Havana Harvest (13 page)

Racked by guilt and self-recrimination, Lonsdale continued to soldier on even after the killer urge for revenge had dulled. Nowadays he went to work because he had nothing better to do, challenged only by his own reputation. He did a good job because he expected it of himself. He kept social contacts to a minimum, reveling in his almost absolute independence, and seeing no one other than trusted friends, of which there were very, very few. The old ones, the real ones, he had needed to leave behind in Montreal when he had “died.”

The only emotional vestige of his previous “life” that he had allowed himself to carry over into his new existence was his love of the classical guitar, an instrument he played whenever he could. He also attended concerts on the occasions when one of the instrument's virtuosos—Julian Bream, John Williams, Laurindo Almeida, or Liona Boyd—was in town and spent many a night listening to the performances in his considerable record collection.

During these sessions, he would become totally immersed in the music. With his defenses lowered he would allow himself to feel and would then have to pay dearly for what he considered to be a lapse in self-discipline. His old hurts would surface again and he would have to deal with them once more.

Micheline's reappearance in his life had given him a nasty turn. It had taken all his self-control to hide the turmoil within him from Siddiqui: her presence was threatening to bring down the walls he had so carefully constructed around his emotional aridity. He tried to take careful stock of the situation and be objective about it.

What did he know about Micheline anyway? She was in her late forties and living alone, she had said. Her parents were dead, but what had happened to her husband, the chef? And had she ever had children by him? Or, by anybody else? That she must have had pain and disappointment in her life was obvious. There were fne lines of suffering around the eyes that no amount of make-up could cover. Her manner had changed too. She was calmer, more self-assured, and she seemed more sophisticated. Had it been only the passage of time that had changed her? A stanza from the Desiderata sprang into Lonsdale's mind: “Give up with grace the things of youth.” It seemed Micheline had done just that.

What about Mr. Schwartz? He had been relieved when she had referred to him as an elderly gentleman. Obviously a platonic relationship, or so he hoped. Was he feeling pangs of jealousy?

It was half-past five by the time Micheline got through her tour of the offce. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but it took longer than I expected.” She sounded weary and still very upset. “I have bad news. None of the tellers or the clerks recognized the man. I also asked the security guards, and they say they haven't seen him either. So, as far as I'm concerned, that's it. There's nothing more I can do to help.”

Though disappointed, Lonsdale was not ready to give up. “That's not true. There's still the Schwartz angle because of his coin dealership.”

“I can't see any connection there.” Micheline was adamant.

“Let's forget about work for a while. Where do you want me to take you to dinner?”

“On second thought, I'm not sure I want to go to dinner with you.”

He would not accept her refusal. “Come on, Miche, why not? As you say, for old times' sake.”

Back at his hotel Lonsdale took a quick shower. Under the spell of the city in which he had lived decades earlier, he could not help but recall a life in Montreal full of hope and idealism—a life he had hoped to devote to the fight for freedom, for democracy, for justice, a life that had, instead, been spent scheming, cheating, intriguing, and killing.

They'd been clever about how they had enrolled him. The CIA makes a point of recruiting individuals with real or potential clout in their communities: political leaders, captains of industry, scholars, artists, and scientists. Since it's diffcult to recruit a successful and well-established personality, the Agency is forever scouting for “comers,” men and women in communities outside the United States who show promise of becoming influential one day.

Lonsdale was spotted while attending university in Montreal. He had later found out that it had been his language skills that had initially attracted the CIA spotters' attention. He took no credit for these. Some people were good at sports, others made beautiful music or sang or danced. Lonsdale had a gift for mimicry, a trick of the inner ear that allowed him to learn foreign languages quickly and to speak them without accent, each in several dialects.

He had been a loner before coming to Canada, not by choice like Morton, but by force of circumstance. Drifting from boarding school to boarding school in a war-ravaged Europe is not conducive to making close friends. Since his father had been Hungarian and his mother Austrian, Lonsdale had ended up more or less on the losing side after World War Two. Not the best of backgrounds for the only foreigner at an English public school where his classmates believed that all Austro-Hungarians were Nazis. Lonsdale had taken it on the chin for three years and had then prevailed on his parents to send him to Montreal.

