An Honorable Man (7 page)

Beth quickly rose from her place and took the seat beside him, empty because the occupant had gone off. She smiled at Mueller. “Are you bored?” she asked.

That obvious? Dinner parties with strangers were low on his list, as were other people's home movies, and he had little tolerance for shallow conversation about politics. People no longer talked civilly. They argued. “No,” he said. “But I hate politics.”

Beth opened her eyes wide, laughed. She whispered, “I hate these dinners.”

Her comment surprised Mueller. He remembered dirt streaking her cheeks, but the dirt was gone, as was the red flush
of sun, and she was transformed. Perfumed skin, wavy chestnut hair, and a black strapless gown that set off her bare shoulders. Without dark glasses her eyes were a startling blue and looked at him with an eagerness that made him want to lean away. Her string of pearls and a giant gold pin that glittered starlike on the dark fabric made her look less ordinary, less chubby.

“They're all his friends,” she said, nodding toward the head of the table, where a gray-haired, older man with thick eyebrows listened intently to his neighbor. His head was bowed and the other man whispered something. They were in deep conversation on some urgent topic. “He holds this dinner every spring in race week. Mother died a year ago. He is still living the life they had together, but it's a big house and he hasn't gotten used to being alone. That's why I visit. Bad things happen in pairs.” She looked at him. “Red baiters want to make him a target.”

She nodded at a couple at the end of table. “Republicans. A banker from New York and that's his third wife, half his age. I shouldn't gossip, but we all do it, don't we?” She added earnestly, “He's come out in support of the hearings on Capitol Hill and that's what makes me angry.”

Mueller resisted the impulse to look at his watch.

Beth turned to another couple. “My father's partner. Collects art, likes opera. He smokes cigars. You can smell them on his clothes. He thinks he is open minded, but he is hopelessly conservative. My father puts up with him somehow.”

She paused. She contemplated the table of well-dressed guests. “Everyone in this room is worried about something. Anxious about something.” She nodded. “He's a Jew who got out of
Germany, his last name is Fried, and the woman next to him, with the black hair, well, she goes on and on about pesticides that leach into the water table when farmers spray for mosquitoes, and her name is Worthy. Has it ever struck you how some people have names that suggest what they do? Veterinarian named Woolf, or a banker named Nichols. Mueller?” She looked at him. “What do you do?”

“State Department.”

“My brother works there.”

Mueller turned to her and lingered on her face, its lines, and slowly the similarity of brother and sister shaped itself into a certainty. Surprise is a funny thing. It only lasts a second. He remembered the remark, so odd in the moment of telling, how Altman had said it and laughed: “My sister is there, old boy. In her is the end of breeding. She would like someone to speak with and you may be just the one to commit that act of bravery.”

Mueller considered the possibilities that might play out, the danger. The line he could not cross.

The stylish older woman suddenly leaned into Beth, her expression exuberant. “So, how did it feel? Opening night? The reviews were kind. They called it a comedy but I have always thought
Measure for Measure
was a tough knot to untie. Pride. Humility. The most righteous character turns out to be a lust-addled hypocrite. I'd say that's a good description of what is happening in Washington today. ‘Some rise by sin. Some by virtue fall.' You, my dear, were a magnificent Isabella.”

Mueller turned to Beth.
An actress?

Dessert was being served when the argument began. The
outspoken woman had wrapped her shoulders in her turquoise shawl and curtly addressed the man directly across the table. He had a crew-cut, thin tie, and a military sternness to his clenched jaw.

“On what evidence?” she snapped. “How can you say we're better than the Russians? They have show trials. We have show trials. How else can you describe the ridiculous hearings that are going on in the Senate?”

She became aware that the guests around her had stopped talking. She looked around for allies. “We are talking about the hearings on Capitol Hill,” she explained. “I disagreed with the idea that some people find popular that there is a thing that the senator calls moral degeneracy, that he says is why Rome fell, and will doom us, which equates communists and homosexuals.”

The room was silenced. The word had jumped from her lips and hung in the air like a bad smell. Guests looked at each other, but no one spoke. The lady looked at their host. “Arnold, they've even got you testifying.”

