B axeter had tried to speak, to explain, but Janet had refused him, choked by this, the final betrayal, tricked by a man she thought had loved her. She spat out that she hated him. He said he didn’t believe her and she screamed back that she didn’t give a fuck what he believed: that all she wanted to do was get back to Cyprus. He’d reached out to touch her, but she’d shrugged him away, not wanting even the slightest physical contact.
“You’re being juvenile,” he said.
“ Have been juvenile,” she qualified. “Welcome to the graduation.”
“You’re not very good at sarcasm: it comes out wrong.”
“What the fuck are you good at?”
“What I do.”
“What’s that?”
“John’s free: you saw it happen. That’s what I’m good at.”
“I’m impressed!”
“You should be. And the sarcasm still isn’t working.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“The barnyard language doesn’t work, either. Never has.”
Like everything else in the operation, which Janet now accepted Baxeter had personally organized, the reunion with the fishing boat went perfectly and there was no difficulty landing at the shoreline break near Cape Pyla from which they’d embarked.
He did not immediately try to start the car, looking across at her. “I said I wanted to explain.”
“Shut up! Just shut up and get me back to the hotel!”
“Your choice.”
“I just made it.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
They drove in silence through the still-dark night towards Nicosia. They’d crossed from the Lebanon in an incredibly brief time and there wasn’t yet the peach and pink tinge of dawn on the horizon: but a helicopter would have been quicker, and the American plan was for John to be helicoptered in at once to the British base at Akrotiri, she remembered. What if they’d tried to reach her at the hotel? What reason could she convincingly give for not being there? Nothing right, Janet thought, dismally: from the very outset she had done nothing right. She’d fumbled and thrashed out and made ripples-maybe even waves-but not once had she got anything right. Not once. Fucked up, all the way along. Baxeter’s distaste of her swearing forced itself upon her: fucked up, she thought again, defiantly. And then again, fucked up.
Baxeter started to drive into the hotel gate but Janet stopped him there.
“We have to talk,” he said, as she got out.
Janet slammed the door, saying nothing.
The skeletal night staff were still on, the clerk hastily buttoning his shirt collar as she approached the desk. When she asked, he assured her there were no outstanding messages: relief lifted Janet. She felt the physical need to cleanse herself of everything and everybody with whom she had been in contact during the previous hours. She showered for a long time, twisting the water control from cold to hot, first to chill and then to burn herself but soon became irritated at the obvious scourging, snapping off the pretense. She didn’t sleep when she finally got into bed, lying wide-eyed but able to see nothing clearly as the day lightened through the window. Fucked up, she decided once more and then confronted another truism: her cursing was thought-out and artificial, words without the necessary gut-felt emotion.
The telephone shrilled at six o’clock. It was Willsher. Janet had to force the excitement befitting the announcement that John Sheridan was a free man, using words like wonderful and fantastic and agreed to be ready when the limousine arrived, in an hour’s time.
Al Hart was the escort once again. He was unshaven and haggard and wore denim fatigues and Janet knew he had somehow been involved. As soon as she got into the car, Hart said: “It was a Cakewalk: we annihilated them!”
Janet thought how easily Baxeter had been prepared to shoot the group of innocent men who’d almost come unexpectedly upon them. She said: “What were the casualties?”
“We lost ten men: maybe twenty-five wounded,” disclosed the CIA man. “None captured, though: that would have been the disaster.”
Ten men-probably with wives and kids-who this time yesterday had been alive, Janet reflected. She said: “So it’s being regarded as a success?”
The stubbled man grinned at her across the car. “There’s already been a congratulatory telephone call-and a follow-up cable-from the President. What do you think?”
Janet wished-as she’d wished all too often-that she knew what to think. She said: “So how’s John?”
“I only saw him briefly: a few minutes,” said Hart, guardedly. “He looked OK to me: bewildered, not quite able to grasp what was happening, but basically OK.”
“I hope to Christ you’re right,” said Janet. How many more disappointments could there possibly be?
At Akrotiri, Hart actually had to get from the car to complete the necessary formalities: an armed escort entered the limousine next to the driver to take them through the military complex. The soldier pointed out the infirmary buildings when they were still some way off and Hart came forward eagerly in his seat: his leg began pumping up and down, a nervous mannerism.
