All the Old Knives (6 page)

“Well, what?”

“If you're going to ask me about Vienna, then you might as well do it before I pass out.”

Involuntarily, my right hand drops to my pocket, touching the Siemens. On the other side of the room, the short-tempered businessman is digging into a plate of antipasti. Celia is waiting to be interrogated.

 

11

Yet as I open my mouth, running through the script, some impromptu variation on the one that brought Bill to tears, she holds up a long finger. “Don't expect a lot.”

I close my mouth, look curious.

The finger moves to her skull and taps. “I don't know how much I'll remember.”

“The Xanax?”

She shakes her head, still holding on to a smile. “There are collectors,” she says, “and there are the other people. Jettisoners? I don't know. But I'm one of them. Remember my apartment on Salmgasse?”

“Spare.”

“More than that, Henry. Empty. Every time I moved, I trimmed my life back to the basics. People do this when they're young, but unlike them I didn't have a parents' attic to slowly fill up. I didn't rent some storage facility in Queens. I just let it go, and each time I dumped old letters or photos, I felt a tingle of pleasure.
There:
One part of my history is gone. That gaggle of friends has disappeared. This collection of embarrassing memories can no longer be discovered by someone going through my stuff.” She reaches for her wine, sips, thinks. “It was always about the future. What's that they say about the past?”

“That it's another country?”

She accepts my half-remembered quote. “I'm forty-five now. My kids are starting to ask questions about that other country. Their friends' parents pull out home movies and photo albums and invite aging relatives over to tell stories. What do I do? I divert their attention. Their friends are handed a long history. My kids are given nothing.”

I'm not sure how to answer this. Is she talking about child rearing or the mistakes of her past? And in either case, does she expect some kind of constructive reply, or is she only showing off her anxieties so that I can admire the difficulties of parenthood? Matty was that way, her hour-long speeches uninterruptable—for if I did break in with a possible solution to her problems, I'd receive a suspicious look, followed by a fresh lecture on my inability to really
know
her.

But this is not Matty—quite the contrary. I say, “Children are resilient. I didn't get much of a history when I was growing up. You know the story.” She does—abusive, alcoholic grandpa, who when he did appear at family functions was mute with eternal guilt, and whose violent history had primed the extended clan for silence. “It'll make sense when they're older. They'll be happy not to be saddled by all those connections.”

“Until they have kids.”

“If they have kids.”

“They better,” she says with the old sharpness—grandchildren are something she's already settled on. “And I better last long enough to bounce them on my knee.”

I don't bother promising her anything.

She drinks more of her wine, fully now, the flesh of her throat contracting and expanding, then sets down the glass. “I'm thinking about writing a book.”

I wait.

With a finger wave around her temple, she says, “Memory. This is a problem. You throw away all the evidence of your past, and you start to forget it. And it may not be pretty, but it's all I've got. So I've been taking notes. Something to leave to the kids.”

“You better get that cleared.”

“I'm not thinking of
publishing,
Henry. Maybe put a couple of copies in a safe deposit box, for when they come of age. Or after I'm dead. Maybe that would be better.”

“Pretty sticky stuff?”

She exhales; I smell tannins and spearmint—mouthwash, or gum. “Pretty sticky.”

“I'd love to read it.”

“Wouldn't you just.”

Arched brow, a quick lick of her lips. I gaze.

“I'm just warning you,” she says. “I may get things wrong.”

“You've already told me not to take you at face value, Cee.”

“Did I?” A smile. “I forgot.”

My expression mirrors hers as I take another gulp of wine. I say, “This should be pretty basic stuff. Chronology, mostly. I'll want you to draw me a few word-pictures. Tell me about Bill. Your responsibilities. We'll work our way up to the Flughafen.”

She plants her forearms on the table, elbows together, gripping hands. Girlish excitement. “I'm all yours.”

“I wish,” I say, before thinking better of it. But her smile betrays nothing. “I'd like to start with your position in '06, working for Bill.”

