The Other Woman

The town was white as dried bone, famously white, and balanced atop the highest point of the incisor-like crag. One hundred and fourteen normal paces along the paseo brought her to the new hotel, and another two hundred and twenty-eight steps carried her across a patch of olive and scrub oak to the edge of the centre ville, which was how, privately, she referred to it, even now, even after all her years of splendid exile. It was a game she had played with her child long ago in Paris, the counting of steps. How many steps to cross the courtyard to the street? How many steps to span the Pont de la Concorde? How many steps until a child of ten disappeared from her mother’s sight? The answer was twenty-nine.

A graffiti artist had defiled the first sugar-cube dwelling with a Spanish-language obscenity. She thought his work rather decent, a hint of color, like a throw pillow, to break the monotony of white. She wound her way higher through the town to the Calle San Juan. The shopkeepers watched her disdainfully as she passed. They had many names for her, none flattering. They called her la loca, the crazy one, or la roja, a reference to the color of her politics, which she’d made no attempt to hide, contrary to the instructions of Comrade Lavrov. In fact, there were few shops in the village where she had not had an altercation of some sort, always over money. She regarded the shopkeepers as vulture capitalists, and they thought her, justifiably, a communist and a troublemaker, and an imported one at that.

The café where she preferred to take her midday meal was in a square near the town’s summit. There was a hexagonal islet with a handsome lamp at its center and on the eastern flank a church, ocher instead of white, another respite from the sameness. The café itself was a no-nonsense affair—plastic tables and chairs, plastic tablecloths of a peculiarly Scottish pattern—but three lovely orange trees, heavy with fruit, shaded the terrace. The waiter was a friendly young Moroccan from some godforsaken hamlet in the Rif Mountains. For all she knew, he was an ISIS fanatic who was plotting to slit her throat at the earliest opportunity, but he was one of the few people in the town who treated her kindly. They addressed one another in Arabic, she in the stilted classical Arabic she had learned in Beirut, he in the Maghrebi dialect of North Africa. He was generous with the ham and the sherry, despite the fact he disapproved of both.

“Did you see the news from Palestine today?” He placed a tortilla española before her. “The Zionists have closed the Temple Mount.”

“Outrageous. If the fools don’t open it soon, it will be the ruin of them.”

“Inshallah.”

“Yes,” she agreed as she sipped a pale Manzanilla. “Inshallah, indeed.”

Over coffee she scratched a few lines into her Moleskine notebook, memories of that August afternoon so long ago in Paris, impressions. Diligently, she tried to segregate what she knew then from what she knew now, to place herself, and the reader, in the moment, without the bias of time. When the bill appeared, she left twice the requested amount and went into the square. For some reason the church beckoned. She climbed its steps—there were four—and heaved on the studded wooden door. Cool air rushed out at her like an exhalation of breath. Instinctively, she stretched a hand toward the font and dipped the tips of her fingers into the holy water, but stopped before performing the ritual self-blessing. Surely, she thought, the earth would tremble and the curtain in the temple would tear itself in two.

The nave was in semidarkness and deserted. She took a few hesitant steps up the center aisle and inhaled the familiar scents of incense and candle smoke and beeswax. She’d always loved the smell of churches but thought the rest of it was for the birds. As usual, God on his Roman instrument of execution did not speak to her or stir her to rapture, but a statue of the Madonna and Child, hovering above a stand of votive candles, moved her quite unexpectedly to tears.

She shoved a few coins through the slot of the box and stumbled into the sunlight. It had turned cold without warning, the way it did in the mountains of Andalusia in winter. She hurried toward the base of the town, counting her steps, wondering why at her age it was harder to walk downhill than up. The little El Castillo supermarket had awakened from its siesta. From the orderly shelves she plucked a few items for her supper and carried them in a plastic sack across the wasteland of oak and olive, past the new hotel, and finally into the prison of her villa.

The cold followed her inside like a stray animal. She lit a fire in the grate and poured herself a whisky to take the chill out of her bones. The savor of smoke and charred wood made her think, involuntarily, of him. His kisses always tasted of whisky.

She carried the glass to her alcove beneath the stairs. Above the writing desk, books lined a single shelf. Her eyes moved left to right across the cracked and faded spines. Knightley, Seale, Boyle, Wright, Brown, Modin, Macintyre, Beeston … There was also a paperback edition of his dishonest memoir. Her name appeared in none of the volumes. She was his best-kept secret. No, she thought suddenly, his second best.

She opened the Victorian strongbox and removed a leatherbound scrapbook, so old it smelled only of dust. Inside, carefully pasted to its pages, was the meager ration of photographs, clippings, and letters Comrade Lavrov had allowed her to take from her old apartment in Paris—and a few more she had managed to keep without his knowledge. She had only eight yellowed snapshots of her child, the last one taken, clandestinely, on Jesus Lane in Cambridge. There were many more of him. The long boozy lunches at the St. Georges and the Normandie, the picnics in the hills, the drunken afternoons in the bathing hut at Khalde Beach. And then there were the photos she had taken in the privacy of her apartment when his defenses were down. They had never met in his large flat on the rue Kantari, only in hers. Somehow, Eleanor had never found them out. She supposed deception came naturally to them both. And to their offspring.

