The Tamarind Seed (8 page)

It was a question he should never have asked. They had been married twenty years; they had three children, a nineteen-year-old girl and two boys at school in England. A long time ago, after the last child's birth, Stephenson had decided not to ask that kind of question. He was not absolutely sure of the youngest child's paternity. Sometimes he detected a resemblance to himself, at other times the boy appeared completely alien. His wife had always been publicly discreet. He had reason to be grateful for that; in the early years his career couldn't have survived a major scandal. Attitudes towards that kind of situation had relaxed tremendously. The Foreign Office had been forced to adopt a less rigid code regarding divorce and remarriage; otherwise there would have been a few senior diplomats left in their posts.

He had made a genuine effort to please Margaret. When he asked her to marry him, he believed that she presented an alternative to the preference for his own sex which had culminated in a passionate attachment when he was up at Cambridge. His lover had been all that he admired; brilliant, physically attractive, extroverted and impeccably bred. Fergus Stephenson had fallen in love with him and been seduced. He realised soon afterwards that he had shared this experience with many of his friends. Margaret came into his life when he first joined the Foreign Office. She was the female counterpart of the man at Cambridge. Very physical, with a strong colouring, robust spirits and fearsome energy. She hunted, swam, skii-ed like a professional, was a most stimulating companion on every level. She dazzled; Fergus blinked in the glare of her personality, drawn to its dominance as he had been towards that other, terrifying sexual partnership. He had thought he was in love with her, and that the other episode could be forgotten. Many of his seducer's victims had married and as far as he knew were ordinary heterosexuals. But it had not worked.

Their relationship had faltered, broken down, emerged again in a desperate attempt on both their parts to escape the truth. He had impregnated her often enough to produce two or even three children, but Margaret was not the woman to be deceived for ever. And one night, shamed and frantic for her understanding, Fergus had committed the ultimate mistake and told her about Cambridge. From that moment she was finished with him. They went on together in public; the marriage would last till death for the benefit of the world outside. Inside, their relationship was a charade, played out with cruelty and contempt on her part, with shame and humiliation on his. He didn't find out about her first lover. He would have preferred never to know, but she sensed this, and took perverse delight in telling him. Their son was three months old at the time. She had seen the sudden question present itself in his mind, and burst out laughing. Fergus had never forgotten that laugh. ‘How long has it been going on? Is Julian yours or isn't he—well you'll just have to wait and see, won't you? I'm damned if I know.'

He put the brush down and smoothed his hair back with his palm. It was thinning across the top of his head; he could feel the scalp underneath it. Whoever the man was this time, and there must have been hundreds, he had passed on confidential information to her.

This in itself was a serious breach of security.

‘Margaret,' he said. ‘Whoever told you about Loder's investigation had absolutely no right to do so. You know that, don't you?'

‘Of course I know.' She had come out of the bathroom; she was a tall woman, elegantly dressed, her blonde hair bleached to a metallic white because it had begun to go grey. She had piercing blue eyes; they were large, heavy lidded, cleverly made up. At forty-five she was still over-poweringly beautiful. In ten years she would be a formidable matron, perfectly cast in the role of Her Excellency the Ambassadress.

‘It was very naughty of him,' she said. ‘Pass me my bag, will you?'

‘I want to know who it is.' It took courage to say that, and she raised her eyebrows at him, exaggerating her surprise.

‘Whatever for? You'd only get him into trouble.'

‘I'd make sure he never gave away a confidential report again,' Stephenson said. ‘That's all I care about.'

‘But it's not important,' Margaret shrugged, looking through her evening bag to check its contents. ‘Just a little affair. Men are always having them, darling. After all, it was a woman he was sleeping with. I thought it was buggery that was the big security risk these days?' He didn't wince; she had made that sort of remark too often and it had no more affect upon him.

‘I'm not interested in what Paterson does in his private life. My interest is in seeing that the security among our staff is kept to the maximum. Especially at the moment. Something's on with the Russians. Perhaps now you'll realise that I'm not asking for any personal reason.'

