The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [75]
“I thought I’d killed you,” Christopher said.
He told her about the photograph the Truong toe had given him.
“Was that the picture that odd little Vietnamese took in the restaurant?” Molly asked.
“Yes. I was stupid to let him see you.”
“And you think they really would kill me in order to— what? Punish you for learning their secrets?”
“I know they would,” Christopher said.
Looking steadily into her eyes, Christopher told her what his life had been. He gave her no details, just the fact that he had always lied to her. Molly gazed back at him while he spoke, showing no flicker of surprise.
She said, “Is this what drove Cathy to do the things she did —knowing you were a spy?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Then she was a fool.”
“You may not say so when you’ve lived with it for a while, Molly. Ninety percent of the time it’s a foolish, joking sort of life. But once in a while something like this happens, and the joke stops.”
“Do these people really go about murdering strangers?”
“Not usually. This time they’re really threatened.”
Molly moved for the first time since they had begun to talk; she crossed her legs, clasped her bare knee, and put her chin on it, as if listening to a story about creatures she didn’t believe in.
“What do you have on them, for heaven’s sake?”
“Molly, it’s better that you don’t know that.”
“No,” she said, “we’re not going to have that again, Paul. If you don’t tell me I’ll go out into the streets and let them kill me. I won’t go on with you.”
“All right,” Christopher said. “I believe they assassinated Kennedy. I have some proof, and before I’m done I’ll have it all.”
“I see. And when you have the proof, what good will it be?”
“I don’t know, Molly. All my life I’ve believed that the truth is worth knowing, even if it leads to nothing. It usually leads to nothing. But what else is there?”
Molly touched herself, and with the same finger, touched Christopher.
“Yes,” he said. “But I didn’t know that always.”
“It’s funny,” Molly said, after a moment of silence. “I won’t say I’m not frightened. But it’s too unreal.”
“It’s real enough,” Christopher said. “I’m sorry you have to know.”
“Know what? I’ve always known you were dying of shame. Now I know why, and it’s not so bad as it might have been.
Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done for your country. Isn’t that
supposed to justify anything?”
“That’s what we train ourselves to believe.”
“Yes,” Molly said. “I would like to know one more thing. Have you killed other men?”
Christopher closed his eyes. “Not with a gun or with my
hands,” he said. “People have died because I made mistakes, or
by accident. Sometimes I knew it was going to happen and did
nothing to prevent it. I don’t know the difference between that
and murder.”
2
Molly made them a cooked breakfast. She put a new record on the phonograph and stood with her arm around Christopher’s waist and a glass in her hand, waiting for him to laugh at the words of a new Italian love song.
After they ate, she gave him the mail and the telephone messages from the office. Christopher sorted out five of the telephone messages and pushed them across the table.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Herman. I don’t know whether that’s supposed to be a first or a last name. He talks Italian with an accent.”
“And this was the message?”
“Yes. It seems less mysterious now than it did then. He just kept saying he’d be standing by the Pietà in Saint Peter’s at ten o’clock in the morning and again at four in the afternoon. Then he’d say, ‘Molto urgente!’—and ring off.”
“Could you tell what sort of an accent he had?”
“Not really. A lot of tongue and lips in it.”
Christopher looked at his watch. “It’s three-thirty,” he said. “I ought to be back in less than two hours.