She returned the scrapbook to the Victorian strongbox and in the sitting room switched on her outmoded television. The evening news had just begun on La 1. After several minutes of the usual fare—a labor strike, a football riot, more unrest in neighboring Catalonia—there was a story about the assassination of a Russian agent in Vienna, and about the Israeli spymaster alleged to be responsible. She hated the Israeli, if for no other reason than the fact he existed, but at that moment she actually felt a bit sorry for him. The poor fool, she thought. He had no idea what he was up against.

12 (#ulink_858122c7-1cc7-50d9-a2d0-310219e9479f)

BELGRAVIA, LONDON (#ulink_858122c7-1cc7-50d9-a2d0-310219e9479f)

Official protocol dictated that Gabriel inform “C,” the director-general of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, of his intention to visit London. He would be met by a reception committee at Heathrow Airport, shepherded around passport control, and whisked to Vauxhall Cross in a motorcade worthy of a prime minister, a president, or a potentate from some corner of an empire lost. Nearly everyone who mattered in official and secret London would know of his presence. In short, it would be a disaster.

Which explained why Gabriel flew to Paris on a false passport instead and then stole quietly into London on a midday Eurostar train. For his accommodations he chose the Grand Hotel Berkshire on the West Cromwell Road. He paid for a two-night stay in cash—it was that sort of place—and climbed the stairs to his room because the lift was out of order. It was that sort of place, too.

He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the latch and engaged the safety bar before lifting the receiver of the room phone. It smelled of the last occupant’s aftershave. He started to dial but stopped himself. The call would be monitored by GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence service, and almost certainly by the American NSA, both of which knew the sound of his voice in multiple languages.

He replaced the receiver and opened a text-to-speech application on his mobile phone. After typing the message and selecting the language in which he wanted it read, he lifted the foul-smelling receiver a second time and dialed the number to completion.

A male voice answered, cool and distant, as though annoyed by an unwanted interruption. Gabriel held the speaker of the mobile to the mouthpiece of the room phone and pressed the PLAY icon. The software’s automated voice stressed all the wrong words and syllables but managed to convey his wishes. He wanted a word with “C” in private, far from Vauxhall Cross and without the knowledge of anyone else inside MI6. He could be reached at the Grand Hotel Berkshire, room 304. He did not have long to wait.

When the playback of the message was complete, Gabriel rang off and watched the rush-hour traffic hurtling along the road. Twenty minutes elapsed before the room phone finally rattled with an incoming call. The voice that spoke to Gabriel was human. “Fifty-six Eaton Square, seven o’clock. Business casual.” Then there was a click, and the call went dead.

Gabriel had expected to be sent to a dreary MI6 safe house in a place like Stockwell or Stepney or Maida Vale, and so the address in tony Belgravia came as something of a surprise. It corresponded to a large Georgian dwelling overlooking the square’s southwestern quadrant. The house, like its neighbors along the terrace, had a snow-white stucco exterior on the ground floor, with tan brick on the upper four. A light burned brightly between the pillars of the portico, and the bell push, when thumbed by Gabriel, produced a sonorous tolling within. While awaiting a response, he surveyed the other houses along the square. Most were darkened, evidence that one of London’s most sought-after addresses was the preserve of wealthy absentee owners from Arabia and China and, of course, Russia.

At last, there were footfalls, the crack of high heels on a marble floor. Then the door withdrew, revealing a tall woman of perhaps sixty-five, in fashionable black pants and a jacket with a pattern that looked like Gabriel’s palette after a long day’s work. She had resisted the siren’s song of plastic surgery or collagen implants and thus had retained an elegant, dignified beauty. Her right hand was holding the latch, her left a glass of white wine. Gabriel smiled. It promised to be an interesting evening.

She returned his smile. “My God, it’s really you.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Hurry inside before someone takes a shot at you or tries to blow you up. I’m Helen, by the way. Helen Seymour,” she added as the door closed with a solid thump. “Surely, Graham’s mentioned me.”

“He never stops talking about you.”

She made a face. “Graham warned me about your dark sense of humor.”

“I’ll do my best to keep it in check.”

“Please don’t. All our other friends are so bloody dull.” She led him along a checkerboard hall, to a vast kitchen that smelled wonderfully of chicken and rice and saffron. “I’m making paella. Graham said you wouldn’t mind.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The chorizo and the shellfish,” she explained. “He assured me you weren’t kosher.”

“I’m not, though I generally avoid the forbidden meats.”

“You can eat around them. That’s what the Arabs do when I make it for them.”

“They come often?” probed Gabriel.

Helen Seymour rolled her eyes.

“Anyone in particular?”

“That Jordanian chap was just here. The one who wears Savile Row suits and speaks like one of us.”

“Fareed Barakat.”

“He’s quite fond of himself. And you, too,” she added.

“We’re on the same side, Fareed and I.”

“And what side is that?”

“Stability.”

“There’s no such thing, my dear. Not anymore.”

Gabriel gave Helen Seymour the room-temperature bottle of Sancerre he had purchased from Sainsbury’s in Berkeley Street. She placed it directly in the freezer.

“I saw your picture in the Times the other day,” she said, closing the door. “Or was it the Telegraph?”

“Both, I’m afraid.”

“It wasn’t one of your better ones. Perhaps this will help.” She poured a large glass of Albariño. “Graham’s waiting for you upstairs. He says you two have something to discuss before dinner. I suppose it has to do with Vienna. I’m not allowed to know.”

“Consider yourself fortunate.”