The Once and Future Spy (32 page)

I
t was Great-aunt Esther who talked them into going to the concert at a neighborhood hall. Because of her hair, more exactly
because of the lack of it, she preferred not to let herself be seen in public any longer. But there was no reason for them
to hang around the house like two caged birds. Spread your wings, she urged with the leer of someone who longed to follow
her own advice. Go for test flights.

The auditorium, usually used for town meetings and slide lectures, was on the small side. The members of the orchestra were
tuning up as Snow and the Weeder found their places in the middle of the fourth row and read the mimeographed program notes.
A group of Harvard music students was going to play Haydn’s Symphony no. 45 in F-sharp Minor, known as the
Farewell
Symphony, as it had been performed, with Haydn himself conducting, before Count Ester-hazy in 1772. A lighted candle was
set into a holder attached to each music stand. The houselights dimmed. The stage flickered with candlelight. The conductor
appeared from the wings. The audience applauded.

Great-aunt Esther had been right about a concert being just what the doctor ordered. Snow had her arm linked through the Weeder’s
and could feel the tension slipping from his body as soon as the orchestra started playing. At one point he whispered, “To
think my man Nate was at Yale when this was first performed.” A few minutes later he
grinned sheepishly at her and it was almost possible for her to believe that the world was right side up.

It wasn’t, of course. Not that Silas had lied to her; the reality was more subtle. He had invented a truth-his truth, the
truth he badly needed. He had concocted the story about Huxstep being on the boat; the night before the Ides of March Huxstep
had been sitting next to her in the bar in Washington. If Silas had imagined Huxstep on the boat, it meant he had imagined
the boat too. Fitting in bits and pieces of reality, he had imagined everything-his eavesdropping operation, the scheme to
explode an atomic bomb in Tehran, the love letters he had sent to Wanamaker to head off the plot. He had invented the story
about the old Admiral being summoned from retirement to trace the leak. He had imagined the attempts on his life in New Haven.
Even Nathan’s story had been a figment of Silas’s imagination. He had invented Nate’s life and superimposed it over his own
life, as if the whole thing were a double exposure. Great-aunt Esther had given Snow a look at the “diary” she had shown to
Silas. It was an old penny notebook filled with recipes and herb remedies that Molly Davis had collected over the years. There
was no mention in it of Nate or a British plan to trap Washington on Manhattan or the Revolution; no suggestion that Nate
was the father of Molly’s child. Nate may have “Liv’d de
f
ir’d and died lament’d,” but not by Molly.

Haydn had scored his symphony so that the various instruments finished playing at different times. As each musician’s role
came to an end he blew out his candle and left the stage. When the Weeder realized what was happening the tension flowed back
into his limbs. There were still four candles burning on the stage. A cellist blew out his and left. The music became thinner
as the auditorium grew darker. An oboe player extinguished his candle. The Weeder shivered. The violinist, playing alone now,
reached the end of the score. The conductor summoned the last note out of the instrument with his fingertips and let it trail
off. Then he and the violinist blew out the two remaining candles and quit the stage.

The auditorium was as dark and as still as a pit. The Weeder, trembling, buried his face in Snow’s shoulder. He asked very
quietly, “Can you get someone to light a candle?”

The house lights slowly came up. The Weeder kept his head on Snow’s old cardigan, which Esther had found for her in an attic
trunk. It still smelled from camphor balls. The Weeder noticed the odor for
the first time. It tripped a memory. He felt the pull of history and slipped over the line into an incarnation. “Molly smelled
of camphor the night I met her,” he told Snow.

On either side of them people were filing up the aisles. This time Snow didn’t hesitate; desperate not to lose him, she plunged
after the Weeder into his incarnation. “I propose we marry ourselves,” she said urgently. She knew time was running out; another
ambush lurked ahead for both of them.

The Weeder smiled Nate’s smile. “Are such things done?”

Snow looked over her shoulder, spotted Fargo and two men waiting at the auditorium doors. So the police had relayed her message
after all. “You need to understand,” she told the Weeder. She was reciting lines but her voice had a real sob buried in it.
“Before I was ambushed by grief I grew accustomed to living the life of a married woman.”

She faltered. The Weeder cued her. “Contrary to what is generally supposed-”

“Yes,” Snow said. “That’s it.” She was in Molly’s role now and playing it with all her heart. “Contrary to what is generally
supposed, women have appetites too.”

The Weeder grasped her hand in his. “What vows would you have us say to each other?” he demanded. He peered into her eyes,
aching for an answer.

The auditorium was almost empty now. Snow could see Fargo and the others starting down the aisles toward them. She threw her
arms around the Weeder and hugged him to her. Tears spilled from her eyes, her voice choked up. “I would have us pledge unconditional
trust in each other,” she said softly. “This is the only thing that counts between two people.”

The Weeder whispered, “I pledge it with all my heart.”

“I too pledge it,” said Snow.

W
anamaker lurked in the shadow of the balcony, watching with a smug smile as the two young men in loose-fitting sport jackets
put a hammerlock on the Weeder and steered him up the aisle. Huxstep, peering from a wing of the stage, formed his left forefinger
and thumb into a pistol and sighted over it at the Weeder’s back. The Attorney General, standing next to Wanamaker, noticed
Huxstep mouthing the words, “Bang, bang! You’re dead!” “What you do with him,” he mumbled, angling the flame of his lighter
into the bowl of his pipe, sucking the tobacco into life, “is clearly not something I need to know.”

Wanamaker started to giggle at what he thought was a joke; Huxstep’s gesture had left little room for doubt about the fate
that awaited the Weeder.

Wanamaker’s attitude irritated the Attorney General. He released a cloud of vile-smelling smoke into his face. “I don’t see
what there is to laugh about,” he snapped. “You plugged the leak, but not before the Russians found out what you were up to.”

“It could take a while,” Wanamaker ventured, batting feebly at the smoke screen, “but we can get Stufftingle back on track.”

The Attorney General appeared interested. “What do you have in mind?”

“With any luck,” Wanamaker said, “we ought to be able to find out where the Iranians have set up their germ warfare shop.
We ought
to be able to smuggle in enough contaminated microbes in a year, a year and a half on the outside, to set off an uncontrolled
biological reaction, otherwise known as a plague.”

“Frame a proposal,” the Attorney General suggested, “but be careful not to leave a paper trail.” He caught sight of Fargo
escorting Snow toward the emergency exit. “What about the girl?” he asked.

“She’s no threat to us,” Wanamaker replied. “She’s convinced the asshole is a raving lunatic-she’s convinced he invented us.”

The idea that he might be a figment of someone’s imagination seemed to amuse the Attorney General. “Wouldn’t it be funny if
she were right?” he said, and reaching into his pocket, he began to turn down the hearing aid.