“I'll be fine,” he said. He nodded at one guest, then another. “It's all a misunderstanding. A few questions about things I did years ago in Vienna. Politics shouldn't spoil the evening. We're here to talk about sailing.”

“But we haven't talked about sailing,” the lady said.

“I will talk about sailing,” he said. “In the den. Shall we go? We have liquor, coffee, wine, tea, whiskey. Out the window you can see the Soviet navy's cadet training ship, the
Sedov
. It has four masts. Just arrived from Buenos Aires on a goodwill tour.”

Mueller left the group and found his way outside. He sat on
a bench with a view of the dark bay. A vast night sky of stars stretched across the water and, in the distance, the dim lights of Washington. Pine scents from evergreens mixed with the ambiguous smells of the warming earth. He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Beth approach.

“The police came by today,” she said, sitting.

He looked at her.

“I said you were recovering. I told them I'd bring you by when you felt better. Tomorrow if you like. You can stay here another night.”

“Who came?”

“The sheriff.”

“From Centreville?”

“Yes. I had called and said you had been run off the road. He was concerned. He asked if the driver was Russian.”

“How would he know?”

“You were by their compound. They drive fast on these roads. I said he might be. Was that wrong?”

“No, he was Russian. Nothing is wrong.”

They sat in silence. Neither of them knew how to carry the conversation forward. Finally, she said, “What brought you out here in the off season?”

“The quiet. I don't like crowds.”

“It wasn't the biking?” She laughed.

Was she making fun of him? Her eyes were open wide, but her expression wasn't mocking. Perhaps she was unsure of herself. He laughed with her. “I haven't biked since college. I had the wrong shoes.”

“How long are you out for?”

“I'm not sure.”

“How long have you rented the cottage?”

He'd been too vague. Certainly he should appear to have some idea. “A week. Maybe two. I'm taking time off to enjoy the quiet. Catching up on my reading.”

He threw out a few authors he'd read in the last two years, still contemporary enough to suit his purposes, and authors he'd enjoyed so he wouldn't have to fake a commentary if asked. But she didn't.

  •  •  •  

It had been arranged that Beth would pick up Mueller at the courthouse when he was done with his interview with the sheriff. It was raining again and the blanket of low clouds deepened the green of the scrub pine and darkened the mood. They drove in silence most of the way.

“What did he say?” she asked, finally.

It had been a short meeting. “He said they're orderly folks. It was a strange conversation. He said things that I think he wanted me to reject.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said they stick to themselves, they don't cause trouble. They even put nickels in the parking meters when they don't have to because their diplomatic plates exempt them. I got the sense he was provoking me to disagree. I told him I didn't want to press charges. It was an accident.”

Mueller paused. “He doesn't have jurisdiction. He said driv
ers aren't diplomats. They don't have immunity. He's already interviewed the driver. The man doesn't speak English so another Russian translated. It irritated the sheriff. The man was on an American highway and he couldn't read English street signs.”

“Did he say you were in the middle of the road?”

Mueller looked at Beth. “Who said that?”

“When he talked to me, he said the driver said you were in the middle of the road, and he had to swerve to avoid you.”

Mueller frowned. “I don't remember it that way.”

She walked him to the cottage's front door. She held her umbrella high for both of them and took his arm. He thought it was to help him walk, but he was surprised when she pulled him forward. He unlocked his door. Before he stepped inside he thanked her. She smiled. She gave him the faintest breath of a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug. She seemed to be a little embarrassed, but added in a whisper, “I'd like to see you again.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

  •  •  •  

Mueller spent the next afternoon in back of the cottage, by the bay, watching movements at the Soviet compound. He had not perfected the patience needed to wait for something to happen when there was no certainty that anything would. Time was the enemy of his restless imagination. He thought he saw something, but when he looked closer it was the same car he'd seen earlier in the day, and the routines at the compound were just that, ordinary comings and goings that had no bearing on his task. Muel
ler put away his binoculars when dusk arrived. He'd made his play. Now he had to wait.