‘What's on with the Russians? I haven't heard anything.'

‘Thank God for that,' he said. ‘If you don't tell me, I shall have no alternative but to go to Loder.'

She was on her way to the door; she usually ended an argument by walking out while he was still speaking, but now she stopped and turned.

‘If you go to Loder and start stirring up trouble,' she said, ‘he'll find out a few things about me you wouldn't like him knowing. I suppose you've thought of that?'

‘I am thinking of it,' Stephenson said. He saw the silhoutte of her body outlined against the open door. Arrogant, voracious, merciless. It seemed to have a malignant life independent of the human personality inside it. He had always basically feared the female; there was something secret and alarming about the demands and passions of a woman. He used to think that he hated his wife's body more than he hated his wife. It revolted him at that moment.

She seldom bothered to torment him; she lived her private life, indulged herself in what she chose, and nobody knew. Even he didn't have to know, unless he probed, as he had done that night. Much of her hatred for him had been spent. Also, she wanted him to get to a top Embassy at the end of his career.

‘It's exactly seven-thirty,' she said. ‘Our guests will be arriving. I'm going down. You can go to that common little bloodhound if you want to; but just think it out first.'

Stephenson stayed behind. He let her go downstairs, to greet their guests, a prominent American economist and his wife, the West German First Secretary, and a sprinkling of his own staff. If he told Loder about the leak, Margaret's connection couldn't be concealed. Stephenson started towards the door. Who was it? Usually somebody younger, but not too young. She didn't go in for boys, thank God. Somebody in a position to know what the principal from S.I.S. was doing, day to day.

Somebody in Loder's section. The more he thought about it the worse it became if he did nothing. He had been brought into a special conference called by Jack Loder to report to the Ambassador.

The information on Sverdlov had been coming through from the Barbadian Police. The Russian had made only one contact on the island, a woman, whom he had picked up at his hotel. Loder had read the details out to them. Information collected on her had been checked and double checked and her identity was established as Mrs. Judith Farrow, domiciled in New York, British citizen, working as personal assistant to Sam Nielson at UNO.

That had started the flap. He found himself using Loder's slang expression. The man was really inexcusable; he sometimes spouted Greek, which annoyed the Americans, or lapsed into the terminology of the wartime NAAFI. Sam Nielson was an international figure. His secretary picking up with Sverdlov was a top security matter. For that reason Buckley and the CIA were scenting blood. Loder's policy, which he had explained to the Ambassador and Stephenson, was to persuade them to accept the story without making a few enquiries of their own. They didn't know, and musn't be told at this stage, that Mrs. Farrow was also the mistress of the British Air Attaché. That would bring the Embassy staff under American suspicion. For this reason alone, the indiscretion dropped to his wife about Richard Paterson's affair with the girl could cause disaster if it was repeated. Stephenson turned back from the door and went into his study. He made a quick note in his diary. See Loder. He locked it in his desk and went on down to join his wife.

The flight back to New York took four hours. Judith had booked on the Saturday morning plane; Sverdlov insisted on driving her to the airport. He had chosen a later flight; Judith suspected that he had done so to avoid travelling with her, but she made no comment. Perhaps he would be met at Kennedy International and saying goodbye to her might be awkward. The last few days had been the best part of the holiday. Sverdlov had not tried to make love to her again, though he kept up a merciless barrage of teasing and innuendo which she described as the Hot War. Far from being sympathetic or offering a shoulder to cry upon, Sverdlov made fun of every aspect of her affair with Richard Paterson, jeering and sniping at what he called her great lost love. Judith was often furious, but frequently driven to laughing at him. Which made her even angrier, because she knew this was his object. The night before leaving they were having dinner at a select but brutally expensive hotel perched on the hills, with a beautiful panoramic view of the sea. They had drinks on the patio under the palm trees, and for several minutes they watched a young Barbadian waiter trying to light the candles which hung in glass storm shields from the trees and bushes. Judith nudged Sverdlov's arm. ‘Poor chap, that's the last match! Please, go over and show him how to do it.'