There must have been the sort of warning of their approach that there had been when Janet had made her entry into the American embassy (a week, a month, an eon ago?) because Professor Robards emerged immediately from the hospital entrance when the car stopped. Janet had expected the psychologist to be wearing a white coat and maybe carrying some tool of his trade, whatever a tool of his trade was; instead he had on the same crumpled jacket and check shirt of their previous encounter. Janet wondered if the man bathed.
“How is he?” Janet demanded.
Robards smiled. “Better than I expected. I want a day or two to be sure-the damned press conference can wait-but he’s better than I expected him to be.”
Janet was conscious of a stir within her which she put down as relief. Was it enough? she asked herself. She said: “That’s good. I’m very glad,” disappointed in herself as she spoke. From the emptiness of her voice she could have been speaking about a casual acquaintance.
Robards didn’t notice. He said: “It’s more than good: it’s astonishing. Your fiance is one hell of a tough guy, mentally as well as physically.”
My fiance, thought Janet. Why didn’t she feel any longer that John Sheridan was her fiance? She said: “I can see him right away?”
“He’s insisting on it,” said Robards, smiling again.
“Is there anything I should say? Shouldn’t say?”
Robards made a sharp, dismissive gesture with his head. “Don’t hold back on anything. If you feel like saying something, say it. He’s quite tense, coiled-up. He’d recognize in a moment any sort of hesitation: be unsettled by it.”
Janet walked with the psychologist through gleaming, polished corridors, conscious of the man’s crepe-soled shoes squeaking over the tiles. She expected the hospital smell of disinfectant and formaldehyde but it wasn’t present and then she remembered it was not physical injury that was treated in this wing. Having posed the question she was unsure what she was going to say.
John Sheridan was in a single-bedded side ward, an all-glass cubicle where he was always visible to the nurses from their central control desk area. There were three nurses at the desk and another was leaving Sheridan’s room as they approached. Through the glass Janet could see Sheridan staring directly ahead, eyes unfocused. His hair remained as thick as it had always been but it was almost completely white now. His cheeks were sunken and emaciated and his eyes were blinking. Both thin hands were outstretched, without movement, on top of the sheet, and the veins were corded black across their backs.
“Are you coming in with me?” asked Janet, suddenly needing support.
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t… No… perhaps not…” she stumbled, awkwardly.
“It would probably be better, just the two of you.”
“Yes.”
“But if you want…?”
“No.”
“I’ll be at the desk: all you need to do is call.”
“Yes,” Janet accepted. So what the hell was she going to say?
“Good luck,” encouraged Robards. Janet wished he hadn’t said it.
She stopped in the frame of the doorway, looking in. For a few brief moments he did not appear to see her and then recognition came into his eyes and his face filled with happiness.
“Hello,” he said. “Hello, my darling.” His voice was thin and uneven.
“Hello,” said Janet. It sounded vacuous and inadequate. Which it was. Go on in! she urged herself; go in! go in! She did at last, hesitantly, her feet sliding one after the other over the polished floor. Janet got to the bedside and smiled down, and when he smiled back she was shocked to see that some of his teeth were missing. She didn’t know if she’d kept her reaction from showing. She reached tentatively out and he stretched his hand up to hers: his skin felt strange, like paper. An old person’s hand, she thought. Kiss him! She had to kiss him!
Janet started to lean forward but Sheridan twitched back, turning his head away. “No!” he said.
“Why not?”
“Not clean,” he mumbled. “Not clean yet.”
“What do you mean, not clean?”
“Haven’t washed, not properly, for a long time,” said Sheridan. “They bathed me this morning but there’s some skin infection, from the dirt. I hate dirt!”
He always had, thought Janet, remembering the fastidious apartment. Concentrating, she saw there was filth ingrained in the creases on his hands and beneath his fingernails: his chalk-white face was patched with pink and there were occasional grazes where the shaver had snagged. She said: “I want to kiss you!”
“No!” The voice was tremulous, tears close. Sheridan said: “It’s nothing serious, the infection. They say it’ll clear up in days.”
