

They'd come, all right!

Blumensteel, whose hands were shaking, was reaching for his lighter.

Click
!

She had returned to her childhood. You could walk into people's bedrooms that way. Her mother was starving for it, and she was watching the vicar. He preached
love
to his flock, but there was none for his wife. Valerie could walk into his dreams, where he kept a spare bed for her that was his own secret; and one sleepless morning, after she had read the books, she walked in and saw herself there. All around them, flowers were drying in heaps where spiders crawled. He spoke to her from his heart, but his heart was small and he didn't have much to say. She was listening. He, the Egyptian, was reading her pictures from the pages of his sacred scrolls. There, by torchlight, he was removing the last obstacle to her will, a piece of blue muslin: a secret curtain, draping a naked camera, in her birthplace at the vicarage, where he'd chained her to his past.

“C'mon—!” Blumensteel cried hoarsely, “who ya savin' it for?”

The creature in his arms was cold, now hot; and her arms draped gently in unconsciousness above his back. “C'mon,
c'mon
!” he begged, and she tried to breathe. Time leapt forward, couples got married in the vicar's head; and the knife, that was passion, plunged deep.

Its handle was turquoise.

Tears fell. Not just hers, but tears from all the women in the world. Wearing sensible shoes, and naked except for their sorrow, they arose from the graves of their cities, the most important half of the human race.

She dreamt of Blumensteel.

It was not a dream in the way she dreamt during her waking hours, but more like a series of prints. Desire was on the other side of it, and it was separated by a wall.

Bodies were coming through!

She rushed from the dream.

It was behind her now, and she was on her knees. He would have to do the holding. From somewhere—from this very bed in this very room, she thought—she heard a child weeping, tears so terrible she had stopped running. She recognized the voice, a calliope in the background, the child had a name...

Maichaud
!

Blumensteel was rising. Through the wall now, he was getting close. The muslin fell.

She was showing it to him.

“
De quoi s'aget-il
?”

Love it, baby!

The dream changed and she lay upon the bed of the unknown soldier. The bed was a cage, and the two animals were circling. The mongoose snapped, then shrank back, its mouth and teeth wet from the attack. In the high reeds of the future, and in some other world, there was a movement in the grass.

Above the Pyramids, the lone black star of the Sikh.

Slaves, tongueless—arising from thought—were clawing their way godward until, booming in the final ritual of creation, they were orchestrating through the world that one thin, high, priestly note of prayer, of ulimate rape and rapprochement: the nocturnal, and embarrassing clacking of wood! A twelve-year-old girl was tearing an American Sergeant apart!

His body exploded on the bed!

On the
bed
, not in her body. In those final seconds, blue lights hissing along the brass, strong hands had thrust her aside. The girl lay pressed to the wall, and the wall was between them. Before, in the doorway, something had opened and closed. Later, he wouldn't remember it. After all, it was but the merest moment in his life. A thing of terror, the wide-brimmed hat, a presence had appeared in the corner. Shimmering, it had moved to the wall. Something cold and accusing had brushed by his bedside, leaving Blumensteel blaming himself. What the hell? He hadn't done anything! A ghost? Just a phantom from the bottle, he concluded, and moving rapidly. Blumensteel's hand was shaking, he raked it through his hair.

Some sort of vibration
...

She was waiting, her face pressed into one of the faces on the wallpaper. It was blue.
If you are not that animal here
, she was hearing,
you will not be that animal there
.

Who was she listening to?

Now, other noises. They had fallen back upon the sheets, exhausted of memories. Blumensteel was putting on his pants, his eyes bulging with fear. She was trying to remember and was finding herself naked. Her mind felt lost, empty, filled by the clicking of the latch.

Outside, wind was banging on the glass.

Sinclair sat up, and turned on the lamp. She listened: it was Friday morning traffic. Reality was rumbling in the distance. Her head banged with hangover and her throat felt like cement. She groped for her clothes, strewn in odd places about the floor. The windowpanes rattled, assaulted by the slamming of a gate. Then, she heard the bus stop for him, change gears, and drive away.

Valerie got dressed.

To her left was a door, opening on a hallway. She turned off the light. There was a notice tacked to the wall next to it, something about cigarettes. Sinclair, wishing she had one, moved through the darkened house and out onto the street.

