The Secret Lovers (13 page)

Wilson laughed. “Elementary, my dear Watson,” he said with his heavy jocularity. “The Ritz is your kind of place, right?”

While Cathy bathed, Christopher went out to a café, bought some jetons, and used the pay telephone to call the Embassy. “There’s not much news,” the
self-conscious girl at the other end told him. “Martha Riley went through a red light and she wants to know if you can fix the ticket.”

He put another token in the telephone and dialed the Rothchilds’ number. Maria answered on the first ring. Christopher did not identify himself; Maria knew his voice. Her own voice was
controlled.

“I’m glad you called,” she said. “I wonder if you’d be free to make a fourth at bridge today.”

“Yes, I’d like that. What time?”

“The usual time. I promise you a good tea.”

“Fine. I’ll look forward to it.”

Christopher hung up and waited for a moment before putting his last jeton into the telephone. A man waiting to use the instrument rapped loudly on the glass door of the booth. While Christopher
dialed, the stranger opened the door and said in French, with exaggerated politeness, “It’s very kind of you to make all these calls while others are waiting.” Christopher pulled
the door shut; the man went on gesticulating beyond the glass.

Cathy came on the line after the phone had rung many times.

“Something has come up,” Christopher said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Paul, it’s Saturday. My mother has asked us to lunch with them. Papa wants to show us his horse.”

“That’s all right. You go on ahead and I’ll be there in time for lunch.”

“Paul, come with me now. I don’t want to show up alone. I can’t
explain
to them. They don’t understand.”

Christopher waited. He could hear Cathy’s breathing. Disappointment caused her to pant, as if she were running.

“One hour,” Christopher said.

Cathy broke the connection.

4

Maria Rothchild was waiting in the open door, as she had been on his earlier visit. She wore a dressing gown, and a scarf covered her hair. Christopher had never before seen her
disheveled. She led him into the kitchen and turned on the radio.

“Where is David?” she asked.

“He flew home yesterday, after we saw him.”

She lit a Gauloise and inhaled deeply, the cigarette trembling in her lips. She crushed it in the sink. Maria, though she disposed of a whole package of Gauloises eveiy day, never took more than
one puff from a cigarette before putting it out. Christopher had never asked why.

“Come with me,” Maria said.

She led Christopher into the sitting room where Otto Rothchild received visitors. Rothchild, fully dressed and awake, sat in his chair; Bud Wilson sat in another. Behind Rothchild, on a card
table, a lie detector had been set up, and a third man stood by the equipment.

Rothchild lifted his head, as if he were much taller than Christopher, and must speak down to him.

“Explain this,” he said.

“Mr. Rothchild,” Wilson said, “Paul, here, is not involved in this procedure in any way.”

Rothchild ignored him. “Maria,” he said, “has Paul explained this to you?”

“Furthermore,” Wilson said, “your calling him here is a breach of security.”

“Answer,” Rothchild said.

“No,” Maria replied. “I didn’t discuss it with him. David is in Washington.”

“Did David authorize this?” Rothchild asked.

“His authorization is not required,” Wilson said. “This is a security investigation.”

“Paul,” Rothchild said, “were you aware that this was going to be done?”

“The possibility was mentioned to me,” Christopher said.

“What was your reaction, please?”

“Surprise that it had never been done before. And I thought you’d react to it pretty much the way you seem to be doing.”

Christopher crossed the room and looked at the machine. He touched the blood pressure cuff, the chest band that measured respiration, the device that recorded the amount of sweat on the palm of
the subject’s hand. “It’s the standard box,” the technician said. “You’ve seen them before.” The paper tapes were blank. Christopher went back and faced
Rothchild.

“What do you want me to do, Otto?” he asked.

“Tell these people to take their machine and go.”

“You can tell them that yourself. They’ll leave.”

“But you won’t do it?”

“I haven’t the authority.”

“Haven’t the authority? You’re a supergrade staff agent, and you’re my case officer. How can they flutter your asset without your authorization?”

Rothchild’s voice wavered. Christopher had never heard him refer to himself as an asset. Maria moved to her husband’s chair and sat on the arm.