She watched the Russian walk over to him; he moved with a curious lope that reminded her of the cat species. In many ways he was a feline man. Within a few minutes the patio was surrounded by flickering lights, and after watching Sverdlov, the waiter grinned delightedly, thanked him and ambled off.

‘Brilliant,' Judith said. ‘Wasn't he delighted with you?'

‘Of course,' Sverdlov sat down. ‘He knew I was a genius, as soon as he saw I used a lighter instead of matches that the wind blew out. As George Orwell said, all men are equal but some are more equal than others.'

‘He didn't seem to care,' Judith answered. ‘Perhaps that's what matters; making the most of what you have and not worrying about whether someone else has more, or better … It's a philosophy we've completely lost sight of—it's all go, that awful expression, whatever it means—get on, make more money, get promoted, get ahead! Anyway, that quotation from Orwell sounds a bit funny, coming from you.'

‘Do you talk like this in New York?' Sverdlov asked her.

‘I say what I think wherever I am. Why shouldn't I?'

‘Because they will think you are a Communist,' he said. ‘Especially since you have been seeing me. I should be careful, Judith. You could get into trouble.'

‘Don't be silly. What I've said isn't Communism. It's more like Christianity if you only knew it.'

‘A philosophy founded upon a superstition is not a philosophy,' Sverdlov said. ‘It is as valid as your tamarind tree, which didn't exist.'

‘You'll never let me forget that, will you? But I believe it did exist. I believe it was cut down.'

He smiled in his crooked way; it had been a triumph for him, and he hadn't been chivalrous and refrained from reminding her. He had driven her to Haywards Plantation and spoken to the owner who listened courteously but with obvious disbelief to the story of the slave and the miraculous tree, even accompanying them on a tour in search of any tree old enough to qualify. They had found nothing. Sverdlov had hung on to her arm, and squeezed it every time they picked a pod of seeds and found them the normal shape.

‘A legend,' he repeated, smiling at her. ‘Like the political agitator who rose from the dead.' He laughed out loud. ‘How can an intelligent woman like you even think of such nonsense! Shall I tell you the truth—there was no tamarind tree, there was no innocent slave—there is no force outside this world which gives justice to the weak. There is nothing but man, and his standards of justice are not consistent. One year you are right to do a certain thing, then the next year it has become a crime. There are no standards, only expediencies.'

‘That is the most cynical statement I've ever heard.' Judith stared at him. She disliked his attacks upon religion; it was the only time when there was real discord between them. But this was different. This was an attack upon his own political ideology.

‘You talk about me getting into trouble in America,' she said. ‘Just what would happen to you if you talked like that at home?'

‘It would depend,' Sverdlov said. ‘Two years ago, eighteen months, it would have caused no comment. But now—now it would be thought of as a crime. That's what I meant. The wind changes, the weathercock turns. That is what ideology is, a weathercock which is subject to the wind of expediency. Or of whim. There was an Empress of Russia who made it high treason to wear pink, did you know that? It was her favourite colour.' He began to laugh. ‘There are people in your Western world who feel the same way about someone with a red tie. High treason … none of it makes sense. In a way that is the glory of materialism. It teaches you in the end to despise all things which are material.'

‘And leaves you nothing of value?' Judith asked him.

‘Survival,' Sverdlov said. ‘That is the only end worth any effort. To live; because afterwards there is nothing.' He reached over and held her hand, he shook his head. ‘There is no reward for the good and no punishment for the evil. There is just darkness; nothing. A man has to live for himself. To be alive is the important thing.'

‘I don't believe that. If you simplify it, it's just absolute selfishness; I don't think that makes anyone happy. And most of all, I don't believe
you.
Why did you help that idiot of a waiter? Why should you do anything for him?'

‘I did it to please you,' he said.