Taking her bearings, she saw The Red Lion in the distance. She went down the stone steps. Along the way, palm trees with green fronds reared like giant chickens against a sky still strewn with stars. Beyond the bushes, above dark wet grass, fireflies danced a litany to morning, their bodies emitting codes.

She reached the hotel and entered through the back door into silent corridors. At this hour, Security was not as sharp as it should have been. The hallways were empty. Had they made their rounds yet? No matter. With the approach of the mission, surveillance was certain to be tightened. Before Sunday, the screws would turn.

MI.5 would not permit laxity twice.

She went through the spectrum of events. Had she talked in her sleep, let the cat out of the bag? The American, captured in fleeting photos throughout the night, had certainly not been there to hear anything. A proper gent, he had merely looked in on her. Same side, weren't they? Just a few drinks too many, that was all. It happened. Ruddy nice of him to get her off the streets, where drunken men prowled, and into a safe house. He knew how to treat a lady, alright. She thought of Hamilton, who had ditched her early, who had dumped her on de Beck. The Commander's dark secrets, as far as she was concerned, were still in the dark; as safe as if they had never been uttered. Valerie jumped! She had heard something:

You will not remember this night
...

“How's that?” Sinclair rasped. Voice in her head now, was it? She could taste the retch of the whisky—no wonder!

She walked into the bathroom and pulled off her clothes. She was looking a fright, she was. What a pot of porridge! Here she could have had her dibs at the Dance, and she had to take up with a Yank who was old enough to be her father! Was it
him
then, had protected her like a daughter? If it was protection she wanted, she wouldn't be looking to the Americans for it! No, what she had looked for was love. What she had hoped for, was his. A loud knocking came on the door. “Smythe! Up?” It was the morning Security round.

“Present, sir!” Valerie piped from the bathroom.

The Spy had saved her from guilt.

What had yet to be answered was why.

Winston Churchill from Chartwell Manor, near Westerham in Kent, was on his favorite telephone, the old-fashioned stand type, fire-engine red, and he was talking with Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander, Asia. Theoretically equal in status to Eisenhower, though militarily one notch below, and affectionately nick-named “Supremo” by Churchill, Lord Louis, at the moment, seemed to be just the right man for the job. In England, where Friday's sun was breaking for the weekend, this last day of June could prove the first day of hope. Black onyx egg cup matching Malaysian serving plates of solid gold sat forgotten; both men had finished eating. But it was Mountbatten who'd been interrupted. The Prime Minister did not have a great deal of time. He was leaving on an American Dakota to fly to Cherbourg, where he planned to spend several days determining the delivery facilities of the Mulberry Harbor. Reports would have him there a month later as well. The public, of course, did not know of either schedule “—and how is Lady Edwina? Over the beastly grippe? Appetite, good?” Breakfast there was dinner here. Mountbatten checked his watch: Ceylon was eleven hours ahead of London.

“Completely recovered, thank you.”

Lord Louis stared at the pouring rain battering the wooden trailings of his favorite pagoda across the courtyards. Beyond, fields of sweet bamboo rose in green tufts to the invisible ridge, fluted with rainbow and rich in the afternoon from beams of the equatorial sun. High in the mountains of Peredynia, newly headquartered in the King's Pavilion, Kandy was as good as it got. Convenient to Trincomalee, the Fleet's main base, Ceylon was Mountbatten's favorite place to be. The rain was to be expected, the humidity not all that bad, what with the prevailing winds. But did the Prime Minister really want to know?

British banter.

Churchill laughed, and lit a cigar. “Suppose we make it Weather Directive,' ” the man wearing the tugboat captain's hat said, leading Mountbatten. “I've just been on the ringer to Eisenhower. The cat may be out of the bag. He tells me that GOLDILOCKS—he doesn't know the code name, of course—is not as popular with him these days as Creasy's
Fifteen Decisive Battles
. You see my meaning, I'm sure.”

“He knows about the Waterfall mission?”

Mountbatten was good at putting things bluntly. MI.5, who was supposed to ensure that telephone calls like this didn't happen, had no compunction in having pulled a fast one on Eisenhower. Transferring the General's Weather Directive to the R.A.F. had been necessary to guarantee their part of the mission. Lord Louis, the fastest planes in the world at his disposal, personally planned to be in England before Sunday, Edwina and Bridley in tow. Having relaxed in the confidence that all was secured, here was his political boss calling him up to say that security had been breached.