Wilson, one hand dangling over the arm of his own chair, cleared his throat. “Christopher seems to understand the situation,” he said. “I’ll explain it to you again, Mr.
Rothchild. This is a routine flutter. It happens to be taking place in the midst of a security investigation, but that doesn’t mean that we think you’ve been lying to us. It’s
just a matter of making the file complete.”

“The file is complete,” Rothchild said. “You should read it. I’ve been in the employ of this organization since before it had a name. No one has ever questioned my
integrity in all those years.”

“No one is questioning your integrity now,” Wilson said. “Every person in this room—Christopher, your wife when she was an officer, myself, Charlie the tech over
there—all of us from the Director on down have taken the polygraph. It’s required of everyone. We regard it as an essential security tool.”

Christopher said, “Wilson, can I have a word with you?” They went into the kitchen together. Wilson did not wait for Christopher to speak.

“The answer is, yes, it really is necessary,” Wilson said. “However, he can refuse.”

“And be fired.”

“That’s the usual procedure. For all I know he’s a special case, but if he is, he’ll be the first.”

Wilson’s feet were planted firmly; he faced Christopher in the narrow kitchen as though he had been ordered to defend the room against enemy infantry.

“Otto has always been a special case,” Christopher said. “I don’t know why he’s never been fluttered. It must seem very strange to you.”

“Unbelievable. How did you guys let it happen? Jesus, Paul—he knows
everyone.
He could blow the whole outfit.”

Christopher saw that there was no hope of explaining this lapse to Wilson. Rothchild was too valuable to lose; no one had wanted to take the consequences of offending him. He insisted on being
trusted absolutely, and so far as anyone knew he had always been absolutely trustworthy. Patchen had given Rothchild what no other employee of the Agency had, his privacy.

“All right,” Christopher said to Wilson, “get your tech out of the room and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Look,” Wilson said. “It’s just going to be a routine flutter. Is he queer, is he doubled, does he steal money. It’ll take thirty minutes, tops, if he loosens
up.”

Christopher sent Maria out of the room with the technician. Rothchild slumped in his chair as the door closed behind her. His eyes remained open and fixed on a point in space between himself and
Christopher’s standing figure.

“Otto,” Christopher said, “I’m sorry this is so upsetting to you. But it’s no worse than an electrocardiogram. You’ve had it done a hundred times to other
men.”

“Yes, and I suspected every one of them of playing me false.”

“If you don’t agree, you’ll be terminated. No one will be able to prevent it. It’s a bad way to go out, after all you’ve done and all you’ve been.”

“It’s an insult.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“What can it possibly mean at this of all times except that suddenly I am not trusted?”

Rothchild’s eyes were still turned away. Christopher snapped his fingers. Rothchild, startled, looked into his face.

“Otto,” Christopher said, “if I had known that you’d never been on the box,
I
wouldn’t have trusted you. Nor would any of us.”

“That’s wonderful to hear, First I give up my health. Now my reputation goes.”

Christopher made no acknowledgment that he had heard. He stared coldly at Rothchild; something moved in the agent’s eyes. Rothchild tugged his slack body, inch by inch like a very old man
putting on a heavy garment, until he sat upright again. He gazed out the window. At last he nodded.

Christopher called the technician back into the room. Maria returned and stood by with Christopher while the machine was connected to Rothchild. They removed his tweed jacket and lifted his arms
while the tube was strapped around his chest. Christopher saw how wasted the muscles had become. Rothchild paid no attention to what was being done. The technician smeared a substance on the palm
of Rothchild’s hand before attaching the device that measured perspiration. “The others can leave now,” the technician said. “We can make this very fast if you can relax,
Mr. R.”

To Maria, Rothchild said, “Uncross my legs, please.” Maria lifted the leg, holding it at the knee and the ankle, and placed the foot beside the other. Christopher watched impassively
from the doorway.

In the kitchen, Wilson suggested a game of gin rummy. He told Christopher, as he dealt the cards, that he always carried a deck in his pocket. Maria Rothchild watched the cards fall for a
moment, and then, uttering an unbelieving laugh, left the room.