“You don't know all of that?”

“Well, you didn't tell me much, and Vick never bothered to lay it out for me. I knew better than to ask.”

She pulls her arms back into her lap, considering this. Then: “You want to record our chat?”

I shake my head, then tap my temple. “I don't want Interpol asking for it later. You might say something you don't want to share.”

She looks as if she appreciates my discretion; then her hand reappears, sliding forth again to grip mine. “You're looking out for me, aren't you?”

“Always,” I lie.

 

12

EVIDENCE

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Transcript from cell phone flash card removed from premises of Karl Stein, CIA, on November 7, 2012. Investigation into actions taken by Mr. Stein on October 16, 2012, file 065-SF-4901.

CELIA FAVREAU:
It is December 2006. Vienna is in the throes of Euro-phoria, a booming economy and a sense of place in the union. As always, there are anxieties—right-wingers remind everyone of Austria
über alles,
despairing the waves of immigrants from Turkey and the onetime Eastern Bloc—but by and large it's a capital of dull stability, its economy not yet shaken by the failures of Western mortgage practices.

There I am, Celia Harrison, a case officer working under William Compton, who does not enjoy being called “Wild Bill”—a fact that stops none of us from calling him just that. An aging commander who remembers the original Wild Bill Donovan, the parachute-drop disasters in Albania and Czechoslovakia, Vietnamese humiliations and the false dawn of perestroika. He was tired, mostly, and bent too easily by Sally's commands, to the point that none of us took his commands particularly seriously. Another way of saying that he was an excellent boss, and I'm not happy to hear he's been completely broken by his self-centered wife.

But you want positions, yes? So, Vienna station, almost entirely under diplomatic cover. Led in 2006, as now, by stalwart Victor Wallinger, chief of station, and his four disciples. Leslie MacGovern, collection management. Two operations officers: Ernst Pul, once an Austrian himself, and dear old Bill. The fourth, you'll remember, was Owen Lassiter, who ran something to do with codes. I'm not really sure what he did, but he only lasted eight months before he found himself a pistol from the storeroom, took it home, and shot himself in the head. Owen was minor American royalty, related to that Wyoming senator, which I think made him and what he did even more of a shock. We expected a prep-school jerk, but got gloomy Owen instead. Is that why Interpol's so interested?

HENRY PELHAM:
Don't think so.

CELIA FAVREAU:
Well, I suppose they couldn't care less.

Anyway, I'd been pulled off the street by '05, graduating from nonofficial to official, and for more than a year I'd been working with Bill, keeping track of our networks around town, some of which I'd helped set up. We'd tapped into the Muslim community, which was by and large peaceful and hunkered down in fear, and the Russian community, which was Swiss with spies. The local gangsters helped us out on occasion, but they weren't much fun—they only helped with business issues, not the hard intel. Our real interest was in the Bundesversammlung, and over the years we'd collected enough politicians to have a pretty good insight into the shifts and turns of national policy. Enough so that Ernst came to Bill and me to find out what was going on there, rather than going to his own networks.

HENRY PELHAM:
Did you like it?

CELIA FAVREAU:
What?

HENRY PELHAM:
Were you happy there?

CELIA FAVREAU:
You remember back then—you tell me. I was busy. I was always on the move, setting up meets and grilling reluctant sources. It was the kind of career I'd always aspired to, and while there was a hint of danger the only real risk was getting kicked out of the country. I had a boss I adored. I had a civil servant's health plan. I had … well, I had you, didn't I? My bestest lover and a rock to lean on when I clocked out. You were still working the street, so even if I didn't have the thrill of danger I could experience it vicariously whenever I spent the night with you. I don't care what they say, Henry. A girl really can have it all.

HENRY PELHAM:
Apparently not. Not you, at least.