Still with her hand in his Janet managed to pull a chair closer to the bed, to sit down. As close as this she could smell at last the disinfectant or whatever they were treating him with. She said: “It’s good to see you, my darling.” Vacuous and inadequate, she thought again.
“The doctor, Robards, he told me what you’ve done.”
If only you knew what I’d done, my darling, Janet thought. She said: “I had to get you out.”
“I never thought it would happen,” said Sheridan. “Not really. I refused to give in, wouldn’t give in because if I had the bastards would have won, but deep down I never thought I was going to get out alive.”
“Did they hurt you badly?” asked Janet. At once she regretted the question: don’t hold back on anything, she recalled.
Sheridan nodded. “In the beginning. They wanted to break me: make me beg…” He pulled his lips back, an ugly expression. “Lost some teeth. I think they bruised my kidneys, too. Peed a lot of blood, but it’s stopped now. Robards said they’d check for permanent damage. They didn’t maim me: threatened to cut fingers off but they didn“t.”
“Poor darling: my poor darling!” Janet covered the bony, fragile hand with both of hers, frightened against hurting him if she squeezed too hard.
“It was you,” said Sheridan, confusingly. “That’s how I resisted them: thinking of you. Although, as time went on, I began to believe I’d never get out, I still kept thinking of you, knowing that you’d be waiting. That’s why I begged, in the end. Didn’t mean anything and it stopped me being beaten: reduced the risk of my not getting back to you.”
“Don’t, my love! Please don’t!” said Janet, begging herself. Sheridan was a blurred outline through her tears. It was exactly how Robards had predicted he would hang on, she remembered.
“It’s all right,” assured Sheridan, their roles reversed. “It doesn’t upset me to talk about it: they didn’t really win. Just thought they did. So I’m not ashamed or anything silly like that.”
“I don’t think you’ve got anything at all to be ashamed of, my darling,” said Janet, with feeling.
“We should have been married by now: I thought about that, too.”
Janet swallowed. “So did I.”
“Have we got the house?”
She nodded. “All waiting.”
“I planned things,” disclosed Sheridan. “That’s how I kept my sanity, thinking about all the pictures and plans you sent and imagining how we’d fix it up…” The man smiled, almost embarrassed. “Every room: carpets, drapes, stuff in the kitchen, things like that. But it was only a game for me, a way of staying sane. We needn’t do any of it, of course.”
“We’ll fix it up however you want,” said Janet. How could she make a promise like that?
“I want so much to get back,” he said. His lips began to tremble and momentarily he had to stop talking, clamping them shut against a collapse. “To get back where things are familiar: where I’m sure. Don’t want to be unsure again,” he picked up. Sheridan moved one of his hands, to cover hers. “Remember what I said a long time ago about never going away again?”
Janet nodded once more, unspeaking.
“This time I really mean it,” promised the man. “Never again. Ever.”
“Good,” she said. Was that the best she could manage?
“I’ve got to stay here a couple of days for tests.”
“Robards told me.”
“But after that we can go home, can’t we?” he asked with sudden urgency. “Back home to Washington?”
“Yes,” agreed Janet, feeling the pressure of his dependence. “We can go back home.”
“Come and see me every day!” Sheridan pressed further. “I want to know you’re around.”
“I’m around,” said Janet. “And of course I’ll come every day.”
Robards was waiting where he’d promised to be, in the desk area. He smiled as Janet emerged and said: “Well?”
Janet was unsure how to answer. She said: “He’s very thin.”
“A couple of weeks from now, with the proper care and diet, he’ll be a different man,” guaranteed the psychologist, buoyantly. “How did he seem apart from that?”
“Nervous,” said Janet.
“But not unstable?”
“No,” she agreed. “He certainly didn’t seem unstable. He said it didn’t hurt to talk about it.”
“That’s the most important thing,” seized Robards. “We’ve got to get it all out: I don’t want anything left unsaid which is going to stay inside his head and fester.”
“Will two or three days be sufficient for you to achieve that?” What was she trying to delay? Janet asked herself.
