Authors: Peter Spiegelman
Arthur Carr looks at his son without surprise, and with a faint, wry smile. “Minotaur chasing you again?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Carr says, catching his breath. “Where the hell have you been?”
His father scratches his head and narrows his gray eyes. “Have you eaten lunch? I could use a sandwich.”
At the diner, his father orders a roast beef on rye. He tries to order a scotch with it, and has some trouble with the waitress’s explanation that beer is the best she can do. In the end he has a Heineken. Carr orders tuna fish, and goes outside to make phone calls.
He watches his father through the window while he talks to the local police and to Mrs. Calvin, and makes arrangements for the Volvo to be towed to a garage. Carr glances at his missed calls list, and sees more messages from Valerie and Mike, and one—an hour earlier—from Tina. He goes back inside.
Arthur Carr’s reading glasses are perched on the end of his nose, and
he’s scanning the ads and the children’s games printed on the paper place mat. “Calling the office?” he asks, as his son slides into the booth. “I expect you’ll be getting back soon.”
“It wasn’t work. It was about you.”
“Not a particularly compelling subject,” his father says, chuckling. “Who’s interested in that?”
“Mrs. Calvin, for one. She was worried sick.”
“Damned dramatic. Doesn’t she have anything better to do? Shouldn’t she be packing?”
“For chrissakes, you can’t just take off like that.”
“Nonsense—people do it all the time. They’re here, and then—poof—they’re gone, just like that.” There’s a connect-the-dots picture on the place mat, and his father moves his finger from number to number. “Christ, some people can vanish while they’re standing right in front of you. They’re in the very same room, but it’s like they’re not there at all. She had that trick down cold.”
“Mrs. Calvin?”
His father looks up and scowls. “Don’t be thick—you know who I’m talking about. You’re just like her, for chrissakes—playing dumb when you want to, but taking it all in. She was a hell of a poker player, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
His father squints at him behind his glasses. “So, maybe not taking it
all
in,” he says, and a sly smile—as at a private joke—crosses his face. “It’s her birthday coming up. Did you remember?”
“On Tuesday.”
“It was always hard to shop for her. Who knew what she wanted? Nothing I had to offer.” The smirk again, angrier this time. “For example, I never knew her taste in cigarette lighters. And I was never much of a tennis player, either. Always hated doubles.”
Carr takes a deep breath. His father mentions Hector Farias only rarely, and when he does the reference is always oblique. And always he baits his son to respond—to ask about his mother and Farias, to offer some comment—but Carr never does. He’s relieved when the waitress brings their food.
Arthur Carr is hungry, and in short order half his sandwich is gone, and so is half his beer. He pats his mouth with a napkin and sighs. “Her cooking isn’t so remarkable,” he says. “I’ll take a few meals here every week and be just fine, and the hell with her.”
“Don’t start again,” Carr says. “She won’t be around for much longer, but for the time being, you’ve got to make this work. You’ve got to be civil, at least.”
“Silence is the best I can manage,” Arthur Carr says, and drains his beer. He turns his attention to the connect-the-dots picture again.
Carr shakes his head. “She does a lot for you.”
His father looks up. His eyes are unfocused and confused for a moment, and then they sharpen. He crumples the place mat into a small white ball. “What exactly did she do for me, besides end my career and turn me into a cuckold and a laughingstock? Am I supposed to be grateful for that?”
Carr’s jaw tightens. “I was talking about Mrs. Calvin,” he says softly.
“I told you not to do that—pretend to be stupid. You know damn well who I’m talking about.”
Carr looks around the diner. It’s nearly empty, and he takes a deep, unsteady breath. His voice is a raspy whisper. “You want to have a conversation about her? Fine—let’s have at it. You want to know what she did for you? For one thing, she put up with your crap for all those years. She put up with your absences and your anger and moving house every other year, and she still managed not to kill you. I’d say that was a fair amount. So she had a lapse in judgment—can you really blame her? She tried to find some happiness, and didn’t think it through. She’s not the first one.”
Arthur Carr lifts his half-glasses off and pinches his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “
Some happiness
—is that what you tell yourself? Is that what you really believe?” His words are slow and his voice is quiet, and his expression is like a flickering candle, shifting from surprise to triumph to regret. “All that watching, and you never saw anything.”
