The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [13]
“Yes, and the junta in Saigon says Diem and Nhu committed suicide,” Cremona said. “Everyone knew it was going to happen—you have a man of action in the White House now. I predicted it weeks ago. A handful of dollars, a head full of bullets. Madame Nhu, when she was here last month, predicted it.”
“Well, if you’re right, it ought to be a very good thing for the revolution.”
“The best, dear Paul, the best. Ah, you capitalist-imperialists are so adept at fulfilling the predictions of Lenin. You are eager for your own doom. Up to now, you’ve been growling in Indochina like a caged tiger. Now you must bleed, Paul. There will be chaos—generals cannot run a government in a civil war. Their army has always been a joke, now their country will be a joke. The U.S. Marines will land—they must. You’re committed now to playing a bad hand.”
“Last time I saw you, you were telling me that Diem and Nhu were a couple of Nazis.”
“They were—but they were no joke,” Cremona said. “Well, I must leave you. Molly, why does a beautiful girl like you consort with this running dog of Wall Street?”
“Our relationship is not political,” Molly said.
They had made love all afternoon. While Christopher took a shower, Molly wrote five hundred words on Italian fashions for the Australian weekly she represented in Rome. Christopher found her at the typewriter, naked, with her glasses slipping down her nose and a yellow pencil clenched in her teeth, when he came out of the bathroom.
“Tripe,” she mumbled. Molly wanted to live the life she thought he led, interviewing foreign ministers and film directors for a great American magazine. She kept all his articles, and would have typed them if he let her. Christopher did not want a secretary or a wife. He had hired Molly as an assistant two years before, to have someone in his office while he was away. It was important to his cover that someone answer the telephone and collect the mail. He kept nothing in the office, or anywhere else, that would connect him to his work as an agent. Molly could discover nothing.
Molly, who talked so beautifully, wrote badly, and she had never had an editor who knew enough about English to punish her for it. She asked too many questions when she interviewed; she had not learned to let her sources talk and betray themselves. Mostly she did stories about Italians, who liked the flat accent she used to speak their language, and tried to seduce her. She had beautiful legs and a soft way of smiling that made men want her.
Christopher had realized that he wanted her to stay with him after they had gone to bed for the first time. They had eaten lunch together on the first warm day of the year in the Piazza Navona. Molly had tied a scarf under her chin, and her bright hair was hidden. When Christopher spoke to her she searched his face, as though for some hint that he was mocking her. She spoke English with a public school accent, but when she talked Italian to the waiter her Australian intonations were audible.
She wore a gray sweater and a pleated skirt like a schoolgirl, and Christopher thought she was ashamed of her clothes, as she was ashamed of her Australian accent. He wanted to ask why she flinched when he talked to her; he thought she must be having a bad love affair. Her eyes were flecked with copper, and when she peeled a mandarine he saw that she had lovely, skillful hands.
Out of mischief, because she was so shy, he said, “Would you like to make love?” Molly replied, touching the corner of her mouth with a napkin, “Yes, I think I would.”
Webster knew that Christopher slept with Molly. He sent her name in for a background investigation without mentioning that she was Christopher’s mistress. “Do you want to read the file?” Webster asked when it came back from Canberra. “No,” Christopher said. “She seems to be okay,” Webster said. “If you have to live with a foreigner, an Australian is as clean as you can do.” They did not live together; Molly kept her own small apartment. She didn’t like the bed at his