“Here certainly,” assured Robards. “We’ll carry on, of course, when we get back to Washington.”
“Of course,” accepted Janet. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Willsher’s here,” announced the psychologist. “He wants to see you.”
The CIA official rose politely as Janet entered the visitors’ room and waited until she sat down. The man didn’t smile.
“He seems OK,” said Janet.
“Yes,” said Willsher. “We’re very relieved.”
“So am I,” said Janet. It had been automatic to say it; the words came without thought. “Hart said there’d been congratulations from the President?”
“The outcry is what we predicted it would be, but Washington is regarding it as an unqualified success,” said Willsher. “Which is what I want to talk to you about.”
“Me?”
“Robards won’t let us make John available to the media for a couple of days, but there’s a clamor for access,” said Willsher. “We want you to hold the first press conference by yourself.”
“By myself!” Inconceivably, her mind blocked by other things, Janet had forgotten the media interest she had been largely instrumental in cultivating.
“You’ve done pretty well in the past,” reminded Willsher, pointedly.
“What more is there to say?” she asked, wearily.
“Which is what I want to talk to you about most of all,” said Willsher. “The discovery of John’s whereabouts… planning of the incursion… everything like that, has got to remain entirely a CIA operation. You weren’t involved. Understood!”
Janet blinked at the demand. “If you like,” she said, badly.
“We do like,” said Willsher, forcefully. “Who you humped to get what you wanted remains unsaid as far as we’re concerned.”
“Who I what!”
“Lady!” said Willsher, weary himself now. “You surely don’t think that we haven’t known what’s been going on, do you? We’ve had you and Baxeter under wraps from the first time you jumped into the sack together: we’ve had a wire in your hotel bedroom for weeks. Heard every sigh and groan. Like I said, that’s your business. It worked.”
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Janet, coming forward with her head in her hands.
“It remains unsaid,” repeated Willsher. “John will never know.”
“But why didn’t you…?” groped Janet, through her hands.
“Didn’t we what? Confront Baxeter and demand cooperation? Because we wouldn’t have got it, would we?” said Willsher, as if he were explaining a simple lesson to a dull child. “Baxeter was conning you and had to imagine he was conning us, too. He’d have backed off if we’d confronted him. And we’d have lost the opportunity to get John. We just didn’t see the curve until it was almost too late but we managed to minimize it: everyone got their share.”
Janet didn’t understand the last remark. What share had she got, out of any of it? She straightened, with difficulty, and said: “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Oh yes you can,” said Willsher, coming forward himself so that their heads were quite close. “We’ve got a success, like I told you. And it’s going to end up a success, all the way down the line.”
“Or else?” anticipated Janet.
“I’m not in the business of threats,” said Willsher. “For the moment I’m in the business of writing happy-ever-after love stories. You go before the press by yourself and you go before the press with John, before you fly back to America, and it’s going to be violin music and roses and everyone back home is going to get a lump in their throats and know an international violation was justified and think what a great and free country ours is. Whatever you personally decide is going to happen between the two of you once you get there and the press isn’t looking is entirely a matter for you. For the moment what happens is entirely a matter for us.”
“Just like that?” said Janet, trying successfully to match the cynicism.
“No, not just like that,” offered Willsher. “The court case is still outstanding and you stand a chance of being trashed if the prosecution can’t come up with that Arab engineer or get the cafe people to remember what happened.”
“Yes,” agreed Janet, doubtfully.
“We know where Haseeb is,” disclosed Willsher. “We’re going to make sure that Zarpas does, too. And the cafe owner is going to recover his memory.”
“By being threatened?”
“Whatever it takes: nothing is going to tarnish this.”
“Not a detail overlooked!” said Janet.
“Not a one,” said Willsher, confidently.
“Satisfied!” demanded Janet, her control wavering. “Are you satisfied with what you’ve done!”
Willsher was quite unmoved by Janet’s outrage. “Of course, I’m satisfied,” he said. “It all worked out, didn’t it? You wouldn’t believe how unusual it is for everything to turn out as completely as it has this time.”
“But what about me!”
“Your problem, Ms. Stone. Your problem,” said the man. “You made it one, after all.”