Every Secret Thing (24 page)

He said, ‘I’m told that you’re engaged to Alvaro Marinho, from the Embassy.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He seems a very nice young man. A good man.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘When will you marry?’

‘We do not yet know. This war…’

‘Ah, yes. This war.’ He turned his face away, to look once again at the leather-framed portrait. ‘What our lives might have been, were it not for this war.’

She followed his gaze, to the lively green eyes of his
redheaded
wife, and she couldn’t help asking, ‘Are you sure she wouldn’t be happier here?’

He said gently, ‘It isn’t a question of happiness. She’s much better off where she is. No, we must think first of those whom we love, not ourselves, and try always to do what is best for them.’

Saying the words aloud seemed to resolve something for him. Taking a sheet of stationery from his desk drawer he wrote four brief lines across it in his neatly slanting script, and signed it. Then he folded it and slipped it in an envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, writing a name on the envelope, ‘could you please see that this gets delivered to the Hotel Rosa, in Caldas da Rainha?’

Regina glanced at the name on the envelope as he handed it over; it meant nothing to her. ‘Of course.’

She knew she should have mentioned that delivery, and the name of the man whom the message had gone to, when she made her weekly report…but she didn’t. It didn’t seem right, somehow, spying on Deacon. Passing along things that Roger and Spivey and Manuel Garcia said, well, that was one thing. But Deacon was in the same business that she was – invading his privacy just seemed improper.

And so, the next week, when she learnt he’d been invited to Garcia’s home for dinner, she didn’t put that detail in her report either.

She was, though, like everyone else at the office, amazed. Roger, stopping by her desk the next day after lunch, to chat, was keen for information. ‘Did he tell you what the wife was like? I’ve never so much as glimpsed Manuel’s wife, myself. I’m not even sure she exists.’

‘She exists.’ Regina smiled. ‘She telephones him now and then.’

‘Ah, so you’ve never seen her either? How very interesting.’ He looked towards Deacon’s office. ‘He’s not in, is he?’

‘Mr Deacon? No, he’s gone to see a painting.’

‘Well, that’s inconvenient.’ Roger’s eyes danced mischief. ‘I shall have to have him round to
my
house for dinner, I suppose, if I want to learn anything.’

‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to invite Mr Garcia?’

‘I have, darling. He didn’t accept. I don’t remember the excuse he used. The problem is, you see, he’s Spanish, and the Spanish and we English have a thing. I don’t know that they’ve ever really forgiven us for that Armada business.’ He leant on her desk, arms folded. ‘And now, of course, it’s wolfram, and this Monreale affair.’

Regina stopped her filing for a moment to look up at him. ‘What’s that?’

‘Monreale, my dear. He’s Consul for the new Fascist republic the Italians have set up for themselves, at Salo. Franco’s allowed him to open an office in Madrid, for passports, and the Allies are protesting. And last week in the House of Commons Eden said he’d warned the Spanish government to stop supplying wolfram to the Axis…’

‘What is wolfram?’

‘Tungsten, some call it. A black ore that’s used as an alloy to harden steel – that makes it a strategic export, in a war. Anyhow, the Spanish have apparently been warned there might be quite grave consequences if they keep up the supply. Needless to say, they’re not terribly fond of us, just at the moment. So I don’t imagine Garcia would want to come over for dinner,’ he said, summing up. ‘No, I’m better off trying your nice Mr Deacon.’

That afternoon, Regina said to Deacon, ‘Roger’s going to ask you to dinner.’

‘Oh, yes? Why is that?’

She smiled. ‘I gather he’s planning to pump you for information on Mr Garcia. He’s like an old woman, he likes to know everyone’s business.’

‘It’s a wonder no one tried persuading
him
to work intelligence,’ said Deacon. ‘It would have saved them the bother of bringing me over, not to mention the expense.’

‘It was considered once.’

‘But?’

‘They didn’t think him suitable.’

‘Not because he was a homosexual, surely? It’s common knowledge, isn’t it? That would make him immune to blackmail.’

‘No, it wasn’t that. He drinks,’ she said. ‘Sometimes too much. And he’s been known to use cocaine. He is a good man, but his habits make him vulnerable.’

‘I see.’ He thought a moment, then he asked, ‘What does he drink?’