“I saw you red in the face, and heard the endless griping about your career—as if your failings were somehow her fault. You and your goddamn career.”
“My career … Jesus.” His father shakes his head. “You
are
an idiot.”
“So much for conversation,” Carr says, and he picks up his tuna sandwich.
“All that watching …,” Arthur Carr says, and he lowers his voice. “Don’t you understand? If it wasn’t for
my
career, she wouldn’t have had one.”
“Had one what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about her career.”
“Her career? She didn’t have a career—she never even had a job.”
Arthur Carr’s laugh is bitter. “She
always
had a job,” he says. “My job enabled her job, for chrissakes. It was her
cover. I
was her cover.
You
were her cover.
Her cover
—do you understand it now?”
There’s a rushing in Carr’s ears, a step he missed. “What? What are you talking about?”
“You insist on being dense. She was Agency, your mother—in the Directorate of Operations. You understand what I’m saying?”
There’s vertigo, a feeling of the ground opening beneath him, and it’s hard to get the breath out of his lungs. His fingers are splayed on the table. “What the hell …? What are you saying?”
His father looks suddenly tired. His voice is a dry whisper. “Your mother was with the Agency, for chrissakes. She was a CIA officer.”
Carr doesn’t remember getting the check, or paying it, or leaving the diner, but somehow they’re in the parking lot and he’s grabbing his father’s arm. It’s thin and light—a bird’s bone. Carr hears his own voice, but it’s far away and attenuated—a radio in a distant room. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking about, but it’s not … You’re confused, Dad—you’re seriously confused.”
Carr stares into his father’s face, into those gray eyes, but try as he might, he can’t find confusion there—can’t find anything but exhaustion and regret. He tells himself his father can’t keep a thought straight any longer—can’t find the thread, much less hold on to it. He doesn’t know the difference between Mrs. Calvin and his own wife half the time. He tells himself these things, but his voice is tinny and remote and in his heart he knows it’s full of shit.
A woman’s voice cuts across it all. “There a problem, mister? You need a hand?” It’s the waitress, calling from the diner door. She’s holding a telephone, scowling at Carr, and staring at his hand on his father’s arm.
Arthur Carr waves with his other hand and smiles. “We’re fine, thanks. My son’s just driving me home.”
On the way, Carr’s head is wrapped in cotton wool, and he can’t tear it loose. He pulls over just before Lee, when he realizes he’s not seeing the road. His father is unsurprised, and looks out the window at a crow picking at a flattened squirrel. The light is lengthening, tinted at the edges with orange, and a hum of insects rises from the woods. Carr draws a deep breath and his father turns toward him.
“Hector Farias,” Carr says softly.
His father nods. “He was one of her sources, one of the agents she ran. He was her prize.”
“She … she knew he was Cuban intelligence?”
“Of course—that’s what made him so valuable. He was one of their senior guys; he was connected everywhere in the region. He was a star, and she had turned him and was playing him back to Havana. In theory, at least.”
“And in reality?”
“He was playing her.”
“The whole time?”
“The whole time.”
“It was years that she knew him … all those places we lived. She never suspected?”
Arthur Carr sighs and turns to the window again. The crow draws a strand of gut from the dusty carcass. His beak is glossy, and so black it’s nearly blue. It’s an eternity before Arthur Carr speaks, and when he does, his voice is like dry leaves. “That’s what the record says.”
Carr turns in his seat. “What does that mean?”
Carr’s father runs a forefinger down his long nose, to his mouth, and to his chin, which has begun to quiver. “She wasn’t stupid. Your mother had her flaws, but that wasn’t one of them.”
The rushing grows louder in Carr’s ears. “You’re saying she
knew
she was being played? The whole time?”
“She sussed it out early on.”
“She
knew
? She told you that?”
Arthur Carr studies the crow, hopping around the squirrel. After a while, he nods.
Carr can’t seem to fill his lungs, and he throws open the door of the rental car and stumbles out into the road. The driver of a passing truck leans on his horn and yells, and leaves a cloud of dust in his wake. The crow flies off. Carr walks slowly to the edge of the woods, and slowly back, the whole way watching the ground. When he returns, his father has the passenger door open and is sideways in his seat.
