Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [33]
He was in the hospital in Saigon with a bullet wound in his calf—the helicopter pilot’s commonest injury, because his seat is armored but the floor is not—when the divorce became final. Someone dumped the notification on his bed while he was in the john, and he found it when he got back, along with another oak-leaf cluster, his twenty-fifth (they were passing out medals kind of fast in those days). I just got divorced, he had said, and the soldier in the next bed had replied No shit. Want to play a little cards?
She had not told him about the baby. He found out, a few years later, when he became a spy and tracked Gill down as an exercise, and learned that she had a child with the unmistakably late-sixties name of Petal, and a husband called Bernard who was seeing a fertility specialist. Not telling him about Petal was the only truly mean thing Gill had ever done to him, he thought, although she still maintained it had been for his own good.
He had insisted on seeing Petal from time to time, and he had stopped her calling Bernard “Daddy.” But he had not sought to become part of their family life, not until last year.
“Do you want to take my car?” Gill was saying.
“If it’s all right.”
“Sure it is.”
“Thanks.” It was embarrassing having to borrow Gill’s car, but the drive from Washington was too long, and Ellis did not want to rent cars frequently in this area, for then one day his enemies would find out, through the records of the rental agencies or the credit card companies, and then they would be on the way to finding out about Petal. The alternative would be to use a different identity every time he rented a car, but identities were expensive and the Agency would not provide them for a desk man. So he used Gill’s Honda, or hired the local taxi.
Petal came back in, with her blond hair wafting about her shoulders. Ellis stood up. Gill said: “The keys are in the car.”
Ellis said to Petal: “Jump in the car. I’ll be right there.” Petal went out. He said to Gill: “I’d like to invite her to Washington for a weekend.”
Gill was kind but firm. “If she wants to go, she certainly can, but if she doesn’t, I won’t make her.”
Ellis nodded. “That’s fair. See you later.”
He drove Petal to a Chinese restaurant in Little Neck. She liked Chinese food. She relaxed a little once she was away from the house. She thanked Ellis for sending her a poem on her birthday. “Nobody I know has ever had a poem for their birthday,” she said.
He was not sure whether that was good or bad. “Better than a birthday card with a picture of a cute kitten on the front, I hope.”
“Yeah.” She laughed. “All my friends think you’re so romantic. My English teacher asked me if you had ever had anything published.”
“I’ve never written anything good enough,” he said. “Are you still enjoying English?”
“I like it a lot better than math. I’m terrible at math.”
“What do you study? Any plays?”
“No, but we have poems sometimes.”
“Any you like?”
She thought for a moment. “I like the one about the daffodils.”
Ellis nodded. “I do, too.”
“I forgot who wrote it.”
“William Wordsworth.”
“Oh, right.”
“Any others?”
“Not really. I’m more into music. Do you like Michael Jackson?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve heard his records.”
“He’s really cute.” She giggled. “All my friends are crazy about him.”
It was the second time she had mentioned all my friends. Right now her peer group was the most important thing in her life. “I’d like to meet some of your friends, sometime,” he said.
“Oh, Daddy,” she chided him. “You wouldn’t like that—they’re just