‘Scottish whiskey.’

‘Then I shall enjoy having dinner with Roger,’ said Deacon, head bending again to his work. ‘One couldn’t get whiskey at all in New York.’

Regina Marinho smiled now, in remembrance. Pouring out a second cup of tea for each of us, she said, ‘I did so like him. He was like a breath of clean air, in those offices. Really, I’d have worked for him for ever, if they’d let me. But of course, they didn’t let me.’

She had never been to Deacon’s flat. She’d never had a reason to, but Alvaro was ill today, and it was Saturday, and there had been a message from New York, and she’d been ordered to deliver it.

The house was in the Lapa district, not far from the Embassy, along a narrow sidestreet that fell steeply to the harbour. Deacon had the third-floor flat. His windows had a dizzy view across the jumbled red-tiled roofs that hugged the hill below. To the east a wall of dark cloud rose above the water, but the sun was bright against it, and the specks of wheeling seabirds were a blinding white.

Regina watched the birds and waited patiently while Deacon decoded the message, in case he should need to send back a reply. This was a different code, not meant for her eyes, nor for anyone else at the Embassy. Deacon had gone to the next room to do the decoding; she didn’t know what key he used.

It wasn’t her concern. She only knew what she was meant to know, and nothing more. But she could not resist, this first time being here in Deacon’s flat, the urge to wander round and see what details of his life she might discover.

The flat had come furnished, she knew, and the sofas and tables and curtains were simple and spare. One armchair had been moved from its deeply indented place on the carpet to a new spot near the window, and the smoking-table at its side was weighted by a stack of books – the one on top a novel by the author Nevil Shute, the next below it a collection of the poems of Rupert Brooke.

She was looking to see what the other ones were when a knock at the door interrupted.

Deacon heard it too. He came through from the back room and warned her to silence, then motioned for her to change places with him, ushering her into the back room and closing the door between them as he went to find out who had knocked.

Regina saw the single bed, the chest of drawers, and realised that the only thing more damning to her character than being found in Andrew Deacon’s flat would be to be found in his bedroom. With that in mind, she kept close to the door, so that if it were suddenly opened she could at least try to stay hidden behind it.

She heard a man’s voice, angry. Cayton-Wood. His walking stick stabbed at the floor with each step as he entered the sitting room. ‘…shockingly poor judgement,’ he was saying.

Deacon’s voice calmly replied, ‘I was told I might use my discretion.’

‘Discretion!’

‘Garcia invited me. I saw no harm in accepting.’

‘You ought to have cleared it with us first. With me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Manuel Garcia is a Spanish agent!’

‘Yes, I knew that.’

‘What?’

‘He’s not a very good one,’ Deacon said. ‘I’d say he transmits once a week, from somewhere not far north of here, by radio. I doubt he’d be the person passing on high-level secrets – he’d have no way to access them, really – but from time to time I’ve seen him looking round in Spivey’s office, so perhaps he keeps Madrid informed of our oil shipments.’

Regina heard a match strike, and Cayton-Wood’s next words were faintly muffled as though he were speaking while lighting his pipe. ‘Figured this out on your own, did you?’

‘It wasn’t difficult. I should imagine you saw it yourself, quite some time ago. How did you manage to turn him?’

A pause, then again the imperious, ‘What?’

‘He does work for us, as well, doesn’t he?’

The open annoyance in Cayton-Wood’s voice was tempered by a grudging admiration. ‘It appears, Mr Deacon, that I may have underestimated you.’

Deacon said nothing.

Cayton-Wood said, ‘He came to us, Garcia did. His wife’s health is poor, and he needed the money. He was already transmitting each week to Madrid, so we kept to that schedule, but under our own supervision. He sends them what we tell him to send – a little truth, a little fiction. Keeps the fish firmly on the hook, you might say.’ A longer pause, and then, almost carelessly, ‘How did you know he transmitted by radio?’

‘We’ve talked a few times about radios; it’s clear he knows his way around the equipment, but there was nothing at his house. I looked.’

‘And why did you assume that his transmission point was somewhere to the north?’

‘Something he said to me once.’

‘Ah.’ When no further explanation came, Cayton-Wood said simply, ‘Well, just see you keep away from him, in future. All agents can be dangerous, and a turned agent is the least trustworthy of all.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Deacon said. ‘I’ll watch my step.’