CELIA FAVREAU:
Sure, but that was later. Before the Flughafen, I wasn't thinking about the future. I was still in my thirties, and I was too busy to fret about kids. I was having the time of my life, living in a world where I could see beneath the surface of mundane reality. When Herr Fischer said something at a press conference, I was one of a handful of people who knew what he was really saying, and why. I knew which politicians had been cowed by fear or greed, and which ones had withstood those pressures. I knew who was admirable and who was not—and I knew that their public image had almost no bearing on the truth of the matter.

I knew, for instance, about Helmut Nowak. Remember him? By '05 he'd held a seat in the Bundesrat for ten years for the Greens, and suddenly he steps down. Personal reasons, he tells his constituents. The papers speculated that he was being pushed out by the new generation of Greens—the hardcore, anticapitalist wing—but they got it wrong. It was the right that was pushing him out, in particular the Freedom Party, which had evidence of a little boy he'd diddled during his years in city government. Personal reasons, indeed.

That was the high, Henry. When I heard accepted truths I was able, very often, to turn them over and read the backside, where the secrets were hidden.

I remember before Drew and I moved away, I was talking with Sarah—Miss Western—and she was simply unable to believe that I could leave that life behind. I knew what she was getting at—most of you thought I'd gone off the deep end, or that I was marrying for money.

HENRY PELHAM:
Not me.

CELIA FAVREAU:
It's all right. There may even be some truth to that story. But if you flip it over you'll see the opposite. Coming over here and raising kids had always been my destination. My parents, before they died, taught me to be just like them, and they succeeded. Without the security of a family around me, I'm only half a person. It's true. The problem was that my years with the Agency were like addiction. I was drunk on the thrill of secret knowledge, too focused on the next high to ever think about what was going to make me whole. You understand? The question isn't why I moved here with Drew. The question is, Why didn't I do this ten years earlier?

 

13

She talks fluently and without reservation, giving voice to Celia 1, the woman who knew how to command a conversation from its start to her inevitable victory. The Celia who knew how to spin a story, invent on the fly, and draw you deep into a maze of fabrication imbued with so much authenticity that you never, not even years later, knew whether or not you had been taken for a ride.

Which makes me wonder about the differences between these two women. Are there any? Celia 1 was a professional manipulator, while Celia 2 is disarmingly earnest, which leads to the inevitable suspicion that Celia 2 is the fake here, a puppet whose strings are being caressed and manipulated by the woman who once shared my bed.

Or is it as she insists? Was Celia 2 always there, behind the constructed shell that was Celia 1? Am I finally face-to-face with the real Celia after all these years?

This, I have to admit, is a heady prospect. It calls into question the very idea of love. Who have I been carrying around inside me all these years? Celia 1? Does that mean I've adored someone who never existed? Did I sense, in some deeper way, the other Celia hiding just beneath the surface, and fall in love with Celia 2? Or—and this is the worrisome option—did one construction allow me to more easily build the woman I wanted to love? Is my Celia, the one that has kept me up nights, just a reflection of my desires?

All this tangled self-questioning, I know, is not a sign of great wisdom, nor is it a sign of my earnestness, for I would never admit to asking the questions. Certainly not to her. Instead, it's a sign of my confusion. I'm sitting here, across from the pick that's been chipping away at my heart, and I'm not sure what to do. There is the job, the one I've flown around the world to complete—in my pocket, after all, a cell phone is recording all our words. But then there's my emotional health. It lies in my senses. I watch her speak, occasionally smell her scent, and feel the rare touch of her hand, all the while asking myself the most basic question: Do I still love this woman? Is she, as I once believed so deeply, the only person to whom I would gladly tie myself unto death? I feel, as I listen to her self-assured speech, that this is so.

Then what about the job? What about Treble, my secret weapon?

“Intelligence as drug,” I say. “I like that. Vick as a pusher. Me as…?”

“You're the pusher, Henry. Vick's the kingpin.”

“Right. Which makes you…?”

“A reformed addict,” she says without a moment's hesitation. “And I hope you're not trying to draw me back into that miserable life.”