Wilson won the first two hands. He played with intense concentration and his broken fingers handled the cards with great delicacy. Christopher was reminded of a fat girl he had known in school
who was a graceful dancer; she had had a habit of singing as she waltzed, and Wilson, too, hummed a tune as he chose cards and discarded.

Only a few minutes passed before the technician came into the kitchen and took Wilson away with him. Christopher heard the shower running on the other side of the wall, and Maria’s sharp
smoker’s cough as the water was turned off. She returned to the kitchen, dressed in one of her pleated skirts, a cardigan around her shoulders. Wilson returned, putting on his coat. He gave
Christopher and Maria a quizzical look.

“Charlie put
me
on the box,” he said. “He wanted to test it. He thought it might be out of commission.”

“Is it all right?” Christopher asked. “I don’t think this ought to be prolonged.”

“On me, the machine works all right,” Wilson said. “Maria, what kind of operation, exactly, did your husband have?”

“It’s called a sympathectomy,” she said. Her eyes widened and she put her flattened palm over her mouth. “Now that’s really
funny
,” she said, and
began to laugh.

“They cut the nerves along the spine, and some in the neck, too,” Christopher said. “It controls his high blood pressure.”

A smile spread over Wilson’s face. “Scared the hell out of Charlie,” he said. “He thought Rothchild had died on him. Nothing on the box registered except a little bit of
respiration. He’s got no readable blood pressure, he doesn’t sweat. Nothing happens.”

Maria’s eyes danced as she listened. “Of course nothing happens,” she said. “The nerves that control sweating were cut by the surgeon, and when Otto goes unconscious he
has no blood pressure. It really is too funny for words. All this pomposity, with Paul of all people having to pull rank, and then Otto’s body turns out to be an unbreakable code.”

In the sitting room, Rothchild had been rearranged in his chair by the technician. Christopher went in to say good-bye to him, and together they heard Maria’s strident laughter pealing in
another part of the house.

With his arched nose and his bottomless eyes, Rothchild looked like the mummy of an Inca, skin turned to parchment by the icy air of a mountain tomb. He laughed aloud, a dozen sharp bursts of
breath. A tear of merriment ran crookedly through the hatch-work of wrinkles on his cheek.

1

The early sun began to warm the earth, and a gusting wind blew streams of ground mist, like the breath of an animal in winter, over the green lawns of the racecourse. Cathy
stood by the rail with her hands in her pockets and a long red scarf down the back of her coat. She had been awake for less than half an hour but her eyes were clear and her skin was touched with
color; after sleep or passion or grief, her face at once regained its perfection, showing no traces of the changes that had passed over it.

“They’re going to breeze him now,” she said. Her fathers Thoroughbred, moving onto the track at the opposite side of the infield, was invisible, cloaked in mist to the
stirrups. The horse was a bright bay, and seemed to carry its rider, an exercise boy wearing a yellow sweater and a cloth cap turned backward, through a cloud. Proof that the horse was not in fact
flying came to them in a moment, as they first felt the vibration and then heard the sound of its hoofbeats on the turf. Cathy hugged Christopher’s arm in both of hers. “Oh, come
on!” she whispered, and the young stallion burst out of the mist and bore down on them with clods of earth flying from his shoes. They smelled the animal, sweat and breath, as he flashed by.
Cathy watched him until the boy turned him off the track and the grooms led him back to the stables.

She and Christopher walked toward the gates. “I like horses better in the morning, when you’re in private with them, than when they’re racing,” Cathy said. “Once,
at home, when I was little, Papa and I watched a gray colt breezing. He held me up so I could see. It was a perfect morning, sunburnt, the way it can be in Kentucky in the springtime. Watching the
colt run—he’d named him Owen Laster after a friend—my father had tears in his eyes. He said, ‘Catherine, a blooded horse is the only thing in the world lovelier in my sight
than you.’ I’ve never forgotten those words. It’s strange how you don’t get the things you want most. I always wanted Papa to name a horse for me and he never did. Just as
you wont write a poem about me, Paul.”

Back at the Ritz, they ate breakfast in their room. Cathy kept silent; she had spoken very little since the day before. Christopher found her eyes on him.