Regina, standing on her side of the closed door, couldn’t see the look that passed between the two men, but she felt it. It was tangible, electric in the room.

‘You do that,’ Cayton-Wood said, almost as a challenge. Then the heavy rhythmic tapping of the walking stick recrossed the floor; the front door opened, closed, and he was gone.

The next week, on the 28
^th
of January, Britain and America cut off their oil supplies to Spain to punish Franco for his staunch refusal to stop selling wolfram to the Axis powers.

The offices at Reynolds were in chaos. One of their tankers, en route to a Spanish port, had to be diverted to the docks at Lisbon. Letters and cables from Reynolds’s brother-in-law in Madrid came so thickly that Regina had a hard time keeping pace with them. The letters all sang the same song – was there not some way Reynolds could help lift the oil embargo? And Reynolds would always reply, in his various wordings, that no, he could not. But because Regina didn’t know if some more subtle message might be hiding in between those lines, she intercepted all the letters anyway, and the Embassy’s experts were forced to work full speed to open and reseal each one before it could be missed.

She didn’t see much of Deacon. He kept busy, these days, cataloguing works of art that Reynolds bought at auction, searching out the works that Reynolds ought to buy, appraising others. He spent hours in the storage vaults upstairs, or on the telephone with dealers and restorers, and whatever time was left he seemed to spend with Ivan Reynolds. But he still made a point, every day on arriving, of saying good morning to her, and to Jenny, and of stopping by Manuel Garcia’s desk to say hello.

Regina didn’t know, herself, how she should be now, with Garcia. She was not supposed to know he was a spy, and so she did her best to act the way she always had around him, but she found it very difficult, with what she knew, to not pay more attention to his actions. She’d never noticed him before, as Deacon had, in Spivey’s office, but a few times these past weeks she’d seen him just outside the door, while Spivey was at lunch. She mentioned this in her reports, and left the matter there.

One morning, as she walked to work, a car drew up beside her. An expensive car – a long, black Humber limousine. She’d seen it several times before; she knew it would be Cayton-Wood in the back, before he’d cranked the window down. He wished her good morning, and smiled, and said, ‘Do let me give you a lift.’

‘That’s very kind, but I don’t mind the walk.’

‘My dear, I must insist. It’s only business, don’t be nervous.’

She wasn’t nervous, getting in the car; but she was watchful. She knew he was high up in British Intelligence – that put them on the same side, but she still kept an eye on the streets they were driving through, wanting to be very sure they weren’t making a detour.

He asked, ‘How’s your father this morning? All right?’

The way he asked that brought a faint frown to her forehead. She had not seen her father for two days, which wasn’t that unusual, except, ‘Why would he not be?’

‘It’s only that I wondered, after last night…’

She was worried, now. ‘What happened last night?’

‘You haven’t heard? The Vigilance Committee, they were raided at their meeting by the local police. I’m not certain what the charges were, but I believe things did get rather nasty.’ He glanced up from tamping fresh tobacco into his pipe. ‘It won’t happen again, though. I’ve told them they’ll be under my protection from now on.’ He struck a match into the silence between them, and puffed out the smoke without asking her whether she minded. ‘That’s not what I wanted to tell you, though. No, I’ve got good news, for you and your young man. You’re free to get married.’

She stared at him. ‘Sorry, I’m…what?’

‘As of next week, we no longer need you at Reynolds. We appreciate your having stayed this long, of course, and the personal sacrifices that you’ve made on our behalf, but happily that’s finished now. You’re free to get on with your life.’

She hadn’t expected that. For a few moments, she didn’t know how to react. ‘But,’ she argued slowly, ‘Mr Deacon… that is, surely
he
still needs me there.’

‘Don’t worry about Mr Deacon.’

She did worry, though. All through the following week, as she made preparations to leave; made excuses to Reynolds, to Jenny, to everyone else, she was worrying, still, about Deacon. With her gone, he’d be on his own. He’d relied on her this far, for so many things, for so many small details, and errands, and now…it was almost as if they were
wanting
to take away all his support; leave him stranded. She’d said so to Alvaro. She’d said, ‘This doesn’t feel right. I shouldn’t be leaving him now, not like this.’