Night Train to Lisbon (20 page)

“I mean,” said Michael, “it's absurd. It's ridiculous. Alec isn't a
traitor.
”

“Well, the government thinks he is,” said Carson, and for a moment she heard Lawrence's gentle, admonishing voice, telling her to confide in no one, but already she'd told her aunt, and she'd told her mother, and Mrs. Bertram knew, and where exactly was the harm? So she plunged ahead. “They say he's a member of the Watchers, and that he's been passing technical information to the Germans. And he's in a terrible mess right now, and I thought maybe if I came here and talked to his dearest friends, you might be able to tell me something, I don't know what, but
something
that would help, that could make a difference somehow. Because that's all I've got right now, this hope, this
faith
—this faith in Alec, this faith that something will happen. Because that's what's been going on lately. I've just been putting one foot in front of the other and somehow getting where I'm going without even knowing I wanted to go there, and that's what I was hoping would happen now, here, by coming to Cambridge and seeing you. That, I don't know, that I would find something, or that one of you would tell me something.”

She was beginning to lose it. She could hear it for herself, in the tumbling-out shapelessness of her words and thoughts. She could see it for herself, reflected back at her in the three puzzled, perhaps alarmed, faces bunched before her.

“I guess,” she said, “I just stupidly trusted that I would think of something.”

And then she did.

These moments don't come often in life. It had happened to Carson only once before, on the train to Lisbon, when she stood on the rear platform and realized that her life had reached a now-or-never turning point, and she had decided: now. Twice, maybe, if she counted that moment this morning when she had told her aunt that the trust of a lover means trusting yourself to do what
you
think is right. But it definitely was happening again here, in this humble sitting room in Cambridge. What she was experiencing was a moment of stunning clarity. It was a moment of perfect conviction. It was the moment that everything else has been leading up to, without you knowing it—but then when you do know it, there's no doubt that
this is it
.

“The police,” Carson said now, looking at the three promising young men grouped before her, “found a photograph and a ring.”

Her uncle had said that British intelligence had known for some time that someone from Cambridge was slipping information to the Germans. It wasn't Alec; Carson still believed that. But what if it was one of the three men in this room with her? It might not be. But then again, it might. There was one way to find out, and all of a sudden she'd known what it was.

It was Freddy who took the bait.

“It wasn't a pho—” he began, then stopped himself.

“Wasn't a what, Freddy?” Carson said. “A photograph? No, it wasn't. You're right about that.
But how could you possibly know that? Yet you do. So you must know that it was actually a
book
and a ring. And I'll bet you know what book it was, too, don't you, Freddy? It was a book that you found here among poor Alec's boxes.”

“Now, hold on,” Freddy said.

“What's going on here, Freddy?” said Tom.

“Nothing's going on,” Freddy said. He tried a laugh. “It's just a misunderstanding.”

“No,” said Michael, standing up. “I don't think so. I think you know more than you're saying.”

There was an agonizing moment of silence, in which Carson and the two men regarded Freddy Hunt. And in that moment of taking stock, they all knew.

Freddy took a step back. “Jesus, don't keep
staring
at me, all of you,” he said. “I'm just
me,
all right? Same person you've always known. Kid from Yorkshire, remember?”

“I think maybe I've never known who you are,” said Tom quietly.

“I'm someone with ambitions, all right?” said Freddy. “A desire to be more than some second-rate academic holed up in a tutorial for the rest of my life. I mean, face it, what good are either of you ever going to accomplish? How are you ever going to do, really
do,
anything with your lectures and your papers? Mike, Tom, who gives a damn about you and your ‘contributions to society'? The future isn't in the decrepit halls of the
academy,
it's in the battlefield, and in the strategy room. It's taking place among the decision mak
ers. The men who count. Men like Alistair Grant and the other Watchers. Men who will lead us through the century.”

There was silence. Then Carson said, “But why
Alec?
”

“Because he's
per
fect,” said Freddy. “Maybe not dirt-poor like me. But from a poor enough background so the government should have no trouble drumming up a case that he's full of bitterness and resentments against foreigners and Hebrews.”

“As full of bitterness as you,” said Michael.

“Oh, please,” said Freddy. “You're the ones who should be bitter. Unlike the two of you, I've actually got a promising future. You see, the Watchers appreciate my mind. They need a theoretical physicist among them. They appreciate me more than anyone at dear old Cambridge. The Watchers want to know what I think, and I tell them. And I'm going to tell them plenty more, believe me. I know quite a lot about telegraphy. There's a tutorial I plan to give. And they're all going to attend. I met a German, Heinz Boller, who wants me to come to Munich to talk to some scientists there.”

While he'd been saying all this, Freddy had also been inching backward, toward the front hall. Now he suddenly turned and ran, and in a moment they heard the front door banging open. Michael and Tom immediately went after him, but Freddy was small and fast, and Carson suspected they'd never catch up.

 

Aunt Jane and Uncle Lawrence's suite at Claridge's was festooned once again with ribbons and a banner, just as it had been when Carson arrived in London three months earlier, only this time the sign read
WELCOME
,
ALEC
. And this time there were three trays of small, carefully constructed hors d'oeuvres, not one tray, as well as three silver buckets of champagne on ice.

Jane was there, of course. So was Philippa. Michael and Tom gathered around the chair where Mrs. Bertram sat, saying how lovely it was to finally meet the woman who meant so much to Alec, and how each of them wished he had a Mrs. Bertram in his life, and how everyone should have a Mrs. Bertram in his or her life. “Well, that's all very well,” Mrs. Bertram answered them. “But then who should I have in
my
life?”