Carr looks at him. “She
knew
, but she let it happen—she participated in it. She … she was a traitor.” The word sounds strange in his ears—something foreign or archaic.
Arthur Carr makes a tiny, rueful smile. “Well, yes,” he says.
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” his father says. “She loved that son of a bitch, and she thought that he loved her. Who knows, maybe he did.”
Carr gazes at the treetops, the orange clouds, the coming twilight. “But that’s not in the record, you said. That’s not the official story.”
“No.”
“Why not? Why didn’t the Agency come after her? Why didn’t they prosecute? Put her in jail? Jesus Christ—why did they ever let
me
in the door?”
“The counterespionage people wanted to come after her. They were embarrassed and angry, and they wanted a full investigation and someone they could burn at the stake.”
“What stopped them?”
Arthur Carr stretches his legs in front of him. He massages his right knee. “I did,” he says softly. “I vouched for her. I pulled what strings I had left at State. Finally I threatened to go public if they didn’t let her be. It wound up costing me every chit I’d ever collected over twenty-plus years, and my pension too, but eventually they decided to call it incompetence rather than treason. So that’s how the record reads.” He flexes his knee and looks up at his son. “The only thing the Agency hates worse than being embarrassed by the opposition is being embarrassed by them in public. You’d think they’d be used to it by now.”
Carr watches him rub his bony thighs and flex his aching fingers. He looks thin and brittle—like a leaf the wind might carry off. Another truck passes, another dust cloud settles. The crow returns and curses at them.
It is six a.m., and Carr is in Terminal A at Logan, waiting for his Miami flight, still waiting for the spinning to stop. He’s at the gate, watching but not following the highlights of a baseball game on the wall-mounted TV, when someone steps into his view. She’s wearing a black dress and dark glasses, and her bare arms are paper white. Her lips barely move when she speaks, and her voice is flat.
“He wants to talk to you,” Tina says. “He wants to know if there’s some reason you don’t answer your phone.” She takes off her glasses and makes a tiny flick of her eyes. Carr looks over her shoulder, down the long row of gates. Even at a distance, Mr. Boyce looms like a cliff.
They’ve gone over it once. They’ve gone over it twice. Now, as darkness settles on the workhouse and wind sweeps through the palms in the front yard and bumps the boats against the metal dock out back, they go over it a sixth time. Carr makes Bobby walk it through: the sequence, the timing, the signals, the routes in and out, the alternate routes, the rendezvous, the alternate rendezvous, and the contingency plans—meager though they are.
“And the minimum window is?” Carr asks when Bobby pauses.
“Five minutes. Five fucking minutes. How many times do I have to repeat it?”
“No less than five between the opening and the finale. Longer if you’ve got a receptive audience, but no less than five.”
Latin Mike snorts from the sofa. “You don’t know how many guys they’re gonna have in the house, for chrissakes. You don’t know if this is gonna distract them.”
Carr answers without looking at him. “Loud noises get attention.” Mike snorts again, and Carr ignores him. He turns to Dennis. “What’s the weather forecast?” he asks.
Dennis is pale and skittish behind his laptop. He glances at the screen. “Mostly sunny and breezy tomorrow, with heavy surf from the storm. Weather service says it should hold off until after ten tomorrow night, and even then we should only get the edge of it.”
“They downgraded it?” Carr asks.
Dennis nods. “Tropical storm Cara now.”
“Is it gonna fuck things up at the airport?” Bobby asks.
“We get out before ten we should be okay,” Dennis says.
“So let’s get out before ten,” Mike says, lighting a cigarette.
“That’s the plan,” Carr says. Mike snorts again. Carr looks at Bobby. “The surf’s going to be rough. You okay with that?”
“We’re good.”
“Good,” Carr says. “Let’s go over it again.”
It’s eleven when they stop. Dennis buries his head in a computer. Mike grabs a whiskey bottle, plugs a cigarette into his mouth, and goes outside.
Bobby stretches and yawns. “Howie still sober?” he asks Carr.