He entered the cottage's back door and threw his overcoat on a kitchen chair. When he flipped the wall switch light filled the room. That's when he saw the front door ajar. He remembered that he'd closed it because a raccoon had gotten into the garbage he'd put in the shed. Muddy shoe prints crossed the kitchen and went into the living room. Quietly, Mueller removed his Colt service pistol from inside an old sock in his duffel bag, and undid the safety. He was alert to sounds, eyes scanning for clues, senses heightened to danger. A sound behind him, a quick movement, and suddenly he turned, gun out.

“So you
are
here,” Beth said, startled. She stood at the bathroom entrance. “I knocked. No one answered. I wondered where you could have gone without the bike.”

Then she saw the pistol.

He lowered the gun and placed it on the kitchen counter. “I was in the backyard. I'm not used to people walking in unannounced.”

“We agreed I'd come over and cook dinner.”

He'd forgotten.

“I found a key above the door. I bought chicken and asparagus. It's the first of the season.” She pointed at two bags of groceries that sat by the sink. She nodded at the pistol. “What are you worried about? It's safe here.” Then, “At least it's safe if you're not on a bike.”

He found a way to smile, but he didn't offer an explanation. She began unpacking groceries and very quickly she was preparing a meal.

It was the first of several nights that she made dinner for him. She offered to come and he accepted. They established a little routine. She arrived in the late afternoon with a bag of groceries and before dinner they took a walk along the beach. They didn't talk much, but she pointed out the large homes along the cove and described who lived in which house, offering gossip about the town. And then she would run ahead, or skip rocks across the cove's calm surface.

On the fourth night she arrived with a bottle of wine and the morning paper, which she'd gotten into the habit of bringing when he said the only thing he missed about Washington was the
Post.
Winter's gloom was already beginning to recede and the days were getting longer. He didn't resist her efforts to brighten the drab cottage with daffodils and a plate of homemade cookies. She brought fresh ones every afternoon after he complimented her first batch. He'd given her an extra key so she didn't have to ring the doorbell and wake him from a nap.

She had a glass of wine with the pot roast she'd prepared and he'd allowed her to pour a glass for him, but he barely touched it. They talked more easily now. She invited him to share his background, and to encourage him she talked about herself and her childhood. As was the case in most conversations then, they turned to the war.

“I was a nurse.”

“Where?”

“The war ended before I was sent overseas.” She stood and approached Mueller. “Let me see your stitches.” She parted his hair and looked at the small head wound.

He felt her fingers part his hair and massage the scalp around the injury.

“Relax,” she said. “You're so tense.” She went back to the wound. “I think it's healed. It wasn't deep. I can save you a trip to the doctor. Shall I remove the stitches?”

“That's not necessary.”

“I know that. I'm offering. It will take one minute.”

He was discomfitted by her kindness. “Okay,” he said.

He winced when she pressed alcohol soaked-cotton around the wound's three stitches, and she patted his shoulder, soothing him, and whispered,
Relax
. It surprised him how the touch of her hand calmed him. It was a feeling he hadn't had—hadn't let himself have—for a long time. She snipped the sutures with a penknife scissors and removed three black threads with her eyebrow tweezers. She massaged his scalp when she was done and he let her go on for a while. He allowed himself to close his eyes and enjoy her touch.

He was glad neither of them was good at flirting. It was a kind of game, a deception. He preferred not to have that responsibility.

Should he sleep with her? He wasn't someone who was easily aroused, but he found her desirable that afternoon on the beach when she burst out laughing at him. She was not someone who would turn his head on the street, but she was attractive, and she had lots of other good points. She was lively and witty, and smart, and respected his privacy. She laughed impulsively without thinking, and he found that her spontaneity made him comfortable. She was easy to be around. He didn't know when it started, but he found himself getting fond of her. It was affection,
and with it came a great need not to hurt her. But it wasn't passion. He didn't want that, or perhaps he did, but he was afraid of it. Or maybe he was afraid he'd ruin it—hurt her, hurt himself, make a mess of it. That's what his wife—ex-wife—had told him. “You don't know how to be close. You pull back. You say you want to be close, but you live inside yourself.” He'd protested that she was wrong, but divorced and alone, he'd come to believe that she was right. He had listened to her complaints, even tried to be the vulnerable man she wanted, but nothing had been enough. They had only made each other miserable. He hadn't seen her betrayal coming. She had turned on him and taken the boy.