The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [108]
‘Exactly,’ Ben said. ‘And you thinka guy like Roth, a man with his contacts, his leverage, doesn’t know a thousand journalists who could have written a puff piece about a restaurant opening? It was all a game. He was trying to get you into bed.’
Alice managed to make her embarrassment resemble modesty.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
‘I’m serious. I’ve talked to Mark about it. The concept of adultery, of stealing someone’s wife, it’s meaningless to him. He sees it as competition.’
Alice tooka cigarette out of her bag and was pleased that her hand did not shake as she lit it.
‘Well, I don’t know…’
‘It’s funny.’ Ben looked relieved. ‘I thought you fancied him. I thought you two had a bit of a crush.’
The sentence died away in his mouth, a moment of frankness that he had not intended.
‘Fancied him?’ Alice made a face of appalled disgust, like a child swallowing medicine. ‘He’s revolting. How could you think that?’
A great wave of relief, of confidence-boosting pleasure, swept through Ben’s body. He smiled.
‘Just a hunch,’ he said. ‘Just a paranoia.’
Again Alice ran her hand through his hair. They kissed now, the sweet forgiveness, and Ben felt the skin on her back, reaching for the soft exquisite warmth of her stomach. For the first time in days he was at peace.
‘We should do something about Michelle,’ he said, galvanized and relieved. Alice looked taken aback as he rose from the sofa and lit a cigarette.
‘We should,’ she said instinctively. ‘She told me Sudoplatov was using a new passport, issued in the last couple of years. If he was in the KGB, he’d still have contacts in the Russian government, in the mafia, people who could get him passports, lines of credit, information.’
Ben inhaled deeply.
‘Then we should try to get in touch with Bone,’ he said, aware that he was slipping backinto a role for which his temperament was ill suited. ‘Would you know how to do that?’
‘Sure,’ Alice said.
‘I haven’t got a contact address for him, and I gave fucking McCreery my only copy of the letter. I don’t remember the number of the PO Box. There’s probably no way of finding him.’
‘Of course there is.’ Alice stood and tookhis hand in hers. ‘We’ll find him on the Internet. Let me get a glass of wine and we’ll go upstairs.’
Ben was technologically backward; he barely knew how to switch on Alice’s computer. In her study - a small, windowless cupboard on the same floor as their bedroom - he stood behind her as she opened Internet Explorer.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. He had his hand on the back of her neckand was stroking her hair. The prospect of tracking down Bone seemed secondary to the knowledge that they would very soon be in bed together.
‘We just find Google and type in the name of the town. What was it? Where did the letter come from?’
‘What’s Google?’
‘Forget it. Where did the letter come from?’
‘Cornish. New Hampshire,’ Ben said. ‘Somewhere in New England.’
The connection was fast. Within three seconds a screen had appeared, saying: New Hampshire Online. NH City Guides.
‘Now we find the phone number. Then we call the local post office and say that it’s an emergency.’
‘Is that what you do at work? Lie and make stuff up?’
Alice didn’t reply. Ben could feel the light heave of her shoulders, the gradual uncurling of her spine as she breathed.
‘Welcome to New Hampshire,’ she said, reading aloud from the screen in a cod American accent. ‘What do you want to know about? Local restaurants? Ski conditions? Where do you wanna go today?’
Another screen appeared,