In Canada things had been better and he would have enjoyed life at the university had he known how to make friends. Unfortunately, he had not. The British had drilled into him that showing emotion, showing ambition, and, especially, showing off, were not proper things to do. Since Lonsdale had been born a gregarious show-off he could only change his personality by adopting an arrogantly aloof attitude. This, coupled with the painful shyness he felt as a result of always being the outsider, made it difficult for him to build relationships. As a consequence, he had continued to be a loner in Montreal.

He'd studied hard and had also worked hard at making money because his expensive tastes had required extra cash beyond his modest allowance. He persuaded the personnel people at the university's teaching hospital to give him a part-time clerical job, which he then kept during four years of undergraduate work, not knowing that the hospital's psychiatric department derived most of its funding from the CIA.

Fate would have it that Lonsdale be put in charge of accounting for special funds for mental health research. This left no choice for the CIA spotters; they had to look him over. The rest had been inevitable. The psychiatrists at Langley developed his psychological profile and identified his principal weakness—he needed to feel that he belonged—and turned him into a viable “asset”: an agent programmed to act intelligently and independently, yet with absolute loyalty.

In spite of the excellent food and the friendly service, dinner at Le Béarn, a French restaurant where he and his wife used to dine, unsettled Lonsdale.

As soon as Marie-Claude, the owner, a romantic and Micheline's friend, laid eyes on them she decided to go out of her way to “make nice.” She showed them to her special table, which stood in the alcove in the rear of the restaurant and was usually reserved for family and very good friends. She insisted on ordering for them and then came to sit with them while they had their dessert. Obviously fond of Micheline, Marie-Claude began to cross-examine Lonsdale, and, mellowed by the vodkas he had drunk in Micheline's apartment, and the bottle of Brouilly he had shared with her during their meal, he found it increasingly hard to resist her probing.

“It is quite amazing,
cheri,
how much you remind me of another one of my customers,” she said as she poured them each a complimentary
Sambucca
to go with their coffee. “He and his wife used to come often for dinner. And then they were killed by terrorists. It seems he was some sort of a secret agent, and they wanted him dead. All the papers wrote about it for days.” She took a sip of her liqueur. “It was very sad. They were a lovely couple, very much in love. I liked them.”

Lonsdale felt intensely awkward and looked to Micheline for guidance, but she looked away.

It was becoming more and more difficult for Lonsdale to cope with the cumulative effect of Micheline, Marie-Claude, and Montreal. To his amazement, he found himself near tears with frustration. The urge to take Micheline home and to hold her close—to be forgiven and to forget—became so strong as to be almost irresistible.

Sensing that something was wrong, Micheline tried to make amends while driving Lonsdale back to his hotel. “I'm sorry Marie-Claude jumped at you the way she did, but you should be flattered, not upset. She's only that talkative when she likes someone and wants to get to know them quickly—”

“So you think she liked me?”

“What is there not to like? You're a good-looking, sophisticated man with an air of mystery about you. I can only guess how attentive she would have been if she knew you speak several languages. You're quite a change from the Schwartzes of this world.”

Lonsdale was taken aback. “What do you mean by that?”

“Let's face it. There aren't many available men of your age around. Most of them are boring, and some of them are quite crude. Mr. Schwartz is a darling, but much older than me. Besides, he never talks about anything except his business. And I suppose Marie-Claude was glad to see me with someone interesting, someone—”

“Go on.”

Micheline threw her head back and laughed heartily. “I was going to say, someone worthwhile, but that would have made your head swell, and you're already too conceited as is.” In spite of her bantering tone, she sounded serious.

“What I regret the most about Marie-Claude acting the way she did,” Lonsdale said, “was that I never got to ask you about yourself. Come to think of it, neither of us got to tell our stories. Marie-Claude was too present.”

Honest and spontaneous, Micheline reacted without hesitation. “You're right, so here's what we'll do. I'm busy with Mr. Schwartz tomorrow, but on Sunday I'll pick you up and we'll go for a drive in the country. Would eleven o'clock suit you?” She stopped the car. They were at his hotel.

“It's a deal,” he said and, before she could move, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, then got out of the car as quickly as he could.