The room erupted in laughter, but this noise was nothing compared with the roar that greeted Alec a moment later when he walked into the room, followed by Carson and Lawrence. Carson, Michael, and Tom had called on Lawrence at his office the same afternoon that Carson had visited Cambridge, and if at first Lawrence was aghast that Carson had confided details of Alec's case to yet two more people, even he had to admit the story they told about what had happened that very afternoon made for pretty compelling evidence that Freddy had framed Alec with items he'd found among Alec's belongings in Cambridge. Lawrence excused himself to consult with
his superiors. He returned to his office more than an hour later and, while Carson, Michael, and Tom watched him anxiously, calmly picked up the receiver of his telephone, dialed, and after a moment said, “Jane, I think a celebration would be in order this evening.”

And so Michael and Tom went to Claridge's to await the triumphant return of Alec, while Lawrence led Carson into a sub-subbasement of London Prison. It would have been dark outside by now, Carson realized, though here inside this windowless netherland where Alec had spent the past thirty-six hours, time wasn't measured in increments of days and nights. It simply went by, unmeasured, somehow endured.

When the policemen brought Alec out of the cell, he looked frailer than when she'd seen him last, and frightened. He let her hold him, though at first he seemed merely stunned and unresponsive. He wore prisoner's grays, and he hadn't shaved, so his face seemed etched in charcoal. Still, as Carson kissed him and cried and spoke softly to him, he started to come around, like someone being awakened from a terrible dream.

“They're really letting me go?” he asked in a voice that sounded somehow rusted.

“Yes, Alec, they are. I promise. It's all over.”

And it was, in a way. Alec closed his eyes and kissed Carson's face, her cheek, her mouth, and within moments her own tears were mixed with his, and she didn't know who was crying harder. Then Lawrence made a throat-clearing noise, and
Alec walked with Carson upstairs to sign some papers and collect his possessions and change his clothes, and then the three of them rode in a taxi to Claridge's. There, in Suite 306, Alec slowly worked his way around the room, hugging and kissing everyone, until he got to the one person he didn't know.

“Well, now that I've gotten to meet Mrs. Bertram,” Carson said, wrapping her arm through Alec's, “I thought it only fair that you meet my mother.”

Alec looked at Carson, then at Philippa, then at Carson again, as if to make sure she wasn't kidding. Carson hadn't prepared Alec for this moment. But then, Carson hadn't prepared
herself
for this moment. She'd thought about it in the taxi on the way over, but she had decided that there simply
was
no way to anticipate what might happen. And so, as she had learned to do over these last few days, Carson had decided to just let whatever happened…happen.

“Mrs. Weatherell,” Alec said, when he'd recovered, reaching out to the woman on the couch. “It's a pleasure.”

“Please,” she answered, receiving his handshake, “call me Philippa. And who knows?” she added, with an eye toward her daughter. “Maybe one day you'll even be able to call me Mother. After all, any man who inspires such faith in my daughter must be special.”

It was that kind of evening all around. Alec turned out to have a perfectly good explanation
for how a German ring with his name inscribed along the inner band had come into his possession. His father, it seems, had found it in the last war, pocketing it on a battlefield and sending it home to his wife, with a note instructing her to sell it if money got tight. But even before the ring reached her, Alec's father was killed. The ring, Alec's mother told him years later, when she presented it to him on his sixteenth birthday, would always show that his father had been there in the Great War, fighting the good fight. Alec sighed now, then added that if he'd known what the supposedly treasonous evidence against him was, he would have been able to offer the detectives this explanation. At this, Lawrence made a sour face and allowed as to how, well, yes, certain methods of interrogation and investigation might indeed be improved, and everyone else in the room hissed at first, as if Lawrence were a movie villain, but then they broke up laughing. Then Alec toasted Lawrence for being big enough to admit his errors, and then Lawrence toasted Alec for being big enough to forgive what he might reasonably have considered unforgivable, and then everyone toasted Alec and Carson for having seen each other through this ordeal, and then Carson said she wanted to propose a toast, and everyone knew from the tone of her voice that it was going to be serious and heartfelt, and the room grew silent.

“To the two most precious things in the world,” Carson said, raising her glass, as a simple
bracelet with blue beads slipped down her wrist. “Friends and family.”

And so there the story might have ended: Alec a free man, Lawrence a humbled civil servant, Philippa a forgiving mother, and finally, Carson in love with not only the prince she wanted, but one of whom her mother actually approved. Happily ever after, and all that.

If only Carson hadn't been bothered by something. It had been nagging at her all day, ever since the morning, but she'd had to put it out of her mind so as to pursue the information about Alec, first all the way to Alec's flat in Cambridge, then back to her uncle's office in London. But now, as the evening wore on, and the three trayfuls of appetizers shrank down to crumbs, and one, then two, then three empty bottles were placed bottoms-up back into their buckets, where they bobbed in the water from the melting ice, Carson decided that the time had come to find out. That's what she did these days, wasn't it? Take one step, then another, until she reached the truth. And so, when she hoped nobody was looking, Carson removed herself from the drawing room, sought out the master-bedroom suite, and entered the little room off to the side, where she reached into the desk's bottom drawer and produced a leather-bound book.

Her aunt had seemed eager for Carson not to see what Lawrence had written on the page after the entry Carson
had
been allowed to read. Jane might have simply been protecting her husband's
privacy, of course, and no doubt to some degree she was. But Carson couldn't shake the suspicion that her aunt had read something else there, something involving Carson. When they'd walked into the room that morning, Carson had been concerned that the journal might reveal something about Alec; her aunt had shared her concern. And their shared concern had been proven well founded as to the likelihood of his guilt, at least as far as they knew at that time. Surely if her aunt, reading the following page, had wanted to reassure Carson, she would have confirmed that it contained nothing involving Alec. But what she'd said instead to Carson was this:
Nothing involving you
—leading Carson to wonder if precisely the opposite was true: that it did indeed involve her.

She found where she'd left off: